Green Monster Shake

A co-worker told me about this shake, and after finding various recipes I decided to try my own version! I made this using my Magic Bullet.

Ingredients:
1-2 cups of spinach
4 spoonfuls of Greek yogurt
2 Tbsp of peanut butter
1/2 cup of 1% milk (or whatever kind you drink)
Few spoonfuls of old-fashioned oats
1/2 Tbsp of honey
(optional: I put in a few mixed berries)

Blend until it's all mixed! These measurements were a little estimated, so you can increase/decrease. I also meant to put bananas in there... haha!

It didn't turn out "green" but it sounded like no one's really did. It was delicious!

Rating:

Pizza Casserole

Okay, so another little splurge on this recipe. But, I would consider it a little healthier than pizza, and its easy to make!

You'll need:
1 bag of egg noodles (I bought whole grain!)
1 extra large can of pizza or spaghetti sauce
3 cups of mozzarella cheese (or more if you like cheese)
1 1/2 pounds of hamburger meat (or sausage, turkey meat, etc.)
1 package of turkey pepperoni


Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook your hamburger and noodles.

The rest is layering... I used a cake pan, but you can use a glass dish as well.

Spread a thin layer of sauce,
then half the noodles,
half the meat,
half the sauce,
rest of the noodles,
(somewhere in here, sprinkle in some Italian seasoning!)
half the cheese,
rest of the meat,
rest of the sauce,
rest of the cheese,
and then layer pepperoni on top!


Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
Then, remove the foil and bake for another 15 minutes.

Let it cool for 10 minutes or so - this is important to let everything settle, otherwise it'll just fall apart.

Rating:

Mini Egg Frittatas

I've been wanting to try this for awhile, and luckily I got a muffin pan for Christmas... so I made these last night! You can put 'em in the freezer and then heat them up during the week!

Ingredients:
5 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
Assorted mix-ins
 - I used turkey pepperoni, bell pepper and tomato.


Preheat your oven to 350.

Whisk together your egg and salt, distribute evenly between six of the muffin cups.
Drop in however much of each mix-in you want in each cup.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, they should be puffy and the edges should be brown!

Rating:

Sweet Potato Cake

This isn't exactly a healthy recipe, but it could be made healthy if you used Splenda! I've never even had sweet potatoes, but my sister and I were needing to use up some pecans, and I found this recipe! It's actually for 2 1/2 dozen cupcakes, but we made it into a cake for the sake of traveling.

Batter:
40 oz. of sweet potatoes, canned or boiled; mashed
1 cup olive oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon maple extract
2 cups brown sugar sugar
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ginger

Pecans:
2/3 cup pecans (or walnuts)
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup brown sugar


Preheat the oven to 375º. Whisk together (we used a blender) the mashed potatoes, olive oil, eggs, vanilla, maple extract, and brown sugar. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Add to the sweet potato mixture and whisk until combined. Bake for about 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. We frosted using one container of store-bought cream cheese frosting.

Now for the pecans. First, grease a large sheet of parchment paper. Put the pecans in a large pan on the stove on medium heat. Add the butter and brown sugar. Stir, scraping the bottom well, until all the sugar is melted and completely liquid. Spread the pecans on the parchment paper, separating them with the spatula so that they don't clump together. Once cooled, top the frosted cupcakes with pecans.

No rating for this recipe - I wouldn't classify it as healthy or cheap, but definitely good for the holidays!

Chocolate Popcorn

I had never heard of chocolate popcorn before last week.... or least not that I remembered. And now, I just want to eat it all the time!

I made it to take to a Christmas party, and I plan on making some for the family over the holidays.


Six bags of popcorn requires 1 package of almond bark.
(I used light buttered popcorn and white almond bark.)

Melt the almond bark on the stove; I split the package in half and melted each half separately, due to the size of my pans. It's also easier to pop a bag of popcorn, drizzle some chocolate over it and shake it up. Each time you add a bag of popcorn to the bowl, drizzle some more chocolate on it. The first batch we attempted to drizzle all the chocolate over all the popcorn, which didn't work well at all.

[In case you've never dealt with almond bark, stack two similar pans on top of each other. Fill the smaller one with a little less than half of water; it will go on the bottom. The bigger one will partially sit on/lean into the other pan, but won't touch the water.] 

When it's all said and done, it still looks like normal popcorn, for the most part. The first time I ate it, I thought it was just normal popcorn. So, don't expect it to be covered thickly with chocolate!


Rating: Not the absolute healthiest treat, but there are far worse! I just love how easy it is to make :)