Crispy Sweet & Sour Brussels Sprouts

My husband and I disagree about how we like to cook Brussels Sprouts. He likes them soft and cooked in the slow cooker with chicken and broccoli. I like them crispy and cooked in the oven. So I bought some at the grocery store the other day and was only making them for myself to go with some sausage I had taken out. So I wanted to make crispy ones! These were inspired by some recipes I browsed on Pinterest.

These were absolutely amazing. You have to make them!

Ingredients
1) 2 pounds of Brussels Sprouts (I bought the bag at Costco)
2) 2 tablespoons of ghee or coconut oil
3) 1 tablespoon maple syrup
4) 1/2 tablespoon fish sauce
5) 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
Extra; Salt, a few drops hot sauce (optional)

Instructions
1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2) Cut your sprouts in half. Place on a lined baking sheet ( I used aluminum foil)

3) Melt your ghee or coconut oil and drizzle on the sprouts. Mix with your hands to blend, and then sprinkle with salt.
4) Bake for 60 minutes on the top rack of your oven, stirring every 20 minutes. They will be dark and crispy when done.

5) Once the sprouts are baked, mix your maple/fish sauce/lemon juice/(optional hot sauce), and then toss on your Brussels sprouts. Enjoy!

Chili Lime Roasted Acorn Squash

Need a good side dish? There are so many wonderful varieties of squash out there and they all taste a little different. Acorn squash is really versatile and gets soft and sweet when roasted. Enjoy!

Ingredients
1) 1-2 acorn squash (I used 2)
2) 1 tablespoon ghee or coconut oil
3) 1 tablespoon lime juice
4) 1 teaspoon chili powder

Instructions
1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2) Melt your ghee or coconut oil, and mix with lime juice and chili powder.

3) Cut your squash into wedges.

4) Place your wedges on a lined baking sheet. Drizzle with your oil mixture.

5) Bake for 25-35 minutes, until soft when poked with a fork.

Vanilla Coconut Butter Bites

This recipe is dangerous. It's so easy, and the melt in your mouth taste is delicious! I made a batch of these and they lasted two days, which was a miracle. We had to hold ourselves back.

If you'd like it sweeter, you can add more honey, but the 1/4 cup was perfect and this ended up making 12 bites -- 1 teaspoon of honey per bite!

Ingredients
1) 1 cup of coconut butter (aka coconut cream concentrate)
2) 1/4 cup honey
3) 2 teaspoons vanilla
4) 1/3 cup shredded coconut

Instructions
1) Prepare your coconut butter (you can grind your own by adding shredded coconut to a food processor and blending for about 20 minutes, until smooth like peanut butter or use Tropical Traditions Coconut Cream Concentrate like I did, and warm until it's the consistency of peanut butter).

2) Add 1 cup of your coconut butter to a bowl, along with 1/4 cup honey and 2 teaspoons of good quality vanilla. Mix until well blended. It will thicken more as you stir it more, so keep blending until it's thick like soft serve ice cream.
3) Spread your shredded coconut onto a plate.
4) Using a small cookie scoop or a tablespoon, scoop your coconut mixture into the shredded coconut, and roll until completely covered. Place on a separate plate.
5) Continue to scoop until you run out of mixture---mine made 12 using the smallest of my cookie scoopers.
6) Place in the fridge to harden, at least 20 minutes. Store in the fridge for best results. Enjoy!

Plantain-Crust Taco Pizza

I just recently discovered that you could make an excellent crust out of plantains. I haven't really cooked with plantains often, but had bought some at the store the other day and wasn't sure what I would do with them. So I blended them up with some eggs and coconut, and baked it to see if it would solidify---and it did! This worked out great. Get creative and add whatever toppings you want!

Ingredients
1) 3 medium-ripe large plantains (about 1 pound)
2) 2 eggs
3) 1/2 cup shredded coconut
Your pizza toppings -- mine included guacamole, ground beef, salsa and tomatoes.

Instructions
1) Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2) Peel and roughly chop your plantains. Add to a food processor or blender, plus your eggs and coconut.

3) Puree until smooth. It will take a few minutes.

4) Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Then pour your plantain mixture on and even spread it out, about 1/4-1/3 inch thick.

5) Bake for 14-16 minutes.
6) While your pizza crust is baking, we browned up ground beef in a large skillet. Once that was cooked, we drained most of the grease and added salsa until slightly moist.
7) Once your pizza crust is done, it will just be starting to brown on the very outside. Remove from the oven.

8) We topped ours with two packs of 100-calorie Wholly Guacamole, as the sauce for the pizza. Then we topped with our ground beef/salsa mixture, and added tomatoes on top. Lettuce would also have been great on top, or you can add cheese if you tolerate dairy.

Apple Cinnamon Banana Popsicles

It's so warm outside! We always try to keep some sort of popsicle in the freezer for times when we are craving a frozen dessert. This recipe was so simple and really delicious! It uses a whole can of coconut milk, so it makes a lot of popsicles. Feel free to half the recipe if you don't have any many molds!

Ingredients
1) 4 ripe bananas (mine were frozen, but fresh is fine)
2) 1 apple, roughly chopped and cored
3) 1 1/2 cups of coconut milk (or a 15oz can) - you could use almond milk!
4) 1 teaspoon cinnamon

**Makes 10-14 popsicles, depending on mold size**

Instructions
1) Puree all ingredients in a blender or food processor.

2) Pour into your popsicle molds.

3) Place in the freezer until solid, at least 4 hours.
4) Enjoy!

"Cheesy" Bacon Cauliflower Muffins

Cauliflower is such a versatile little vegetable. This recipe uses nutritional yeast to give a cheesy flavor to the muffins, but if you don't have any you can omit it. Or you can use real cheese if you tolerate dairy! This makes a lot of muffins and lasted well in the fridge for 3-4 days after making it. Use it as a delicious, portable side dish.

Ingredients
1) 2 pounds of cauliflower florets ( I used the bag from Costco)
2) 4 eggs
3) 1/4 cup coconut flour
4) 1/2 cup nutritional yeast (optional, but gives the "cheesy" flavor)
5) 1/4 - 1/2 cup bacon bits (depends on how much you want in each muffin, start with 1/4 cup and add more if it looks like too little!)
Extra: 1 teaspoon salt

**Makes 18 muffins**

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
1) Steam your cauliflower. You can do this on the stove, or the lazy way like I did: microwave. I placed the cauliflower in a very large bowl, added 1/4 cup water, and cooked for 8-10 minutes until fork tender.

2) Add half your steamed cauliflower and the 4 eggs to a food processor or blender.

3) Puree until smooth, and then add the remaining cauliflower. Puree until smooth.

4) Pour your cauliflower/egg mixture back into your bowl you used to microwave it. Add your 1/4 of coconut flour and stir to combine.

5) Next add your 1/2 cup nutritional yeast, bacon bits, and salt. Stir to combine.

6) Using a measuring cup or cookie scoop, divide your mixture into cupcake molds. I used silicone to ensure no sticking. It made 18, but yours could make a few more or less depending on ingredient size.

7) Bake at 400 for 30-35 minutes, until firm when touched.

Taco Casserole

 Do you love tacos? Do you like casseroles? Then this meal is for you!

I've been in a cooking rut the last couple of weekends and have just been making the same thing over and over. But I really wanted to taste something different and I was craving some Mexican food. This meal turned our insanely tasty and the shredded potatoes in it just added the right texture and bulk to fill you up. Add any veggies you like, but I really liked the carrot/onion/tomato mixture for my taco. You could certainly top this with some guacamole---it would make it even better!

Ingredients
1) 2 pound of ground beef (or other ground meat of choice)
2) 1 pound of potatoes, grated or diced
3) 1 pound of carrots, grated or diced
4) 2 onions, grated or diced
5) 2 cans of diced tomatoes (15oz each)
Extra: 4 tablespoons chili powder, 4 tablespoons cumin, 1/2 tablespoon salt (optional 1 teaspoon of hot sauce)

Instructions
1) Preheat your oven to 350.
2) Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat, and add your ground beef.
3) Break up the ground beef into small chunks and cook until browned. Drain out the majority of the liquid in the bottom of the pan (I do this by tilting the pan to the side, and using a scoop to ladle the oil into a bowl.)

4) While your ground beef was cooking, shred up your vegetables. I used the shredded attachment on my food processor and ran the potatoes, carrots, and onions through in large chunks. It was much easier than chopping, but if you don't have a food processor you can chop into uniform-sized pieces or grate with a cheese grater.

5) Once your ground beef is done, stir in your seasonings and the tomatoes and mix to incorporate.

6) In a large 9x13 casserole dish, combine the ground beef and your grated vegetables. Stir to thoroughly mix.

7) Bake for 45 minutes, until the vegetables are tender and the top starts to brown. Top with guacamole for an even better meal!

5-Spices Roasted Potato Wedges

These were sort of my take on Red Robin's delicious fries. Man, those are so good. We don't go out to eat very often, but when we do sometimes we go to RR for their bottomless fries. Their spice mixture is just so tasty!

So I just tried to throw some spices together and hope it was equally as good on some roasted potatoes. This takes regular potatoes and really jazzes them up! We served these with dinner, and also with a nice breakfast when we had my brother-in-law over.

We try to add in some extra starches on days we have workouts, but if you are trying to be lower carb you might want to make these on special occasions and not for regular eating.

Ingredients
1) 2 pounds of potatoes of choice (russet, sweet, white, red...)
2) 1 tablespoon cooking oil (ghee, coconut oil, etc)
3) 1 tablespoon of spice mixture

Ingredients for Spice Mixture
1) 1 tablespoon salt
2) 1 tablespoon paprika
3) 1 tablespoon chili powder
4) 1 teaspoon dried basil (or Italian seasoning)
5) 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

Instructions
1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Get out a cookie sheet and coat it with a silicone mat or with parchment paper.
2) Chop up your potatoes into similar shaped cubes, to ensure even cooking.

3) Drizzle your 1 tablespoon of cooking oil over the cubes and mix with your hands.
4) Mix up your spice mixture. This will make a lot, so use something you can store (we used a small plastic container). You'll be able to make this recipe about 4 times by just making this spice mixture once.

5) Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the spice mixture on your potatoes, and use your hands to mix and ensure even coating.
6) Cook for 35-45 minutes, flipping over at the half way point.

Quick Chocolate Cherry Dessert

We just came back from our honeymoon, and are currently doing a 21-day sugar detox because we ate so much food on our trip! This means no fruit for us for a few weeks, but I will making this one again after we are done because it is so easy and took less than a minute to prepare. The only sweetness is coming from the fruit, as the coconut and cocoa powder were unsweetened. Hope you enjoy!

Ingredients
1) 1 cup of cherries, fresh or defrosted
2) 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder
3) 1/8-1/4 cup shredded coconut

Instructions
1) Defrost your cherries, if they are frozen. If fresh, take the pits out.

2) Add your teaspoon of cocoa powder and thoroughly stir.

3) Add in your shredded coconut, until your desired amount. Eat up!

Super Easy 1-Minute Mayo

I've had bad luck with making my own mayonnaise in the past. Sometimes it emulsifies, and sometimes it doesn't. Drizzling in your oil as slow as possible is really tedious and if you do it wrong at all, your mayo is ruined! So I saw on buzzfeed about how you can make mayo using an immersion blender. I tried it out, instead of drizzling the oil in, and it took less than 1 minute and was amazing! I really like a lot of mustard and lemon juice in my mayo, so the recipe below is adjusted for my liking. You can tweek it however you like.

You'll never make slow mayo again!

Ingredients
1) 1 egg yolk, room temperature
2) 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
3) 1 tablespoon water
4) 1 tablespoon lemon juice
5) 1 cup oil of choice (I used avocado oil. Other options: macadamia nut oil, extra light olive oil.)

Instructions
1) Place egg yolk, mustard, water and lemon juice into a tall container.
2) Add your 1 cup of oil.

3) Using an immersion blender, place blade into bottom of your container. Turn on, and pump up and down a few times until everything is blender.

4) Season with salt & pepper, if desired. Store in the fridge.

No-Bake Pumpkin Pie Pudding

I still have some pumpkin cans in my pantry from winter time. I was seriously craving something sweet and delicious, and quick and easy more importantly. I whipped this bad boy up in less than 2 minutes, and it really hit the spot. Hope you enjoy!

Ingredients
1) 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
2) 2 tablespoons almond flour
3) 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, or cinnamon/nutmeg
4) 1-2 tablespoons honey (to taste)

Instructions
1) Add your pumpkin puree to a small bowl or mug.

2) Add your almond flour and spices. Mix to incorporate.

3) Add 1 tablespoon of honey. Taste. Add another tablespoon if needed.
4) Enjoy!