Candice, this is for you. Chocolate Chip Chickpea Blondies

Deliciousness. Made with beans. But you can’t taste the beans. I promise.

They have the texture of cookies. I don’t know why they’re called blondies.

By the way, this isn’t totally my recipe, I (loosely) used the recipe posted a while back by @missk_j6 on instagram.

Chocolate chip chickpea blondies:

ingredients
1 can (540mL I think) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 scoop vanilla protein powder (I used Optimum Nutrition)
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey (could use agave or maple syrup)
2 packets splenda/stevia (if needed)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup dark chocolate chips

These are super easy. Preheat your oven to 350f. Throw all the ingredients into a food processor (except the chocolate chips) and whiz until well combined. Taste the mixture. If it needs more honey or you want to add the splenda/stevia packets, or salt, add some. They definitely lose a bit of sweetness while baking. Pour the mixture into a baking pan lined with parchment paper, add the chocolate chips and mix them in, then bake for about 30-35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool then stuff your face!! I topped mine with Cookie Nookie Peanut Butter.

I will try to cook some more good food in the coming months so I can update my blog more often!

hulk pancakes

just a quickie tonight because my mum said she wanted me to post the recipe for these pancakes:

these are hulk pancakes! and they are GREEN!!!!

ingredients for 1-2 servings:
1/3 cup egg whites
1 egg
2 tbsp cottage cheese
1 tbsp coconut flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 scoop vanilla protein powder (I used casein for these, which digests slower than whey, but I think they would both work)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 to 1 tsp cinnamon (depending on how much you like cinnamon)
1 to 2 handfuls of spinach
sweetener to taste

heat your pan on medium and spray it with coconut oil or non-stick spray
throw all your ingredients in a blender. I promise you can’t taste the spinach! it’s an awesome way to get your greens in and gives the pancakes a cool colour 🙂
let the batter sit for a minute or two so the coconut flour can soak up the liquid – you may need to add another tablespoon of egg whites if it gets too thick. it should be thick but pourable
then just cook like regular pancakes!
these are layered with homemade berry chia jam (recipe below), melted coconut butter and no sugar added syrup. the best part – they are very high in protein, so you will stay full, and they are low carb!

berry chia jam

ingredients:
1 cup fresh or frozen berries of choice
1 to 2 tbsp chia seeds
sweetener to taste

if your berries are frozen, microwave them for about a minute or until they are mush-able with a fork
mush your berries, add your chia seeds and sweetener and mix
microwave for another 30 seconds
let sit until the consistency has thickened and is jam-like

the berry chia jam is awesome on pancakes/waffles, toast, oats (!!!!!), english muffins, scones, and more! sometimes I use lemon stevia and make lemon berry jam. another favourite of mine is adding some vanilla extract to blueberry chia jam.

enjoy!

I eat with my eyeballs

don’t you? food just seems to taste better when it looks pretty. like this apple that I layered with peanut flour butter (like pb2 but without the added salt/sugar – can be purchased from iherb.com, lowcarbcanada.ca, amazon, etc) and dark chocolate chips.

umm.. YUM.

so here’s some food I prepped on Sunday morning for work this week:

the yummiest chicken I’ve ever made. and SO SIMPLE. I took some steel cut oats and threw them in the blender until I had oat flour. I mixed that with unsweetened shredded coconut and put that on a plate. I rinsed the chicken boobs and dried them with a paper towel. then I dipped them into one egg that I had whisked, then into the oat flour and coconut mixture, then put that on a baking tray that I had sprayed with pam and baked at 375f/190c for about 25 minutes until the boobs were done. I had one of the boobs (cold) with a greek spinach salad today at work and it was DELICIOUS. last night, I had about half a boob which I warmed up and covered with salsa, cottage cheese and sauteed peppers, onion, cherry tomatoes and mushrooms that I had seasoned with southwest chipotle Mrs Dash and some taco seasoning and cooked in a little bit of coconut oil.

I also made some turkey bacon egg muffins.

these are super simple, just preheat your oven to 375f/190c, spray some muffin tins with pam, line the outside of the tins with turkey bacon (or real bacon if you have it!), crack an egg inside and season with whatever your little heart desires. bake for about 10-15 minutes or until the whites are opaque. I have one or two of these babies as a snack either by themselves or with some raw, chopped veggies.

lastly I made some oats, which will last me about 3 days. if I’m prepping oats in advance, I will use 1 cup of steel cut oats, 4 cups of water, a bit of liquid stevia and whatever flavourings I’m feeling. this week I made vanilla cinnamon oats. I also often add 1 cup of egg whites (from the carton) to add some protein to my breakfast so I stay full for longer. I just pour in the egg whites when the oats are almost done and stir stir stir until the whites are white (weird, right?). this also adds volume to your breakfast and makes the oats fluffy! I took some tall containers and layered my oats with chopped up pear, stewed rhubarb, chia seeds and hemp hearts. unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of my oats this week, but here’s a photo of last week’s oats. these ones didn’t have egg whites in them so they are not as voluminous as my usual oats. I could seriously write about oats forever, I FREAKING LOVE OATS.

these oats were infused with chai tea (I steeped a couple of chai tea bags in water before I cooked my oats in it) and topped with chia seeds, mixed berries, hemp hearts, peanut flour butter and shredded coconut.

I wish it was legit to eat oatmeal (or breakfast) for every meal.

lastly, this is the epic tuna salad I made at my better half’s house this weekend after we gym’d together. by the way, I did another 10k on Saturday, my time was 50:22. I was trying for under 50 minutes so I was a little disappointed (stupid 22 seconds) but I am still satisfied with that time. I was really pushing myself too and at one point I felt like I was going to throw up. I don’t know if that’s because running on the treadmill is SUPER BORING or because I was half asleep or what. anyways, one of my friends from work will be doing the 10k with me at the Victoria Goddess Run this weekend and she is a fast runner, so hopefully I will be able to keep up with her and improve my time a bit.

back to the salad:

no cooking required, y’all. I just threw some mixed greens on a plate, topped it with a drained can of tuna (in springwater), and then added some feta cheese, sundried tomatoes, cucumber, wholegrain dijon mustard, freshly cracked pepper and topped everything with greek olive oil dressing (made by Kraft – super delicious!).

super random but here’s my view from work. I love it. it’s too bad the roof of the Bay Centre is so ugly but the water views are awesome, it’s pretty cool watching the seaplanes land and seeing all the random ferries and boats whiz around in the harbour (I guess you can’t see the water in this photo, but trust me, it’s there. just slightly to the left. but look at all the little people!).

simple, homemade low carb burger buns and a sore bum

I am participating in the Victoria Goddess Run on June 2nd. this will be my first organized running event (I was supposed to run in the TC 10k in 2012 but then I decided to move to Australia instead!), and since I don’t do much long distance running anymore, I have decided to run a bit more than I usually do for the next couple of weeks. today I ran just over 10km in 53:48 which I am pretty happy with. I am hoping to get my time around 45 minutes for the actual “race” so I definitely need a little more practice. I remember when I first started running again last July, I could barely run for 10 minutes straight without feeling like I was going to collapse… today’s 10k barely felt like a long run at all. I probably could have run for at least another hour. I think I’m gonna try hill sprints next and see how much they kick my ass.

my sister and I went for a bike ride down to the beach yesterday. I haven’t ridden a bike in close to five years, so that was interesting… I forgot how to use the brakes. I thought they were the gear shifts. biking is really hard! my legs were not prepared for how hard it is to bike uphill and my butt is still sore, two days later. how do people deal with those seats??!

I haven’t been cooking anything interesting lately.. weekday lunches are usually chicken salads/wraps or leftovers, I prep the chicken on Sunday for mom and I which makes life much easier throughout the week. last week I had 1/2 cup of ancient grains mixed rice (from Costco – SO YUMMY!!), turkey bacon wrapped asparagus, and grilled chicken breast. I sprinkled a bit of feta on top of everything and after warming it all up in the micro at work I put some tabasco on everything (I love spicyyyyy).

someone at work said to me “you must spend all night cooking and making food, you eat so much and I never see you get take away”. I guess I can see why some people would think that eating the way I do takes a lot of time/effort but I enjoy my Sundays in the kitchen, cooking is relaxing to me, I listen to some music (I’m currently obsessed with Current Swell) and then I don’t have to worry about what I am going to take for lunch to work during the week.

ummm… how epic does that burger look?!! we get these delicious frozen salmon burger patties from Costco (love that place) and they are awesome for when you are too lazy to cook anything else and they are delicious.

I made these burger buns with a recipe adapted from Living Nutrition – the only change I made to the recipe there was the addition of two extra tablespoons of greek yogurt – you may not need this, so start with 1/4 cup. we also didn’t have any poppy seeds or dried onion so I just sprinkled sesame seeds on top of the buns.

ingredients
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1/4 cup + (2 tbsp greek yogurt, plain – maybe!)
1 tsp honey
small handful of sesame seeds

directions
preheat your oven to 375f/190c
mix all the dry ingredients (except sesame seeds) in a large bowl and set aside
beat all the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl until well combined
pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well
let the mixture sit for a few minutes so the coconut flour can soak up the liquids
using an ice cream scoop or small measuring cup, place “balls” of dough onto a parchment lined cookie sheet (8 – 10 “balls”)
top half of the “balls” with a sprinkle of sesame seeds
bake for about 10 minutes

that’s it for me today, time to go eat and prep my steel cut oats for the week while my chicken marinates! if the marinade recipe is good I will post it! ciao!

hello, and welcome to my blog

hey everyone, thanks for stopping by. I decided to start a blog because my mother said that I should do it, and since I always do what my mother says, here it is. it kind of scares me to do this whole blogging thing, because all the people I follow on instagram have awesome blogs with awesome recipes and about a million followers… it’s intimidating! but then I realize that I’m not them, I’m just me, so I can just do my best to keep you all entertained.

ok enough chatter. here’s some food porn and a simple recipe to start things off.

I made these waffles for my mom, dad and I on Saturday morning. mom and dad are new to the healthy lifestyle that I’ve adopted, and they were seriously impressed by these babies. mine are topped with sugar free maple syrup, microwaved frozen blueberries and tru-whip, which is like cool whip, but it’s made with all natural ingredients, no corn syrup, no hydrogenated oils, yum!

recipe – makes 6 waffles

ingredients
1 cup steel cut oats, ground into flour
3 tbsp coconut flour
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
6 tbsp unsweetened applesauce
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp butter flavouring
1 egg
1/3 cup egg whites
1/4 cup almond milk (or more or less until you have reached pancake/waffle texture)
stevia to taste

so first, grind your oats into a flour (I used our magic bullet, which sucks), then add in the coconut flour, protein powder, baking powder/soda and salt and mix well. pour the dry ingredients into a bowl and then throw all the wet ingredients (except for the milk!) into the magic bullet (or whatever you’re using – blender, etc) and mix until combined. pour wet ingredients into dry, add about half of the almond milk and mix again… keep adding almond milk until the mixture is your typical pancake/waffle mixture. you might need to use more or less than 1/4 cup. make sure you’ve given the batter a minute or two to soak up the liquid because coconut flour takes a few minutes to do this.

you could also add in some cinnamon for vanilla cinnamon waffles. or you could make chocolate waffles by using chocolate protein powder and adding in a little bit of cocoa powder instead of using vanilla extract. or make banana waffles by using mashed banana instead of applesauce. or pumpkin waffles – use some canned pumpkin (or freshly steamed/mashed pumpkin) instead of applesauce. you get the idea. i love to play around with different extracts/flavourings! and, if you want to sneak in some greens, throw a handful or two of spinach in with your wet ingredients into the blender – I swear you can’t taste it!

next, let your waffle maker do the rest of the work. pour your batter in there, close it, wait a few minutes, remove your waffles and then top with whatever your precious heart desires! enjoy!