A Few Healthy Recipes We've Tried Here

So, I know I need to start eating a little bit healthier. Now that I have the running thing built into my routine, I need to focus on better eating. I've been eating better since January but haven't really found recipes that I like, that are easy and that we can start having more regularly. I can tell now that I am running more often, more miles, and more regulary, what I eat matters. I want to find food that is delicious and that also gives me energy.

One of my summer goals was to try a few recipes.  My 2 daughters (ages 21 and 12) are both vegetarians. The 12 year old i fairly new at this (a few months) but my oldest daughter has been a vegetarian for 5-6 years. My youngest won't eat any shellfish which makes things difficult.  And she doesn't like a huge variety of vegetables. She just hates meat.  So, we are trying some recipes that we might all enjoy!  Here are a few I've tried. I love Pinterest for finding good recipes and good sources for good recipes.

Julie at Peanut Butter Fingers is one of my favorite sources for healthy eating. I follow her blog regularly and bookmark recipes that look good. This week, we finally tried a recipe we've been meaning to try for a while:  Banana Vanilla Protein Pancakes.  My 12 year old loves banana pancakes so I was hoping she'd like a healthier version. I wasn't expecting to love them but I think I did. A few hints if you try this recipe. Julie suggests using an immersion blender which we don't own. So I figured I'd use a regular blender. Bad idea. The batter is way to think and stops the blender. So I ended up using a hand mixer that worked fine.  I also found that making smaller pancakes (about 1/4 cup of batter) helped. The batter doesn't flow so I had to flatten it down a bit in order to get it into pancake form.  I found if I made them too big, they were thick which made the center difficult to cook through.  I also found that it was important to spray Pam before each pancake. The batter makes an ugly mess when it sticks to the pan so definitely worth a spray each time. Overall, these were great pancakes that we will definitely have again.  Now that I know these things, I will not make quite the mess that I did next time. The size of the mess today was all about figuring out how best to make this with the tools I had available. This recipe made about 6 pancakes and 2-3 per person with a little fruit seems like a good sized meal.  We ate them with lite syrup this time as the sweetness was perfect.  We might try them with fruit instead next time. Not sure but there will definitely be a next time!

One of my new favorites is this recipe for Chickpea and Tomato Salad with Fresh Basil from GreenLiteBites. Chickpeas and Tomatoes are two of my favorite things and this salad is incredible if you love those two things. This is a light salad but one with lots of flavor. It is great to have alongside almost anything!

Today, we tried another recipe that we found from Peanut Butter Fingers.  It is Smoky Corn and Black Bean Pizza. To make it a little easier (and a little less healthy), we used a whole what Boboli pizza shell. Because we chose a cooked crust, we used frozen corn and cooked it. Then we just needed the oven to warm everything.    The combination of the black beans, corn and barbecue sauce was perfect. We could even add a few more veggies to make it even better. Definitely a quick easy meal that we will have again.

Next up to try is another recipe from Peanut Butter Fingers for this Spicy Shrimp Sandwich with Chipotle Avacado Mayonaise. Since my 12 year old won't eat fish, we'll make some with shrimp and some with white fish. Should be good either way, I think.