Throughout our new Clean Eating lifestyle, I've found a number of fantastic blogs with great clean, healthy, nutritious recipes. My current favorite is
elana's pantry. I love her take on food and am astonished by what she is able to do with simple, whole ingredients (and she lives in Boulder!). This weekend I made her
Peach Almond Ice Cream -
FANTASTIC! This "ice cream" is made with almonds, water, peaches, dates, stevia, vanilla extract and lemon juice - that's it. No milk, no cream, no eggs, no sugar... just good, healthful ingredients make an amazing ice cream. One quarter of this recipe is a large serving of ice cream and only has 150 calories and 2.25 grams of fat - I will be making this all summer and gobble it up guilt free.
I also recently made Elana's
Chocolate Chip Brownies - again simple, healthy ingredients: almond butter, eggs, agave nectar, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, sea salt, baking soda and dark chocolate chips 73% cacao. Probably not quite as healthy as the black bean brownies I've been making but these were so much closer to a traditional, fudgy brownie. So good.
photo :: elana's pantry
One thing I've noticed about clean eating is that if you are allergic to nuts there isnt a lot of food left! But apart from that these things sound like they'd be tasty for those who can eat them. Have you used stevia much? I've been afraid too since I react to other forms of alternate sugars.
ReplyDeletethe nut comment is completely untrue... a lot of the blogs I follow are also gluten free - when you can't or don't want to eat gluten, nuts are a great alternative but as far as clean eating goes, whole wheat flour, rice flour or coconut flour can be used instead of almond flour and like in the ice cream above, you could use coconut milk or regular cow's milk instead of the almond milk. Clean Eating's basic guidelines are:
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- eat a combination of lean protein and complex carbs at each meal (5-6 small meals a day)
- drink 2 to 3 liters of water a day
- avoid all over-processed foods, particularly white flour and sugar
- avoid chemically charged foods
- avoid preservatives
- avoid artificial sugars
- avoid saturated and trans fats (eat 2-3 servings of healthy fats a day)
- avoid sugar-loaded beverages such as colas and fruit juices
Basically, eat whole, natural foods - the foods God created rather then foods created in a lab of factory. Eat things that fuel your body instead of nutrient void foods like candy. There is plenty that you can eat without touching nuts.
As for stevia, this is the first time I've used it. I may be wrong, but you react to artificial sweeteners, not alternatives like honey - correct? In the above recipe you don't need it if the fruit is sweet enough or could use a bit of honey or agave instead. My jury is still up in the air about the use of stevia - many clean eaters love it and use it daily to sweeten their coffee, others avoid it all together. We'll see where I fall after some time. Ideally in clean eating, the natural sugar in fruit would be all that you eat but if you still want to enjoy baked goods from time to time, there are alternatives that are much better then white sugar and I am on a journey exploring them.
Cool - since you are my only clean eating source and you can eat nuts I am probably just seeing recipes that you use because you like the nuts and assuming those are the primary options instead of just preferences. I do have the biggest problem with artificial sweeteners which I avoid totally - including splenda. But I have heard mixed reviews on stevia. I will be interested in what you conclude on that one. Happy eating this summer!
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