When I was younger, my favorite kind of pasta was fettucine alfredo. Is it good for you? No. Healthy in any way? Of course not. Of course, this was before I kicked all processed foods out of my life and started eating healthy. Since then I went from eating canned tomato sauce to making my own sauces.
But then a glorious thing happened. I found this blog post that made something similar to a cream sauce, but it used avocados. Avocados! Perfect. This still has some cream in it, but for a dish to eat every once in a while, it's perfect. I'll even go so far as to say it's my new comfort food. Let me know what you think!
Ingredients
Pasta noodles, cooked
2 avocados
5 tablespoons of light cream
1 teaspoon of salt
2-3 tablespoons of lime juice
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
3 pieces of bacon
1 small onion
3 cloves of garlic
Handful of Monterrey Jack cheese
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, and lay the strips of bacon on a baking sheet. Cook for 20 minutes.
While the bacon is cooking, begin to cook the pasta noodles.
Heat olive oil over medium heat in a sauce pan.
Chop the onion and garlic and add to the pan. Saute until golden brown.
Put the avocados, light, salt, lime juice, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and cream in a blender. Once cooked, add the onion and garlic and ONE strip of bacon. Blend well. If you desire thinner sauce, add more cream.
Looks gross, but it's amazingly delicious.
Once the pasta is done cooking, drain and return to pan. Add the avocado mixture and cook on low heat for a few minutes. (The heat makes the avocado extra creamy!)
When ready, crumble the additional 2 pieces of bacon and cheese over each bowl. Enjoy!
I've really been into dessert lately. Like, a lot. My boyfriend doesn't really like sweets and he especially doesn't like chocolate, so I've been a little stuck on what to do lately. I experimented with making cakes in a cup and microwaving it, which, somehow, is all the rage of Pinterest, but trust me when I say it's not good. At all. None of the recipes I tried. They're all only to be used if you're desperate. Luckily, I found this recipe over at Tao of Dana, and we both loved it! Also, for those that are interested, it's grain and gluten free.
I LOVE blood oranges, so I was excited to make this. It's a little unconventional for me since I would never think to use beans as a base in a cake, but isn't that what makes cooking fun?
Ingredients
8-10 blood oranges (optional, to be served with the cake)
3 cups white beans, cooked, unseasoned, and cooled (or rinsed, if using canned beans)
9 tablespoons of coconut oil
1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons of honey
6 eggs
2 tablespoons of vanilla
3/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
Preparation
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Put everything EXCEPT the oranges into a blender. Once blended, add grated blood orange peel to mix and stir.
Pour mixture into cake pan and bake for about one and a half hours, or until the middle is not longer jiggly. This is important to note because it browns rather quickly, and I thought for sure it was going to burn. Not so.
I like grilled cheeses. A lot. Who doesn't? But lately I've been getting bored with just the standard cheddar cheese, and I've been mixing it up a lot, using a mixture of muenster, pepper jack, and cheddar.
You know what else I like? Avocados. I found this brilliant idea on Pinterest, incorporating avocados into grilled cheeses - with pepperoni, no less(which I totally switched out with bacon, yum)! I knew I had to do it one night when I was too lazy to cook something and there were no healthier, leftover alternatives in the fridge. Luckily for me, that evening was last night!
Honestly, the worst part of the whole experience was waiting for the sandwich to finish cooking! It looked and smelled amazing, which was just torture!
YOU GUYS. If you're like me, and still kind of new to the whole "healthy eating" lifestyle (by which I mean I've only been doing this for about 2 years), then you'll love this list I found today from Community Markets.
I've always been confused about how to store food. Because, really, don't you just throw it all in the fridge? Doesn't the fridge keep everything fresh? These were my thoughts. Sometimes I would read cookbooks about how some things should not be kept in the fridge, like peaches. They should be left on the counter, and then they'll ripen and the whole house will smell like peaches. Or something like that. Very strange, but okay. Peaches: no fridge.
But that always left me confused about everything else. I've been trying to follow the grocery store guidelines, i.e. whatever is refrigerated or on ice goes in the fridge and whatever's in the regular bins goes in the pantry or on the counter. But I'm certainly not one to trust the grocery store to know what's best for me to eat.
Then recently I found this website called, Save Food From the Fridge, which I thought would be awesome and full tips, but it's actually just a few photos of a couple of (admittedly, very cool) modern designs for the kitchen, though it does have a few tips.
Interesting: Store apples with potatoes, so potatoes don't sprout. Also interesting: Apples don't go in the fridge.
Interesting: Eggs have lots of pores and need to breathe. I wonder if non-organic eggs can be left out of the fridge?
Interesting: They need water! Also interesting: These also don't go in the fridge. Hm.
This one makes sense! Though, there's still a funnel to water them.
So what's the problem with these highly designed food trays? They seem a little over the top and somewhat elitist, but mostly the problem is that I can't figure out where to buy them.
So luckily for me, I came across the list I mentioned earlier, that tells you exactly how to store fruits and vegetables. If you're very gung-ho about this, like me, you can print out a list to hang up. Otherwise, feel free to peruse here:
I'm not the biggest fan of "light" butter since I feel like I can only get the right taste with butter in all its full-fat glory, but I LOVED this commercial from Lurpak, a Danish butter company.
This commercial highlights what should be the main focus of meals: vegetables. And it does it in such a creative way that I nearly swooned, especially when they began chopping the purple cabbage. Check it out and tell me you're not suddenly ready to pop into the kitchen and make something amazing for dinner.
(And when you're eating all those great vegetables, who cares if you use a little bit of real butter, right?)
In light of it being cold season and all, I thought I'd post my new-found cure (or rather, a cure about 12 hours) for the common cold. Garlic is, apparently, a wonder drug. In researching it online, I've found claims for it to cure everything from asthma to weight loss to tumors. How true are these claims? I have no idea. But I can say that I love me some garlic and it is the sole reason I don't suffer from colds.
Before I get to it, I'll say this: raw garlic is spicy and bitter. If you're allergic, do not eat it. If you don't like the taste of garlic, I have been told that lentils and olive oil help disguise the its scent.
1. Get live, raw garlic. I've been told that you know it's still alive because it has a healthy green shoot inside. Since most grocery stores frown on you opening their garlic cloves at the stores, I have been told (and thus far in my experience, it's true) that garlic with roots on the bottom are healthy and alive. Garlic without the roots has been sprayed with radiation and no longer has healthy properties.
2. Chop the garlic and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes. I've started chopping mine into larger chunks because the taste and smell don't bother me anymore, but chop them into whatever size you want.
*For first (and second) timers, the smaller, the better. The smell and taste can be overwhelming at first, but I found that I got over it pretty quickly.
3. Dump the garlic into your glass of water and enjoy.
OR (For Garlic Tea)
3. Dump the garlic into a mug and pour hot water over it. Cover your mug for another 10 minutes and let it steep. Then add a tablespoon of lemon juice and/or honey, depending upon your preference. Another alternative is to add raw ginger and some cinnamon. Tasty and powerful enough to knock your cold out. Enjoy!
FAQs
1. I don't like garlic. Should I do this?
No. Probably not. Why torture yourself?
2.Should I do this? I don't like the idea of reeking of garlic all day.
Fair enough. Honestly though, even though you're aware of the garlic smell, other people don't smell it on you. Unless they're kissing you.
3. Is this verified by science?
Science has verified that raw garlic has antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. It also has an active ingredient that hinders free radicals from spreading throughout your body. So it's pretty healthy and good for you.
4. How soon do I get relief from my cold symptoms?
I experienced relief after about 5 minutes after I began consuming the garlic water. A friend disagrees- she says it's 7 minutes. (Why this level of detail matters to her, I'm not sure.) So I'll say 10-15 minutes just to be on the safe side.
5. The garlic burns! Help!
That's why you put it in water! I read online that someone touched raw garlic and their skin blistered- I'm pretty sure that qualifies as an allergy. As long as it just burns a little, you're fine. Drink some more water. Also, the garlic tea is much easier to consume than the garlic water. Give it a try!
This little kid is not only adorable, but he's incredibly knowledgeable and articulate on some of the problems facing our food system. Check the clip out and let me know what you think!
