Cheesy Vegetable Kale Chips

Those delicious cheesy kale chips you can buy at the store are delicious and oh-so-healthy, but at about $5 a bag they are quite an investment. This is a pretty easy batch you can whip up for about half the price, yielding about 3-5 times as many chips. SCORE!

(If you want a simpler, faster roasted kale recipe without all of the cheesiness, I gotcha covered too)

This recipe is super fleixble. You can make them in the oven or dehydrator, using a blender or food processor, and you can even mix up the ingredients if you want. Swap lime juice for the lemon and squirt in some sriracha sauce. Use sun dried tomatoes instead of a carrot. Go nuts and be creative and enjoy the magical disappearing act that follows (read: these taste great and you will eat them quickly).

Onward to the recipe!

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Hollylujah! Onion Rings

There's a burger spot in our neighborhood with vegan options, and my boyfriend and I like to go there after an active day, or when we're simply feeling indulgent. I love their vegan and portobello burgers, but their onion rings are the BEST, and probably the reason we go about once a month. They're beer-battered and deep fried and probably not even vegan though, so I've been jonesing to come up with a healthier alternative to make at home.

The idea to make them with almonds was always there, in order to lower the carbs and make the fats healthier. But I started off a bit over-zealous, planning to make the almond milk at home and dehydrate the leftover almond crumbles to turn into almond flour and a crunchy coating. This is exactly what I did, but it took forever, so next time I will probably simplify a bit. :) In fact, I have come up with a simple method, so I will share all of your options in this post, depending on where you fall on the zealous-ometer.

Note: I will continue to tweak this recipe and add more photos and an instructional video. But if you can't wait, give it a go!

On to the recipe...

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Recipes of the moment: Jul 24

While I do have some exciting new recipes in the works this week, in between I've been trying some recipes from other bloggers in between. Here are two of recipes I'm trying at the moment:

1. Yesterday I made my first batch of homemade coconut bacon, using this recipe from The Simple Veganista. It tastes eerily like bacon (granted, I haven't had the real thing in at least 5 years, but STILL). It's delicious, and dangerously addictive.

   

   Coconut Bacon

   
   It also made a great BLTA with hummus and red onions, which made quite a splash on instagram yesterday for some reason. I guess people can't resist a pretty sandwich!
   



Yesterday's lunch: the BoLThA?

2. Today I'm making a batch of raw portobello jerky, courtesy of Choosing Raw. The idea for this struck me when I was enjoying the meaty texture of my recent marinated portobello burgers. When I started my research, this recipe looked so much like what I wanted to create that I decided to just go with it. I marinated the sliced caps last night and they are currently in the dehydrator. The house is smelling SO smoky and jerkylicious as I type :)
   

   

   Raw portobello mushroom jerky

Today I'll be refining my healthy onion ring recipe, and assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, that recipe should be here tomorrow! Stay tuned!

To be continued...

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Healthy Pad Thai? YES.

Hello hello! I am back from a wonderful visit in Los Angeles with friends and family. I was anxious to get back to cooking, so I stopped at the store on my way back into town and stocked up on a bunch of fresh ingredients to fill my week with new recipes. Among them was a spaghetti squash and some powdered low-fat peanut butter, both of which were calling me the next day when I was craving pad thai.

Pad thai is delicious, but never really considered healthy, so I was on a mission to reduce the guilt of this incredible dish as much as possible. Using baked spaghetti squash instead of rice noodles cuts the carbs down by about 30g per serving, and by using powdered peanut butter, the fat is reduced by 85%.

Here's a nutritional comparison for this recipe vs the same exact one prepared with regular peanut butter and rice noodles:

This recipe: 135 calories, 3g fat, 21.1g carbs (full nutrition facts at the end of this post)
Traditional: 430 calories, 16.7g fat, 55.9 carbs

The numbers don't lie. Onward to the recipe!

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Marinated Portobello Burgers Recipe

My adventures in creating recipes from farmer's market finds continue...

There was a mushroom stand on Sunday with baskets of various mushroom varieties, all marked at $5 a basket. There was only one portobello basket left, and it was mine. I knew right away that they would become burgers, so all that was left was to decide on a marinade. Here's what I came up with...

Why I put the lettuce on the bottom, I'll never know.

Onward to the recipe!

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Zucchini Pasta with Walnut Pesto (low-carb and low-calorie)

I had a pretty great Sunday. It started with my first-ever Zumba class and swimming with my good friend Nena (whose awesome Tech blog you can find here, btw). Afterward, there happened to be a farmer's market in the parking lot, so we got some cash and went produce hunting. I scored on a lot of goodies that will be sure to inspire many new recipes this week. Here's my loot:

GET IN MAH BELLY

Inspired by the unhealthy hummus we found there, we went back to my house and made the hummus that I posted yesterday, and then I started to think about what else I could make this week. I got some extra long zucchini that would make great noodles, and so much basil would have to become pesto. So yesterday afternoon I got to work, determined to make a delicious new pasta dish that would be as healthy as possible.

If you've never made zucchini noodles, you're missing out. Cooked just a little, zucchini closely resembles the texture of pasta, and when you add some sauce you can hardly tell the difference. It makes a great lasagna noodle as well. 

To cut the noodles, a special slicer is ideal. I have a mandoline slicer (this one) that can make julienned strips, but this spiral slicer is officially on my wish list. If you don't have the appropriate slicer or the cash to splurge on one right now, you can use a vegetable peeler to create long, flat, linguine-like shreds. I don't recommend just using a knife for this, though. I tried it once, and the results were not worth the time and effort required.

Whether you peel the zucchini first is up to you - it's really just a question of aesthetics and nutrition. The skin adds a bit more color and fiber, but I'd recommend peeling your zucchini if it isn't organic, to reduce your chemical intake. However you choose to slice your noodles, stop when you get to the seeds. I like to save the insides for other recipes - they're good grilled! :)

If you want more info on the various ways to prepare zucchini noodles, check out this thorough Wikihow article. 

Ummm, hi.

Onward to the recipe!

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