Tropical Mango Strawberry Smoothie Bowl

Fall is just arriving in New England. Actually, this is my first autumn here since 2006 and it is bringing on such intense nostalgia for long gone angsty high school days. But still, autumn was always my favorite time of year when I was young.

I basked in the autumnal glory during my morning yoga practice. Feeling extremely sore from a heavy lifting session yesterday, I spent the entire 90 minutes working in sitting and laying postures. Yoga is all about listening to your body and I'm so glad I did. Instead of feeling tired, I feel rejuvenated and healed.

View from my yoga mat this morning. Made "auto awesome" by google. Whatever that means.

So to celebrate the beginning of autumn and my post-yoga bliss, I decided to make a fruity, delicious breakfast.

However, this breakfast bowl has little or nothing to do with fall. It is instead a tropical wonderland of delectable flavors and healthy green additions that make it a nutrition packed filling breakfast that will freak out your parents and wow your health nut friends. Except the cereal. But I love cereal.

My favorite way to eat a smoothie is in a bowl. Basically you make the smoothie. Pour it in a bowl, and put whatever you want on top of it. Then mix it all up and voila! Amazebowl breakfast.


People get all weird about cereal these days because the "health" community decided to fear carbs. Just like they used to fear fat. Next they will probably decide to fear protein.

Anyway, if you fear carbs I'm sorry for you. It will be okay. But if you love cereal, try putting it on top of a smoothie instead of milk! Hint: It's delicious.


Aside from the fact they are really really ridiculously good tasting, why should you use any of these ingredients?

Obviously mango and strawberries are fruit. So they are fiber packed and nutrient dense, full of anti-oxidents and energy providing, slow digesting carbs. Spinach has loads of nutrients, most importantly calcium and iron, which becomes easier to absorb when you combine it with vitamin C. Vitamin C can be found in what? Fruit. Bam! Healthy and delicious.

Cinnamon has boatloads of health benefits, including helping to control blood sugar, it's anti-microbial, and the list goes on. This website I found has a list of 20 benefits. Seriously. 20. http://cinnamonvogue.com/cinnamoncommonuses.html

Walnuts? Also great for you. They are a nut though so just remember not to go too overboard if you are trying to lose weight, because they are high in fat. HOWEVER fat is good for you so eat them. They are good for your brain! Omega-3's for days.

Hemp seeds. Protein. Filling. Crunchy. Yummy.



Alright, recipe time!

Ingredients

For the Smoothie

1. 1/2 Mango
2. Strawberries
3. 1/4 package silken tofu
4. Handful of spinach
5. spoonful of Greens Superfood Blend (totally optional, but I like it)
6. tsp vanilla extract
7. dash of cinnamon
8. water

For the Toppings

1. More Strawberries
2. 2 Figs
3. Crushed walnuts
4. tbsp hemp seeds
5. Grape Nuts Cereal (or cereal of your choice)
6. Lots of cinnamon!

To begin: It's simple. Take all smoothie ingredients. Stick them in a blender. Blend until smooth.

But if you need more directions, see below:

Get your blender cup and put in the handful of spinach. Top that with some silken tofu.

Next, cup up your mango. Cut the top off the mango, then slice horizontal and vertical so you create a checkerboard effect. Put the bottoms so it all pops up all pretty like this. And peel off or cut off those nice little cubes and throw it in with the spinach and tofu.

Tip: I like to cup up the whole mango in one go, and stick the rest in the freezer for later. Frozen mango makes great fake ice cream.

Cut up your strawberries and add them to the mix. Top it off with the green powder blend, cinnamon, and vanilla. Now add as much water as you like, depending on your desired consistency.

Blend until smooth.

Pour this lovely mixture into a bowl.

Now for toppings!

Cut up the figs by cutting them in half, half again, and half again. Add to bowl.

Cut up strawberries. Add to bowl.

Crush walnuts. Add to bowl. Are we seeing a theme here?

Add the hemp seeds and cereal. Stir it all up! 

Add a generous sprinkle of cinnamon.

Devour.

I hope you love it. If you want more sweetness may I suggest adding dates, honey, or maple syrup. I prefer a more subtle sweetness but that is just me. If you have any suggestions or ideas for improving or changing this up, please leave a comment and let me know!

Delicious Falafel Pancakes!

Hey everyone! Here is another recipe from deep within the recesses of my crazy mind. And yes, it is as delicious as it sounds, falafel pancakes.

Everyone loves falafel right? Those deep fried balls of chickpea wonder from the Mediterranean. It has been one of my favorite meals of all time since I first had it in London when I was 12.

For this culinary experiment, I used garbanzo bean flour, cumin, lemon, onion, garlic, and sea salt to get that falafel taste, and conveniently, garbanzo beans, also known as chickpeas, are gluten free! So for those of you whose bodies hate on wheat, these pancakes are for you.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of coriander or cilantro, but you could add those to get an even more falafelly flavor into these pancakes.

What I DID add which is probably pretty weird, is ground up flax seeds, gives some healthy omega 3’s and replaces egg in the pancake batter. I also blended onion and garlic right into the batter, AND because I love to include green things in every meal, I blended some broccoli into the batter as well. I really wanted to blend zucchini in, but I didn’t have any in the fridge. Oh yeah, also sliced up some mushrooms and threw those in with the pancakes as well.

Who invited broccoli to the party?

Garden fresh onion

To top it all off, literally hehe, I chopped up cucumber, tomato, avocado, and drizzled some lemony tahini dressing all over it. So creamy. So omfg delicious. And vegan. WHAT?

To be clear, I did not use nearly that much cucumber...

Seriously, this was the most delicious and filling breakfast of ALL TIME. But let it be known, making it is a laborious act of love. This is not a quick, 5 minute breakfast, this is a lazy sunday morning let’s-get-super-hungry-while-we-cook-incredible-pancakes breakfast.

Or, if you’re between jobs like me, it’s a perfect let’s-procrastinate-sending-more-resumes-into-the-abyss-and-cook-amazing-pancakes breakfast.

And if you’re a calorie counter, it comes out to under 500 calories. Yeah. I’m awesome. You’re welcome.

So without further ado, the ingredients list:

For the pancakes:

• ½ cup garbanzo bean flour
• ¾ cup water
• 1 tbsp ground flax seed
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch sea salt
• 1-3 tsp cumin
• ½ onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 mushrooms
• 1 spear broccoli
• juice of a nice sized wedge of lemon

For the topping

• ½ tomato
• cucumber
• ¼ avocado

For the Tahini Dressing

• 2 tbsp tahini
• 2 tbsp water
• lemon juice
• 1 clove garlic
• sea salt
• drizzle of honey

ALRIGHT! The prep work. Learn to love it my friends.

I buy whole flax seed, because it keeps longer than ground flax seed. I also have a nutribullet which is AMAZING and turns flax seed into flaxseed meal in about .5 seconds. So do that first, if you need to.

Next, combine all DRY ingredients, flour, baking soda, flax seed meal, salt, and cumin and whisk them or blend them together. Set aside.

Take your onion, I was lucky enough to have a yummy onion grown in my own garden! Just harvested! Cut it in half, and cut that half up into little bits. 

Chop up the broccoli just for good measure.

Now, take half of that onion pile, so ¼ of the onion, and throw it in the blender/food processor with the dry ingredients. Also throw in 1 garlic clove, the lemon juice, the chopped up broccoli, and the water. Blend.

**If you do not have a blender or food processor, no worries, just use garlic and onion powder and forget about the broccoli, it's not necessary**

***In terms of water: I err on the side of too little, and whenever I make pancakes I always end up adjusting once I start cooking the batter and see how it actually cooks. Just remember, you can always add MORE water, but its much more difficult to make batter thicker***

OKAY. So our batter is all done. Give it a little taste test. Is it delicious? Good. It’s not? Add salt? Add cumin? Add lemon?

Now, your onion is already chopped. Next chop up a clove of garlic, and chop up those mushrooms into pieces. Mix them all together in a small bowl. Excellent.

Now take all of it and put it together in a bowl.

Before we start cooking lets just prepare everything yeah? Dice the cucumber, tomato, and avocado. In the end I ended up just mashing up the avocado and spreading it on the pancakes but you know your own tastes.

Combine all the tahini dressing ingredients in a (different) blender cup and blend until smooth and creamy. Set aside.

Get out some olive oil and paprika and then….

Woooooo! The fun part! Cooking!!

Get out your favorite pancake griddle, and some olive oil to grease the pan. Product placement: if you live in the States, get your butt to Target and get one of these Misto things. It sprays olive oil and it is genius.

Seriously go buy one. Right now. You'll thank me.

Okay so heat up your pan and spray some olive oil. Then take a small handfull of the garlic, onion, and mushroom mixture and start to sauté, only for a little bit. The mushrooms should start to brown. If they start to burn, turn the heat down. Now gather them into a little group in the middle of the pan, maybe add another spritz of olive oil, and pour your first test pancake on top. I like to use a ¼ cup measuring cup to dole out smallish sized pancakes.

Time to add pancake batter!

This is a good time to see if your batter has enough water. Mine did not.

Pancake batter fail.

If you’re new to the pancake world, here is how to properly cook a pancake.

1. Pour the batter onto the pan.
2. Watch it bubble. When the bubbles don’t disappear back into wet batter but instead stay visible, then it is time to flip.
3. Flip pancake.
4. (optional): Forgive yourself for making a mess of a perfectly pretty pancake.
5. Let it cook longer than you think it needs.
6. Remove from heat, add next pancake.

Q: Should I flip this pancake? A: Yes.

I usually develop a system where I have 2 pancakes going at the same time, one has been flipped one is new, so when it is time to flip the new one, it is time to take the finished one off of the pan.

I also started sprinkling paprika on the pancakes. Yummmmm…

Once you’ve got your glorious stack of falafel pancakes stuffed with onion, garlic, and mushroom then all that left is to load that stack up with cucumber, tomato, and avocado, and drizzle some of that tahini dressing all over it.

Devour.

What do you think? Am I crazy? Crazy stupid? Crazy genius? If you tried this recipe, what changes did you make? I would love to hear some feedback!