Healthy Recipes Weekly Roundup 06/11-06/18

I may have mentioned that I am not a recipe developer, but I suppose a title I could claim is Recipe Collector. My Bookmarks are basically 98.6% recipes, of which I have made maybe a third.

What can I say, once I find a favorite, I just stick to it and don’t bother branching off.

If it ain’t broke, right? 😉

The truth is I absolutely adore cooking and baking, and since I had to take a hiatus whilst at college (you try cooking in those tiny communal kitchenettes), I’ve been cooking and baking like a madwoman ever since coming back for break. It’s therapeutic and stress-relieving and just plain fun, especially when I get to share what I made with a friend or my mom, and they get all bright-eyed with wonder.

This is especially fun when the recipe is secretly healthy or hides some preposterous ingredient (heh, stay tuned).

Though I don’t create and develop these recipes myself, I really do think that cooking and baking is not something absolutely everyone can do well. You need to be attentive and patient, and you need to be willing to experiment a little. Knowing when to add some extra spices or deciding to substitute one ingredient for another is something that comes with practice and is integral to becoming a whiz in the kitchen.

I strongly believe that anyone can grow to love cooking; all it takes is some practice and accepting that there will be times when you will need to graciously donate your labors to the trash.

But persevere, and you might just have that aha moment when you realize how gratifying and satisfying it is to eat something that you made and feel incapable of uttering anything more than inappropriate noises.

Over the years, I have accumulated a very large arsenal of killer recipes, and I know full well which bloggers I love for which foods. I am planning on compiling a list of my favorite health/wellness blogs (and there are a lot!), but until then, I thought I’d post a weekly recap of some of the recipes I made this past week.

Weekly Faves

 

1. Cream cheese frosting for breakfast from Imma Eat That

No, that was not a typo. This is a recipe that tells you in full honesty that it is okay for you to eat frosting for breakfast. And you don’t even need to feel bad about it (not that you should ever feel bad for eating frosting for breakfast because lezbereal if you’re doing that, you’re probably doing something very right).

Now this recipe is not actually cream cheese frosting. I’m sorry. I know I got all of your hopes up, and now you’re slapping your thigh because you can’t believe you’ve fallen for a cruel trick.

But. Allow me to regain your trust.

This is as close as you will get to eating cream cheese frosting flavor-wise, while getting all the nutrients and satiety from a hearty and healthy breakfast. And if that isn’t a great deal, I don’t know what is.

I love that this recipe needs to be made the night before because I’m often so hungry in the morning that the very idea of waiting until my breakfast cooks makes me want to throw my pan out the window while simultaneously shoveling chocolate chips into my face since my blood sugar is in a dangerously low position (anyone else? no? just me then?).

Guys.

If you haven’t tried making your breakfast the night before, GAME CHANGER. Honestly. Never again can you say you don’t have time for breakfast because lo and behold, your breakfast will be waiting for you as soon as you stumble out of bed and into the kitchen in your fluffy robe and bunny slippers. Zero effort, zero waiting. Boom.

2. Basil Strawberry Quinoa Salad with Goat Cheese, Sunflower Seeds, and Lemon Vinaigrette from The Ambitious Kitchen

Guys. This salad. It was orgasmic.

Was that inappropriate? I don’t even care.

I expected this to be good, ‘cause how can you go wrong when you have goat cheese and strawberries in a salad? But I never expected how frickin’ satisfying the addition of nutty quinoa would be and how crunchy and texturifying the seeds would be, and that dressing! MAKE IT.

Another bonus: this ain’t no sissy salad. It kept me and those I fed it to nice and satisfied for hours!

Pro tip: I actually added a hefty drizzle of balsamic vinegar to the salad, and it took it over the top. Strawberries and balsamic vinegar are the best of friends after all.

3. Flourless Peanut Butter Zucchini Brownies from The Hummusapien

Alexis from The Hummusapien really knows her desserts. I absolutely adore her bar and brownie recipes because it is literally impossible to tell that they are healthy since they are so dang delicious. Sinfully so.

I’ve made these brownies once before about a year ago, and then somehow forgot about them amidst all the other recipes I was making.

When she posted a picture of them on her Instagram a couple weeks ago, I couldn’t stop thinking about them until I made them, and then I was like, HOLY PICKLES HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT THIS GOODNESS?

Guys, I feel very strongly about these brownies. No, you can’t taste the zucchini. Yes, you can taste the peanut butter. In a wonderful way. If you’re allergic to peanut butter… I can’t help you.

KIDDING! You can replace it with absolutely any nut butter, and it will be bomb anyway. Almond butter, cashew butter, oooh sunflower seed butter! The possibilities are endless, and you don’t even have to be resentful about how prevalent peanut butter is in the American foodosphere.

I fed these to my mom and best friend, and they were all totally unaware that these were healthy and secretly had a vegetable.

That was a total lie. They know me, so even before taking a bite, they were like, so what’s weird in this recipe?

Haters gonna hate.

But actually, they gobbled up the brownie and took seconds because they are well aware by this point that Nicole knows her stuff when it comes to healthy recipes, even if they’re “weird.”

Because weird is always good.