Tag: Gluten Free
Strawberry Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when it comes to your diet, there’s no such thing as a “detox.” Your liver and kidneys serve as your body’s built-in detoxification system, and there’s not much you can do to make them function better.
That being said, on this day after Thanksgiving, we could probably all use a “detox” in the sense of something light and healthy to get back on track after the inevitable holiday indulgence. A smoothie is my snack of choice after mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie…and pizza. (No, my family Thanksgiving tradition doesn’t involve pizza. It’s just that when you eat dinner at 3:00 PM, you get pretty hungry by about 9:00.) Though I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of all those foods, the key to health is balance, so I’m leaning toward the skinny side of the food spectrum today.
This Strawberry Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie is inspired by the Chunky Strawberry Bowl at Jamba Juice. Strawberries, banana, peanut butter, and oats may sound like an odd combination, but from the first time I tried the Jamba Juice version, I was hooked. There’s something almost comfort food-like about the sweetness of the fruit blended with wholesome oats and stick-to-your-ribs peanut butter. I’ve been recreating it at home for awhile now.
When it comes to making your own smoothie instead of going to Jamba Juice, there are a couple of distinct advantages: 1.) you won’t pay a whopping $7.15 for it, and 2.) it doesn’t have to set you back 570 calories when all you want is a snack. Plus, on Black Friday, you don’t have to leave your house. That’s my kind of detox. 🙂
Wishing you a delightful remainder of your Thanksgiving weekend!
Strawberry Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie
Fruity and filling, this smoothie is a healthy snack choice!
Servings: 2 smoothies
Ingredients
- 1 frozen banana
- 1/2 c. frozen strawberries
- 3/4 c. plain Greek yogurt
- 1 Tbsp. honey
- 1/3 c. old-fashioned oats
- 1/4 c. almond milk
- 2 Tbsp. smooth peanut butter
Instructions
- Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.
Notes
A Love Letter to Food Original Recipe.
Pumpkin Hummus + Fall Tortilla Chips
I realize Halloween is over, but can you handle one more pumpkin recipe? I know I can, but then again, I could eat pumpkin pie every day whole year round. For others less out of their gourd for gourds, now that it’s November, pumpkin fatigue may have set in. Understandable. But I hope you’ll make an exception for this Pumpkin Hummus recipe, because not only is it easy, unique, and tasty, it’s also super fun to make with DIY fall-shaped tortilla chips.
When it comes to making hummus, the main thing that usually stands in my way is that I suffer from what I think of as Tahini Block. As in, I really, really don’t want to spend eleven bucks on a jar of ground sesame seeds  when all I’ll use is a couple of tablespoons at the most. Therefore, I generally refrain from homemade hummus unless I can use a tahini-free recipe. This one fits that description! Though tahini adds a signature flavor, as a general rule hummus is extremely adaptable. As long as it starts with beans and ends up with a nice consistency, I say you’re safe to call it authentic even if no tahini is involved.
Now let’s talk tortilla. DIY fall shaped tortilla chips, to be exact. Of course you could buy tortilla chips at the store–I mean, who really needs to make their own chips?–but once you’ve cut your own shapes with delightful fall-themed cookie cutters, there’s no going back. Pumpkin and leaf-shaped dippers add a whole extra layer of seasonal character alongside this pumpkin hummus.
So for your next play date, Thanksgiving potluck, or Tahini Avoiders Anonymous meeting, give this fun combination a try!
Pumpkin Hummus + Fall Tortilla Chips
A savory, tahini-free pumpkin hummus paired with fun DIY tortilla chips!
Prep Time10 mins
Total Time10 mins
Servings: 6
Ingredients
For the hummus:
- 1 large clove garlic
- 1 c. pumpkin puree
- 1 c. garbanzo beans, drained
- 2 Tbsp. lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. cumin
- 1/8 tsp. paprika
- 1/8 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil
- pepitas, for garnish, if desired
For the tortilla chips:
- 12-18 6-inch corn tortillas
- olive oil cooking spray
- your choice of herbs and spices for sprinkling (paprika, cumin, oregano, garlic powder, etc.)
Instructions
To make the hummus:
- Place garlic clove in the bowl of a food processor and run on low briefly to mince. Add all remaining ingredients and process until smooth. Serve garnished with pepitas, if desired.
To make the chips:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil.
- Using fall-themed cookie cutters, cut shapes out of tortillas. (You can either discard the remaining tortilla scraps or include them for other, funky-shaped chips.) Spray both sides of cutouts lightly with olive oil cooking spray, then sprinkle to taste with herbs and spices. (Or for sweet chips, try sprinkling with cinnamon and sugar.)
- Place on prepared baking sheet and bake 7 minutes, then flip chips and bake another 7 minutes. Serve with pumpkin hummus.
Notes
A Love Letter to Food Original Recipe
Harvest Chopped Salad
Back in September, I posted about the chopped salad that was my top choice for my birthday dinner. Since then, I’ve been overwhelmed at the amount of attention that post got! I guess the internet was hungry for the funky-but-delicious combo of smoked salmon, dried sweet corn, cranberries, and arugula (among other ingredients) topped with a creamy pesto dressing.
Writing about–and eating–the Stetson Chopped Salad got me thinking of other variations on the theme of salad ingredients layered neatly in rows. I mean, really, you can’t go wrong with a chopped, layered salad. It’s just so dang appealing, with its colorfulness, its order, and its symmetry. This Harvest Chopped Salad featuring apples, pears, cranberries, pecans, bacon, and blue or goat cheese is the product of these recent salad daydreams.
It couldn’t have come at a better time, either.
Not long ago, I started volunteering on a monthly basis as a cooking demonstrator at my local Natural Grocers. It’s a fun volunteer activity, but it’s tougher than you might think coming up with recipes that are 1.) gluten-free (Natural Grocers keeps a gluten-free kitchen), and 2.) conducive to demonstration. When you watch the Food Network, you don’t really notice that TV allows for time-lapsing cooking, or simply producing a finished version of something that took who-knows-how-long to cook or bake. In the real world, it’s not that easy. Like, if I’m demo’ing a recipe with roasted vegetables, uhhhh, what do I talk to my audience about for 45 minutes while the oven does its job?
Awwwwwwkwaaaaarrrrd.
So for the purposes of my October demonstration, the Harvest Chopped Salad is a saving grace. And maybe it will be for you, too, some autumn weeknight. There may be quite a bit of slicin’ and dicin’, but this recipe requires no lengthy cook time and can get dining-ready in no more than 30 minutes.
In fact, this recipe seems to be such a winner that I was contacted by someone at Natural Grocers’ corporate office to ask if it could be featured on their website! Of COURSE, I said! (Link coming soon.)
If you live in the Phoenix area, join me for my demo (and samples!) of this yummy fall main dish this Thursday, October 19th, at 6:30 at the Natural Grocers at 2151 E. Baseline Rd. in Gilbert.
Harvest Chopped Salad
A hearty fall salad that's as tasty as it is pretty!
Prep Time30 mins
Total Time30 mins
Servings: 5
Ingredients
- 10 c. romaine lettuce, chopped
- 8 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
- 3/4 c. pecan pieces
- 4 oz. crumbled goat cheese or blue cheese
- 1 c. honey crisp or other apple, chopped
- 1 ripe pear, chopped
- 3/4 c. dried cranberries
- 1/2 c. + 2 Tbsp purchased poppyseed dressing
Instructions
- On a large platter or five individual plates, spread romaine in a single layer.
- Cover with layered rows of bacon, pecans, crumbled cheese, diced apple, diced pear, and dried cranberries.
- Serve with purchased poppyseed dressing drizzled on top or on the side.
Notes
A Love Letter to Food Original Recipe, loosely based on this recipe from Iowa Girl Eats.
BBQ Chicken Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
How about a little tuber education? As I was thinking about this recipe for BBQ Chicken Stuffed Sweet Potatoes, I started doing some research to answer an age-old question: what’s a sweet potato, and what’s a yam? Imagine my surprise when I read in this authoritative article that “sweet potatoes are not a type of yam, and yams are not a type of sweet potato. They are both tuberous root vegetables that come from a flowering plant, but they are not related and actually don’t even have a lot in common.”
WHAT.
Apparently, what I think of as regular old sweet potatoes–the oblong, orange-fleshed vegetables in these photos and commonly found on your Thanksgiving table–are merely “soft” sweet potatoes, as opposed to “firm” sweet potatoes, which have a golden skin and white flesh. Yams, on the other hand, have a black, bark-like skin and purple or red flesh.
And can we just take a moment to say that “flesh” is not the greatest word to describe anything edible.
Regardless of terminology, however, these BBQ Chicken Stuffed Sweet Potatoes are one of my new favorite fall dinners. They’ve got a lot going on: potatoes baked to tender perfection meet sweet barbecue chicken and stretchy melted Monterey Jack (plus some spinach thrown in for extra nutrition). With veggies, starch, and protein all in one package, I’m content to call them a one-dish dinner–or round out the meal with a loaf of rustic bread. They’re also a clever way to use up leftover barbecue chicken, or to make a double-duty dinner out of a large batch of crock pot barbecue chicken earlier in the week.
So whether you call them soft sweet potatoes, firm sweet potatoes, yams, or just “the orange ones,” I think you’ll be calling them a recipe to repeat once you give them a try.
BBQ Chicken Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes are baked to tender perfection and topped with BBQ chicken, spinach, and melty Monterey Jack in this fall favorite!
Servings: 5
Ingredients
- 2 large chicken breasts
- 3/4 c. barbecue sauce, divided
- 5 sweet potatoes
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1 tsp. chili powder
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil
- 5 c. fresh spinach
- 4 oz. Monterey Jack or sharp white cheddar
Instructions
- Place chicken breasts in a slow cooker. Top with 1/4 c. barbecue sauce and cook on high for 4 hours. Remove chicken, drain of excess liquid, and shred. Return to slow cooker, stir in remaining 1/2 c. barbecue sauce, and cook an additional 15-30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash sweet potatoes and prick with a fork. Bake about 45 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
- While potatoes are cooking, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add spinach and saute until wilted, 2-3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
- Remove potatoes from oven and slice in half lengthwise. Line a baking sheet with foil and place potatoes on it. Mash potatoes lightly and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and chili powder. Top with wilted spinach and shredded chicken. Shred Monterey Jack directly onto potatoes.
- Return to oven and bake an additional 5 minutes, or until cheese has melted. Serve immediately.
Notes
Inspired by Half Baked Harvest.
Vanilla Chai Granola
A friend of mine recently posted a bit of a rant on Facebook about food blogs that make you scroll through 6,000 pictures and an 800 word banal anecdote before you can actually get to the recipe. I get it. Certainly, recipes are the main reason people visit food blogs…at least, I assume so. That’s the reason I visit food blogs, anyway. We’re not here for the story of how your dog is so adorable and that somehow relates to this casserole, or how you spilled all your Worcestershire and were forced to make this sauce with soy sauce instead. (“But it turned out AMAZING!”)
The truth is, though, as a food blogger, sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch to come up with anything meaningful to say about, say, a salad that just came together on a weeknight and was good enough to share. Cause that’s kind of the whole story. And people end up trying way too hard, when maybe the recipe can speak for itself.
Sorta the case with this Vanilla Chai Granola. All I’ve really got to say is: it’s tasty, easy, and goes great with some Siggi’s vanilla yogurt and some strawberries in a breakfast parfait. Other than that, I could see it as a unique topping for a fruit crumble or a simple start to the day with a splash of milk.
So since I’m not talking your ear off about the recipe…can you forgive a couple extra pictures? 😉
Vanilla Chai Granola
A mixture of warmth and sweetness make this Vanilla Chai Granola a special breakfast treat!
Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 c. old-fashioned oats (gluten free, if necessary)
- 2/3 c. pecan pieces
- 1/3 c. slivered almonds
- 1/4 c. canola oil
- 3 Tbsp. maple syrup
- 1/4 c. brown sugar
- 2 tsp. vanilla
- 3/4 tsp. cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
- 1/8 tsp. ground cloves
- 1/8 tsp. ground coriander
- pinch salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees and spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray. In a large bowl, stir together oats, pecans, and almonds.
- In a medium bowl, combine canola oil, maple syrup, brown sugar, and vanilla.
- In a small bowl, combine cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, coriander, and salt.
- Pour oil mixture over oat mixture and stir to coat, then do the same with the spice mixture over all.
- Spread in a layer on the baking sheet and bake about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
Notes
A Love Letter to Food Original Recipe.