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No-Sugar Grilled Pineapple Rings

By on July 15, 2016 in Guilt-Free Treats, Healthy Snacks, Side Dishes

When we lived in Utah, we had a Brazilian neighbor. Every time she saw us, she’d invite us in for Brazilian food, which happens to be AMAZING! The meat and veggies were delicious, but my favorite part was the grilled pineapple. As it heats up, the sugars caramelize and the juices come out. It softens but somehow stays crunchy. It’s one of the most satisfying things in the world. The only problem was, it was covered in sugar. I was so sad to learn that she made it by covering it in brown sugar.

Fast forward to now. One day I had a hankering for that sugary, warm, juicy grilled pineapple. I decided there had to be a way to make it without the brown sugar. After all, pineapple is naturally sweet, so there’s no reason to add more sugar.

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The key is to start with a fresh pineapple. Canned rings just won’t do the trick. You need to start out with firm, crunchy rings to keep the nice crunchy texture after you grill them.

Then all I did was melt some coconut oil, add cinnamon and salt and brushed it on the pineapple rings.

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Then I passed them off to my manly husband to cook on the bbq grill next to some juicy steaks. Since this is both healthy and sweet, it works as a side dish, or a dessert.

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Guilt-Free Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits

By on July 8, 2016 in Breakfast

As a kid, I always got excited when I heard the ice cream truck. Since it was summer, I was generally in my black and rainbow striped swimsuit running through the sprinklers with half the kids in my neighborhood. We’d hear the music and run toward the truck with all our might and quarters. Aside from that, there was another truck that brought joy to my heart: the Schwan’s truck. We’d get so excited when the “Schwan’s man” would come each week. My mom always bought two things (she bought more but I wasn’t really interested in raw chicken breasts and salmon patties). One, push-up ice cream pops. Remember those? I can still taste of that delicous peach ice cream combined with the taste of plastic and cardboard as I licked the tube trying to get every last drop. The second things she always got; cinnamon raising biscuits. These things were so addicting. Many a Sunday morning, I’d wake up smelling those delicious biscuits. The fact that they came with a tube of frosting made them that much better.

Maybe I was feeling nostalgic because it was close to mother’s day, but a few weeks ago, I was craving these biscuits, but didn’t want to eat something that I’d regret later. Then I realized, since I know how to make healthy biscuits, I could easily recreate these!

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I started with my healthy drop biscuit recipe. To them I added cinnamon, vanilla and raisins. As with the drop biscuits, I was way too lazy to roll and cut them, but you certainly could if you had the motivation. Since I wanted them to have that round look the ones from my childhood had, I rolled them and shaped them with my hands.

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We ate these before I could get a picture, but to simulate the frosting, we drizzled a bit of coconut butter of the top of a few of them. These were so good, I considered putting the black and rainbow swimsuit back on and running through the sprinklers eating one. But then I’d be the neighborhood freak. Oh well. They tasted just as delicious as they did when I was 7.

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The Healthy Wendy’s Frosty

By on July 1, 2016 in Guilt-Free Treats

Girls’ night in college usually involved my roommates and I going to a movie, getting dessert at midnight in a restaurant, daring each other to do something really stupid and then dancing until 2 a.m. when someone would suggest making cookie dough, which we’d do, and then eat the entire bowl before falling asleep on the couch about 4 a.m. Now that I have a daughter, we do regular girls’ nights. Though these days, they usually involve painting nails, watching Angelina Ballerina and making a treat together. I have to say, I prefer these girls’ nights.

Last Friday after our nails were sparkly turquoise and Angelina was having a dilemma about being jealous of another mouse ballerina, we decided it was treat time. Giving my daughter loads of sugar right before I send her to sleep does not make for a happy ending to girls’ night. Instead, we made this healthy version of a Wendy’s Frosty with only 3 ingredients, all of which are healthy and easy to pronounce.

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Just throw the frozen bananas, cocoa powder and a milk of your choice (we went with almond milk) in a blender and you’re good to go! I really want to make some sweet potato fries to see how they taste dipped in. Come on. You know you used to dip your fries in your frosty.

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Backyard BBQ Foil Potatoes

By on June 17, 2016 in Side Dishes

Last weekend, we grilled burgers for dinner. We wanted potatoes with our burgers and decided to make them on the grill. Maybe we wanted to feel like pioneers (with our propane-fueled, electrical-started grill??). I’m not sure, we just decided we needed to make the potatoes on the grill. The experiment went really well.

My husband likes red potatoes, but the kids and I like sweet potatoes. My son, only like sweet potatoes seasoned one way and the rest of us are a bit tired of it. That was the first big plus with making the potatoes on the grill. We could make as many different kinds as we wanted.

We ended up with three different variations of potato packets.

The first:

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  • Red potatoes
  • Butter
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Italian Seasoning

The Second:

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  • Sweet potato
  • Butter
  • Season Salt
  • Cumin

The Third:

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  • Sweet potato
  • Butter
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Cinnamon

Just cube the potatoes and top them with seasonings and butter. I double wrapped the sweet potato packets because sweet potatoes release a sugary syrup when they cook. The red potatoes were fine in the single wrap.

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25 minutes on the grill and we each had our own delicious version of potatoes. These would also work really well on a campfire. Maybe that would make us more like pioneers.

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Gluten Free 3 Ingredient Pancakes

By on June 10, 2016 in Breakfast

My mom used to make our family a big breakfast every Sunday. Sometimes it was french toast, sometimes waffles and sometimes it was pancakes. Being the awesome mom she is, she’d make my pancake shaped like minnie mouse, complete with pancake eyes, nose, mouth and bow. It was the best breakfast you can imagine.

My kids get pancakes… shaped like circles. Unless I have a batter accident and then sometimes it’s shaped like something from a Rorschach test. Oh well. It’s a pancake, right?

These are our favorite pancakes to make. They are sweet, super easy to make and flip better than any grain-free pancake I’ve ever made.

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I was actually shocked how much these taste like regular pancakes. I thought they’d be really eggy, but the flavor and texture was fabulous. Plus, with only three ingredients, these are the easiest pancakes I’ve ever made. Unless you count adding water to Krusteaz mix…

I mix everything together in a blender because it’s easy, thorough and the spout on the blender jar is the perfect way to pour the batter onto the skillet.

My son ate these with maple syrup, but my daughter and I heated some natural peanut butter in the microwave for 30 seconds and drizzled it over the top. WOW! That was absolutely amazing. It was one of those meals that makes me wonder why everyone doesn’t eat healthy.

Enjoy your pancakes, no matter what shape they take.

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Easy Cinnamon Apple Stir Fry Lunch

By on June 3, 2016 in Main Dishes

As I’ve mentioned several times, I love stir fry. Even though it’s May, today I was in the mood for the flavors of fall. That’s what I love about stir fry. You can eat the flavors you’re craving whenever you want.

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As usual, start out by cooking the vegetables in salt and pepper. Rather than take the time to cook and dice sweet potatoes on my own, I used these:

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These are one of the most convenient things I’ve found. Eating healthy often requires a lot of chopping, so these pre-cooked make it much easier.

Because I used pre-cooked sausages, I just had to cook them long enough to brown the outside and warm the inside. These chicken apple sausages are great to have on hand. We use them in salads, in eggs for breakfast and, of course, in stir frys.

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Who says you can only have cinnamon and sweet potatoes in the fall? Not me!

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Healthy, Easy Cowboy Salsa

By on May 27, 2016 in Side Dishes

This is a recipe my mother-in-law made at a picnic. It’s so much better than a jarred salsa. It’s perfect with tortilla chips or crackers, but all I need is my face and the bowl. YUM!!!

In a colander, drain and rinse:

  • 1 can corn
  • 1 can black beans (I thought I had black beans and didn’t, so I used a can of pinto beans instead, which was also delicious. Despite my husband’s original claim that pinto beans are just a cheap imitation of black beans, he enjoyed it with the pinto beans as well).

Put the beans and corn in a large bowl and add:

  • 6 or 7 chopped roma tomatoes – They key to this part is to get the tomatoes about the same size as the beans and corn.
  • 1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
  • 4 or 5 green onions – The easiest way I’ve found to chop green onions is to clip them with kitchen shears, similar to how you clip chives.

Toss this mixture together.

Then in a small bowl, combine:

  • 1 package powdered Italian dressing mix
  • the zest of one lime (this is optional, but I think it makes it even better!)
  • the juice of two limes

Pour this mixture over the salsa and toss. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge so all the flavors can combine.


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Healthy BBQ Beef Kabobs

By on May 20, 2016 in Main Dishes

My husband hates most vegetables. I on the other hand, love vegetables. This makes it very hard to cook dinners, especially when I’d like to make them a bit healthier with added veggies. We found a great solution to our problem: beef kabobs.

Beef Kabobs

I load mine full of vegetables, and his full of meat.

The first thing to do is pick a meat. I pick whatever is cheapest at the grocery store. I looked at beef stew meat, stir fry beef and flank steak. That day, stir fry beef was cheapest (I used one pound). If steak is on sale, ask the butcher to cut it up into stew meat for you. They always say yes.

I cut the pieces in half so they were about 2 inches long each. I then marinated the meat using the same marinade I use on my Round Steak

Then, I picked the vegetables. I used only tomatoes, onion and beef on my husband’s, but loaded mine with tomatoes, onion, mushrooms, green pepper, pineapple and beef. I originally wanted to buy cherry tomatoes, but decided not to when I saw how expensive they were. Good grief! Instead, I halved roma tomatoes and cut each half into quarters. It worked just as well. I then assembled the kabobs on skewers. Soak your skewers for at least half an hour in water before assembling the kabobs. This keeps them from burning and your beef kabobs probably won’t taste all that great if they go up in flames.

My wonderful husband grilled them on the barbecue on medium-high for about 10-ish minutes. All grills are a bit different, so grill them until your vegetables are roasted and a bit black on the edges. Roasted vegetables are, in my opinion, the best way to eat vegetables. YUM!

The best part about this dish is how versatile it is. Load it up with whatever you like. I made my husband one kabob that was purely meat. Enjoy your beef kabobs!!

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The Easiest Way to Make Eggs in just One Minute

By on May 3, 2016 in Breakfast

I feel guilty calling this a recipe. Guilty because it’s like calling Easy Mac a recipe, except Easy Mac is terrible for you and eggs aren’t. But as far as difficulty level, these eggs and Easy Mac are on the same level.

My daughter loves to have eggs for breakfast. The problem is, I have 45 minutes in the morning to make her breakfast, do her hair, shower and get myself ready. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for an omelet. So when she wants eggs, this is my go-to. Why? Because this egg comes together in the microwave in just one minute.

In fact… this summer the kids spent four nights with my parents while my husband and I took a trip to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. One morning, my daughter asked for an egg. My mom got out her frying pan, buttered it and cooked a beautiful scrambled egg. My daughter looked at it and said, “This is not the way to make an egg.” My poor mom.

So now the process. Pay attention or you’ll miss it, because it’s fast and not very complicated.

Just beat the egg  with a little salt, pepper and milk in a small bowl.

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Pour this into a microwave safe mug greased with your favorite pan greaser (butter, coconut oil, cooking spray, etc.). This is very important. First off, if you don’t use a microwave safe mug, you’ll have an explosion. My husband learned this the hard way when he tried to make my daughter her egg one morning. He thought he covered his tracks, until I saw the egg explosion stuck to the top of the microwave. Don’t do that. Second off, if you don’t grease it, it will stick like crazy. If you do, it will just slide right out.

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Cook it in the microwave for 30 seconds and then stir it. Put it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds. If I make two eggs, I cook it in two sets of 45 second intervals.

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My daughter loves cheese on her eggs so after it’s cooked, I sprinkle some shredded cheese on top and let the heat from the egg melt it. By the time the cheese is melted, the egg is cool enough for her to eat.

Now I can make her a nutritious breakfast in just one minute and still have time to shower and possibly even shave my legs… maybe.

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Healthy Curry Stir Fry

By on April 22, 2016 in Main Dishes

I have another stir fry recipe today. I love stir fry because it’s a great way to use up excess or about-to-expire vegetables and meat. Plus you can flavor the mixture to fit your mood. This day, I felt like curry. This isn’t surprising since I could eat curry every day.

As is the case with most my stir frys, this comes together quickly in one pan. This serves one very hungry person or two people who are just sort of hungry. I tend to fit in the category of a very hungry person, so this is a great lunch for me.

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