Granola Bars for Your Inner Cookie Monster

trainer-approved recipes

- Beth Beauchemin (Read About Beth)

It is no secret that I am the Cookie Monster incarnate – I can scarf down my favourite oatmeal chocolate cookie (yep, the typical fat and sugar laden one that I find at my favourite coffee shop!) faster than you can blink an eye!  However, those delicious treats don’t really provide much more than a quick sugar high, followed by a more devastating crash.  Add to the mix my crazy 7 1/2-month pregnant state PLUS just life in general with a toddler, and you have me wanting NEEDING a yummy, but good for me, substitute for those delectable cookies.

At first, I turned to everyone’s favourite, and hopefully somewhat healthy, pocket snack – granola bars.  I think I kept Nature Valley in business for the first 6 months of my toddler’s life!  However, upon closer inspection, it turns out that my awesome snack food was not so good!  I won’t go into specifics, but suffice it to say that those sweet and salty bars have sugar listed 7 different times.  (The plain old crunchy bars only have it listed 1-2x, but as the second ingredient.)   While I’m not one to cut dessert out of my life, I do try to be selective about where and how much sugar I’m ingesting.  The occasional gelato run in the summer is all good (in my books, anyway) but my “healthy” snack food is not the place for sugar. (FYI – sugar has been linked to bloating, excessive flatulence, loose stools, insulin resistance, increased LDL (bad) cholesterol, decreased immune function, and obesity.  Can you blame me for wanting to minimize its appearance in my food?)

So, snackless and desperately needing a quick, easy, and portable pick-me-up, I turned to a fabulous friend and nutrition expert for some advice!  Counselling me away from processed sugars and empty calories, Lianne from Sprout Right has given me my newest fast and delicious treat.  These bars are officially for our little ones, but I think that they are just about perfect for almost any busy person who’s on the go.  The other great thing about these bars… start to finish (including loading the dishwasher) takes less than 20min.  Perfect!

Sprout Right “Go Faster” Granola Bars

Sprout Right founder, Lianne Phillipson-Webb

Yields 16 bars.

• 1 cup Nature’s Path Millet Rice Flakes
• 1 cup whole rolled oats
• ¾ cup dried fruit (raisins, dates, apricots, etc.), chopped
• ¼ cup sunflower, pumpkin, or sesame seeds
• ¼ cup chopped almonds or cashews
• ½ cup brown rice syrup
• 2 tbsp coconut butter or unsalted butter
• ¼ cup almond or peanut butter

1. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a bowl.  2. Gently heat brown rice syrup, coconut butter, and nut butter in a large saucepan until melted and smooth.  3. Add dry ingredients to saucepan and quickly stir well to coat completely.  4. Press into a 8” square pan.  5. Refrigerate for at least 1hr and cut into squares.  Store in the fridge or freezer.

Nutrition Information: (per serving; varies slightly) 128 calories; 5.5 g fat; 3.1 g protein; 18.3 g carbohydrate; 1.7 g fiber

• slow releasing carbs and healthy fats for longer lasting energy

• good source of vitamin E, calcium, zinc, vitamin B1, manganese, magnesium, protein, copper, selenium, phosphorus, vitamin B5, folate

My other go-to portable snack bar is from Weelicious.com.  Blogger Catherine McCord isn’t a nutritionist but a busy mom who loves good food.  Weelicious is a fabulous resource not only for when you need to feed the little people, but also for when you need to keep yourself going!  Her protein bars (a Lara Bar knock off, but WAY more affordable when you have the time to make them) are awesome!

Bon appétit!

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble

trainer-approved recipes

- Beth Beauchemin (Read About Beth)

It's time to eat!

Wow!  Who can believe that the leaves are changing, pumpkins are out, and another long weekend is upon us.  It feels like only yesterday that Max and I were still bouncing out the door in shorts and t-shirts and now its sweaters and jeans!  I love fall – and not just because it’s my birthday season!

My favourite fall activity is Thanksgiving dinner.  Yes, my FAVORITE thing to do is eat! Growing up on a farm, this weekend was symbolic of many things: it was (normally) the end of harvest for my dad and uncle; it meant Halloween wasn’t far away; it meant a big family get together with all the aunts and uncles; it meant we were all getting presents from Grandma since over half the people in my extended family have birthdays in September, October, and November – in short, Thanksgiving was practically better than Christmas! (practically… but not quite!)

A sweet tooth runs in our family… my mom is “lucky” enough to be satisfied with salty things, but for the rest of us, we absolutely crave a bit of sugar after a meal.  Hmmm… is there anything better than a slice of cheesecake or a few pieces of chocolate… I’m in heaven just thinking about it!  Yes, I know fatty, sugary items aren’t supposed to be on a “healthy’ diet, but I’m a staunch believer in keeping a few “yummies” on the menu.

Why?  For me, there are 2 main reasons.  First off, I can control my appetite 80% of the time MUCH better knowing that it’s ok to enjoy my treats the other 20%.  I eat well, I work out often (well, as often as I can!), I’m a generally active person… there are many reasons why I can indulge in a little sweet every now and then.  However, that is the KEY POINT. Every now and then.  One reason to indulge is it helps with self-control; as I mentioned above, a good rule of thumb is 80% healthy, 20% not so healthy!  The other reason is very simple.  Can you imagine life without dessert????  I can handle grey skies and rainy days…. No dessert?  Now that is a depressing thought!

The Belly Bootcamp moms and I worked exceptionally hard this morning, just so that we can all indulge this weekend without feeling guilty.  Cardio training for our hearts and resistance training for our bodies… we fit in a full workout so I feel completely at ease sharing my favourite Thanksgiving dessert with you.  Enjoy, and have a wonderful long weekend!

Beth’s Not-So-Healthy Pumpkin Cheesecake

Yields 10-12 servings

• 1 cup vanilla or graham wafer crumbs
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• ¼ cup icing sugar
• ¼ cup butter, melted (NOT margarine)
• 3  8oz packages cream cheese
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 cup canned pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling)
• 4 eggs
• 1 ½ cups mini chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 350F.  2. In a medium bowl, stir together crumbs, cocoa, and powdered sugar; stir in butter. 3. Press crumb mixture onto the bottom and 1/2 inch up side of a springform pan. 4. Bake crust 8min, and remove from oven.  5. Increase oven temperature to 400F. 6. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar, flour, and spice until well blended.  7. Add pumpkin and eggs; beat until well blended.  8. Stir in chocolate chips; pour batter into prepared crust.  9. Bake 10min. and reduce oven temperature to 250F; continue baking for another 50min.  10. Remove from oven to wire rack.  With knife, loosen cake from sides of pan.  11. Cool completely, and then remove side of pan.

Refrigerate before serving, then dive in!

Nutrition Information: Do you really want to know?

hold-onto-summer salmon & fruit salsa

trainer-approved recipes

- Beth Beauchemin (Read About Beth)

scenery, prairie-style

I’m just back from a visit out to the family farm in Alberta… how wonderful are 2 week holidays!!!  Travelling with 1 kid (2 if you count my husband!), I needed those 14 days to fully recover from the trip out, relax, and then prep for the return trip!  I won’t bore you with what we did (suffice it to say that with a toddler son “t-r-a-c-t-o-r”  time filled up MANY hours!), but I did spend some time with my mom making healthy – and flavourful – family meals.

It is CONFUSING out there in the supermarkets!  Between fat free, low fat, sugar free, low in sodium, cholesterol free, low cholesterol, organic (and the list goes on and on and on!!!), what is a gal to do?  I consider myself quite educated in nutrition and even I get overwhelmed by the variety of choices and labels out there.  Your best bet? Learn how to cook (if you don’t already)!  Generally speaking, when you make your own meals and snacks food will be fresher, have higher nutrient values, be lower in fat and salt, and taste exactly the way you like it (once you get the hang of it!).  There are tons are great cookbooks out there that can help you on your way to gastronomic greatness; in the meantime, here is one of my favourite family meals.  Fruit salsa is so ridiculously easy and so amazingly delicious.  I bought a mini chop just to make this!  It goes with fish, chicken, and of course, tortilla chips!   We serve it with brown rice and some raw veggies.  You can prepare your salsa up to a day in advance and refrigerate.

Yields 4-6 servings.

Fruit Salsa

• 2 cups diced sweet fruit (nectarine, peach, pineapple, strawberry, kiwi, mango, or a combo)
• 1/2 cup red pepper, diced
• 1/4 cup red onion, diced
• 1/4 cup fresh (2 tbsp dried) chervil or cilantro
  

  wild is best, but farmed salmon is better than no salmon at all...

• 1 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded & chopped
• 1 tbsp honey (or 2 tsp agave nectar)
• 1 tbsp lime juice

Salmon

• 2-3 salmon fillets, skin on
• sea salt & fresh ground pepper
• crushed red pepper flakes to taste
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• lime juice

1. Stir all the ingredients together in a bowl.  To save time, you can put everything in the mini-chop (washed and cut into big chunks) and whirl away! 2. Grease grill, then heat BBQ to high.  3. Season both sides of salmon with spices, and lightly drizzle with lime juice and olive oil.  4. Place salmon flesh-side down on  grill.  5. Cook, mostly covered, about 8 minutes (salmon should lift easily from grill), then another 2-4 minutes on skin side.  Skin will probably stay on the grill.  6. Slice fillets lengthwise to create 6 portions and serve with a spoonful (or 2 or 3!) of fruit salsa.

Nutrition Information (6 svgs): (per serving; varies slightly depending on fruit) 451 calories; 26 g fat (of which 22 g are unsaturated) ; 39.8 g protein; 11.7 g carbohydrate; 0.7 g fiber

the best and worst muffins ever

trainer-approved recipes

Mmmm… interested?

muffins that won't break the calorie bank

I found this fantastic muffin recipe during my maternity leave, when I had time to surf the web and bake – on the same day, no less!  Over time, I have adapted it to my family’s tastes.  It’s a very basic recipe, chock full of goodness but easy on sugar and fat.  I’m not much of a sweets eater (if we’re being honest here, I prefer snacks of the salty variety) but my husband, J, has an enormous sweet tooth!  Homemade muffins are infinitely healthier than the store-bought variety if you choose the right recipe, so once in a while I’ll indulge J and whip up a batch of these easy treats.  The other day, my sister – who is an amazing self-taught chef – made me a batch while I was catching up on some dishes and we were chatting in the kitchen.  She insisted on sparing me a second dirty mixing bowl and combined everything in one bowl, forgetting the milk!  By the time she remembered and added it at the last step, the muffins were overmixed.  Out of the oven came twelve chewy oatmeal pucks.  You can avoid this mistake and make yourself twelve delicious, moist muffins if you just FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS!  Sorry, sis…  When they come out right, they’re not just delicious, they’re a great small meal for an adult or child with a glass of milk or soymilk.

banana oat muffins

yields 12

• 1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup oats
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 3/4 cup low-fat milk
• 1 egg
• 1 cup mashed bananas, about 3 bananas (frozen or ripe to overripe)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly grease muffin tin.  2. Combine flour, oats, sugar, powder, soda and salt.  3. In separate bowl, beat egg lightly, then add milk, oil and vanilla.  4. Stir in banana until just combined.  5. Stir flour mix into wet mix until just combined – do not overmix.  6. Pour into muffin tin and bake 18-20 minutes.

Nutrition Information: (per muffin) 214 calories; 7.8 g fat; 5.4 g protein; 32.8 g carbohydrate; 3.7 g fiber

tasty turkey chili