Recipes – Page 2 – Snapshots & My Thoughts by Ailee Petrovic

Food March 12, 2015

6 Helpful Resources for Healthy Eating

healthy I’ve been a vegetarian since 6th grade, and I’ve been cooking my own meals for many of the last 16 years. I would have to use the word ‘cook’ very loosely, as I started off my veggie years by microwaving a couple of black bean burgers for dinner. Over time, I started to look for more exciting recipes to ‘change it up,’ as there are so many meals you can eat, you just need a little inspiration from time to time. I have a number of amazing recipe and cookbooks (some shared below), and have used the internet to find a number of recipes that we use regularly, including The Forest Feast and Oh She Glows.

Not only do I peruse food blogs for main courses, but I also use a number of sites to find healthy vegan desserts. As I’ve mentioned before, my friend Mara of Hook, Thread and Tinker bought me Rawsome Vegan Baking for Christmas, and I’ve tried almost 70% of the recipes so far. It is amazing. McKenzie recently bought me Deliciously Ella‘s new cookbook, which I’m so excited to dig into. Her website is amazing, and I’ve already tried and fallen in love with her Banana, Pumpkin Seed and Almond Granola Bars.

Today I’m sharing my favorite 6 websites for healthy recipes: The Forest Feast, Naturally Ella, Minimal Baker, Oh She Glows, Deliciously Ella and This Rawsome Vegan Life. Do you have other sites that you reference for recipes? Please share!

forestfeast2

1 The Forest Feast: My good friend, Brittany, recently bought me The Forest Feast cookbook for my birthday, and after oogling over it for ages, I’m so excited to own a copy. I love Erin’s website, filled with delicious recipes with categories like food, drinks, entertaining and traveling. Check out the website and buy a copy of the book!

Favorite recipe: Stuffed Sweet Peppers

Food February 25, 2015

Healthy, Raw Vegan Oreos

My sweet friend, Mara, bought me an incredible raw, vegan cookbook for Christmas, and I have been cursing her every week for it (only kidding!), as I cannot stop myself from making these delicious desserts. In all seriousness, this book has saved poor Sasha from enduring the millions of healthy baking recipes that I tried to invent in my head for years – apparently there’s actually a science to these things and the recipes cannot just be winged like cooking!

I’ve been making most of the recipes following the exact instructions in the book, but yesterday I decided to go a little rogue on Emily’s ‘Raw Chocolate Cookies Sandwiching Vanilla Cashew Cream’ recipe and I’m so glad I did, as the result was phenomenal. I’ll call it the healthy, gluten free, refined sugar free, raw vegan Oreo (catchy little name, right?), or perhaps just vegan Oreo for short.

I’ve got to warn you, these will make about 6 cookies, but they won’t last more than 6 minutes (especially if you’ve got guests over)! These are definitely my new ‘go to’ items, although I won’t stop making my other healthy vegan favorites (Black Bean Brownies, Brownie Bites, Mini-Cheesecakes and Chocolate Beet Brownies).

Cookie Ingredients

3/4 cup of oats (gluten free if baking for someone with Celiacs or gluten intolerance)
2 1/2 cups of pitted dates (I use these which you’ll find next to the raisins and other dried fruit at the grocery store)
2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons of melted organic coconut oil

Recipes December 16, 2014

Christmas Peppermint Cocktail

On Friday evening, I had three of my closest girlfriends over for a Christmas dinner and catch-up. Like I mentioned yesterday, these ladies make me cry with laughter. Isn’t that just the best? We had some wild moments back in high school, all of which are totally cringe-worthy now and are funny to reminisce over.

I tasked Brittany to come up with a Christmas cocktail, and she outdid herself by in turn tasking her entire work department to submit the most delicious cocktail they could find. She arrived at our house with a large bag from Specs, filled with three fancy liquors and candy canes. I knew we were going to enjoy ourselves.

These candy cane cocktails literally taste like candy canes, so you would be tempted to drink them quickly… and to have too many. Warning: Do not do this. They are strong. But delicious. So I highly recommend you pull these out at your holiday party, because you won’t regret it.

Food November 18, 2014

Healthy Raw Vegan Mini-Cheesecakes

I’ve been searching for healthy vegan cheesecake recipes on Google for ages, and I kept finding ‘healthy’ recipes that include tons and tons of maple syrup or sugar, which, in my books, isn’t healthy. I also found a number of recipes that involve freezing the cheesecakes (which qualifies them as being raw), but I think frozen desserts to have less taste than that of warm or room-temperature ones.

Given that I could not find my perfect healthy vegan recipe online, I decided to do some experimenting and oh-my-goodness, y’all… I love these cheesecakes so much. They may not be low fat (think quite a bit of nuts), but they are low-carb!

Sasha and I demolished these over the weekend – our favorite toppings were raspberry jam (we love Bonne Maman Raspberry Preserves) and just plain raspberries. As explained below, I mistakenly tried adding the toppings after they had already set, which should be avoided (although they still tasted amazing).

Food November 4, 2014

Vegan Everything Bar

If you live in Houston and haven’t tried Sinfull Bakery, you are truly missing out. I first tried their delicious treats at Catalina Coffee, when I grabbed a vegan Everything Bar while checking out. i intended to eat only half at first, but on that specific day, I learned a very important lesson: It is impossible to only eat half of an Everything Bar.

Last weekend, Isla and I ran into Catalina while Sasha was at Martin’s Tailors (best in Houston!) getting new pants hemmed. Recognizing the fact that I could not get a coffee without reaching for the Sinfull treat, I grabbed a bar and decided that I would share it with Sasha (ha, well he ended up getting 1/6th). I looked at the ingredients on the back – all healthy, but some ingredients that I avoid from day-to-day, like flour and brown sugar. After church on Sunday, I thought to myself, ‘Why don’t I make an everything bar?’ After all, these desserts are supposed to be just a gathering of lots of healthy ingredients from one’s pantry.

Alas, my everything bar recipe. This first attempt included a lot of: ‘Oh, that needs some salt…’ and ‘Yikes, too dry… needs coconut oil.’ Once they came out the oven, Sasha and I couldn’t keep our hands off them. I’m pretty darn proud of this Ailee-invented-Everything-Bar (as always, vegan and gluten and refined-sugar free). Please try it at home and let me know how it goes!