Healthy Pancakes? Nooo... YES!

Healthy Pancakes? Can it be!? Yes! And no, they don't taste like cardboard, they are actually delicious! The secret? Oatmeal, greek yogurt and bananas. Abbey and I had these for breakfast yesterday and they were too good not to share. I got my inspiration for these delicious pancakes from Pinterest but made a few tweaks with what I currently had in my Fridge. Follow this link for the original Biggest Loser recipe, or read on below for mine.

Banana Bread!

So after the GM Diet, I had so many leftover ripe bananas, I decided to pawn them off on Jim, since he eats one a day for lunch, but he had just bought some and wasn't having it, (Plus they really were too ripe to do much with). He regifted them back to me and suggested that I make him some banana bread instead. The word "Spoiled" comes to mind...

I used one of my abfab recipes from the More from Magnolia Bakery Cookbook. It's a must for Bakeryphiles.


Alyssa Torey, the owner and author says,"Honestly, I was never a big banana bread fan until the idea of adding coconut came to me one afternoon and inspired this recipe, which turned out wonderfully."

You will need:

3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c canola oil
1 1/2 c sugar
3 large eggs, room temp, well beaten
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups ripe banana, mashed ( I used 4)
3/4 c sour cream
1 1/2 cups pecans, toasted and chopped (See note*)
3/4 c sweetened shredded coconut

*Note; To toast the pecans, place on a baking sheet in a 350* oven, for 15 minutes, until light brown and fragrant.


Preheat Oven to 350*

Grease and flour your pans. I used a silicone 6 mini loaf pan, and it worked well. You can also use muffin tins, a 10 inch tube pan, or whatever you fancy.

In a bowl sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda, and set aside.


In a large bowl or mixer, beat together oil and sugar until well mixed, add eggs and vanilla and beat well.


Add bananas and sour cream.


Add the dry ingredients, one cup at a time, until just combined.


Stir in pecans and coconut.


Pour batter into pans.


Depending on the size of you pan baking will take anywhere from 30-60 minutes. A full loaf pan will take the longest. My mini loaves took about 40. Just keep checking until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, or with dry crumbs.


Let cool for about an hour and serve with nummers butter, or spray butter (which is what we used.)


So I took two loaves over to Jim's for him and his roommate Lee, and we all devoured them, except that Lee isn't too fond of coconut, so he just had one bite.

The GM Diet Plan : DAY FOUR

Lost another pound! Huzzah!

Today is pretty much the day I was looking forward to the least. Banana and Milk day. Blech. I'm not the hugest fan of bananas, or milk, and I assumed today would be really difficult.

Day Four

Eat up to 8 bananas and drink 3 glasses of milk. Day Four makes up for the lost potassium and sodium.

I started off the day with 2 1/2 bananas and a glass of milk. The night before I had frozen a few of the bananas for easy banana shakes, they also make a really delicious creamy almost ice cream like treat.

I took 1 1/2 frozen bananas, 1 regular banana, 8oz of 2% milk, and a dash of REAL vanilla extract to help me keep it down, and threw it all in a blender.


I blended it for about a minute, until it was smooth and creamy and transferred it into my awesome "green" Venti Starbucks reusable cup. The shake itself was actually really good, and a lot better than expected. It tasted almost exactly like a banana milkshake that you would get at a diner.


For lunch we headed over to GG's for some of their non fat, no sugar froze yogurt, assuming this was pretty much as close to milk as you could get, and topped it with some of their yummy banana chips. Not EXACTLY what the cleanse calls for, but come on, ONLY milk and bananas?!?!? Gimme an inch people.


We headed down to Starbucks for some ice waters and unsweetened iced passion/green tea and enjoyed our delicious FroYo. Oddly enough, we got a size or 2 smaller than we usually get and could hardly finish half of it. The cleanse so far has made us both a lot less hungry and a lot more full a lot faster! Huzzah!

Jim met us down there to give us some words of encouragement and then we went to go see Star Trek, which, BTDubs, was AWESOME! Floating in space much? And I was a good girl and resisted every single urge I had to get popcorn! Yay me!

For dinner I had another shake whist drooling over the smells of a hot thin crust pepperoni pizza baking in the oven.

All in all I had about 5 bananas and 3 glasses of milk. I tried ever so hard to finish those dang 'nanners, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Tomorrow is Beef and Tomato day, and I am anticipating it ever so.

Acai Rio Bowl

Opera raves about it, Rachael Ray can't live without it, no one can pronounce it (ah-sah-EE) , and I freaking love it.

Recently I've been buying it in juice form and adding it to my morning smoothies. I really like Sambazon, it's organic and has 80% juice (it's got some agave in there to help sweeten and smooth it out) At around $7.99 for a 32 oz bottle, and even cheaper when it's frequently on sale, it goes a long way for little cash. They also have an organic Acai, Pomegranate and Blueberry mix, but I'd yet to try it, if you have let me know.

I usually have my Acai 2 different ways, as juice in my smoothies, or in a frozen almost sorbet like form with granola and bananas (Rio style!). I got my idea from Robeks Juice, they have a great one.

So yesterday I went down to Albertson's to replenish my staples and look for a frozen version before I figured I'd just have to google it and make it myself, and lo and behold! (Sambazon also has one but I've yet to make it to a store that carries it)


So I decided to be a champ and make some of the granola I saw at Robeks on my own and see if I could get the same results.

Following my granola recipe, I used;
1 c Rice Krispies
2 c Coach's Oats (or your favorite oats)
1/2 c Bran flakes
1/4 c raw sunflower seeds
1/4 c flax seeds
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp brown sugar

Here's the Rio Bowl at Robek's;

And here's mine;
(more banana ftw!)


The bran and sunflower seeds add a nice flavor, and the krispies give it a great crunch. Overall very close to the original, especially if I can find the Acai sorbet, and forgo this Blueberry Pomegrante blend.

My other method involves a blender, so if you want my Acai Smoothie recipe you gotta go here.

It's always sunrise in Philadelphia

There is nothing worse when traveling than an extra long, unnecessary layover in a strange city. Unfortunately I had one that lasted slightly over 3 hours after a red eye flight into Philadelphia, fortunately Alex, who helped design the Epicuriosity Logo lives in Philly, which means I had someone to visit with, joke with, and most importantly have breakfast with.

The Philadelphia Airport Marriott has a sky-bridge from terminal B directly into the hotel, making it totally convenient for hungry travelers to spend copious amounts of money in the one restaurant in the lobby, The Riverbend Bar & Grille.

Alex and me forcing early morning smiles.

Alex was ever so nice as to meet me there for breakfast at 7am. That's right! 7-freaking-am. I told him if he were to come and keep my company for a couple hours, breakfast would be on me and he obliged despite the early wake up call.

To help us wake up, Alex got some coffee, and I had some jasmine green tea, as the sun rose over the Philly skyline.

Jasmine Green Tea and Coffee (with 2 sugar in the raws and cream).

I ordered off the "healthy" menu and got the "Crunchy French Toast". It's dipped in an egg beater batter and then rolled in crushed corn flakes.

Crunchy French Toast with sliced fruit.

It came topped with sliced strawberries and bananas and a side of low calorie syrup.

Knott's Berry Farm's Low Calorie Syrup.

Alex got just regular old french toast. I'm sure he liked it very much as he cleaned his plate, but come on, mine looks soooooo much better right?

Alex's boring old french toast.

I had to catch my plane shortly after and had to rush off to go through security again, but it was a great finish to my crazy layover in Philly, and now I've got a craving to find some good crunchy french toast recipes and try this at home.

Thanks again Alex for keeping me company.

You are a super awesome time waster and breakfast date!

Chocolate 'n' Peanut Butter Bananas

I had a hankering. Sue me.

All you need is a banana, peanut butter, chocolate (chips work fine), and a double boiler (or a steady watchful eye and a microwave).

I hate heating up chocolate in the microwave because it tends to scorch and scorched chocolate is uber nasty. You can tell if you scorched it because it comes out all lumpy and burned smelling.

If you wanna try the double boiler and don't have a traditional one, you can follow me and use my (better) method.

All you need is a pan of simmering water, and a glass bowl that sits on top without TOUCHING the water. The hot steam with warm the glass enough that the chocolate will melt and not ever even get close to burning.



I halved the banana, and sliced it lengthwise, and applied peanut butter to one side of each half, and put the melted chocolate on the other half.



Voila! Instant yummy chocolate peanut butter bananas in less time than it took me to decide I wanted one. You can also wrap these in plastic wrap and throw them into the freezer, which I think would be divine as well, but I was hungry in the moment.

Better'n Peanut Butter

Peanut Butter has lately become a weakness. I know that it's a MUFA and so it's not really THAT bad for me, but the amount of fat and calories mean I don't get much of it.

Enter, Better'n Peanut Butter!

With only 50 calories and 1 gram of fat a tbsp, it's pretty much the best thing to spread on sliced bread. In fact, I've been putting it on pretty much everything. It's got a creamier texture with a bit less viscosity than regular peanut butter (meaning it doesn't hold its shape as well) , and is almost frosting like. It's made with "defatted peanut flour" so it still has the taste, without the fat. I wanted to try it on everything I had previously put regular peanut butter on, and try it out, so YOU didn't have to!



It's freaking AMAZING on apples. LOVE IT.



I substituted it for regular peanut butter in my banana oatmeal, and it was even BETTER. It's melted perfectly and mixed in so well.

I even tried a new recipe my client Sheila told me about for yummy late night snacks! I used Better'n Peanut Butter in it instead, and the beauty of this is you don't even need to know how to cook to make this! So try it!!



I started with some bananas, cut in half.



Next slice lengthwise and spread about a tbsp of Better'n Peanut Butter on them, sandwiching between the 2 banana halves.



Wrap in plastic wrap and stick um in the freezer until frozen. And then eat them, cuz they are freaking amazing. It's the perfect late night snack, cuz I can't think of many other things that go great with bananas than peanut butter, except maybe chocolate! (And um, Better'n Peanut Butter has a chocolate spread too!!)

I also spread some on my bagel this morning. I'm seriously obsessed with it. You can get it at most health food stores, I found mine at Trader Joes. I'd love to see what others come up with, so please if you use it, tried it, or made something amazing, post them in the comments.

Kath wins at life.

My best friend Michelle has been reading my blog! Yay! And shes been mega linking me to lots of foodie blogs for my blogroll! We were talking about how hard it becomes to eat healthy on your own, without any kind of other foodie blogs, cookbooks, or recipes from friends. I told her that I enjoyed my daily routine, but I knew that if I didn't change it up, it would get old soon.

Living in Southern California everyday is mostly beautiful and hot, and so enjoying cold cereal with fresh raw fruit is super yummy, but lately we've been having these weird cold spells and now I have a yummy hot cereal to eat when it's cold! Yay!

Michelle linked me here, to Kath Eats' blog. It's a super awesome vlog about her classic oatmeal, which I had heard about, but had never made. Obviously on a whim I didn't have EVERY ingredient but I think I did pretty well considering. For those of you who prefer a written version (of what I made) to Kath's vlog, you can read on. Or just watch her vlog and come up with your own versions.







I started with quick oats (not from Costco, but I think I might have to put those on my list since this oatmeal was so yummy)and 2% milk. 1/2 a cup of each, plus an additional 1/2 cup of water.









I threw it all into a pot over med-low heat and let it come to a slow boil. Then I sliced up the other half of my banana I saved from breakfast yesterday and threw that in there too so it could get all warm and gooey.









Then I got out the rest of my ingredients, or "toppings" as Kath calls them. Pure Vanilla Extract (if you don't have it, just step away from the computer and go buy some. I NEVER use the imitation stuff, let this be a life lesson), Light Brown Sugar (dark has more molasses)1/4 cup of toasted walnuts (mircowave them for 1:30 min), and Cinnamon.



I set aside the walnuts and added the rest into the oatmeal as it was simmering on the stove, then dumped it all into a bowl, topped it with the walnuts and added a tsp of peanut butter since I didn't have the almond butter Kath recommend.



Seriously it was uber yummy. The peanut butter got all melty on top and I eventually mixed it in. I'll most likely try this again with some other toppings and maybe use pecans instead of walnuts next time, cuz I tend to have more of an affinity for pecans. I didn't bother doing a calorie count, but I assume it's not too much higher than 300, if it even reaches that. If anyone wants to make it and do the calorie counts, by all means let me know. Here's my finished product in all its warm oatmealy gooey glory.



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