Chickpea Omelette

This may look like a regular omelette using eggs, but it's actually a chickpea pancake! The taste is nuttier and sweeter but it has likeness to a veggie omelette. Chickpea flour is much lower in fat and calories than 2 eggs and is cheaper as well. Serve with a side of salad for a satisfying breakfast.

1/3 cup chickpea flour (1/3 cup = 2 "eggs")
1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
1/4 tsp baking powder
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/3 cup + 2 tbsp water
1/2 tbsp coconut oil (for cooking)
Assorted veggies (I used kale, carrots, tomatoes and red onion)

Start by sautéing the veggies on medium heat with coconut oil. Once cooked through, combine rest of ingredients and stir until a batter forms. Pour batter into pan, cook for 5 minutes or so, (you can even add some more nutritional yeast flakes on top before folding for a cheesier centre) then fold "omelette" in half and continue cooking for another minute or until cooked through. You want it to be slightly soft in the middle though, so don't cook it too much! Makes 1 omelette.

Sunshine yellow omelette

If I knew it was this easy to have a protein rich, filling breakfast I would have been making these a long time ago. Protein smoothies are nice, but nothing beats a hearty cooked breakfast!

Bunny Pasta! (Roasted Carrot and Tomato Fusili w/ Carrot Top Pesto)

I picked up a new pasta the other day: Eco Chefs Mung Bean Pasta. I'm usually not one to buy pasta, but the nutrition facts sold me in an instant. 24g of protein and 16g of fibre per serving?! Are you kidding me? Not only that, it has 35% of your daily intake of iron and the ingredients are super simple, "mung bean flour and water". This is, I'm sure a nutritionist's dream! but I'm just happy to have found a low carb pasta and for only 2.50 (1.25 per serving). :) The texture isn't as chewy and soft as regular pasta, and you're not going to get that pasta starchiness.

In my opinion, this is the best pasta option for those on low sugar, high protein diets that want a pasta shape in their meals every once in a while. I also plan on trying the Chickpea and Red Lentil varieties.

Nutritional Amazement!

Have you ever tried carrot tops? I always buy the carrots with the bright green tops, and then never know what to do with all the green goodness. Here is an easy carrot top roasted carrot/tomato pasta! When I told Jenn what I was doing with the carrot tops, she's like: that's what kind of pasta a bunny would eat! For some reason I found that funny...haha. Anyways...Bunny Pasta!:

CARROT TOP PESTO:

1 bunch of carrot tops (stalks removed)
1 clove garlic
3 generous tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
1 tbsp hemp seeds
1/2 lemon, juice squeezed
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine carrot tops in a food processor, process until thoroughly chopped. Keep processing and add in olive oil gradually, then add rest of ingredients and process until a pesto is formed.

ROASTED CARROTS AND TOMATOES:

3 carrots, sliced into coins

15 cherry tomatoes, halved

1 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss to coat. Lay carrots and tomatoes on a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes or until roasted.

Cook Mung Bean Pasta according to package instructions. Heat pesto in small pot on medium heat, add roasted veggies, cook for 1 minute, add pasta and toss to coat. Makes 2 servings.

Top with nutritional yeast!

Embarking on a low sugar diet? Check out our Inner Ecology E-book for sugar-free recipe ideas.

First Protein Pancakes! + Mini Coconut Key-Lime Pies + Smoothie

Hey y'all! We haven't been posted lately because of a recent move. Jenn and I are actually subletting a place so we'll have to do the whole thing again in a month...gag. There isn't much light in our place, but that's not stopping us from blogging to our heart's content! ;)

We've been wanting to try protein pancakes, every time I (Jac) mention it, Jenn gives me this face of suspicion lol. I was looking up recipes and came across Choosing Raw's Protein Pancakes, they looked so fluffy, we had to try them, they are also low in sugar using stevia as a sweetener.

We don't have our bullet with us so we couldn't grind up the flax, so we put the seeds in whole, they still gel this way but don't hold together as well. We also used vanilla brown rice protein powder instead of hemp protein and water instead of almond milk and added some blueberries in them. They turned out great, not too sweet and very fluffy.

Bubbly

Pancakes with blueberry debris :P

2/3 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup almond flour
2 tbsp brown rice protein
2 tsp baking powder
Stevia extract, to taste
1 tbsp flaxseeds, whole
Pinch of sea salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup blueberries

Combine dry ingredients including flaxseeds. Add water and stir until thoroughly combined. Add in blueberries. Heat coconut oil in a frying pan on medium heat, spoon batter into pan, cook for a few minutes, then flip, continue until cooked through. Makes 6-7 pancakes.


We were asked by Christy Morgan from Blissful Chef to create a recipe using a Microplane Zester. You know how much we like Key Lime Pie flavoured treats. We decided to go all out and make Coconut Key-Lime Pies! these are low sugar, and super creamy with lots of zest, just how we like our key lime pies. ;).

Here is the link to Christy's blog for the recipe.


Last but not least we wanted to share with you guys a smoothie. Since we've been on a budget (namely Jac), we've had to be choosey about what we buy. Usually we would buy frozen berries for smoothies but have been resorting to a pretty good alternative. A few months back, Madre Labs sent us their Eureka! Berries and Simply Acai Berry Powder, I just combined the two and voila, insta-berries! Let's just say it's been a life saver antioxidant and vitamin C wise.

I usually add chia seeds to my smoothies for thickness but since scaling back on expensive ingredients I started using psyllium husk, I wanted to up my fibre too anyways. Psyllium is really cool because it gels just like chia, you only need a little bit and it adds so much extra fibre, it makes it shiny too which is kind of weird but interesting lol. This smoothie reminds me of those Happy Planet smoothies that you can buy in bottles, it's just so smooth!

Shining, shimmering, splendid

1 cup water
1 small pear, cubed with skin on
1 small mango, frozen
1 tsp psyllium husk
2 tsp Eureka! Berries + Simply Acai powder (or your own berry powder)

Add everything to a blender and blend!

3 Vegan Smoothies! for One Green Planet

Here is a little snippet from our article at One Green Planet: Three Delicious Vegan Smoothies. We had a lot of fun concocting these smoothies and hope you enjoy the post!


Option 1: "super nutritious + green"

Green Ginger "Super" Smoothie

Option 2: "fruity + protein-rich"

Strawberry Mango Protein Smoothie

Option 3: "minty + creamy"

Creamy Mint Chip Smoothie

See our post at One Green Planet for the recipes and the rest of this article :).

Raspberry Smoothie + Make Your Own "Chocolate" Peanut Butter

It's mine and Jenn's birthdays today! So far it's been great, we are going to New York for a few days which is exciting! Mainly to see some incredible shows such as Newsies and Once, shop around and of course check out the sights. Cannot wait!

I've been in a very berry-licious mood lately. I find when it comes to smoothies, frozen berries are always best so I was happy enough to buy a large bag of frozen raspberries. The thing I like about raspberries are the seeds. I know some find the seeds annoying especially blended in a smoothie, but it's nice because it feels like you're eating the smoothie instead of drinking it.

RASPBERRY SMOOTHIE

1/2 cup frozen raspberries
1/2 a pear
1/2 frozen banana
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 scoop brown rice protein powder (vanilla) - optional
Stevia to taste
Water to blend


I've been seeing chocolate peanut butter around a lot lately and it's a shame because I always wished there was carob peanut butter, just this once, for those not into the cocoa thing. Well I took matters into my own hands and made "chocolate" peanut butter using carob and stevia! It tastes so good like Reese's peanut butter cups!

The peanut butter I used was Valencia peanut butter which tends to be more "liquidy" than regular peanut butters so it worked great to achieve a smooth, peanut buttery consistency.

Peanut Butter, Carob Powder, drops of vanilla stevia to taste, sea salt to taste

Coconut Toasts!