Tag: Vegetarian

Protein Pancakes My Way

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I usually eat the same thing everyday for breakfast: oats with banana and some sort of nut butter.

This morning, I woke up at 6:00am with nothing to do.  I decided to spice up my life.

Not like that…

Rather, I decided to stray from my usual breakfast into something fun and amazing!  So I did the usual blog perusing and remembered Jessica‘s Vegan Strawberry Cream Pancakes that look divine.  Then I remembered I don’t have fresh strawberries and thawing frozen ones would take too long.  So those will be made at another time.

As a kid I hated pancakes because my mom used to make them from Bisquick, which is just disgusting and salty and not delicious.  Then I grew up and tried real pancakes.  I realized how beautiful life could be and how good legit pancakes are.  So pancakes it would be for breakfast!

Then I kept coming across Heather‘s Protein Pancakes on my pancake search.  The dilemma here is that I don’t buy protein powder.  So I moved on to search through old recipes I had made on SparkRecipes and found an old recipe I had added for Cottage Cheese Protein Pancakes, so I figured why not?

I honestly can’t remember where I got this recipe from, maybe somewhere on SparkRecipes?

Now that I’ve taken you through my thought process (haha sorry about that), here’s the recipe I used:

Cottage Cheese Protein Pancakes

1/2 cup 1% cottage cheese
2 egg whites
2 tbsp whole wheat flour
dash of cinnamon

I combined all the ingredients.

Then threw them in the blender.  This is where my Magic Bullet that I left at home would come in handy, since it splattered all over, basically half the ingredients didn’t make it into the pan, but oh well.

I made one mondo beast of a pancake and topped it with some Hungry Jack Lite Syrup (1 tablespoon to be exact). This puppy has about 26g of protein!  Crazy!

I enjoyed this with a tasty Green Monster (kale, spinach, 1 banana, 5 frozen strawberries, ice and water).

The first bite wasn’t that great, but the subsequent bites got better and better.  I think I may have undercooked this a bit or maybe it’s just the nature of the beast.

Did it taste like a pancake?  A little bit, syrup helped.

Was it the texture of a pancake?  No.

Was it tasty?  Sure!

Would you make it again?  Why not!  Easy enough!

My protein packed breakfast was pretty good overall (31g of protein in one meal!  Woah!  That’s half a day’s worth!)

In other news…

This weekend is my last relaxing weekend!  Classes start on Monday 😦 Not excited, but it’ll happen.

Have a great Saturday!

Any exciting weekend plans?

January Recipe Challenge: South America

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I go through travel bug stages.  Last year, I was itching to go to India, then I went.  This year I’m itching to go to China and Peru, I’ve yet to go.  Not entirely sure why I want to go to those places but they seem awesome!  I really would love to do the Inca trail.

So tonight for the January recipe challenge, I made Peruvian Chickpea Stew.  Sorry for all the soups/stews, I’m a huge fan of soup/stew, and when I look for recipes I look for things that I would like.   Peruvian cuisine is such an interesting mix of many different cultures.  I find it really intriguing.

I first tried Peruvian Chickpeas at Super Pollo.  If you live in the Washington DC metropolitan area, please please please go to Super Pollo in Arlington, VA for some wonderful pollo a la brasa (yes I’m promoting meat eating because this stuff is amazing).

Tonight I put my chef planning kit to work!  I decided I needed some company for dinner, so I had a mini dinner party.  I only invited a few people so we could all fit at my tiny table (plus sadly I can’t afford to feed the 20 people I wanted to invite).

Peruvian Chickpea Stew

inspired by Recipezaar’s Peruvian Chickpea Stew

1lb dry garbanzo beans/chickpeas
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions or 3 small onions, diced
3 garlic gloves, minced
1 can whole canned tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 tsp coriander powder
3 tsp cumin powder
3 tsp allspice
2 small yellow squashes
8oz (approx) of vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste

First,  cook your chickpeas until tender, a little under cooked is fine as they will simmer for a while later. You can probably use canned garbanzo beans too, but honestly I don’t think those taste as good.  You’d be amazed at how much better cooked dried beans taste over canned beans.

Then sautee the onions and garlic in the olive oil on pretty high heat until slightly browned and translucent.

Then add the chickpeas, tomatoes, spices, squash, and broth.  Stir and simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.

Serve with quinoa for a high protein very healthy meal!

I really liked this recipe.  It’s very healthy but hearty and tasty!  The spices are an interesting flavor combination.  I definitely recommend this! It wasn’t the same as the ones I had at Super Pollo but still delicious and probably a million times healthier!

To round out my mini dinner party, I made an Arugula and Pear salad using this recipe from Eating Well.  Honestly this salad was ridiculously good.  I tweeked the dressing a bit adding a bit more dijon mustard and a little less olive oil.  I also only used arugula, no other lettuce.  It was delicious!  I highly recommend this salad if you’re looking for a wonderful side dish!

For dessert, I made Fitnessista‘s Almond Butter Chocolate Chip cookies!  They were a hit!  No one knew they were vegan!    I made a few tweeks as well.  Instead of maple syrup, I used agave nectar and omitted the molasses since I didn’t have any and didn’t want to spend all that money for a teaspoon of molasses.

I just realized, actually this whole meal was vegan!  Very tasty and very balanced. Here’s my plate:

Salad side above and chickpea/quinoa side below.

A note about calories:

I decided to not count my calories for this meal.  I enjoyed it and made sure not to over eat too much, I filled half my plate with salad, 1/4 with chickpea stew and the other 1/4 with quinoa.  I also had 2 cookies, no big deal.  I splurged a bit, but I’m okay with that.  By the end of the meal, I wasn’t stuffed I was good and satisfied.  Yes, I probably could have eaten more but I didn’t feel the need to.  Life is about balance.  I want my weight loss to be manageable and sustainable, not painful.  One meal is not going to derail my efforts, I tracked the rest of the day (see my sparkpage) and tomorrow will be a normal day again and all will be well in the world.

I like to live by the 80/20 rule: Eat well 80 percent of the time and indulge 20 percent of the time.  Good rule in my opinion. What do you think?

Anyway, I’m off to watch more Mad Men!  Have a great night!

Barney Butter

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Do you ever see things on blogs then really want to try them?

I’m a huge fan of nut butters, okay I’m slightly obsessed even though I’ve only tried Peanut Butter, Almond Butter and Soy Nut Butter.  They’re delicious and keep you full for a long time!

Seeing nut butters of all sorts on random blogs got me perusing websites one day to see what products I could buy around here.  I wandered to the Barney Butter website to find they are giving free samples!  Check it out!

Barney Butter is Almond Butter.  Recently I’ve been enjoying consuming Trader Joe’s Raw Almond Butter, which while good is not nearly as good as the roasted almond kind.  But mostly I’ve been avoiding almond butter and sticking to PB.  I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you don’t love it, don’t eat it, especially when it comes to calorie dense foods.

This morning, I decided to put my PB to rest and squeeze my Barney Butter sample onto my oatmeal.

They came in convenient little 90 calorie packages, which would be perfect for travel.  Apparently it also comes in large jars, but I’ve yet to see it in stores.

This stuff is nothing short of fantastic.  Of course, this makes sense as almond butter is delicious, and this one has added sugar (evaporated cane juice), which makes everything even more tasty.  I would choose it over the raw Almond Butter any day.

But don’t take my word for it!  Order your free sample on their website!

In other news, while thrifting with the roommate yesterday she came across a fabulous vintage coat that sadly didn’t fit her but fit me perfect!  These are the perks of being short I guess!

Locally made too!

I found a salad spinner!  Only $2!

And a cheap copy of The Poisonwood Bible which I’ve heard is really good.

Now I’m off to the gym for what I hope will be a great workout!  Have a great day!  Don’t forget to smile!

Fabulous Lunch for a Boring Day

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This morning I was up at 6:30am, because I want to try to get back on a schedule.  Despite waking up so early, I had no where to be, no one to see and nothing to do.  I e-mailed the professor I am working with this semester to see if she wanted to meet to talk about my research position, and she wants to meet on Friday.  This is a little upsetting as I could have been home right now.  Instead, I’m bored in Ithaca.

So instead of productiveness, I sat around all morning watching Mad Men and reading blogs.  Finally around 12:00 I started to get hungry so I made lunch.  Kind of sad that lunch (and something I got in the mail… more on that later) has been the most exciting part of my day!

After talking to my cousin about her Cesar salad for lunch, I decided I needed a salad too!  Mine was not a Cesar salad but bright colorful and delicious nonetheless!  In my salad: Romaine, Carrot Ribbons and One Hard Boiled Egg.

I had half as a salad and the other half I put in a Flatout Sun dried Tomato Wrap with a Morningstart patty.  Delish!

These wraps are pretty good.  I found them at Wegman’s and decided to get them since they were pretty low cal (90 calories per wrap) and the ingredients weren’t horrendous (still has preservatives but I sucked it up).

I rounded out my meal with a delicious organic honeycrisp apple!

Soo good! (For nutrition info, see my sparkpage)

I was enjoying a cup of this tea (apparently I don’t want to let go of the holidays):

when my roommate came in with the mail.  I got something!

My friend Celia’s Save the Date postcard!  Very cute!  I love the design!  Congratulations Celia and Chris!

Now I’m off to Target to get some floss then to the gym.  Hopefully a good work out will make me less of a Negative Nancy today!

Have a great day!

Stocking up + New Thing!

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Yesterday was all about getting settled back into my apartment.  I was so exhausted when I got back on Friday that I fell asleep at 8:00pm.  Needless to say I saw up early on Sunday (6:30am, I slept a ton!).  I lounged around for a bit (aka watched Ugly Betty and Mad Men), cleaned the apartment then finally got around to going to the grocery store.

I love grocery shopping, but I always get a little flustered when the grocery store is crowded.  I like shopping on a weekday better, but oh well!

Anyway, so I loaded up on a ton of stuff.  Somehow it managed to all fit in my handy DSW bag!

Do you use reusable bags? They were very common in Berkeley and to some extent here as well.  In Berkeley, I kind of felt like I was getting a glare if I didn’t have one and the cashiers were all smiles when you had a reusable bag!

I loaded up on tons of healthy things.

I also bought a few new things to try out.  The first is almond milk (almond non-dairy beverage?).  Ordinarily I buy lactaid to use in coffee and cereal.  I’ve realized that since I have to take lactaid I probably shouldn’t be drinking milk… It also kind of scares me that lactaid lasts for so long and doesn’t go bad as regular milk does.  So I decided to try out something new.

This morning I had almond milk in my coffee and I’ll say it was pretty good.  I could definitely get used to it.  It doesn’t have the same amount of protein as milk/lactaid but the amount of milk/lactaid that I drank was so small that I feel like it’s not really significant.

While I was visiting the lovely fella in the Bay Area last week, we went to Whole Foods one day.  In the bulk food section, I came across Chia seeds, which I had been seeing on about 8394002779 million blogs. Yes this kind…

I got a very small amount ($0.35 worth) and have been waiting to try it ever since.

I added some to my oats this morning.  Honestly, it didn’t really change the flavor but made the texture slightly different, a little more gel-like.

I’m going to look around for these in Ithaca.  I liked the texture and the health benefits sound great!

  • 15g (2 tbsp) has about 75 calories.  (I added 5g to my oatmeal)
  • Chia is richer in omega-3 fatty acids than flax (source)
  • Chia is rich in antioxidants and vitamins (source)

Are you a chia fan?

New Leaf Update:

In case you missed it, I’m turning over a new leaf.

Day 1 went well!  Starting on the right foot is always a good sign!  I stocked up so I’m ready to go!  I went to the gym for a short work out since I’m sick I took it easy.    If you’re curious about what I ate all day, check out my sparkpage and click “Shared Food & Fitness Trackers” on the right to see it all!

Anyway, the rest of today will be spent unpacking and cleaning up… probably watching a few episodes of Mad Men too because apparently I’m obsessed!

Happy MLK Day!

Just curious… Anyone doing a day of service?

January Recipe Challenge: Asia

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The lovely fella lives in the Silicon Valley.  The first time I visited him here was when I had just gotten back from India in July of 2009.  I kept noticing a ton of Indian markets, restaurants and shops.  I’m not sure if it’s because I had India on the brain or there are legitimately just a lot of Indian places!  Apparently, the Silicon Valley (or the South Bay in general?) has a large Indian population.  So for yet another addition to the January Recipe Challenge, I decided to make something Indian!

Indian is probably one of my favorite foods, I love everything from curries to dosa, but I’ve always been too scared to make it as it seems really daunting. With the availability of Indian products and the January Recipe Challenge as my impetus, I sucked it up and decided to try making something Indian.

Tonight, I actually made two recipes!  Palak Paneer (Spinach and Cheese) and Channa Masala.  Both are fairly common at any North India/Punjabi restaurant.  They are also vegetarian!  Actually in case you didn’t know… A lot of people in India are vegetarians for religious reasons.

I found two great recipes from Manjula’s Kitchen.  I really liked her site because she had videos of her making the recipes!  This inspired great confidence in her!

Just as in the Swedish recipes I made earlier this week, I had to make due with the appliances the lovely fella has, which means no measuring cups or spoons or a blender which was kind of necessary.  I had to eyeball it all but surprisingly it turned out really well!  So here are the recipes with the tweeks that I made to them (remember I eyeballed these amounts).

Palak Paneer

Inspired by Manjula’s Kitchen Palak (Spinach) Paneer

4 cups fresh spinach, chopped
6-7 oz store bought paneer
1/2 can tomato puree
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
salt to taste
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 tomato, sliced for garnish

Ingredients all together:

Can you believe they have Goofy on the spinach package?! Not sure how I feel about this...

First we quickly browned the paneer in a bit of oil and then set aside.

Then we added a tad more oil (probably a total of 2 tbsp, you really don’t need to add more in my opinion…) and added the spices (coriander, turmeric, cumin seeds) and cooked those for about a minute.

Then we added the tomato puree and ginger and let that cook for a few minutes.  Once the tomato sauce reduced by half, we added the spinach and a little bit of water (I saw her do this in the video that’s why I did it too) and covered it and let it simmer on medium/low heat for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime, we combined the cream and flour in a small bowl.  After the spinach mixture has simmered, we added the cream mixture and let it cook for a few minutes.  Then cover it again and let is simmer for about 5 minutes.  Then added the paneer back and and let is simmer for a few more minutes! Then it’s ready to eat!

Ours didn’t look quite right but I think it was the lack of blender.  It still tasted great!

Next we made the Channa Masala.

Again we didn’t have all the necessary equipment (mainly a blender and measuring spoons so I eyeballed it all and just finely chopped all the ingredients).  Also note that the channa masala is also vegan!

Channa Masala

inspired by Manjula’s Kitchen’s Chola (Channa Masala)

1 can (15oz) garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 can tomato puree
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
1 small green chili (use less for less picante!)
2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chopped cilantro
1/4 tsp garam masala powder

I forgot to take a picture of all the ingredients for this one but they were kind of similar to the Palak Paneer ingredients.

First, we heated the oil in the pan.  Once the oil was hot, we added the cumin seeds and cooked them til they made a cracking noise.  Then we added the flour and cooked it for about a minute. Once that had cooked for a minute or so, we added the tomato puree, ginger, green chili, coriander, turmeric and red chili powder.  This simmered for about 4 minutes.

Then we added the garbanzo beans plus 1/2 cup of water and let that simmer for about 7-8 minutes, stirring every so often.

Lastly, we added the cilantro and garam masala and let that cook for a minute and it was all ready! Serve with rice, naan, raita, tomato slices or anything else you like!

We enjoyed these two fabulous dishes with some Naan we got at Costco (the Costco here sells a ton of India products… large Indian population I guess…).

Of course, it was eaten with fingers not silverware…

I thought this was very delicious!  The lovely fella liked it too!  The Channa Masala was a little too spicy for him but nothing a little water couldn’t fix.  We actually realized we pretty much doubled the green chili, so it was extra spicy.  I thought it was perfect but I really like spicy food.

I know Indian food sounds intense and complicated (or at least it did to me) but give it a try!  It really wasn’t that difficult, just requires a bit of ingredient hunting!

Tomorrow I’m headed back to LA then Friday I go back to Ithaca!  I don’t want break to end, but I have a little bit of a blog revamp coming when I get back to Ithaca so stay tuned for that!

Have a great night!

His and Hers

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This morning I used some old bread and made the lovely fella some french toast.

His Breakfast:

I, on the other hand, don’t care much for french toast.  Okay really, I hate it… So instead I had some broccoli and a black bean burger.

Her Breakfast:

Tasty!  I’m in desperate need of fruit and vegetables!  I feel like I’ve been on food overload the past few days!  I do however LOVE the lovely fella’s big white plates!  They make everything looks so good!

Do you eat differently from your significant other?

Have a great day!

Napa: Wine, Wine and More Wine

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Yesterday we left about mid-day and headed up to Napa!  It’s only about an hour and a half drive from the lovely fella’s place in Mountain View.  We found a deal on Travel Zoo for a hotel plus wine tastings at 3 vineyards and 3 half bottles of wine!

The first stop was Peju.  This was one of our free wine tastings.  The vineyard and tasting room was very lovely!

They had some interesting trees in the entrance…

We tasted 5 wines: 1 white, 1 red/white blend, 2 Cabs and a Port.  My favorite was the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon.

This also happened to be the half bottle that they gave us!  So that was convenient.  I liked this place but sadly there was another couple tasting next to us so I felt really rushed.  They flew through it and it felt like we needed to go at their pace.  Oh well.  It was still fun and tasty!

The next stop was: Castello di Amorosa.

It was a lovely location with a great view, not to mention the winery was in the shape of a castle! This wasn’t included in our three free tastings but the lovely fella heard it was good so we went.  I’m glad we did! This was my favorite of the three we went to!

We tried some wonderful wines here too!  I don’t usually like sweet wines but the ones here were particularly delicious!

The final winery we went to Madonna Estate for a free tasting.  It was very small but nice.  We were the only ones in the tasting room.  They didn’t have half bottles so we got a free full sized bottle of Riesling.

The man in the tasting room suggested a restaurant for dinner.  He was Italian so naturally  he suggested an Italian restaurant (Zagat also said it was delicious).  So for dinner we went to Bistro Don Giovanni.

We were wined-out so we stuck to water.  First, we were served some rosemary focaccia.  It was extremely oily, but naturally very delicious!

The lovely fella and I shared a beet and haricot verts salad with avocado, fennel and roquefort vinaigrette.  This was very good.  Light and flavorful!

As an entree, I got the Ricotta and Pesto Ravioli with a lemon cream sauce.  This was OOH SO GOOD!  I can’t even tell you how delicious it was!  I love lemony things but this was literally out of this world!

The lovely fella got an (unphotographed) Rigatoni with lamb meatballs.  He enjoyed his as well!  I definitely recommend Bistro Don Giovanni for anyone going to Napa.  It was delicious and reasonably priced!

We decided to skip dessert there since nothing looked too good.  Instead, we stopped by Whole Foods for a bakery treat!  I got a cupcake (which took me hours to eat since it was so sweet):

The lovely fella got an almond cannoli.  I’m not a huge fan of cannolis but he really enjoyed it…

Warning: Hipster Hating Ranting to Come!

The next day we left and stopped in San Francisco for breakfast/lunch.  We went to Tartine Bakery.  This hipster watering hole was delicious!  I got a 3 Cheese Pressed Sandwich and the lovely fella got a ham croque monsieur.  Mine was simply to die for!  It was also HUGE!  I ate 2/3 of it and thought I was going to explode!

The food was fantastic (I seriously can’t get over how good this place was); however, I didn’t like the cafe itself.  It was ridiculously crowded with hipsters talking about Europe and art.  I didn’t feel like I could really enjoy my meal to the full extent.   I also felt silly pulling out my camera, maybe I would have if I had been sitting outside with a little more arm room.  I literally felt like I was living in the this blog.  I’m not sure why I was so irked by the patrons of this place.  I think it just felt a little pretentious to me.  Strangely enough, the place was kind of dirty too.  You bus your own tables (which isn’t a problem at all) but that means all the tables were really dirty.  The occasional wipe down would have been appreciated.

I would love to go back!  It was seriously amazingly good!  But next time, I’ll get it to go and enjoy my sandwich or pastry elsewhere 🙂

Now we’re back in Mountain View trying to figure out what to do the rest of the day!  Maybe we’ll have some more wine… because obviously we haven’t had enough…  On that note, this blog is supposed to be about healthy eating… don’t worry that will resume soon!  When I’m back at home (aka Ithaca) I rarely eat out plus I have a healthy plan for the next few months, more on that later!

What’s your favorite type of wine?

January Recipe Challenge: Europe

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The lovely fella bought a Swedish cookbook at Ikea last week.  So I thought it would be a great for the January Recipe Challenge.  Again, I don’t know much about Sweden other than its neutrality in WWII, they have a lot of immigrants and Alexander Skarsgard is from there… so I have no idea how authentic this is but it looked delicious and vegetarian (which seems rare in Swedish cuisine from looking at that cookbook!).

We decided to make Forest Mushroom Soup (Soppa på blandsvamp).

The only difficulty in making this recipe was finding the right mushrooms and the fact that the lovely fella doesn’t have measuring tools.  So here’s our tweeked version (estimated as we couldn’t actually measure):

Forest Mushroom Soup/Soppa på blandsvamp

inspired by Ikea’s Swedish Cooking

2 tbsp butter
8oz cremini mushrooms
3.5 oz shitake mushrooms
6 oz portabella mushrooms
1 onion
1 garlic clove
3-4 tablespoons whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons red wine (or really just a splash!  The recipe called for sherry but we didn’t want to spend money on it so we decided to use red wine instead… not the same… I know but it was still really good!)
3 cups low sodium vegetable broth
about 1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste

We enjoyed a glass of wine while we cooked!  The lovely fella got me this bottle of wine for Valentine’s Day last year with the intention that we would drink it then but it didn’t happen and he’s had it ever since.

It was very tasty, especially after it aerated for 20 minutes!  So we gathered the ingredients:

Then cleaned and sliced the mushrooms then chopped the onion and garlic.

From what I’ve heard… Mushrooms should be wiped with a damp cloth or paper towel not run under water.


We melted the butter then sauteed this all for about five minutes.

Then added the flour and stirred it.  Added a splash of red wine.  Next we added the broth, cream, salt and pepper and let it simmer for a few minutes.

Then we served and enjoyed it with our wine!

This recipe was quick, easy and delicious!  The mushrooms were fantastic and made it really “meaty.”  It was a perfect light meal!  It would be great with a big hunk of crusty bread (unfortunately we ate our fair share of bread and cheese while the soup simmered!).

Then we went to see It’s Complicated, which was hilarious!  I won’t spoil it but I really enjoyed it!

Tomorrow, we’re headed to Napa for wine tasting and all around fun!  Hope you had a great weekend!  Goodnight!

Green Beans!

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This morning I went to the lovely fella’s apartment gym again.  I did 3 miles in 28:40!  I’m a slow poke so that was kind of fast for me.

Then we headed to Costco, for the purpose of eating samples and frozen yogurt.  After Costco, we headed to Trader Joe’s to get ingredients for dinner tonight.  We’ve been eating out a lot lately so we decided to stay in tonight.  We’re making a recipe from another continent for the January Recipe Challenge!

While at Trader Joe’s, I came across this interesting thing: Green Beans.

Not just any green beans.  These are crunchy and lightly salted.  However, interestingly enough they’re really sweet too!  Who knew green beans were sweet!  They look like green beans too!

The ingredients were green beans, canola oil, tapioca starch and salt.  Not too bad right?  The first one wasn’t that great but the next few or maybe 50 were delicious!  I wonder if they lose all the nutrients that fresh green beans have?  Any thoughts?


Tonight we’re making a new recipe and going to the movies!  Have a great evening!