"Clean Simple Eats" Sweets

Healthy cookies? Who knew there was such a thing? This afternoon I was checking up on the happenings on Instagram when I saw @cleansimpleeats posted a recipe for "Skinny Banana Cookies" and I immediately went to store, grabbed some bananas, and turned on the oven. The result was awesome. :-) 

Last night, Darren and I went to a birthday party and overdosed on delicious appetizers and desserts at a restaurant called Moxies. While these eats were scrumptious, we both woke up today and decided we needed to repent and be a little healthier (I feel like we do that a lot though, it's a vicious cycle). 

The problem with trying to be healthier is that I have a VERY overactive sweet tooth. So when I saw "skinny" and "cookie" in the same recipe name it caught my attention. Enough of my gabbing, here's the recipe:

"Skinny Banana Cookies" from @cleansimpleeats
Ingredients:
- 4 medium ripe bananas, mashed
- 2 1/2 cups oats
- 1/4 cup all natural peanut butter or other nut butter (I used regular PB because that's all we had)
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- dash of cinnamon
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate because if I used dark then I'd be the only one eating them)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Combine all ingredients together and spoon onto parchment paper on a baking sheet
3. Bake 12 minutes and cool on cooling rack
Makes 32 cookies.



Pretty straight forward, yeah? Mash up some bananas, throw in some oats, peanut butter, chocolate chips, seasoning and voila! Healthy cookies!

Did you know that in Canada, Kraft makes peanut butter and puts pictures of teddy bears on it? I didn't.

Now this is where I got nervous: I'd made the dough, I'd formed the cookies and placed them on the cookie sheet. The thing is that I have very rarely, like VERY rarely, had a cookie that I formed nicely and stuck in the oven and had it come out looking as nice as it did when it went in. I seriously thought that these would turn out the same way and they would fall sometime during the 12 minutes of baking time. 

The picture @cleansimpleeats posted looked like baked versions of the cookies I'd formed from dough: (Photo taken from her Instagram post)

 I wasn't sure how mine would turn out. Twelve minutes later:

Victory!!! I was seriously so surprised!!! Adding to the fact that I love @cleansimpleeats because she posts healthy food and sticks the recipe in the comments instead of making you track down the website, but now I can confidently say that non-foodies and people who are less than proficient in the kitchen can follow her recipes and have them turn out as good as she says they will!!

Taste test: they were delicious. And I typically steer clear of things with banana in them but maybe it was the oats or the peanut butter or the chocolate (all things I love) but I didn't feel like the banana took over the cookie. If I were to rename these, I would call them "Skinny Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies Held Together by Bananas." Her name for them is shorter though and probably more accurate... I tried. 

I texted my husband to tell him I'd baked him some treats. His response was, "Are you trying to make me fat?" And I could tell him with confidence that they wouldn't! (He got home from work and ate some before I even knew he was home. Pretty sure that means he liked them)

Instagram WIN!!!

Trying Some "Clean Simple Eats"

Nine times out of ten, when it comes to exercises, cardio routines, and recipes that I want to try, I turn to Pinterest. BUT I do reserve the right to change that up and I'm glad I did. 

Instagram was the key to finding these new recipes. She's @cleansimpleeats and I've been following her for a few months now after Heidi Powell (wife of trainer Chris Powell and co-host of "Extreme Weight Loss" - a show that I'm absolutely addicted to) re-posted a recipe for some healthier Valentines Day cookies. She always posts delicious looking foods and, what I especially like about her posts, she posts the recipe in the comments so you don't have to go tracking down a website (turns out websites don't translate to hyperlinks in Instagram).

Today she posted what she called "Skinny Banana Cookies" and I decided today was the day to try and re-create her delicious looking treats for myself and see if they actually worked. There was another post for "Sausage and Hash Egg Muffins" that she'd posted a while back and, because I'm trying to find protein-filled, healthy yummies to include in my hubby's breakfasts and lunches, attempting to make the muffins was added to my to-do list as well.

First up to bat:

"Sausage and Hash Egg Muffins" from @cleansimpleeats

1. Preheat oven to 375F

2. Crack 18 whole eggs in a large bowl and beat

3. Add:    1 grated sweet potato

                 2 chicken sausages, chopped

                 2 cups spinach, chopped

                 1 Tbsp dried, minced onion

                 Salt and pepper to taste

                 Shredded cheese (optional)

4. Grease 24 foil muffin liners and scoop about 1/3 cup mixture into each liner

5. Bake 30 minutes. 

Store leftovers in fridge.

I started off with the eggs, per her instructions. I don't think I've ever cracked so many eggs in my life. Holy Protein, Batman.  After using an entire carton of eggs (turns out in Canada, Costco sells eggs in boxes of 18 so I was in luck), I peeled a sweet potato and grated the whole thing directly into the eggs.

Next came the chicken sausage. I tried to cut each one up into semi-small pieces so that each of the 24 muffins would get at least two or three pieces in it. As a side note, I bought these at Safeway but I'd been at Costco the day before and noticed that they had some turkey & chicken sausages and you get eight sausages for the same price that you'd get a package of four from Safeway so if you're planning on making these muffins on a regular basis, I'd suggest going the Costco route and either freezing or refrigerating the extra and using it for the next batch.

The spinach, onion, salt and pepper came last and I mixed it all together. In retrospect, I should have added more salt and pepper but I figured that it would be safer to add too little than too much. In the taste-test portion of this experiment, my sister-in-law cut the muffin in half and added more salt and pepper to each side and it made up the difference.

When filling up the muffin tins, the recipe calls for using about 1/3 cup. Keep in mind that the eggs are going to expand during baking so you don't want to fill them all the way to the top of the liner. The first few muffins that I filled I used exactly 1/3 cup and then had to fix them later because there was WAY too much egg and they may have exploded in the oven and no one wants to clean that up. I went back and fixed the first few and ended up using a little less than 1/3 cup in each muffin.

Here's a helpful hint: they raise up when they're cooking but a few seconds after you take them out of the oven, they settle a little bit. I took this picture after they'd already fallen but they still look pretty good.

As a born skeptic, I'm always cautious when I try to replicate the recipes of others. I feel like no matter what I do, mine never end up looking the way they are "supposed to look." Here is the picture she posted along with the recipe:

And here is a picture of what I made: 

Taking into account that I grabbed the smallest one of the batch to sample and acknowledging that her picture was taken outside with better lighting, I'd say that they aren't a far cry from each other!! Win!! 

Two of my sister-in-laws helped with the taste test and they both said that they were good. As noted before, we all added some extra salt and pepper and I will probably put ketchup on some of the ones I eat in the future (but I put ketchup on almost everything so that's not a comment about needing to change the taste of it) but I thought they were really good, easy to make, and I'm a huge fan of the nutrition facts:  

Protein: about 6 grams

Carbs: about 1 gram

Calories: about 65

I'm chalking this one up to a Instagram WIN and sending props to @cleansimpleeats. 

Stay tuned to see how the "Skinny Banana Cookies" turned out :-)

Cardio for the Anti-Runner

I used to HATE running. I couldn't fathom why people would run track or cross country in high school. In college, I had friends who would go out running on sidewalks, treadmills, and trails and I really just didn't understand the appeal of people putting on shorts and tennis shoes to weary their legs over a number of miles and for what? Granted, I eventually started buying into the importance of cardio and the health benefits that come from running but, to this day, I prefer running on a treadmill (I like being able to see how far I'm going, how many calories I'm burning, and how fast I'm going at any time) and I can only run outside when running a 5k or some event like that and then it's more for the "free" t-shirt and competition rather than the actual running. 

- Side note: I did run the Disneyland Neverland 5k (the Tinkerbell Half Marathon was sold out) and if there is one place that I LOVE running outside it's Disneyland. If I ever do a marathon, it will be at/through a Disney Park and I will love every sweaty second of it. - 

Once I realized the benefits of running, I started running a mile or two on a treadmill a few times a week. All I would do is get on the machine, set it at a speed and run until my miles were up. Problem was, I wasn't seeing results. Yeah, I could run for a while but I didn't see myself losing weight, losing inches, losing anything. The only thing that I lost was the time that I spent doing result-less cardio in the gym. I kept at it for about three years and then I started hearing this hype about interval training. Intervals claimed to have "better results in a shorter time" and I'd "burn fat faster." I figured I'd give it a try and I was cautious at first because I don't tend to buy into quick fixes but I did like the idea of spending less time on a treadmill. I started with a Fat Burning Run (http://pinteresttrainer.blogspot.com/2014/02/fat-burning-run.html) and it worked! I replaced my 3 miles on a treadmill with a 20 minute, 1.8-ish mile run and I burned more calories and could see results on the scale and tape measure. 

Now, I'll be honest. There are some days where it's cardio time and I do not feel like running. Just because someone is able to run, doesn't mean they love it. Somedays I still hate it. On those days, I use this:

The Treadmill Shredmill Workout

There are three non-consecutive minutes where you are running (you can do that :-) but the rest of this workout mostly stays below 4.0 mph. Originally, as I am with most workouts, I was skeptical. But I finished this workout the first time and this is what my treadmill told me:

Four hundred twenty calories?!? And virtually no running?? This is great!!! The reason that this works so well is that, even though you aren't walking very fast, you're walking up some sweet inclines, burning calories, fat, and working your booty. :-) I've done this workout a few times now and I am dripping sweat afterwards every time. My husband hates running more than I do and I'm trying to get him to try this (I'll let you know if that ever happens haha). I decided to take out my Wednesday rest day and replace it with this treadmill shredder and it's great because it's mostly a walk so I can still do a run the next day and my legs don't feel like jello.

 It makes you sweat but it doesn't make you run!

Pinterest WIN ;-)

Simple Sunday Meal & Save Yourself the Carbs

It seemed like every Sunday when I was growing up our family would have spaghetti for dinner. This was probably for a couple of reasons: 

• It was a really easy meal to put together
• It was so easy that my mom could assign me or one of my 7 siblings to make it without worrying about the state of the kitchen after the fact
• We had 10 people in our family so we bought noodles and Prego in bulk and always had the ingredients on hand
• It was a dinner that almost everyone liked (one of my brothers had a problem with the tomatoes in the sauce and would painstakingly pick out every single one before he would eat anything and eventually my mom agreed that as long as he ate a bite of the sauce, he could put butter and salt on the rest of the noodles. Which he was fine with. He used a LOT of butter. We're talking spoonfuls. Although there was that one time that he took a spoonful of margarine and ate it like it was ice cream…but that's a story for a different time.)

So now that I'm trying to get on board the "healthy train" and trying my hand at carb cycling, it makes it hard to enjoy my traditional Sunday spaghetti without getting a pit in my tummy and feeling a little (sometimes a lot) guilty. But there is a way!

Spaghetti Squash!!!

"How to Save 130 Calories on Your Bowl of Pasta"

I found this pin, tried it and I love it. (I don't know if the 130 calories is accurate because it all depends on portion size but I'll do a comparison of spaghetti squash vs noodles at the end.) Instead of cooking up some spaghetti noodles, I cook a spaghetti squash and it's just as good but so much healthier! 

Using spaghetti squash is almost just as easy as using noodles too. Instead of throwing noodles in water for a while, you put a squash in the oven for an hour and you're good! Well, almost. :)

Good things require work and good things require patience, right?

Here's how I make my spaghetti squash:

**I am including pictures but please excuse my use of an iPhone camera and my terrible kitchen lighting**

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Stab the spaghetti squash repeatedly all over with a knife (this will make it so the pressure that builds up in the oven can be released easily instead of exploding and making a mess for you to clean).

2. Place the squash in a pan or tray on the middle rack of the oven for 60 - 75 minutes (this is where the patience comes in. Noodles cook faster, yes, but this is worth the wait. Also, you don't have to check it to make sure it's not boiling over, over cooking or undercooking, and you don't have to throw it on a wall to find out if it's done).

3. Remove the tray with the squash from the oven, wait about 5 minutes for it to cool a bit (be careful and use oven mitts because it will still be hot!!) and then cut in in half length-wise.

4. Using a big spoon, remove the seed from the middle of the squash.

5. Take a fork and separate the "noodles" of the squash and dish onto a plate. 

6. Cover the spaghetti squash with sauce of your choice (I am a HUGE red sauce fan so for me it's marinara) and enjoy!! 

**Thank you for not judging me on my photography skills or lack thereof**

Comparing 1 cup of spaghetti squash to noodles this is what I found:

                     Squash (Based on Wikipedia and verified by Dr. Oz)                 Noodles (Based on Barilla Spaghetti Noodles)
Calories                                          31                                                                                                        200
Total Fat (g)                                   0.6                                                                                                        1.0
Protein (g)                                      0.6                                                                                                         7
Carbs (g)                                         7                                                                                                           42

Judging by these few nutrition facts, if you are trying to get your protein in for the day, the noodles would be the way to go. But if you're trying to get your protein from this food group, there is whole other discussion we need to have. (Eat a string cheese. One string cheese has 8 grams of protein and doesn't have the calories or carbs.)

BUT if you're looking for a way to enjoy pasta-type sauces and recipes without the carbs and calories, substituting spaghetti squash is a GREAT way to go. :-) Happy cooking!