Favourite Healthy Recipes Volume 1

I love experimenting with new recipes, finding ideas and changing them to make them my own, and experiencing new flavours and palettes that are exciting and delicious.

The most important things to think about when you are preparing are:

• Will this meal provide me with a broad range of vitamins, nutrients and minerals?
• Am I eating a wide variety of colours?

It’s hard to eat a lot of colours if you have only meat and potatoes on your plate.  So this is why eating fruit and vegetables is essential to reaching all of your daily nutrient requirements.

Here are a few of my most favourite recipes that have been in my family’s meal rotation lately.

Breakfast

Breakfast is your first opportunity of the day to start consuming as many nutrients as you can, to jump start your day.  Ideally, the very first thing you should do to start your day is moving out the toxins that have accumulated overnight.  So try and drink a tall glass of water with lemon.  Then, enjoy this smoothie at least 20 minutes later.

Funky Monkey Smoothie

• 1 frozen banana
• 10 large frozen strawberries
• 1 large handful of spinach
• 1 tbsp peanut butter
• 2-3 cups almond milk
• 1 tbsp hemp seeds
• 1 tbsp cocoa

Add all ingredients to a high speed blender.  Cover with almond milk, and blend until smooth.  Your children will love this smoothie and won’t even notice the greens hiding inside!  Love smoothies for breakfast??  Click here for our Breakfast On The Go – Mixed Berry Smoothie recipe.

Lunch

Lunch is best if it’s an easy salad or something that is pretty mobile.  I mean, who knows where life will take you by lunch time!!  So pack something that is easy to throw together and enjoy on the run.

Mango Salad

• 1 ripe mango, diced
• 1/2 head of romaine lettuce, washed and torn
• 1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced
• 1 red bell pepper, diced1 roma tomato, diced
• 1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds

Combine lettuce, vegetables and sunflower seeds.  Dice mango, being careful to save the juices.  Add the mango and juice from the mango to the salad and toss.  To learn more about why you should include mango’s in your diet click here for 10 Health Benefits of Mango’s.

Dinner

This is a great dinner option that you can enjoy at your home.  It replaces the empty nutrients in white or whole grain pasta with spaghetti squash!  Feel free to tweak the recipe with whatever vegetables you have on hand.  This recipe is also great as a left-over lunch option.

Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti

• 1 spaghetti squash
• 1 pound grass fed ground beef
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 8 oz mushrooms, sliced
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1 jar tomato sauce (check label for no added sugar) or use your favourite homemade spaghetti sauce recipe

Cut squash in half, scoop out seeds and place on a baking sheet face down.  Bake squash at 350 F until spaghetti-like consistency.  Scoop the flesh out of the skin with a fork.  Cook ground beef in a skillet until no longer pink.  Add garlic, green peppers, onion, zucchini and mushrooms and sauté until vegetables are tender.  Add tomato sauce and heat through. Cover spaghetti squash with sauce and enjoy!