Tasty Bites: Enter The Green Monster

By Candy (Steele the Day)

Yesterday I sent what I thought was a helpful link to an article to my youngest son who works out very hard nearly every day. It contained a recipe for a good post-workout refueling shake full of nutritional goodies written by Matt at No Meat Athlete.. My son’s response?

“I’ve never heard of most of that stuff.”

OK, so I went overboard with a recipe containing selba, sprouted buckwheat, chlorella or spirulena powder. I just love Matt’s site and the article gave some great advice, but in all practicality, it was time to apply the KISS principle if I was to convince someone to not eat fries and a soda after a workout.  So I told him to make a Green Monster.

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Tasty Bites: Choosing the Best Peanut Butter

By Candy (Steele the Day)

Even though peanuts are actually a legume and not a nut, they pack a punch in terms of nutrition. They are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Unfortunately, they also pack quite a few calories, and for peanut butter lovers, that can be a little discouraging. The good news is that a little peanut butter goes a long way on flavor.

If low-fat peanut butter is your usual choice for your diet’s sake, let’s take a closer look. The brand on the left is advertised as low-fat. It contains 12 grams of total fat and 2.5 grams of saturated fat. The brand on the right has 16 grams of total fat, and the same 2.5 grams of saturated fat. Either way, this is pretty caloric-dense food. One serving (2 Tbs) of the low fat variety has 190 calories and regular peanut butter has 200 calories per serving. What’s your choice? Lower fat?

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Tasty Bites: The Best Dressed Salad

By Candy (Steele the Day)

Salads make perfect meals and are great ways to use up leftover vegetables, fruits, beans, meat, and rice. But what about the dressing? What’s the most tasteful way to dress a salad?

If you’ve stood in the salad dressing aisle for any length of time, you know how confusing it can be. There are literally hundreds of choices – some good, some not so good. It’s hard for me to purchase bottled salad dressing anymore because I don’t always want the same flavor on every salad, and it can be quite pricey to stock your fridge with several bottles. I saw a bottle for $7.00 the other day! You don’t want the flavors to fight with the flavors in your salad, so it’s always nice to have a couple of different blends on hand so you have a choice. If you look at a bottle of dressing, you’ll likely see things like high fructose corn syrup, preservatives, additives, and artificial color.

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Works For Me Wednesday: Breakfast Shortcakes

By Alan

In our household, a Saturday morning tradition is that Daddy makes breakfast for the girls, while Mommy tries to sleep in. The favorite version of breakfast is based on a simple recipe that appears on every box of Bisquick: Strawberry Shortcakes. (Disclaimer: No, we aren't affiliated with Betty Crocker or General Mills, and we get nothing for this recipe from them.)

Since we're making breakfast shortcakes (think big gooey cookies), and not a fruit dessert, we changed the recipe considerably.

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Recipe Search Engine

By MAD21

SUPER NATURAL RECIPE SEARCH

"Search for natural, delicious, whole food recipes."

Yes, a search engine just for recipes. This one is a really great one. On my first try, I typed in 'bananas' and at the top of the list was an amazing recipe for banana chip cookies (from 101 Cookbooks). You can also type in your favorite chef to see if they have any favorite recipes from them.

While the engine includes recipes from many different sources, Heidi Swanson, the creator of the engine, states: "This search engine will not query each of the sites in its index in its entirety. Instead, I went through each site page by page, cherry-picking the recipes I could imagine cooking in my own kitchen - again, the ones highlighting whole grains, natural sweeteners, a wide range of flours, and plenty of fresh produce. I populated the search engine with those. A couple thousand to start. And while I don't cook with, say, eggplant or okra very often, there are many cooks who I admire that do - this search engine allows me to highlight those cooks and their recipes here."

Just like some of the recipe sites I've talked about before, this one also includes comments from people. So when you find a recipe that looks interesting to you, you can look and see what other people have said about it. Whether it's a good one or not, and maybe some variations you can try until you find one just right for you.