Nanner Nanner

Just to keep the pattern up, I'm sharing a banana bread recipe that is to. die. for. It is gluten-free and there is absolutely no added sweetener, not even honey or maple syrup. Purely sweetened by the overripe nanners and coconut flour. This stuff literally melts in your mouth. And I didn't have to alter the original recipe one bit. I've found a lot of gluten-free baking requires really expensive nut flours and so forth, but coconut flour is a game-changer. Trader Joe's sells 1 lb. bags of organic coconut flour for $2.99!! Not only is the price amazing, but all coconut flour recipes call for much smaller measurements than traditional wheat flour recipes, so that bag will last you. The trade-off is that the recipes require about double the amount of eggs, used as a binding agent. Coconut flour is delicious, highly nutritious, and this bread is both light AND filling.

Coconut Flour Banana Bread

Recipe from Civilized Caveman Cooking

Ingredients

• 4 Ripe Bananas, mashed
• 4 Eggs
• 1/2 Cup Almond Butter (also found cheapest at Trader Joe's, $6.99) 
• 4 Tbsp Coconut Oil, melted
• 1/2 Cup Coconut Flour
• 1 Tbsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• Pinch of sea salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Blend bananas, eggs, almond butter, and coconut oil together. I used a regular blender.
3. Transfer to a large bowl and add in all remaining ingredients. Stir well. 
4. Lightly grease a loaf pan and pour in batter.
5. Bake in oven for 50 minutes.

Super easy! I love that this snack requires minimal effort. So often I find myself hungry in the middle of work or running errands and need something to hold me over when I know I won't be have a full meal for a couple of hours. That is exactly why I'm loving baking lately. It's so important and useful to have these powerful snacks on hand to sustain us throughout the day, wherever it takes you. I, for one, don't think clearly when my stomach is growling and my brain power is depleting. 

I'll probably be making other variations of this recipe, maybe in muffin form, with my favorite add-ins like walnuts and dates, or maybe in loaf form again, but turned into decadent french toast! Have some fun in your kitchen. And wear a cool apron. 

Cheers to baking! 

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Mornings Glorified!

The verdict is in: the muffins are share-worthy! Perfectly moist and satiating, chock full of the good stuff. Apple, carrot, coconut, dates. Morning Glory muffins have been my favorite since the first time I tried one, not too long ago. They bring me right back to the Mill Mountain coffee house in Virginia where I did some of my best research and writing in school. It became somewhat of a routine. So much so that they'd give me coffee and a muffin at no charge. It's funny how food can take you back.

I altered the recipe slightly, omitting the brown sugar that I feel is unnecessary for something with such naturally delicious ingredients. These are a damn good snack to power you through the mid-morning or afternoon lull.

Morning Glory Muffins

Adapted from Elly Says Opa!

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
• 2 tsp Baking Soda
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 1/2 cups Carrots, peeled and grated
• 1 Apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
• 1/2 Cup Shredded Coconut
• 1/2 Cup Chopped Walnuts
• 3 Large Eggs
• 1/2 Cup Honey, I used Trade Joe's Raw Wild Collected
• 1/3 Cup Coconut Oil, melted
• 2/3 Cup Unsweetened Applesauce
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1/4 Cup Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice, I put an orange segment in my hand press
• 3/4 Cup Dates, chopped  

Directions

1. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl.

2. Use a spatula to stir in the carrots, apple, coconut, and walnuts.

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

4. In a small bowl, beat the eggs, honey, coconut oil, applesauce, vanilla, and orange juice.

5. Gently stir the wet mixture into the dry until just mixed.

6. Lastly, fold in the chopped dates.

7. If your muffin tray is not nonstick, lightly grease each muffin tin or fill with liners. 

8. I filled each tin with batter just slightly more than full, yielding 12 medium muffins with enough leftover batter for an extra two (I simply baked the extra in one side of a bread pan because I was impatient)

9. Bake for 20 minutes and your whole house will smell AMAZING.

I highly recommend smearing some almond butter between two halves for an extra boost. Enjoy! And try to stop at just one, I dare you. 

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Countdown

The winter blues are real. I am finding it more and more challenging to get up from our blanket-laden Lazyboy when I don't really have to. It's becoming a problem. Although I fight myself most days, I still make it to TRX and yoga and am reminded of how critical regular exercise is for your mental health. Forget the physical for a minute - it's the mind that I think faces the most difficulty during this time of year. I see pictures of Florida and Costa Rica from friends that are lucky enough to get a heavy dose of Vitamin D and salt water in bleak January and February, and as much as I wish I could pick up and fly out to the islands, simply looking at warm beaches actually eases my mind. 

I keep reminding myself that without a change of season, we wouldn't appreciate sun and warmth nearly as much. There is beauty in each season, even on bleak five-degree days. And it's safe to say we can begin the countdown to Spring! The first official day of Spring is in exactly one month from tomorrow. Of course that doesn't mean we are in the clear from snow and cold weather, but hey, it's a big step in the right direction. In highschool and even college, I thought one of the main perks of summer was getting a tan. My outlook has completely changed since. 

Warmer days, whether the sun is out or not, creates endless possibilities. I've already put a list together of "Things to do in Columbus" come April/May, including FARMER'S MARKETS, the most important of them all, pick-your-own farms, free yoga in the park, free outdoor concerts, and outdoor movies. Yes, most of these options are available indoors during the winter seasons, but there is a difference between the confines of a four-walled room and the open outdoors. 

I also found a bike path that can take me all the way downtown, roughly 12 miles and maybe an hour-long ride. I've already begun daydreaming about my Mondays reinvented. I don't start work until noon, allowing a perfect amount of time to relax with a good breakfast, stuff a backpack with slightly more presentable clothing, and hop on my new commuter route. Should probably leave a bit of extra time for the sweating to subside upon my arrival. Sweating is good.  

Last summer, I took advantage of many Saturdays and Sundays off from the restaurant and biked the 1 1/2 or 2-hour route from suburban Concord to the outskirts of Boston. For the most part I rode solo, and it was one of the most freeing ways to get out of the everyday routine, both physically and mentally. I had no one to answer to, no rules to follow. Sometimes I wasn't even quite sure how I would get back home. I usually spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the city at a food fair, or meeting my friend Julia for a smoothie and inconveniently to everyone else walking my bike down the busy sidewalks. If I planned well enough and brought an extra snack, I would bike the whole route back before sunset. That was a long day. A long, good day taken full advantage of. I've realized that my bike is in Massachusetts while I am here in Columbus, however. A tragic love story of separation. I'll have to face that issue later...

In the meantime, I'll be making pancakes a lot. And baking. I've had an urge to bake this week. Cupcakes, cookies, muffins. I have a Morning Glory Muffin recipe to put to the test this afternoon, so hopefully it will be share-worthy. Anyone thinking that muffins don't pair well with February is wrong. 

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Intentions

I'm sitting in Starbucks reading through "The Juice Generation" by Eric Helms, founder of the first juicery in the US back in 1999 before any of us really starting thinking about juice that extended beyond Tropicana. It seemed fitting that a little boy started sobbing in front of me upon finishing his juice. I feel your pain, little man. Sometimes those satisfying flavors are too darn hard to part with. I've been witnessing an immense support of this so-called juice generation in the storefront where I work and am amazed at how passionately so many locals feel toward the products. When there is a surge of popularity for anything in the health and fitness world, I'm inclined to immediately take a step back before jumping through the floodgates. Sometimes the health benefits may be available, but intentions are not correctly aligned. The owners have established more than a business here, however, by promoting a balanced lifestyle and self-care perspective. Juice bars are popping up all over the place, and though many may approach the business honestly, some are simply taking advantage of a trend. The production may be half-hearted, produce may not be 100% organic in an effort to cut costs and boost profits, and juices may be watered down, reducing the nutritional punch in each bottle. I'm not exactly business-minded, as I find the heart and soul behind a name to be the most crucial element of a company, rather than profit margins.

And it's all about the mentality in my book. I rolled out my mat in a hot yoga class on Monday, and began the class not with an immediate sweat session, but with a moment of stillness. The instructor made a point to have us take a minute to set our intentions for the practice that morning. Sure, it's just one hour of the day, but the power of a short period of time when approached humbly can significantly alter your attitude toward the day, toward others, and toward yourself. Intentions can be focused physically, emotionally, or mentally, whichever you feel needs the most love and care. We dedicated a few minutes to headstands. I have never been able to find my way into one, but I slowed the process, followed the introductory steps, and used core strength I didn't even know I had to lift my feet off the ground, eventually holding the full pose. I was SO excited. It was both a physical and mental accomplishment. We really are our own worst enemies. I felt such an overwhelming wave of pride, not because I thought I could show off to the class (there were 4 other people), but because I beat myself. Yoga is another one of those "trends", but when practiced with pure intentions, you fully understand its draw and grasp the benefits.

So let's work on setting our intentions, whether big or small.

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The Balls are Good

As I've previously discussed, I'm a sugar lover but terrified of the vast amounts we consume. There has to be a happy medium in the food world where "sweet" doesn't have to mean "bad for you". I am now working part-time at a small raw & organic juice company here in Ohio called Native Cold Pressed. Their products are absolutely delicious using only organic fruits and vegetables, no water. You're getting a solid 3-5 pounds of produce in each bottle which is incredible. Consuming vegetables has never been so easy. A friend of the owners' happens to run a small company that makes clean energy bites, which we sell in our storefront. They're crazy good.

So I was trying to think of delicious snacks I could make to have on hand and something I could easily take with me to work, and the obvious dawned on me. As much as I support our local companies, I can just make my own energy bites! I've made coconut-date balls in the past consisting of only dates, almonds, and coconut essentially thrown in the food processor and you're done. Sadly when I moved to Columbus, I moved away from the food processor in my mom's kitchen. But a blender turned out to work just fine! I stumbled upon a very appealing food blog called "Better With Cake", where the author shares recipes for healthy treats. The following is my adaptation of her cookie dough bites:

Yields 16 Energy Bites

Ingredients

• 1 Cup Raw Cashews
• 1/2 Cup Rolled Oats
• 14 Jumbo Medjool Dates, pitted
• 1 tsp. Vanilla
• 2 Tbsp. Ground Flaxseed
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions

1. Combine cashews and oats in a blender. Blend until you have "flour", this should yield 2 cups
2. Set flour aside and blend dates. Yields 2 cups of binding agent
3. Add the flour back in the blender with the dates and remaining ingredients. 
4. Blend until you have a thick consistency 
5. Use a tablespoon to ball up your "dough" until it's in the desired shape
6. Store in fridge or on counter in an airtight container, whichever your preference

These taste so decadent! Trey and I went through them over the course of 24 hours (I halved the recipe so it was only a total of 8). Dates are an amazing sweet source of energy that pack in both fiber and more potassium than bananas. They're a great tool for substituting refined sugars and I'm sure I'll be messing around with them more to come up with other combinations like this. Try them out, it's so easy! Credit to Emma at Better with Cake for the idea. 

Tomorrow is Sunday which means you should be in your kitchen. Ta Ta!

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The Decline of our Sanity

Last night we watched a documentary called "GMO OMG" - or I should say I was cooking and listening while Trey was watching. The director, Jeremy Seifert, and his children do a rather entertaining job of exposing the harmful effects of GMOs and the industry's efforts to covery it all up. GMO is a term that only begun to receive notable attention in the past decade, and I know that I didn't bother to learn more about it at first. This documentary was filmed in 2012, and all of the people Jeremy interviewed had either never heard of GMOs, had heard of them but didn't know what they were, or knew what they were and didn't realize they were eating them. It's actually a little scary to think about how the food industry has altered the basic building blocks of our food without outwardly letting us know.

But apparently not everyone agrees. Both Colorado and California rejected the labeling of GMO foods consecutively in 2012 and 2013, followed by Oregon's rejection this past November (NPR). Thankfully Vermont has signed the first GMO labeling requirement to take effect in 2016, with continued campaigns to prevent the instatement. Many soy products, refined sugars, and corn syrup are derived from genetically engineered ingredients. Are we really still not convinced that it's better for our bodies to avoid corn syrup and refined sugars? I honestly find the GMO dilemma funny from a consumer perspective. When you ingest these ingredients, you're hurting yourself. Why are we fighting so hard to continue? The FDA doesn't have any safety regulations or scanning processes for GM food, and there is alarming evidence of pre-cancerous cell growth from these types of products (Natural Revolution). It's a risky and unnecessary game.
  
Sure, I understand much of the fight comes from the companies surviving because of GMO use. They require much less crop maintenance and increase crop production tenfold, and that means revenue. But those crops will provide a yield once and once only, whereas unaltered seeds may produce for consecutive growing seasons. In developing countries, this reproduction is key to survival. If the food industry continues on to expand GM production, a lot of populations will be left struggling. Not to mention they're destroying the microorganisms in the soil necessary for reuse of the land. This practice expands, our land dies.

Food for thought (ha!) on this glorious Thursday in January. I'll share with you some actual food next!

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Sugar, You Sneaky Bastard

I've had a fascination with sugar lately. The world is suddenly realizing that too much sugar leads to health problems and weight issues. As kids we're taught to eat sugar in moderation and parents fear that sugar high that will leave their children bouncing off the walls. So as much as we're all aware that too much sugar is a bad thing, we weren't ever told exactly why.

My understanding is still in its beginning stages, but I've read a book or two, a few articles, and watched some documentaries that reveal how sugar affects the body. Of course, we can find sugar in fruits and vegetables, but this is the naturally occuring fructose that our bodies are able to use productively because of the fiber that accompanies it. It's that added sugar that'll get ya. I've considered myself to be a relatively healthy person for a while now, but not until fairly recently did it occur to me to check for added sugars in products like pasta sauce, ketchup, peanut butter, cereal, yogurt, and milk. I love all these things and therefore they should love me. But it's an unrequited love, sadly. A good amount of sugar that is found outside of your produce is refined (aka Sucrose) and therefore stripped of any nutritional quality. Instead of turning into energy your body can use, it creates a huge imbalance that, in short, can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and weight gain if you're consistently consuming too much. The American Heart Association estimates that we should be intaking no more than 25 grams of added sugar, which excludes the delicious fruits and milk that most of us adore, but we consume a rough average of 83 grams each day. That's madness.

I am no nutrition expert, but I've definitely discovered a passion there, one that I plan to pursue in a way I haven't yet figured out. The funny thing is I was planning on sharing two chocolate bark recipes today and now I've ironically rambled on about the dangers of added sugar instead. Don't get me wrong, I love sugar and indulge in something sweet every day. But it's all about moderation, people.

As I mentioned, this post went in a different direction than intended. Ah, the beauty of free-writing. For a couple of reasons, I'm not going to share a recipe for sweet treats at this moment; One being my current focus on store-bought products that should never have added sugar in them, and two being that I just made SUCH a delicious pasta sauce from scratch. And I have to share that now, instead. I would like to preface this creation with a fun fact from my refrigerator. I have a bottle of Kroger Pasta Sauce whose third ingredient listed is sugar, hitting your system with a whopping 9 grams per 1/2 cup. I don't know about you, but I use more than half a cup of sauce on my pasta, so you do the math. It baffles me that companies feel the need to add sugar to a product like this one where the focus should be to bring out the naturally sweet tomato flavors with various spices. That's the entire purpose of spices.

Veggie Madness

Ingredients

Makes 2 Servings

• Big Gulp of Olive Oil
• 1/2 White Onion
• 2 Cloves Garlic, crushed and diced
• Crushed Red Pepper Flakes, to your liking but don't leave them out!
• 1 14.5-ounce Can Diced Tomatoes
• 4 oz. Tomato Paste (Smallest size I can find is 6 oz)
• 1 Cup Packed Spinach, shredded
• 2 Zucchini & Spiralizer Tool
• Parmesan, for topping

Instructions

1. Heat saucepan over medium-low with olive oil, add onions and saute for a few minutes until they begin to look translucent 

2. Add garlic and crushed red pepper flakes, saute together for another few minutes until the mixture becomes very fragrant 

3. Add in the can of diced tomatoes, including the juices, and stir

4. Add the tomato paste next, stir well, and throw in all of your spinach

5. Continue stirring occasionally. While the sauce is cooking, make your zucchini "noodles" by pressing one end into the Spiralizer and twisting against the blade. 

6. When the spinach has cooked down into the sauce, you're set to go! 

7. Top half of your zucchini pasta with half (or more...) of the sauce and sprinkle in some Parmesan for added flavor

If you don't have a spiralizer, you should get one. It was gifted to me (Go Ari!) for Christmas and I never owned one before. Obviously you can cook regular pasta to serve your sauce with, but I love the extra dose of veggies. 

Fresh food, I love you. It really is a privelege, so we should all be taking advantage more. 

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