Top Menu

Tag Archives | no sugar

Healthy, No-Sugar Beef and Broccoli

When my husband and I got married, we’d eat out about once a month. Now before you think we were well-off (because we were dead broke), let me explain what I mean by “eat out.” Once a month we’d make the 1/2 mile walk to the local Smith’s grocery store. Inside the Smith’s was a Chinese restaurant that charged $4.95 for a plate of food. So for less than $10, we had our date night. These days, knowing what I know, I doubt we’d hit up that particular restaurant, but I still remember it fondly. I always got the same thing: chicken chow mein, orange chicken and beef and broccoli. Today I was randomly craving that beef and broccoli. Side note: I didn’t have one craving when I was pregnant, but when I’m not pregnant, I crave random things all the time. The point is, I wanted to eat beef and broccoli and not feel horrible after. So I decided to come up with my own recipe. Here’s how it went down.

I started with a flank steak sliced super thin. Then I marinated this in a delicious, no-sugar, no-soy sauce for about 45 minutes (because that’s how long it took me to get my daughter, get home and start cooking).

Then I cooked my broccoli. This was simple as it was just avocado oil, broccoli, and pepper. How long you cook this is going to depend on your taste buds. I happen to like my broccoli very well cooked. I love when it has some black char on it. Cook it how you like it. How long you cook the broccoli won’t make any difference to whether or not the dish turns out.

Move the broccoli to a bowl and add the meat, marinade and all. This is another thing to cook to your liking. I like my meat rare, so I only cooked it for around 3 minutes or so. If you like it more done, cook it for around 5 minutes.

While the meat cooks, make the delicious sauce. The thickener in the sauce is arrowroot powder. It acts a lot like corn starch.

Add the broccoli back in and once it’s warm, toss the sauce. You’ll only have to cook it for a minute or so to finish the dish.

I ate this plain because I was starving and it smelled amazing, but this would also be delicious over rice.

 

 

Continue Reading 2

No-Sugar Grilled Pineapple Rings

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.

IMG_20160619_175211349

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.

IMG_20160619_172642630_HDR

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.

Continue Reading 2
2016-01-12 08.20.48

Homemade Instant Oatmeal Packets

My husband used to ask me to buy pre-packaged oatmeal packets for his breakfast. One day I decided to read the ingredients. Yikes. This breakfast was not doing my husband any favors. I quickly realized I could easily make him his own oatmeal packets for much less money and with a much more impressive ingredient […]

Continue Reading

No Sugar Chocolate Banana Muffins

Every morning my son’s breakfast includes a mini muffin. This is my way of cramming a bit more protein and nutrients into him in an unprocessed way before sending him off to second grade to solve the world’s great problems. I always look for muffin recipes heavy on nuts and/or eggs and low on sugar. We generally stick to banana muffins, but to keep things interesting, I’m always trying to find something else. I found this recipe from Yummy Mummy. It looked delicious, but since I was giving it to my son every morning for breakfast, I wanted something without added sugar or sugar substitutes and without chocolate chips. So using Yummy Mummy’s recipe as my base, I came up with a version without sugar. We’re all very pleased with the results and I can continue to give my son a muffin every morning without feeling guilty. Luckily as a mom, there are still plenty of other things I get to feel guilty about every day.

2015-12-07 16.51.13

Continue Reading 0
cinnamon-233960_1280-300x225

10 Sugar-Craving Cures

  When people ask me the number one thing I’ve done to make myself healthier I always respond with, “give up sugar.” The automatic response is, “I could NEVER do that. You just don’t understand how much I love sugar.” Oh believe me. I get it! I get it more than most people. I LOVE […]

Continue Reading

No Sugar Hot Apple Cider

Apple cider is fabulous for many reasons. I love to use it in bbq recipes, it makes the house smell great while it’s cooking and it’s so fun to drink on a cold day. Sadly, most apple ciders, homemade or bottled are packed with sugar. This is one of my pet peeves [Warning: Rant ahead]. Why do we always need to add sugar into fruit. Fruit is nature’s sugar. It’s naturally sweet. It doesn’t need sugar! [Rant complete… for now].

This apple cider combines all the things that make apple cider so delicious, without the added sugar. Plus it’s a slow cooker recipe so you can let it brew all day and come home to amazing smells.

IMG_20151122_095319272

Add the apple juice to a small slow cooker. We like Motts Tots. It has half the sugar of other apple juices, which makes this even lower in sugar than it would otherwise. But use your favorite apple juice, as long as it’s 100% juice.

Slice the orange and add it to the slow cooker along with the rest of the ingredients. Now just let it simmer on low for at least 4 hours. If we want it the next morning, Waking up to that smell makes life better, no matter what else happens the rest of the day.

Continue Reading 0

Healthy Orange Cherry Breakfast Scones

Growing up, there was a Village Inn about two miles from our house. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, my BFF and I would walk there for breakfast, indulge in a sweet breakfast pastry (aka pie) and then walk back to my house. We felt like we were so healthy, walking the four miles it took to make the round trip. Little did we know, we were packing on enough sugar and bad carbs to require us to walk about 50 miles to break even.

Even with the knowledge I have now, I still have that taste for delicious pastries branded in my brain. Luckily, there’s a much healthier way to indulge.

These scones are sweetened only with dried fruit, cinnamon and orange zest; and made with a combination of almond flour and coconut flour. This keeps the protein high and the processed carbs low. These scones have less than 5 grams of sugar each.

2015-05-08 17.45.37

This easily comes together in a food processor. This is my ancient food processor my grandma found at a garage sale for $10. It’s one of my favorite tools and even though it’s death will mean I get to buy a newer model, I hope this one lasts forever.

2015-05-08 15.35.11

Combine everything but the cherries in a food processor. Let everything process until the dough forms a ball.

2015-05-08 15.40.00

 

Add the dried cherries and process again. These are the only dried cherries I’ve found without added sugar. This is one of my pet peeves. Fruit is so full of natural sugars, why do we feel the need to sweeten them. I found these at Walmart of all places.

I like to let the cherries process for a bit to break them into small pieces. This distributes the sweetness throughout the scone. If you like bigger chunks of cherry, mix these in with a spoon.

I bake these in my awesome scone pan, but you can pat this in a round disk and cut into eight triangles, cut them into squares, or roll this out and cut them with a circular biscuit cutter.

2015-05-08 15.49.50

These bake quickly so you don’t have to wait long. Rather than top these with frosting, we just drizzle melted coconut butter over the top. The kids think I’m the cool mom giving them frosting for breakfast. They’re such lucky kids.

2015-05-08 16.09.25

 

2015-05-08 17.45.37

Continue Reading 2

No Sugar BBQ Sauce

BBQ sauce makes any meat better. Pour it over chicken, that’s all you need for a great dinner. Pour it over a pork roast and, voila; pulled pork. Smear it on hamburgers and they’re suddenly the best hamburgers ever. My daughter DSCN0305uses BBQ sauce like most kids use ketchup, so we go through a lot of it in our house. While I’m totally okay with adding strange things to food to get kids to eat them, I’m not okay with the sugar content of most condiments. This is especially true for BBQ sauce. When we made the change to a healthier lifestyle, I knew we couldn’t give up BBQ sauce. That’s when I began the quest to make a no-sugar BBQ sauce. Not only did I succeed, but my husband says this is the best BBQ sauce I’ve ever made and my daughter gave it her stamp of approval.

First let’s look at a typical bottled BBQ sauce. The sauce we bought before we made our own, contains 32 grams of sugar in 1/4 C with high fructose corn syrup being the first ingredient. That is crazy. My BBQ sauce has less than 3 grams of sugar in 1/4 C and tastes delicious.

This is also an easy recipe. I didn’t want a recipe that required a lot of sauteing, dish washing and vegetable chopping, so I made it simple. Just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together. Yes there are a lot of ingredients, but they are likely things you have in your pantry. If you don’t like an ingredient, leave it out.

I like to store it in a mason jar (or a washed, glass peanut-butter jar since we have a million of those sitting around) and stick it in the fridge. This will stay good for about a two weeks.

DSCN0314One night we had some left over pork roast and needed a quick dinner. I threw the roast leftovers in a slow cooker with the BBQ sauce and we had dinner. It’s almost too easy.

Continue Reading 2

Healthy Diary-Free Chocolate Peanut-Butter “Milk” Shake

For the most part, a healthy lifestyle is easy to maintain. The hardest part is when people are eating dessert. I can usually resist, but there’s always part of me that wants to grab the milkshake out of their hands and chug it down. But then I remember how horrible I feel after I binge on sugar and talk myself down. Rather than cheat and feel like death after, I try to come up with ways to have a treat without loading my body with processed, sugary crap. This healthy take on a classic milk shake was a huge success.DSCN0174

I bring this all together with my immersion blender. This is one of my favorite tools because it creates way less cleanup than using a blender.

Combine coconut milk, a frozen banana, protein powder and peanut butter with an immersion blender. I use this protein powder.  It tastes great and doesn’t have all the bad stuff some protein powders do.

This is so thick you’ll need a spoon. See! Eating healthy doesn’t mean you can’t indulge.

DSCN0176

Continue Reading 3

Send this to a friend