Ways To Make Fruit Fun

As each day passes, I'm becoming more settled into my life here in the Big Apple.  I had to get over some bouts of homesickness and fears of feeling alone, getting used to the harshness (at times) of the city, finding myself in yoga, learning to make time for meditation, appreciating my apartment even though it's small, overcoming fears about starting my health coach business and learning to eat clean, healthy food...everyday.  I feel more comfortable as each day passes, even though there may be slip ups here and there, but I realized yesterday as I was hanging out with some fabulous new friends that I'm so lucky.  I just need to be grateful, realize what I have and thank the universe.


Food that makes me happy (everything??!!) would be oats and fruit.  They are such clean, even, consistent, healthy, healing foods and I'm super grateful when I make myself a bowl of oatmeal with fruit or when I combine different fruits to make a delicious, sweet dessert or breakfast.  So here is what I've been up to the past couple days with fruits and veggies.  Please pass these recipes on, they are so wholesome and fun.  The green smoothie I had this morning and it was like coffee, woke me up and I felt awesome!




Green Smoothie (a little different than my previous post)

2 frozen bananas
2.5 tbsp of maca/hemp/cacao powder blend (raw, Nativas Naturals brand)
1 giant handful of fresh organic spinach
1/2 small avocado
1 small organic pear
Juice from 1 lemon
2 cups of water or coconut water (add more if you want to thin it out)

Combine everything in your high speed blender (I have a ninja blender and I love it) and pour in your favorite glass.  The avocado makes it creamy and the frozen nanas make it cold and milkshake-like.  Add less water if you want it thicker.  Excellent way to get your greens first thing in the morning.  You can omit the raw protein powder since not everyone will have this but it's a good way to get a different flavor and get your serving of superfoods.

I played around last week with combining dates and the sweet, pink lady apples I bought at Trader Joes....the apples taste like candy, I kid you not.  They are so sweet that it's hard to believe you're eating fruit.  I combined soaked dates and 2 apples and I was thinking how perfect a combo this is.  I'm so obsessed with pumpkin pie spice lately so this fruit combo plus pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon is so delicious and evokes images of the leaves changing (I can't wait to see the leaves change in Central Park!).  So, I played around with this, whipped up this sweet apple combination for overnight oats and was in heaven.

Apple Pie Oats

2 small organic super sweet apples (pink or green)
6-8 medjool dates
Pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon
1 tsp of vanilla extract

If the dates are harder, soak them.  The last batch of dates I bought at Trader Joe's were smaller and harder for some reason (oh no are they going out of season?!) so I soaked them.  Usually medjool dates are large, soft and chewy.  If you buy non medjool dates and you want them chewier, have no fear, just soak them.  I soaked them for about an hour.

Combine the dates and apples in your food processor and process on high.  You can cut up your apples first and feed them slowly into your food processor.  Then add pumpkin pie spice and/or cinnamon and keep blending. Then add your vanilla extract and blend a little longer.  The mixture will be sticky and thick.

Combine this date/apple mixture with cooked oats, put it in the bottom of a jar of overnight oats or mix it well into your chia seed pudding.  This is like apple pie without the baking.

Chocolate Brownie Nana Ice Cream

So, for this next recipe, I combined a little bit of chia seed pudding, nana ice cream and these awesome chocolate brownies that can also be made raw.  I go through these periods of time where I feel like eating everything sweet for breakfast, as you can see!  Sometimes I just can't make up my mind, oats or pudding or nana ice cream, it all sounds good!

Brownies:

1 cup of oats
2 tsp of vanilla extract
1-2 scoops of chocolate protein powder or cacao powder (raw)
4 medjool dates
5 tbsp of water
Optional: 2 tbsp of peanut butter

Combine everything in your food processor.  The water will get the food processor going but you may need to turn it off and mix everything up yourself before turning the processor back on, don't add too much water or they will be watery brownies.  When they are the consistency you want (thick), scoop them into a brownies dish and freeze or scoop into balls and freeze.  You can break them up when you take them out of the freezer to eat.

Chia seed pudding:

2 tbsp of chia seeds
1 tbsp of maple syrup
2 tsp of vanilla extract
3/4 cup of almond milk

Combine and refrigerate.  I made the pudding in a mason jar so I could add the other ingredients on top.

Nana ice cream:

2-3 frozen bananas in your blender until thick and creamy.

Combine it all! Put the chia see pudding in your mason jar, then break up your brownies and add them on top of the pudding, scoop in some nana ice cream then top with more brownies.

Almond Butter Banana Sandwiches

Cut up two bananas, spread almond or peanut butter on a piece of banana then put another piece on top. Do this until you use all the banana pieces.  Freeze for about an hour so that you can still bite into the banana pieces.  They taste like an ice cream sandwich :)

There you have the yumminess for today, people!  I'm still going strong with the 30 days of yoga.  My 30 day membership to Sonic Yoga expires on Wed :(  I will miss it but I'm going to figure out where I'm going next or if I'll stay there.  Yoga studio memberships are priced like full gym memberships in this city so it's a bit much for just yoga.  I taught my first yoga class last Thursday and it went well, I was very excited to get that under my belt and I'm going to be teaching another class on my friend's rooftop in Brooklyn this week...rooftop yoga!!

I'm headed out for a run now!  I made my oil and salt free pesto sauce for my potatos and I made spring rolls tonight so I'll get that recipe on the blog soon.