Avocado pasta

A delicious pasta sauce that’s gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, and vegan!

Avocado pasta sauce can best be described as creamy pesto. The avocados create an incredibly creamy and mild base without the heavy cream and butter in traditional cream sauces. 

The biggest key to creating a flavorful sauce is to use plenty of fresh herbs and garlic. Use whichever herbs you like best. I recommend a combination of basil and parsley, but you can also use cilantro. What’s most important is that you use fresh herbs because they pack more of a flavor punch than dry herbs.

The sauce will be thick, so I recommend using noodles that are strong enough to carry the sauce. For example, I would choose spaghetti or fettuccini over a thin pasta like angel hair pasta. Also, I don’t recommend using penne because the sauce is too thick for it to get in the inside of the noodle.

Avocados are known to oxidize and turn brown, so you may be wondering if the same thing will happen to the sauce. Fortunately, the lemon juice helps to keep it from turning brown, but it definitely tastes best on the first day when it’s fresh.

Another tip: Add the sauce to the pasta while it’s still warm so it absorbs more of the sauce and flavor. That’s why I recommend making the sauce before cooking the pasta.

My favorite way to eat the pasta is with grilled chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and artichoke hearts, but you can serve it any way you like.

Avocado pasta sauce

Ingredients

• 2 ripe avocados
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup fresh basil
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 12 ounces spaghetti or pasta of your choice

Directions

1. In a food processor, add flesh from avocados, garlic, basil, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Blend until creamy. If sauce is too thick, add another Tablespoon of lemon juice.
2. Cook pasta per package directions
3. Gently toss pasta in pan with sauce. Add protein, veggies, cheese, or whatever other mix-ins you want.

Healthy Cranberry Relish

During the holidays, we’re surrounded by so many caloric and unhealthy treats that sometimes it’s actually refreshing to eat something healthy.

This cranberry relish is exactly that. It’s literally just raw fruit with a teeny tiny bit of sweetener. The combination of fruits works really well together too, and the colors in the relish make for a very festive addition to your holiday table.

Additionally, it is very very minimal work – you don’t need to worry about peeling the fruit because it just gets ground up in the food grinder – talk about all the extra fiber!

Cranberry relish

Ingredients

• 1 (12 ounce) package of cranberries
• 2 apples, cored with skin still on
• 2 oranges, seeded with peel still on
• 1 (8 ounce) container pineapple tidbits
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar or sugar substitute like Splenda, depending on level of sweetness you want

Directions

1. Cut the fruit into chunks. The chunks don’t need to be small – they just need to fit in you food grinder or food processor
2. Stick chunks of fruit in food grinder
3. Stir in sugar and serve

Two-ingredient cookies (plus mix-ins)

Sometimes the best things in life are the simple things. And these two-ingredient cookies are no exception.

I saw this recipe circulating around Pinterest, and it reminded me of the three-ingredient pancakes I like to make. After collecting enough overripe bananas I finally gave them a try this past week.

They were very easy to make – just mash bananas with oats. And the mix-in possibilities are endless. I made one batch with chocolate chips and a little vanilla extract and another batch with Craisins and chocolate chips. You can also add peanut butter, chopped nuts, coconut flakes, cinnamon, Nutella, etc.

These cookies also meet just about every dietary restriction you can think of. They’re gluten free, dairy free, nut free, vegan, vegetarian, and Paleo(ish).

I love these cookies as a snack or for breakfast. It’s easy to grab them and go. And sure they’re technically called “cookies,” but the only thing in them is bananas and oats. And you can’t feel guilty about eating bananas and oats for breakfast!

Have you made these before? What are your favorite mix-ins?

Two-Ingredient Cookies

Servings: Makes about 12 cookies

Calories: About 36 calories per cookies

Ingredients

• Two large, ripe bananas
• 1 cup quick oats

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Mash bananas with the oats. Add any mix-ins you want.
3. Form mixture into one-inch balls and place on greased baking sheet
4. Bake for 15 minutes

Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days. I actually recommend storing them in the refrigerator because the cookies seem to collect a bit of moisture.

Three-Ingredient Banana Pancakes

When I was in 8^th grade, I subscribed to Seventeen magazine because... obviously. One of the magazines talked about celebrity diets and I read that Jessica Biel’s favorite breakfast was three-ingredient pancakes (bananas, eggs, and cinnamon). So for the next month I made three-ingredient pancakes every single morning. Despite the fact that there’s not much to them they actually do turn out like banana-flavored pancakes. And they were obviously super healthy since a whole stack of them had very few calories and lots of protein. That Jessica Biel was onto something!

Recently, I've seen this recipe start to pop up everywhere on Pinterest, clean-eating websites, etc. So I decided to make them again, and I don't know why I ever stopped! They're so easy. And they're gluten-free and paleo.



Three-Ingredient Pancakes
Yield: Makes about 5 small pancakes

Ingredients

• 1 ripe banana
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

1. In a bowl, combine the banana, eggs and cinnamon.
2. Mix/mash until the mixture becomes all smooth. You can use a fork to achieve that.
3. Grease your frying pan with a little bit of oil or butter.
4. Heat your stove to a low to medium setting.
5. Pour two tablespoons of the batter in your pan and cook for about 1½ minutes on both sides or until done.
6. Serve as is or garnish with anything you like (banana slices, cinnamon, honey...).