Day-to-day eating habits can be very individualistic. For instance, some people stick to three square meals a day, while others prefer smaller meals and a few snacks throughout the day. Though I have a set of general eating "rules" that I recommend for everyone, when I get asked what's best in terms of frequency of meals, my answer is whatever really feels best for your body. Personally, I'm a smaller meals and snacks kind of girl. I feel best eating something every 3-4 hours, rather than having big meals. The latter leaves me feeling like I can't digest my food easily. I've definitely mentioned this before on the blog, and it's the reason why I've shared so many snack recipes! As for my go-to snacks, I like whipping up a smoothie, or eating a yogurt or fruit with nut butter. I also have ... [Read More]
muffins
PB & J Banana Muffins {vegan + gf}
As with most food bloggers & writers, I love to bake and cook for loved ones. Whenever we have guests in town, I enjoy feeding them well. A lot of the time when I meet up with girlfriends, I'll bring them some of my latest kitchen creations to try. I show my love for people by making them nutritious, delicious food. When I stay at my parents' house in Jersey, it's fun to make snacks, dinners, and desserts for everyone to enjoy. A few weeks ago when I was there, I was a little off of my Chef Nicole game because I was under the weather, but I still whipped up some yummy recipes for them. One night I made creamy spring veggie & asparagus puree soup for dinner, because I knew my mom would dig it (She did!). I also made my most recently published Shape recipe, blueberry banana Greek ... [Read More]
Pumpkin Apple Banana Muffins {vegan}
Packed with apple, pumpkin, banana and cinnamon, and free of refined sugar, these healthy vegan muffins make for a great autumn snack, small breakfast, or guilt-free dessert! One of my favorite September activities is apple picking. But since it's pretty warm and summery feeling in San Diego in September, sometimes I forget that the apple orchards are ready to be visited. A few years we've been too late in the apple picking game and either a.) go when the orchards are pretty picked over, or b.) miss apple picking all together (like last year!). BUT NOT THIS YEAR! Nope, in 2016 I was on high apple picking alert! In the San Diego area, the best area to visit for apple picking is Julian - a cute little town I've talked about before. It's about a 75-minute drive from my house, and it's like ... [Read More]
Banana Almond Butter Muffins {Vegan & Gluten Free}
Happy Friday friends! Hope that your first full week of January has been awesome, and that you have some fun weekend plans ahead. Speaking of fun, today I've got a fun recipe to share with you guys! Whenever I go food shopping, bananas are always on the list. I buy a ton of bananas! A and I both use them for smoothies almost daily, plus I like to smear bananas with nut butter or top yogurt bowls with banana slices often. However, I somehow wound up with too many bananas in the house over the past week. We couldn't eat them fast enough, and before I knew it, I had 5 brown bananas sitting in my fruit basket. I threw a few of them in the freezer for later smoothie use, and then I had a yummy idea for the remaining ones... ....baking some muffins! ... [Read More]
Banana Pumpkin Muffins with a Cinnamon Brown Sugar Topping
Hi everyone, happy Sunday! I have a few updates for you all on the blog front. I've updated my recipe pages to include all of my latest kitchen creations. I also updated my workout page, which now includes a new section for my hiking spot posts. Lastly, I added a 'travel & fun' page so that all of my travel posts, restaurant and winery experiences, as well as random adventures are in one place. Fun stuff! And now onto food - banana pumpkin muffins to be precise... After a morning yoga session, running errands, and going hiking with my hubby and puppy yesterday, I came home and decided that a bit of baking was in order. Since I had an open can of pumpkin and some ripe bananas ready to be eaten in my fruit basket, and I've been loving muffins lately, I whipped up some tasty banana ... [Read More]
[Secret Ingredient] Double Chocolate Pumpkin Muffin Bites
A couple of days ago, I was on a mission to come up with a mini-something recipe that could serve as a baby snack or dessert. An I'm-waiting-for-dinner-to-cook-and-need-to-eat-a-little-something-ASAP recipe. Also an I-just-ate-dinner-and-am-not-really-hungry-but-want-a-bite-of-something-sweet snack. Since pumpkin eats are constantly on my brain these days, I naturally incorporated some into the recipe - in more than one way. I think that including chocolate in a sweet recipe is always a good idea, so this recipe quickly became a combo of chocolate + pumpkin yumminess. And then there was the mini muffin tin I happened to see peering from my cabinet just waiting to be used, all of which resulted in these babies... Then comes the *secret ingredient* part... I wanted to omit use of any oil ... [Read More]