One Bowl Banana Bread

Is there anything as heavenly as the smell of freshly baking bread in the oven? It is one of life's grandest smells to me. And, it is not as hard to make some home made banana bread as you might think!

I experimented with a new easy, one bowl banana bread recipe this past weekend and the verdict is in, it was delicious! 100% husband approved, too. We will definitely be making this again.

Here's the recipe if you want to try it too!

One Bowl Banana Bread
(Makes two loaves)

Ingredients
2/3 cup melted butter, or vegetable oil
6 over ripe bananas
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground cloves
4 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
1. In a large mixing bowl, mash bananas with butter (or oil), eggs and brown sugar.
2. Add seasonings, flour, baking soda and salt and stir until just combined.
3. Grease two 8x4 inch loaf pans, divide batter between the two and smooth out the top.
4. Bake at 350 for one hour or until top is springy to touch.
5. Remove from pan onto wire rack and let cool.


Enjoy with your morning coffee or as dessert! Or even make your own banana bread French toast!

Who likes a good, simple banana bread as much as I do? What kind of home made bread is your favorite?

Turkey and Veggie Soup

Summer is quickly approaching and that means soon warmer weather will be the normal. But, as we have experienced this past week in Atlanta, we can still have a few cold days left before the heat fully arrives.

What does that weather mean? One last chance for a hearty soup before the cool soups make their appearance on the dinner table.

This last week I experimented with the ingredients I had around the house to make our hearty turkey and veggie soup. The great thing about this recipe is that it can definitely be made to what YOU have in your kitchen and what YOU like.

But for a base recipe, here is what we used!

Ingredients

1lb ground turkey

2 tsp cooking oil or butter

1 onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 sweet potato, cubed

4 cups raw kale, chopped

1 cup baby carrots

4 cups chicken broth

1 can diced tomatoes

1 tsp basil

1 basil leaf

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp paprika

Directions

1. In a large heavy bottomed pot (such as a dutch oven) over medium high heat, heat up your cooking oil or butter 

2. Add you chopped onions, sautee until soft and translucent. Add your garlic in and cook for one minute. 

3. Add in the chopped green peppers, and potatoes.

4. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil. 

5. Add kale, bay leaf and diced tomatoes and reduce heat to medium low. Let cook for about 10 minutes, covered. 

6. As that cooks, brown your turkey with all of the seasonings mentioned above added in with it.

7. After turkey is browned, add to soup, mix and cover. 

8. Let cook over medium low, stirring occasionally for about 25 minutes. 

9. Garnish with cheese and plain Greek yogurt if desired! 

Enjoy these last few days of warm soup weather before the fall. This is an easy and yummy way to get veggies in! Experiment with what you have and make it fun. 

What's your favorite soup? 

DIY Strawberry Ice Cream

Today is the first day of spring, and what better way to ring that in and the approaching warmer weather than with super easy and delicious strawberry ice cream? This was incredibly easy, and I loved it! I have made ice cream with frozen bananas before, which is also very good, but sometimes I want something with less of a banana-y flavor.

Enter strawberry ice cream.

It's like an ice cream meets a yogurt, meets a sorbet, meet a sherbet. All delicious. So be sure to give this recipe a try!

DIY Strawberry Ice Cream
(Makes 4 servings)

Ingredients
4 cups frozen strawberries
1/2 cup plain yogurt (I used Greek, you could probably even use a vanilla greek yogurt if you like it a little sweeter!)
3 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

Directions
1. Place all ingredients in a food processor (or blender), blend until smooth.
2. Divide into 4 servings, or dip out yours and save the rest for later, and ENJOY!

So easy, so refreshing, and best of all, GUILT FREE! Who is going to try this delectable treat? 

Ground Turkey Enchiladas

Living in southwest Arizona for over ten years absolutely made me partial to Mexican food, and real , authentic Mexican food at that. The rest of the country just doesn't know what it's missing! No, Taco Bell and On the Border don't count. Georgia just doesn't have the same Mexican food as Arizona. 

While there's a mix of different dishes panning across the Mexican food genre, some can be healthy, and others not so healthy.This week I definitely had a hankering for enchiladas, so I thought I would try my hand at making a healthier version of enchiladas, and they turned out great! I will be making these again.

Ground Turkey Enchiladas

Ingredients
16 corn tortillas
Red or green enchilada sauce
1 onion, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
2 tsp cooking oil
1lb lean ground turkey
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 Tbsp cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp black pepper
Seasoning to taste

Directions
1. Preheat a large skillet with cooking oil over medium high heat
2. Sautee onions and bell peppers until tender (about 5 minutes)
3. Add in your ground turkey, mix and brown through.
4. Add your cumin, garlic powder, paprika and black pepper. Mix to combine, cook over medium for a few more minutes.
5. Grease a large baking dish (enough to fit your enchiladas, or you can use two dishes)
6. Heat up your tortillas for a few seconds so they are easier to work with. Fill each with about 2 heaping Tbsp of filling, then roll and place with the seam on the bottom.
7. Fill all tortillas, then cover with enchiladas sauce, cheese and cilantro.
8. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes
9. Enjoy!!

What is your favorite Mexican dish? Anyone else love their food nice and spicy besides me? 

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Who doesn’t love a warm, gooey cookie around the holidays? I know I do! I was searching for a way to create at least one “cleaner” cookie though that will help with the sweet tooth, but not totally undo my progress.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have found such a recipe! And I really liked it! We will definitely be making these again in our home. They are super simple, easy, fast, and delicious!

They are a little on the gooier side (which I like, personally), because you aren’t using any sort of flour or butter. But man are they tasty! Give them a chance for sure.

Here’s what you need to bake up these tasty clean treats!

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

2 ripe bananas

1 cup rolled uncooked oats

1 Tablespoon Peanut butter

½ cup chocolate chips

You can also add in a few dashes of cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, and whatever other toppings you like! (Think more peanut butter, honey, nuts, etc)

Directions

1.     Heat oven to 350 degrees

2.     Mash up your bananas with your oatmeal so that they are all mixed together

3.     Add your peanut butter, chocolate chips, and whatever other toppings you like.

4.     Drop by heaping spoonful onto your greased cookie sheet, then press out into a cookie shape (but don’t make them too thin!)

5.     Bake at 350 for 15-17 minutes, until they begin to get a more golden brown color and are forming together.

6.     Allow cookies to cool on pan for about 2-3 minutes, until you can scoop them off with a spatula. (When I took mine out they began to squish when I used the spatula…let them cool ON the baking sheet a few minutes and it’s much easier!)

7.     Eat and enjoy the warm gooeyness!

There you have it! An easy, more healthy way to feed your sweet tooth around the holidays this year. If you have a health conscious friend, you could even whip up a batch of these as a Christmas present!

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Who’s going to try out this tasty treat??

Finish Your Broccoli First!

“May I be excused?”

“Not until you eat all your veggies!”

How many of us grew up hearing that at least a handful of times in our lives? I’m sure there are a fair few of you out there, including myself. I have never really hated vegetables, but I never loved them either or specifically asked for them. Unless you count stuffing grape tomatoes in my mouth straight from the garden when I was a kid (there’s photographic proof of this).

Growing up, particularly through middle school and high school, I never really was keen on eating all my fruits and veggies. Fruit didn’t appeal to me unless it was the only option, and a veggie was just an afterthought with dinner for me sometimes. Then there was the occasional salad thrown in just to look cool.

But as a whole, I didn’t really make it a part of my daily nutrition. That has carried over into my adult life, and fruits and veggies were more of an afterthought for me rather than a staple or main food group in my life. And thus, I found myself packing on the pounds and lacking a lot of nutrition that I needed, leaving me tired and weak a lot of the time.

This past April, everything changed. I was introduced to the 21 Day Fix, which laid out for me how much fruits and veggies (and every food group for that matter) I was supposed to have each day, and just how big each serving was supposed to be. “What?! You mean I have to eat multiple servings?” I thought. Veggies was one of my biggest category for daily nutrition and to that point it was probably my lowest next to fruit.

How about you? Do you struggle to get your fruits and veggies in? Do you ever get that random bag of broccoli because it seemed like a good, healthy choice at the time, only to find it three weeks later rotting in your forgotten veggie drawer? That definitely happened to me. Though now I am happy to say those drawers are used daily now.

So, how have I turned my habits around to getting 5 servings of veggies and 3 servings of fruit in per day? (Which in all honesty that is a liberal estimate of what I had per week before of those things) For one, the 21 Day Fix has taught me how to plan it in, and actually enjoy eating vegetables and fruit. It is now a daily staple in my life.

Another big way I make sure to get my fruits and veggies in, especially in a pinch, are smoothies! You can stuff those things full of fruit, and veggies! Did you know that you can add kale or spinach to your smoothie and you can’t even taste it? Try it out! You get a punch of nutrition and you don’t have to feel like you’re eating like a rabbit (as my husband would say).

The moral of the story is, eat your fruits and veggies! Find a way to incorporate them more into your diet through planning. Plan snacks, make smoothies, sneak them into your dinner. I promise you that you will start to notice a difference in your energy and how you feel when you fuel your body with the right nutrients.

So what’s your favorite way to sneak in fruits and veggies to your diet? Share some of your tips below!

Revamped "Cookie Dough"

Alright, I admit, I am an avid fan of cookie dough! The stuff is just so delicious. Never mind that they say you shouldn't eat batter with raw eggs, it's just too good! But, unfortunately, raw eggs or not, it's probably not a great idea to eat cookie dough anyways. At least not regularly.

But I recently found a fantastic way to curb the sweet tooth and get just a little hint of that cookie dough  like taste! And the best part, it's much healthier than cookie dough, and bonus, you don't have to worry about any raw eggs.

Here's the digs on the recipe, it's super easy, fast, and delicious! Perfect for that late night sugar craving so you don't derail your days worth of clean eating.

Ingredients
3/4 cup of plain Greek Yogurt
2 tsp. natural peanut butter (it's just a better choice for you)
1 tsp. of honey
2 tsp. chocolate chips
Pinch of salt (optional)

Directions
1. Combine yogurt and peanut butter in a bowl and stir
2. Add in the honey, chocolate chips, and salt.
3. DIG IN!

This recipe is super easy, and really versatile! We ran out of chocolate chips and I had some dried cranberries, so I substituted that instead, and it was delicious! Get creative, there are so many options out there! Nuts, blueberries, white chocolate, etc. Just remember, everything in moderation!

What would you add into this recipe to revamp the cookie dough? Share your thoughts below!