Berry Almond Quinoa Porridge

My brother recently took out a big stack of cookbooks we had stashed in a cabinet to find some creative ways to make breakfast and lunch. I think he gave up pretty quickly, as usual, but he never moved them back into the cabinet. Since the stack of books was right in front of me, I rifled through them and was intrigued by the concept of quinoa porridge in The Hungry Student Vegetarian Cookbook. This cookbook was gifted to me by a friend, and the recipes are quite easy and interesting to make.

The next morning, I made it and changed a few things, such as replacing the milk with almond milk, switching the sugar with maple syrup or honey, and changing the toppings.

Banana Açai Smoothie Bowl

Açai has been everywhere on Instagram so when I saw a packet of açai puree at Trader Joe’s, I jumped at the chance to finally make my own açai bowl. First of all, for those of you who wonder what açai is, it’s a berry that comes from Brazil and it contains a lot of antioxidants. I’m not sure about the rest of the claims, such as preventing diseases and weight loss, but açai sure is delicious.

I always thought it was pronounced a-KAY, but it’s not! The real spelling is açai, with a c-cedilla, so that means the ‘c’ is said softly and the ‘i’ is not silent. The correct pronunciation is ah-sah-EE. You’ll thank me in the future when you’re faced with the prospect of ordering something with açai and don’t want to embarrass yourself pronouncing it.

I added 1/2 cup almond milk in my açai bowl, which was a bit too much because it doesn’t have the consistency of scoop-able ice cream, so I revised the recipe and cut the milk down to 1/3 cup to make it thicker.

• Servings: 2
• Time: 10 mins
• Difficulty: Easy
• Print

A smooth and delicious bowl of creamy goodness. Made with bananas, blueberries, açai and spinach, this is sure to subside the sweet cravings for the day.
Ingredients:
2 bananas, peeled
1 packet of Trader Joe’s açai puree, put under warm water for 5 seconds
1/4 cup blueberries
1/4 cup spinach, washed
1/3 cup almond milk

Instructions:

1. Put all the ingredients in the blender and blend until smooth and thick. It should have the consistency of ice cream. Divide smoothie into two bowls and enjoy right away with toppings such as berries, granola and coconut flakes.

Strawberry Rhubarb Upside Down Almond Cake

I made this cake to clear out the very ripe strawberries in our fridge and use up the last stalks of rhubarb. This is a gluten-free almond cake with strawberry and rhubarb and it is so delicious. It’s also healthy because it has fruit, coconut sugar (which is better for you than white sugar), and almond flour. I have to admit, the cake won’t win any beauty contests, but I have high regards for the taste.

This recipe comes from a combination of an almond cake recipe from Well Plated by Erin and my own mixture of fruit on the bottom. The most famous upside down cake is probably the colourful pineapple one, but I would choose this one over the pineapple one any day.

Fig, Banana and Peach Smoothie

After a 6-week long holiday in Europe, I’m finally back home. It was a beautiful trip, which I will post about later, but for now, you’ll have to content with a smoothie recipe. One thing about traveling is that you can’t always find the healthiest foods all the time, so I’m trying even harder to eat healthy now that I’m home. For example, this was my first smoothie in 6 weeks!!! And I think I passed my monthly quota of meat and potatoes by a mile. Whoops.

This smoothie is the sweetest smoothie I’ve ever tasted, and this is without any additional sugars. The sweetness mainly comes from the figs, which came from our own fig tree! The rest of our garden exploded as well, including the lettuce and zucchini. The only thing that kinda turned for worse was the grass. Brown grass is not that nice… Anyways, I’ll try to finish up the vacation post soon (hopefully), and make more food!

Greek Yogurt Healthy-Freddo with Berries

The day I’m done school the weather decides to be blistering hot. Well, blistering hot compared to the rest of the year. It’s 30°C here and I know that might not seem hot in other places, but trust me, here it’s incredible.

I decided to beat the heat by making a cold dessert, and what better than the Italian dessert Semifreddo, which literally means half-cold? I was looking at Elisabeth Prueitt’s cookbook, titled Tartine All Day, and I happened upon the most gorgeous picture of chocolate Semifreddo. I was so hyped to make it until I saw the ingredients and realized I didn’t have half of them and it wasn’t as healthy I would have liked.

No-Bake Matcha Tahini Energy Bites

Sometimes we all need a bit of extra energy. Especially when it comes in the form of a sweet and nutty ball with matcha and dates. These bites literally melt in your mouth! And I absolutely adore the soft texture of the dates with a bit of crunch from the almonds and chia seeds.

I call this the easiest and healthiest dessert, snack, whatever, invented! (My dad called them donkey shit but whatever, it’s the taste that counts, right?) It only takes 5 minutes to blend all 5 ingredients in a food processor before popping them in the fridge for a few hours. I may or may not have also licked the pot sparkling clean while waiting for the bites to firm up.

Healthy Sesame Mochi Ice Cream

I’ve had this one time in Japan and I loved it so much that I’ve been waiting to make since forever.

It’s essentially healthy ice cream, with only sesame powder and bananas, wrapped in a naturally-sweetened coating. And it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It just takes time to refrigerate and freeze, but during that time you don’t have to be like standing in front of the fridge and watching the mochi. Unless you want to for some reason?

I’ve also been preparing a food board presentation for school, which may or may not include healthy brownies, so if that works out I’ll share that here, plus the presentation board because it has food drawings on it :).

Tropical Blueberry Smoothie

I’m going to Hong Kong soon!!! Just one more week of school and then I’m off. I actually can’t wait for all the delicious food and the much warmer weather than we’ve been having over here. Like can you believe it’s snowing in March? I fear this city is adopting Quebec’s weather 😦 .

Weirdly, although it’s really cold outside (well, for me it is because I’m a naturally cold person), I still love making smoothies, yogurt bowls, chocolate banana chia seed pudding and all sorts of cold stuff for breakfast.

Raspberry, Lemon and Almond Milk Creams

I was flipping through a cookbook, La Tartine Gourmande by Béatrice Peltre, that I had lying around in my house, mainly out of guilt that I had never actually made anything in it yet. All the recipes looked so good but I was feeling lazy. And then I reached the dessert section.

If you’ve read some of my other blog posts, you might know that I have a thing for desserts. So naturally, my interest in the cookbook spiked up to like 200% and I wanted to make everything. Lemongrass and blackberry teacakes, dark and white chocolate mousse cake, rhubarb mousse fraisier, apple and pear verrines, spiced panna cotta… There were just so many yummy-looking recipes!