Homemade Catalina/French Dressing

This is adapted from a recipe I found on kitchensimplicity.com. I made it lower in sugar and used a healthier fat source.


Catalina Dressing
Makes 1.5 cups total

¼ cup fire-roasted tomatoes (canned)

¼ cup splenda or sweetener of choice

¼ cup red wine vinegar

¼ cup onion, chopped (or ½ teaspoon onion powder)

½ teaspoon paprika

¼ teaspoon worcestershire sauce

½ cup olive oil

salt and pepper, to taste

Put all the ingredients in blender and puree until smooth and combined. Shake or stir well before using. Refrigerate any unused portion.

Great on a salad with bleu cheese!

Blueberry Vanilla Breakfast Cake

Imagine eating a big hunk of cake for breakfast! This is it! This cake is dense, moist and filling (and healthy!). I pretty much took the ingredients for 4 healthy breakfast servings and made cake. Yummy! It isn't super sweet, so if you  like things sweeter, add some additional sweetener of your choice. I like it because it is quick to make and very portable for breakfast on-the-go.

Blueberry Vanilla Breakfast Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

In a large bowl, mix together:

2 cups quick cooking oats
1 tsp baking soda
2 packets Splenda (or equivalent preferred sweetener)
Cinnamon, one tsp (if desired)

In a small bowl beat together:

4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

In a shaker mix up :

2 cups water
4 scoops vanilla whey protein

Add egg mixture and protein shake to oats and mix well.

Stir in:

1 1/2 cups blueberries (I used frozen)

Spray an 8X8 baking dish with cooking spray. Pour in mixture and stir around alittle to evenly distribute the berries. bake 35-45 minutes (when center is firm/knife comes out clean it is done). Cut into 4 squares and enjoy :)

One serving is equivalent to having 1/2 cup oatmeal, one scoop whey protein, one whole egg and about 1/3c blueberries. Each serving is approximately 45 grams carbohydrates, 3-5 grams fat, and 30 grams protein.

Breakfast quick "breads" or bars or...

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana "Cake"
makes 4 small or 2 large servings:
1 c oats
1/2c egg whites
2 cups water
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp baking soda
1 scoop chocolate pb protein powder (Xtreme Formulations)
1 sliced banana
2 tbsp unsweetened coconut shreds

Beat together everything but banana and coconut. When it is well mixed, add the banana and coconut and stir.
Pour into a 8x8 pan (pre-spray with cooking spray)
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

Change the flavor by the flavor of protein powder, adding vanilla extract or other extracts and different fruit/nuts, etc. I didn't add any splenda and this was sweet enough, but someone with more of a sweet tooth might like some sweetener added.

 Banana "Bread" and Caramel Apple Upside Down "Cake"

Banana "Bread"
 makes 4 small or 2 large servings:
1 c oats
1/2c egg whites
2 cups water
1 tsp baking soda
1 scoop cinnamon roll flavor protein powder (Xtreme Formulations)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
2 packets splenda
2 tbsp walnuts, chopped
1 sliced banana

Beat together everything but banana and walnuts. When it is well mixed, add the banana and walnuts and stir.
Pour into a 8x8 pan (pre-spray with cooking spray)
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

Caramel Apple Upside Down "Cake"
makes 4 small or 2 large servings:
1 c oats
1/2c egg whites
2 cups water
2 tbsp pecans, chopped
1 tsp baking soda
2 scoops butterscotch protein powder (Xtreme Formulations)
1 sliced apple


Beat together everything but apple and pecans. Place apple slices in a layer on the bottom of the greased 8X8 pan, sprinkle pecans evenly over apples.Pour oat mixture over the apples, evenly distributed. 
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

 

All of these have gotten rave reviews at home and at work :)

 

Here's the protein I have been using, it really bakes up well:

 

Healthier, Gluten-free Pizzas!

Healthier Gluten-free Pizzas

These turn out crunchy and tasty! You can top them however you like, we mix it up depending on what we have in the fridge, or in this case what looked good/easy whenI  stopped at the  grocery store afetr work. These are done pretty quickly if you have ingredients ready.

 Teff Wraps. Pre-heat Oven to 400 degrees F. Place wraps on a baking sheet, spray top with Pam/cooking spray (this helps them crisp, I think. Bake on rack close to top of oven for 5 minutes, flip over and bake another 4-5 minutes (watch so they don't burn).

 Baked wraps. They get really crunchy this way, so yummy. We have experimented with a lot of different wraps, these are my favorite.

 The Sauces we used this time, as I said, I was at the store, it was late, things looked good. They are all fairly low fat and don't contain  high fructose corn syrup (and were on sale).




Jennie-O Hot Italian Turkey sausage, pre-cook and then chop (I used one sausage for one pizza). pepperoni in the background, we had real pepperoni for another recipe. You can get lower fat/sodium or turkey pepperoni if you want to be even healthier.

    

 Onions Sauteed with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar and baby portabellas sauteed with a little butter and lots of sliced  garlic. In the background is sliced green olives. I picked up a rotisserie chicken for simplicity sake for the chicken pizzas.

   

 

I'm not very good at the picture thing yet, so these are out of order. This is two wraps with the Tomato based sauce.The top picture has pepperoni and crumbled bacon on one wrap and chopped turkey sausage and crumbled bacon on the other. The next picture is just showing to spread sauce as close to the edge as you can 9reduces chances of edges burning.

 

 
 Pre-baked pizzas. In the picture on the right: One is BBQ sauce, chicken, onions, bacon and a thin slices of goat cheese (http://www.murrayscheese.com/drunken-goat.html), oh and bacon ;) The other is Alfredo sauce, chicken, baby bellas&garlic, bacon and thin slices of a hard cheese kind of like parmesan (http://culturecheesemag.com/cheese-library/espresso-bellavitano)

 

The two on the left have the tomato based sauce, one has pepperoni, baby bellas&garlic, bacon and the espresso cheese, one has sausage, green olives, onions and goat cheese. Oh and bacon :)

Bake the topped pizzas 5-8 minutes, until warm and melty. Yummy. 4 mini-pizzas fed 2 hungry adults.

Almond Muffins - wheat free, gluten free and delicious!

This is from a recipe on T-nation, you can really customize it with any flavoring or add-ins you like. I used almond extract, I have seen it made with canned pumpkin (cook a little longer), nuts would be good, zest of lemon and poppy seeds would be awesome...anything you can think of. You can make big muffins, mini-muffins (my first batch here was minis), muffin tops...I have no idea how it would be in a small loaf pan, but I bet it would work.

Almond flour is expensive, but worth it if you aretrying to go wheat-free/gluten-free.

Basic Muffin Recipe

Made 21 mini-miffins, not sure how many large it will make.

2c almond flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3-1/2c Splenda
1/2c butter or coconut oil, softened
4 eggs
1/3c water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

Spray or grease a muffin tin, or line with paper cups.

Mix all the dry ingredients. Mix all the wet ingredients. mix together well, either by wooden spoon or with a hand mixer.

Spoon into  muffin tins, leaving a little room for expansion.

Bake 10-15 minutes, until set in middle (check wwith toothpick). Less time for mini-muffins, more time for larger and for muffins with moist add-ins, like pumpkin.

Enjoy!

Bonus Topping/glaze/dip

You can make this any flavor, depending on the protein you use and if you add zest or extracts, and you can make it thick like frosting, dip consistency or pourable, like a glaze depending on how much milk/milk substitute you use.

1 Scoop Whey or mixed protein powder
1 tbsp coconut flour
splash of 1/2 & 1/2 or almond milk (I used whole milk)

Mix well, adding more liquid if needed for desired consistency. Enjoy guilt-free on top of muffins (or by the spoonful :) ).



These brownies are amazing! Paul makes them for me :) This is from an ebook, full of great recipes, by Leigh Peele called Body By Eats Desserts. order it here (when redesigned, apparently):

http://www.bodybyeats.com/?hop=henlem

Veggies Noodles

We finally got a noodle shredding device and have been making lots of veggie noodles. My favorite are zucchini. You can use any shreddable vegetables. I saute them in a little oil and spices, depoending on what I am going to serve over them.

Here is the shredder we got:

http://www.amazon.com/GEFU-13460-Spirelli-Spiral-Cutter/dp/B0026RMEK4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1380644377&sr=8-2&keywords=vegetable+noodle+maker

Here is a fancier version:

http://www.amazon.com/Paderno-World-Cuisine-A4982799-Tri-Blade/dp/B0007Y9WHQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380644490&sr=8-1&keywords=vegetable+noodle+maker


Here are some massive amounts of raw noodles:

 

 And In the process of being sauteed:

 

So far I have had chicken and Thai peanut sauce over them and red curry pork over them. Any type of saucy food you might serve over noodles can be served over veggie noodles, if you are looking for a no-grain, low carb choice. We like lots of vegetables for their nutrient content, as well as for their bulk. I can cut weight and still have a large volume of food with lots of vegetables.