Recipes Archives - Page 66 of 113

DIY Vanilla Extract and a Gifting Idea

Is it too early to start thinking about the Christmas holidays. Absolutely. Do I do any of my holiday gift buying before Labor Day? Under no circumstances. I might have my meal plan figured out for the week, but I’m the mom on Halloween morning looking for electrical tape to try and make a Bat Man costume.

But, I do have a great idea that you can do now for holiday gifts or holiday baking — DIY vanilla extract! Why am I talking about this now after I just said I don’t plan for the holidays this far in advance? Because although vanilla extract takes minutes to make, it requires about 6 weeks to sit and brew. Still a little early to think about this, but lots of holidays are coming up and I will not be thinking about making vanilla extract in November. #thanksgivingtrumpsall

My assistant Lauren gave me a bottle of homemade vanilla extract last year for Christmas and I was absolutely delighted to receive it. First of all, I just love homemade gifts, especially homemade food gifts! And vanilla is something I use a lot of, so I was really grateful to be given something so good AND useful. I love the essence of vanilla in baked goods and desserts. In fact, I think it’s one of those ingredients that has a natural sweetness to it without actually containing a sweetener. Just an FYI, even if you don’t make your own vanilla extract, do read the ingredient label on commercially-prepared ones. Somehow manufacturers are allowed to use the word “pure” on the label while adding things like corn syrup solids. So troubling.

Recently, I had Lauren provide me a little tutorial on making vanilla extract and give me all her sources for labeling and making these look so cute. Here’s what you’ll need:

Grade B Vanilla Beans: Grade B beans are best for extract as they are too dry for cooking, but still are high quality in taste and flavor. We used 3/4 of a pound of these Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans. Bourbon, by the way, refers to the island of Bourbon in Madagascar, not the alcohol. Bourbon vanilla is the most flavorful of all the vanillas and what I use for all my baking.

Vodka: Vodka used because it has no flavor, as opposed to other other alcohols. You don’t need to buy the best vodka to make vanilla extract. Any mid-level 80-proof vodka will do. Figure on spending about $15-20 for a 1.75 liter bottle. We used 2 bottles.

Large glass jar: This is to brew the extract. We used this gallon kombucha jar which was $10 on amazon.

For gifting, there are obviously hundreds of options, but here is what we used in the pictures on this post:

Glass bottles: I like the idea of gifting 4 ounce bottles since that is a standard size for vanilla extract. These are the bottles we used which as you can see are dark glass. Clear glass is fine for brewing, but for long term storage, dark glass is better since light is no friend to extracts. In general, specialtybottles.com is a great source for lots of different bottles.

hoemmade vanilla extract perfect for holiday gifts | pamela salzman

Labels: I love the labels Lauren used. It makes the gift more personal and printable labels are especially nice if you don’t have nice handwriting. These Avery kraft square labels were found on amazon.

String: Not necessary, but I use this baker’s string for many gifts from my kitchen. I think it’s adorable. Red is perfect for the holiday, but there are lots of pretty colors available.

Here’s what you do:

1-2 months before you want vanilla extract, prepare the batch. I like the ratio of 4 whole vanilla beans to 8 ounces of vodka.

Split the vanilla beans lengthwise and place them in the large bottle. Cover the beans completely with vodka. Secure the lid on the bottle and swirl it around a bit. Store at room temperature for 4-6 weeks, the longer the better. It will darken as time passes. The batch above has been sitting for 6 weeks.

When you transfer the extract to smaller bottles for gifting, add the beans to the bottles as well. As you use the extract, just keep adding a little vodka to replace what you took out. Vanilla extract lasts indefinitely. You can also take vanilla beans from which you scraped the seeds and add them to vanilla extract in the works.

Store finished extract in the pantry (not the refrigerator) away from light and heat.

Have any of you made other extracts? I think I have the extract-making bug!

vanilla

Black Bean and Beet Burger Recipe and Video

If you’re new here, I am OBSESSED with veggie burgers. I have two posted on this website — a black bean and brown rice burger with smoky red pepper sauce and a chickpea burger. Both are hearty, flavorful and delicious. This black bean and beet burger might just be my favorite. If you don’t like beets (and I know you’re out there,) I’m not sure if this will change your mind since you can definitely see the beets, but the burger tastes like more of the spices in the mix than anything else. Check out my YouTube video here on how to roast beets.

These are great for Meatless Mondays and so perfect for back-to-school since you can make a batch and freeze them for an easy weeknight dinner. I have pulled them straight from the freezer and cooked them frozen, just like you could with a store-bought one. I love to eat a veggie burger on a bed of greens with a sauce or spread of some sort, cooked onions and avocado. Of course the kids and my husband love eating them as a true burger on a bun with or without cheese. My favorite buns are any of the sprouted Food For Life Baking ones, toasted. The family is really into the “Million Dollar Buns” by Dave’s Killer Bread. I wrote about Dave’s Killer Bread in one of my Friday Favorites. Some of the varieties contain canola oil which I avoid like the plague (refined, pro-inflammatory, usually GMO, blech) and the buns contain canola oil so they’re a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of food.

Although I include all types of whole foods on this site, including animal products, I do think we should be eating a mostly plant-based, anti-inflammatory, low-glycemic diet. These burgers fit the bill and still keep all the burger lovers in my house very happy, too.

Black Bean and Beet Veggie Burger Recipe and Video

Pamela

4.15 from 7 votes

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Servings patties

Ingredients

8 ounces beets steamed or roasted, and peeled (1 large or 2 small)
3 cups black beans or 2 15-ounce cans, drained and rinsed
½ cup cooked cold brown rice
¼ cup dried figs diced small
¼ cup oat flour
½ cup diced red onion
2 garlic cloves minced
2 teaspoons brown mustard
1 Tablespoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 ½ teaspoons sea salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
Unrefined coconut oil for cooking patties
Sprouted grain hamburger buns for serving (optional)
Accompaniments: grilled onions avocado, tomato, cheese, sprouts

Instructions

Quarter the beets and pulse along with 2 cups of the black beans in a food processor until roughly chopped.
Add beet-bean mixture to a large bowl, along with the next 13 ingredients (remaining black beans, brown rice, dried figs, oat flour, red onion, garlic, smoked paprika, brown mustard, ground cumin, ground coriander, thyme leaves, salt, pepper). Stir to combine, mashing the mixture together with a spatula or wooden spoon.
Using a half cup measure, form six patties. Cover them with parchment paper or plastic wrap and transfer to the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.
In a large skillet or on a griddle pan, heat an 1/8 inch of oil. Add the burgers and cook over medium heat, turning once, until browned and heated through, about 6 minutes. Serve with desired accompaniments.

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Deconstructed Guacamole Salad Recipe

I just dropped off my oldest at college this past weekend. Up until this point, nothing has made me feel as old as saying to someone, “I have a child in college.” And it doesn’t help when people respond with, “Wow!” Rub it in. Thank heavens for Mr. Picky who is in elementary school and still asks me to cuddle him at night.

My daughter goes to school in Dallas. So when I visit, I make sure to b-line for some good Tex-Mex food. You all know my weakness is guacamole and chips. Guacamole = healthy food. Chips, not so much. In LA you can find places to give you jicama with your guacamole. In Texas, not so much. So I try not to overdo it when I’m there, but I’m not always successful.

Although I grew up in New York, California cooking has stolen my heart. Lightness, freshness, color. It’s addictive. And the best avocados! Come visit me and we’ll have fun just prancing around the farmers markets. We can make this salad, which is like fancy-pants guacamole.

I taught this salad last year or the year before and it is one of my favorites. First of all, it takes minutes to pull together. Second, it includes two of my favorite foods, tomatoes and avocados, which I will remind you are both insanely delicious right now. Use whatever tomatoes look great and have fun mixing colors and shapes and sizes. Lastly, it’s basically guacamole that I can eat with a fork or on top of a piece of fish or grilled chicken and I don’t feel the need to have 25 tortilla chips along with it.

It also happens to look very pretty on a buffet. But tomatoes are leaving us soon, friends. Enjoy it ALL while you can, because you’re going to blink your eyes and they’ll be gone.

Deconstructed Guacamole Salad Recipe

Pamela

Print Recipe

Servings -6

Ingredients

4 medium tomatoes cored and cut into wedges or 1 ½ pints of cherry tomatoes, halved
½ small red onion sliced very thinly (soaked in ice water for 15 minutes to tone down the onion flavor, if desired)
½ jalapeño seeded and finely chopped (optional)
3 medium or large ripe avocados pitted, skin removed and sliced crosswise into ½-inch slices
a handful of whole cilantro leaves
2 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
¾ teaspoon of sea salt
a few grinds of freshly ground black pepper
a few drops of hot sauce
3 Tablespoons unrefined cold pressed extra-virgin olive oil
optional: serve with broken corn tortilla chips on top or around the side of the salad

Instructions

Place the tomatoes, red onion and jalapeño on a platter. Arrange the avocado slices on top. Scatter the cilantro leaves all over.
Whisk together the lime juice, salt, hot sauce and oil together and drizzle all over salad. It’s best not to toss this salad, otherwise the avocados will get messy. Taste for seasoning and add additional salt if necessary. A sprinkle of flaky sea salt is nice.
Serve with tortilla chips on the perimeter of the platter or crushed on top, if desired.

Notes

The amounts for the ingredients are merely guidelines. Feel free to adjust quantities to suit your taste.

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avocado cilantro jalapeno red onion tomatoes

Chocolate-chia-raspberry popsicles recipe

This is the last hurrah before school starts and then the recipes start getting more serious. Throughout the summer, I’ve assembling more than cooking, presenting meals at irregular hours, winging it a bit. But with the first day of school looming, I know I have to get my act together and have a plan for three well-balanced meals a day. But until then, we’ll keep eating these popsicles for breakfast or to cool off in the afternoon.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: my weakness (beside guacamole and chips) is ice cream. I hardly ever eat it anymore, even the clean recipes I have on my site for dairy-free, refined sugar-free cashew ice cream. Once I start, it’s hard for me to stop, so I try to stay away from ice cream altogther. But I still crave it, especially ice cream with chunks of something tucked inside like chocolate chips, nuggets of banana, a swirl of peanut butter or a salty almond. Now look what I’ve done. I’ve gotten myself all worked up.

A homemade popsicle is my answer to an ice cream craving. It’s sweet, cold and creamy. It takes a little longer to eat. It’s a reasonable serving size and therefore an acceptable calorie count. And I can make it the way I want. My kids and I have been devouring these chocolate chia pudding popsicles. I got the idea from seeing Martha Stewart on The Today Show. She took a small container of plain yogurt and swirled some fruit into it and then stuck a popsicle stick into it and froze it. I thought that was a clever breakfast to-go for the warmer first days of school. We eat a lot of chia pudding for breakfast and snacks. My son prefers the chocolate version which I make with raw cacao powder and the next day we’ll add in fresh fruit or shredded coconut and the like. Chia seeds are really high in protein, fiber and good fats, so they make a great breakfast or substantial snack. So I took some leftover chocolate chia pudding, stirred some fresh raspberries into it and poured it into popsicle molds. Voila! Delicious and a truly healthful treat!

I think these are like a chocolate popsicle with texture. I kept the sweetness pretty low, but if you want this to feel more like a dessert, it would be super easy to make it sweeter. Just add a little honey or maple syrup to the pudding before freezing and you’ve done it. Or use more dates if that’s how you’d like to go. I love the combo of chocolate and raspberries, but you can keep these straight chocolate or add coconut or chopped cherries or strawberries or even raw cacao nibs if you’re a hardcore superfood junkie!

One message I am always trying to get through to my students is that so many recipes are just formulas that you can tweak into dozens of other recipes. Chia pudding is one of those. Once you know the basic ratio of chia seeds to liquid to sweetener, you can change it to any number of flavor combinations, like strawberry-basil, blueberry-almond or mango-coconut. You can blend fruit into the almond milk if you don’t want chunks. Or just stir pieces into the pudding if you want the texture. Or mini chocolate chips would be nice. And then there’s peaches and raspberries. Or lemon. Or banana. I can do this all day. Savor these popsicles in case they’re you’re last ones until next summer!

Chocolate-Chia-Raspberry Popsicles

Pamela

Print Recipe

Servings -6 popsicles

Ingredients

1 ¼ cups unsweetened almond milk or a combination of coconut milk and almond milk
3-6 pitted dates or sweetener of choice to taste
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2-2 ½ Tablespoons raw cacao or unsweetened cocoa powder depending on how chocolaty you like it
¼ cup chia seeds
¾ cup fresh or frozen raspberries
4-6 popsicle sticks

Instructions

Place almond milk, dates, vanilla and cacao in blender and process until dates are pulverized. A Vitamix does a great job with this. If your blender leaves the dates too chunky, you can strain the mixture before adding it to the chia seeds.
Pour chia seeds into a medium container and add almond milk mixture. Stir immediately to combine otherwise you may end up with blobs of chia seeds. Allow to sit on countertop and stir every 5 minutes. After 15 minutes, it should have thickened.
Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.
When the pudding mixture is completely thickened, stir in the raspberries. Divide the pudding into popsicle molds and insert a stick in the center of each. If your molds hold 3 ounces of liquid, you should be able to get 5-6 popsicles out of this recipe.

Notes

The sweetness is to taste, so taste the mixture before refrigerating and adjust accordingly. If you don't want to use dates, try Grade A maple syrup, honey, coconut sugar or whatever you prefer.

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almond milk cacao chia seed raspberries vanilla

Parmesan Peppers Recipe

I just returned home from a beautiful vacation on Long Island with my family. It’s always my favorite week of the year and I enjoy the time even more when the weather is perfection like it was last week (barring the crazy 30-minute quasi-tornado on Tuesday morning.) I try to visit my parents in August rather than earlier in the summer because my father’s vegetable gardens are much more abundant now. I think one of the best, most rewarding things in life is to be able to grow your own food. On so many levels it’s good for you and good for the earth.

It can be very confusing to know what’s in season these days since we can buy virtually anything at any time. But if you’ve ever gardened, you know that certain vegetables are planted during certain times of the year. When I was growing up, I knew strawberries were only around for a short time so I would eat as many as humanly possible to take advantage of nature’s little springtime gift. Same with tomatoes. In fact, my mother loves telling me the story of when I was little and I ate so many unripe green tomatoes out of my father’s garden that I made myself sick. I guess you can have too much of a good thing.

Here’s a newsflash for some people: bell peppers are a summer vegetable. Sure you can buy them all year, but they’ll be imported and likely not organic. Another newsflash is that bell peppers are usually on the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list of most highly contaminated produce, so I always buy organic or not at all. Yikes. Now I look back and thank my lucky stars my father grew lots of peppers without pesticides.

Sweet bell peppers have a soft spot in my heart because they were one of Mr. Picky’s first “approved” vegetables. I can even remember the day he tried a stick of raw red bell pepper and said, “Hey, this is good! It’s juicy!” Munch, crunch. Then I went overboard trying to put sweet bell peppers in everything because I thought they were my ticket to broadening his limited palate. Well my strategy didn’t exactly work. But I’m glad I went pepper-crazy because I found this recipe for Parmesan peppers and it has become a favorite.

Parmesan peppers is one of the easiest and tastiest side dishes. It gets multiple flavor boosts from garlic, thyme, lemon and Parmesan cheese, although I often use Pecorino, a sheep’s milk cheese. It’s true that my son prefers his bell peppers raw (“juicy and crunchy”), I prefer the sweeter flavor and silky texture from roasted peppers. One sliver of these peppers wrapped around a bite of fish or roasted chicken is just delicious. And if you can find two (or even three) colors of peppers, this is a really beautiful side dish. And I repeat, easy!

So the big question is, does Mr. Picky eat this? And the answer is, almost. What does that mean? Like most kids, he’s slow to come around to vegetables and he likes to try things on his own terms. It’s annoying for sure, but it is pretty normal. So the first couple of times I made this, he was like “no way I’m eating that.” He did have the obligatory taste, but nothing more after that. More recently, he has eaten an entire piece and declared, “it’s pretty good, but I’m fine with one piece, thanks.” The last time he had one piece and said, “it’s good and I’m pretty sure I’ll eat more next time.” Welcome to my world!

While there are no guarantees in life, these peppers have always been a hit with everyone else who has tried them, including my two daughters. What I do know for sure is that summer and local peppers won’t be around forever, so do enjoy them while you can.

Parmesan Peppers

Pamela

adapted from Bon Appetit, June 2011

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Servings

Ingredients

4 bell peppers a mix of yellow, red and orange is nice
1 clove thinly sliced garlic
8 thyme sprigs
1 Tablespoon unrefined cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup grated Parmesan or Pecorino
juice of ½ lemon if desired

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Stem, core and quarter bell peppers; place on prepared baking sheet.
Toss with garlic, thyme and olive oil; season with salt and pepper.
Arrange skin side down in a single layer and roast until softened, about 30 minutes.
Remove from oven and preheat the broiler.
Sprinkle the peppers with Parmesan and place under the broiler until the cheese is melted and peppers are slightly charred. This will only take a minute or two.
Remove from oven and drizzle with lemon juice, if you like. You can leave the thyme sprigs, but they are not to be eaten.

Notes

Feel free to leave out the cheese if you need. These are also great with a few capers sprinkled on when they come out of the oven.

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bell peppers garlic parmesan thyme

California Nicoise Salad Recipe

I just arrived in New York for my annual summer vacay with my parents, my sisters and their families. We’ve descended upon my parents’ house in Long Island for a week of old fashioned backyard fun with a few trips to the beach and the ice cream parlor. It also involves some serious menu planning for 12-16 people at any given meal. If such persons were all adults, this task would be less challenging than if half of them were children ages 1-19. But I love a challenge!

Sometimes for lunch we’ll make a giant composed salad where each component has its own space and I serve the dressing in a small pitcher on the side. I notice the kids (and picky adults, in general) eat much more of a composed salad than a tossed one. My son, Mr. Picky, can always find something to choose from a composed salad versus one that is tossed, especially if there’s one ingredient that’s offensive and touching everything else. Touching ingredients is a deal breaker!! This version of a classic Nicoise salad is always a winner, plus it’s one of my favorite salads of all time.

The classic typically contains oil-packed tuna, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, green beans (usually the small haricot verts), Nicoise olives, and boiled potatoes. It’s a perfect salad for summer because it can all be prepped ahead and served cold or at room temp. And it’s a meal unto itself.

But I have made so many versions of this salad subbing chicken or slow-roasted salmon for the tuna or even white beans for the tuna for a vegetarian version. Regular string beans for the haricot verts. Even cucumbers have worked nicely. But in this version, which I call a “California Nicoise,” I sub in the very Cali avocado for the potato, because everyone seems to be watching his or her carbs lately! Because of the versatility of this salad, it was a hugely popular in my classes last summer with everyone — Paleo-types, vegetarians, vegans, gluten-free peeps and so on.

Visually, I think this salad is so beautiful and quite healthful, too. It is well balanced with high quality protein, fat and lots of veggies. I love using the very best tuna for this salad. I featured this Tonnino oil packed wild tuna in a recent Five Friday Favorites and it is perfect here. If you want to use standard canned tuna, just drizzle a little olive oil on top for added flavor.

Green beans can be blanched, radishes sliced and eggs boiled the day before and refrigerated. But again, feel free to sub other ingredients if that would make you happy. And if you notice more takers than usual for this salad, perhaps employ the composed method for other salads too!

California Nicoise Salad

Pamela

5 from 1 vote

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Ingredients

For the dressing:
½ teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ Tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 Tablespoons champagne or white wine vinegar
1/3 cup unrefined cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil
8 ounces haricot verts thin French green beans or string beans, trimmed
2 Tablespoons kosher salt
4-6 hard-boiled large eggs **peeled and halved lengthwise
1-2 cans high-quality tuna preferably packed in olive oil, drained and broken into pieces
1 large avocado cubed***
½ cup olives preferably Niçoise
¾ pound cherry tomatoes halved
4 radishes trimmed and thinly sliced
Bibb lettuce leaves to line platter if desired, or shredded as a bed for the lettuce

Instructions

Whisk all the dressing ingredients together in a medium bowl or shake in a screw-top jar.
Prepare a bowl of ice water for the green beans. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add kosher salt. Add the beans and set a timer for 3 minutes. After beans have cooked for 3 minutes, test for tenderness. They should be crisp-tender, but not taste raw. Drain and immediately submerge in the ice water bath. Drain after 5 minutes or so and pat dry. Can be done the day before and refrigerated.
Assemble the salad by arranging ingredients in separate groups. I like to line the platter with lettuce either just under the tuna or the entire platter. Drizzle everything with dressing or leave on the side for each person to dress his/her own salad.

Notes

*Ingredient amounts can vary based on preferences.
**Place uncooked eggs in a saucepan and cover with water. Place over high heat and bring to a boil. Cover, turn off heat and time for 10 minutes. Rinse with cold water or transfer to a bowl of cold water. Can be done a day ahead and peeled before serving.
***the avocado is in place of the traditional boiled, small new potatoes. But use 1 pound of potatoes if you prefer.

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avocado eggs green beans olives radishes tomatoes tuna

Baked zucchini fries recipe

My kids can’t get enough of these zucchini fries and I can’t get enough of hearing them beg me for vegetables! After I returned home from New York last week, my son, the one and only Mr. Picky, said, “I don’t know what you’re making for dinner this week, but please include zucchini fries!” Pinch me.

I know the recipe is posted on the Today Show website, but I didn’t actually demo the recipe during my segment and I do have some tips to share. Keep in mind, if you love zucchini fries when you go to a restaurant, these are similar, but not exactly the same. Those are deep-fried, and we all know deep-fried food, EVEN A VEGETABLE, is really, really bad for you. Sorry to remind you, but restaurants use the lowest quality oil to fry foods and they use it over and over and over again. It is like a big vat of inflammation and free-radicals and transfats and likely GMO’s — everything you want to avoid. So we’re going to bake these, ok?

They’re still going to be crispy and tasty, they’re just not going to be greasy. Perfect reason to dip these fries into something. I eat them as is, but my husband (just a grown-up kid really) likes these dipped in tomato sauce (homemade recipe here) or Ranch dressing (homemade recipe here) and my son will also eat them with mustard. I find two things to be true with kids and vegetables — they love dips and they like things that resemble French fries. That makes this recipe a double winner!

But I’m not going to lie — even though this is an easy recipe, requiring no special skills or culinary training, they’re kind of a pain to make because you’re dipping a lot of zucchini sticks into egg and then breadcrumbs and arranging them just so on a baking sheet. My advice is to get your kids or someone to help you and then this becomes no big deal. You can also cut the zucchini in the morning to save on prep time before dinner.

I know so many of you have zucchini coming out of your ears right now. Try not to let them grow too big. For this recipe especially, you want to select small to medium zucchini which contain fewer seeds and aren’t bitter like some big ones. And the trick is to cut them into the size no bigger than a normal adult finger. If you cut them too big, they won’t get tender enough and if you cut them too small, they can get dried out.

The only problem with this recipe is that it never makes enough. It says “serves 6,” but that’s hardly true. I actually never got to eat 1 fry during the entire month I taught this recipe because there were never any left. Once you start, you can’t stop. So for the first time, I can’t answer the question “how long do leftovers last in the fridge?” No matter how many you make, there won’t be any!

Baked Zucchini Fries

Pamela

5 from 1 vote

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Ingredients

Unrefined cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil
4 medium zucchini
1 cup dry bread crumbs use GF breadcrumbs to make these GF*
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese omit to make these dairy-free
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon ground paprika
1/8 teaspoon dried oregano
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 large eggs**
Unrefined cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil spray

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and brush parchment with olive oil.
To cut your zucchini into fries, cut each zucchini in half crosswise. Cut each half lengthwise into halves or in thirds, and each one of those pieces into 4 sticks or into ½-inch wide sticks.
In a shallow dish, combine breadcrumbs, Parmesan, garlic powder, paprika, oregano, red pepper and salt. In a separate shallow dish beat eggs very well.
One by one, dip each zucchini stick into the egg mixture, then into the bread crumb mixture. Shake to remove any excess and place on the baking sheet.
Once all are coated with breadcrumb mixture and on the prepared baking sheet, spray with olive oil.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, flipping over halfway to ensure browning on both sides. Serve plain or with marinara sauce or Ranch dressing.

Notes

*Do not use panko bread crumbs instead of the standard bread crumbs. They do not stick as well.
**You can also dip the zucchini in olive oil instead of eggs for an egg-free version.

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

For more great zucchini recipes, check these out:

Grain-free Chocolate Zucchini Cake (seriously the bomb!)

Zucchini-Gruyere Tart

Zucchini-Blueberry Bread

Zucchini Bread Pancakes

Corn and Zucchini Frittata

Summer Garden Frittata

Zucchini “Pasta”

Summer Minestrone

eggs garlic powder parmesan cheese zucchini

How to Make a Smoothie Bowl: Recipe and Video

I live and teach in Los Angeles where people grab onto a food fad and hold on for dear life. Until the next cool thing comes around. Acai bowls were all the rage a few years ago. Maybe they haven’t made it to your neck of the woods yet, but no matter because you can make one yourself. Not only are acai bowls delicious, but they are a pretty healthy snack. It’s almost like a not-as-sweet soft serve made with frozen acai, frozen bananas and frozen strawberries plus a little juice or almond milk to help blend it. But it’s the toppings (like granola, coconut, nuts, banana) that make an acai bowl even more delicious because of the contrast in textures. And then when acai bowls weren’t exciting enough, pitaya bowls came onto the scene.

And then someone figured out that you could pour your smoothie into a bowl and top it with any number of great toppings and eat it with a spoon instead of a straw. Genius.

Most people seem to make their smoothie bowls pretty liquid-y, but slightly thicker than a normal smoothie, at least so the toppings don’t sink. I personally like them as thick as an acai bowl or soft serve. I taught these in my breakfast classes last year and everyone preferred the thicker versions. There is no right or wrong way to do it. BUT, if you want to eat this as a meal replacement, I recommend getting some protein in the smoothie or in the toppings.

Protein could be:

nuts or nut butter
seeds, like hemp, flax meal, sunflower, pumpkin or chia
protein powder

These are some of my recent creations that I have posted on Instagram and Facebook, but like I said — there are infinite possibilities. Watch my video if you’re a visual learner and also because I show you how to make a smoothie bowl in a Vitamix and a food processor.

And if you really need an actual recipe just to get you started, see an example below. Or just make your favorite smoothie with a little less liquid, pour it into a bowl and add lots of toppings! Have fun and stay cool!

Smoothie Bowl

Pamela

5 from 1 vote

Print Recipe

Ingredients

3 ripe bananas peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces, about 2 cups (if you’re using a Vitamix or another high-powered blender, you can cut bananas into larger pieces), FROZEN or 1 ½ ripe bananas, frozen and 4 frozen figs
1 cup frozen strawberries
¼ - ½ cup unsweetened almond milk or milk of choice or even more if you want a pourable smoothie
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract optional
sweeten to taste with a few teaspoons more or less of raw honey, Grade A maple syrup or a couple drops of stevia, if necessary (you might not need any)
Toppings: bee pollen hemp seeds, raw cacao nibs, toasted coconut, chopped walnuts or almonds, granola

Instructions

Place bananas and strawberries in the bowl of a food processor or Vitamix or other high-powered blender. Add almond milk, vanilla and sweetener to taste. Process until smooth and creamy. I find that the food processor needs a little more liquid and a few more seconds to achieve the desired consistency, which is like soft serve ice cream.
Transfer the ice cream to bowls and serve immediately with toppings, if desired. If eating this as a meal for breakfast, try to add protein toppings such as nuts or seeds or add a scoop of protein powder to the blender. If you use a sweetened protein powder, add a handful of ice to the blender so the smoothie is not too sweet.
You can also store the smoothie bowl in the freezer for another time, but you’ll need to allow it to sit on the countertop to soften up for a few minutes before eating so that it’s scoopable.
Notes: these measurements are flexible. Use more strawberries if you like or sub blueberries.

Notes

Notes: these measurements are flexible. Use more strawberries if you like or sub blueberries.

Another variation: chocolate smoothie bowl – use 4 frozen bananas, 2 Tbs. raw cacao powder, ¼ - ½ cup almond milk, ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract, sweetener if necessary

Mocha smoothie bowl: make chocolate smoothie bowl with 2 teaspoons instant coffee powder

Chocolate peanut butter smoothie bowl: make chocolate smoothie bowl with 2 Tablespoons (or more) natural peanut butter.

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