Watermelon + Heirloom Tomato Summer Salad

Beauteous, no?

Most people reading this will know I recently returned from am amazing trip to the United Kingdom, where I enjoyed some especially amazing meals.

For some reason, whenever I travel somewhere new, it's always that first meal that really knocks my socks off and sticks with me.  On this trip, that meal took place at Draper's Hall restaurant in Shrewsbury, Wales, and began with an appetizer of watermelon and heirloom tomatoes.

The original!

When I got home, I knew I wanted to reproduce it!  The flavor combination was unexpectedly complementary and so refreshing on a hot summer's day....not that we experienced any of those in Wales, but back home is another story.

It's also a delightfully easy, no-cook recipe.

What you need:

About 3 cups chopped watermelon

1 large heirloom tomato

About 2 tbsp feta cheese

A sprig of fresh rosemary

6-10 large basil leaves

A dash of salt and black pepper

Makes 4 servings

Just chop it all up, toss together, and serve!

Nutrition Facts:

Calories- 53

Fat- 1.5g

Carbs- 8.7g

Sugar- 6.5g

Protein- 2g

Pretty healthy! Plus it's just pretty to look at. Surprisingly filling, too!

And it paired very well with some prosciutto-wrapped roast asparagus (that recipe shall be shared next).

.....On to things I could not replicate, sadly:

Draper's Hall Restaurant exterior in Shrewsbury.

Boyfriend's lamb dish.

My beer + bernaise sauce dish.

Some sort of chocolate mousse something.

I did have some success with recreating this face!  Boyfriend highly approved of the salad.  No leftovers!

                                     

Vanilla Berry Protein Pancakes

 I think I've finally perfected them, so here is the final recipe!

Mmm...fresh raspberry vanilla.

A few weeks ago I decided I really needed to focus on upping my protein intake in light of how much more I was working out.  I wound up overdoing it and making myself sick, mostly because I was in a frenzy to try all the protein powder recipes I could and gorged myself on the (crazy low calorie) results, but I'll spare everyone the details there.  Since I've been experimenting for weeks though, I can guarantee any protein powder recipes I share here are absolutely delicious, and don't taste like protein powder nastiness at all.  Just beware if you decide to eat a few batches of these a day along with the apple pudding muffins I shall share soon...

I have to say though, I bet none of what I've made would taste as good with another protein powder.  I highly recommend the BodyLogix Natural Whey.  I initially bought it just because it seemed to the the best powder around so far as giving me the most protein for the least calories, and I was shocked that it was also the best tasting I had tried, by far!  The vanilla flavor is like a white chocolate milkshake, even just mixed with water.  Not to mention it is one of the less expensive powders out there, to boot.

My Nana tells me these do not look good and she can't believe they would taste ok with protein powder, but she's wrong, I promise.  They taste different from your average IHOP rendition, for sure, but they're also way, waaaay healthier.

On to the recipe!

What you need:
1 scoop BodyLogix Natural Whey
1.5 tsp Ener-g Egg replacer
1/4 cup King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat Flour (white whole wheat works, too, and is 10 less calories)
1/4 cup low fat 1% cottage cheese
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp Stevia
(optional) handful of your berries of choice
(optional) pancake syrup/toppings (look for Walden Farms 0 calorie syrup- it is a miracle in a bottle!)

Makes 4 medium sized pancakes.

What to do:
Add all ingredients except the optional berries to a blender and blend until everything is nicely combined. Heat a greased skillet over medium heat, pour some batter in, toss in some berries if you like, and cook them like you would any other pancake!

Nutrition facts (without berries or toppings) for the WHOLE stack:
285 calories
2g fat
33g carbs
33.5g protein
4g fiber
2.5g sugar

These turn out pretty moist, so it's not entirely necessary to top them with anything, but it doesn't hurt.  They don't fluff up as much as your average pancake though, so if you toss in something like blueberries, it gets tricky to cook them evenly on both sides (because the blueberries are thicker than the pancakes).  I chopped up some raspberries from my dad's garden for them this morning and that problem was avoided!

You can also substitute plain Greek yogurt for the cottage cheese, but you wind up with a denser pancake.  The cottage cheese is better for fluffing them up, it seems.

Suggestions for making them fluffier without losing nutritional value are welcome!  I like this version a lot, but it's always fun to try more variations and see what I get.

Previous versions:

The very first try.  Not bad, but very dense...

Getting better....more pancake-shaped at least....

Mmm blueberry!

Liquid Cake!

50-90 calorie Liquid Devil's Food Cake

Today I’m not posting a recipe so much as a suggestion.  It’s probably obvious at this point that I have a bit of a sweet-tooth, and that’s been my biggest challenge to overcome so far as striving to maintain a healthy diet.  I’ve found a brilliant alternative to cakes, and cookies, and all that other sweet stuff though: TEA!

I’ve always been a tea lover, but a while back I started venturing into the world of loose leaf teas and varieties beyond what you’re going to find on the shelf at the local grocery store.  I’d tried a few supposed “chocolate” flavored teas and such in the past, but was pretty disappointed.  Now I know though that not all tea is created equal, and if you go for the right thing, brewed correctly, you’re going to be pretty amazed by how extravagant tea can taste.

Some of my favorites from Tattle Tea.
French Toast Chai, Honeybear Green Chai (salted caramel honey), Blueberry Lemon Cake Rooibos, and Forbidden Love Oolong Chai (devil's food cake).

My current favorite sources for tea are Tattle Tea and The Spice and Tea Exchange.  There are so many creamy tasting or right-out cake flavored teas to choose from!  On a whim a few months ago, I tried steeping the Black Chocolate tea from Spice and Tea Exchange purely in milk, and to my surprise wound up with the most decadent tasting hot chocolate I have ever had!

What you need:
Yummy tea of your choice
Milk or milk alternative of your choice
Sweetener of your choice...or no sweetener; whatevs.

To create my liquid cake, I heat the milk on high in a sauce pan just until it starts frothing, then pour it over tea leaves into my cast iron tea pot and steep it just as I would in water.

Using regular dairy milk and sugar still made for a fairly high-calorie treat for me though, so I started looking to alternatives that might make this a treat I could enjoy more often.  I love my raw sugar, but I’ve found Truvia to be an acceptable alternative, and I’ve found out I’m quite a fan of soy and almond milk, which have way fewer calories than dairy milk.  Yes, I know skim milk is also an option, but...yuck.  Go for it if you want some watery-bleh-icky tea, but I'm telling you there are better options.  Silk vanilla soy milk is my personal favorite!

Cookie Butter is NOT a part of a balanced breakfast...but a teaspoon of it can be on some double fiber wheat bread paired with low-cal almond milk tea.

Recently, I brewed up the Forbidden Love (devil's food cake flavored chai) tea from Tattle Tea in Silk Vanilla Almond Milk and added two teaspoons of Truvia baking blend sweetener.  The result: 90 calorie cake in a glass!

And last night?  Decaf French Toast Chai in Silk Unsweetened Almond Milk + 2 tsp Truvia baking blend = 50 calorie liquid French toast glory.  I mean, seriously.  You can have three cups of this and still come out healthier than a single tall chai latte at Starbucks (and having once been an addict of those, I can attest that this alternative is actually tastier).

The options for creating liquid cake are endless, and I'm having a pretty great time experimenting.  For anyone else with a disastrous sweet tooth, it's worth a try, and cheaper than a slice of cake, too!

Most importantly, liquid cake is Weebie-approved!

50 Calorie Chocolate Miracle Muffins

These are by far my favorite "diet" recipe that I have given a whirl, and actually what inspired me to start recording the recipes I've tried, edited, or created.  These are so freakin' good that they made me want to share them with the world!  People have laughed at me, rolled their eyes, and don't for a second believe that a 50 calorie muffin could taste like anything better than soggy cardboard.

And unlike the diet coke brownies from my last post, these are not only low calorie, but also have nutritional value!  They've got protein, are pretty darn low carb considering this is a chocolate muffin, and aren't high in fat or sugar either.  This is mostly accomplished by substituting out the usual unhealthy culprits in the ingredients list: oats in place of flour, unsweetened applesauce in place of butter, Splenda in place of sugar, and egg whites in place of whole eggs.  I'm typically not a fan of artificial sweetners such as Splenda, but for the results, I can deal with it.

The recipe I used can be found here:  Joe and Sue's Double Chocolate Muffins

This time, I actually highly recommend following the recipe as is.  The only adjustment I've made is using Hershey's Dark Chocolate morsels, the ones that are slightly larger than your typical chocolate chips.  I just prefer dark chocolate, and the larger chips make for more of a fudgy bite than normal sized chips, even if you are using the same amount of chocolate in the end.  The bigger gooey pockets are nicer and pack more flavor than the smaller ones.

Before baking...

...and after baking.  Yes, they look almost black before they cool.

What I'm most amazed by is that the nutrition facts actually check out!  So long as you're using about 3 tbsp of batter per muffin, they're going to be around 50 calories.  Of course, this also depends on how generous you are with sprinkling the chocolate chips on top.  I stuck to five per muffin, but I think 3 would be fine.

Nutrition facts (per 1 muffin- recipe makes 24):
Calories: 50~60ish, depending on size and amount of chips
Protein: 2.6g
Carbs: 7.8g
Fiber: 1.8g
Fat: 2.1g
Sugar: 3.2g

Things to potentially try: replacing the chocolate chips with butterscotch chips.  The results of this weren't bad, but they had a distinct coffee flavor (I have no clue why), and I am not a fan of anything coffee flavor.  My best friend enjoyed them at least!

Things not to try:  editing this into a lemon muffin recipe.  We tried.  It was a monstrous failure.  Even though the results look pretty ok here....they weren't.  We just tried to salvage the batter any way we could, and mini lemon pancakes resulted.  Still yuck.

At least The Boyfriend Food Disposal System still took care of them.

3 Ingredient Banana Pancakes!

I've had this recipe saved on Pinterest for a while:  http://www.recipebyphoto.com/3-ingredient-pancakes/

Looks too simple to be true, right?  I was skeptical, too, but over the weekend I found I really needed to do something with the blackened banana in my kitchen, so it felt like the right time to give this a try.

And OMG....it was SO much better than expected!

146 calories per pancake!

Even as I was mixing up the ingredients and pouring them into the pan, I was still skeptical.  I was skeptical up to the moment I cut a piece off and stuck it in my mouth.  They taste like delicious, moist banana crepes!  I only had some atrociously unhealthy uber-butter flavored pancake syrup around the house from my pre-diet days, so I was worried about having nothing to douse it in, but it turns out these really don't need anything extra.  I put two teaspoons of blueberry jelly on the top of mine for the sake of trying it out, but it would have been just as yummy alone.

Here's what you need:

1 very ripe banana

2 eggs

a smidge of cinnamon (like, 1/2 a tsp perhaps)

Makes 2 pancakes

Cut the banana up, add the egg and cinnamon, mash it all up with a potato masher (or an assortment of ineffective kitchen utensils if you've forgotten you own a potato masher, as I did). Let the mixture sit for about 3-4 minutes to get a fluffier pancake than the one in the picture (I figured this out on the second go-round). Heat a skillet over medium-high heat with a sliver of butter, add half of the banana goo mixture, and watch the magic begin.  Just cook it and flip it like you would a normal pancake.

Nutrition facts:

Calories:  146 without toppings (I did figure in 1/4 a tsp of butter per serving with this- if you use an alternative you could adjust accordingly)

Fat: 5.7g

Carbs: 16.5

Protein: 6.8g

Fiber: 2.4g

Sugar: 6.8g

....and just one is pretty darn filling!

In the true spirit of my cooking style, I did, of course, burn the second one.  Because I didn't add more butter to the pan.  My dear boyfriend still ate it like a champ and turns out they still taste pretty awesome even burnt!

It's an abstract piece, ok?