Maui Black Bean Soup

This Maui Black Bean Soup is the next recipe I decided to try.  It is in the Clean Eating cookbook by Tosca Reno pg. 71.  It has 178 calories a serving.  I gave this one a try.  Now that we have moved from Japan to Northern part of the United States 40 something miles from Canada, it is freezing here and we are not use to it.  So it is nice to have a bowl of soup for dinner to warm us up.  I did pour the soup over brown rice and my husband loved it.  My kids ate it and wanted chicken nuggets to go with it. But for my husband and I , we ate the soup over a bed of rice.  It was delicious and my husband asked to make it again another night.  So far, I am doing good.  We haven't found one yet , that we haven't enjoyed. 

clean eating's caramel popcorn

August/September 2012 Clean Eating Magazine had a recipe for Caramel Popcorn.  With Halloween around the corner, I wanted to give it a try.  I have to admit, I wanted something sweet and didn't have any sucanat but decided to use brown sugar instead.  I used the pure maple syrup and the vanilla like the recipe called for , but omitted the peanuts.  The commissary didn't have any raw unsalted peanuts.  It is a nice alternative to more fattening snacks and give plain popcorn a lift.  Not bad.

Yummy clean eating Pumpkin Bread.

The pumpkin bread is awesome.  It came from the clean eating the website http://eatingcleanrecipes.com/tag/clean-eating-pumpkin-bread/Which also includes the recipe.  It is the best pumpkin bread I have tasted. So moist.  The only problem is stopping at one piece.  
I make this and the loaf is gone with in an hour.   Yummy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mexican Roll Up

I tried the Biggest Loser Mexican Roll ups.   Instead of Salsa, I used cut up tomatoes and add fat free Cheddar cheese in for my kids.   It was a really nice recipe. Really easy to make and not a lot of steps or ingredients.  I will make this one again.  Works great for nights that are hectic and you need something quick.   This recipe can be found on page 176 of the Biggest Loser Cookbook.  One roll is a serving and the serving is 234 calories, 34 g protein and 14g carbs.

Protein Bar

First, I have to get better with my picture taken skills with food.  OK, now that I got that out of the way.   I decided to try for a homemade protein bar from the Oxygen Sept 2012 Magazine.  It is called the Goji Dark Chocolate Bars. 
I omitted the one step of covering them in Dark Chocolate.
First I picked up the Goji berries from GNC.  Instead of Chocolate Brown Rice protein powder I used Chocolate whey protein powder.  The main reason for that is, I couldn't find the chocolate brown rice protein powder around my area and didn't want to order it online.  I wanted to go ahead and make it.  
They were really sticky after I mixed them, so I took parchment paper and lined a small round flat bowl and put the mix in it and froze it.   I was planning on dipping it in the chocolate, but decided to take a taste after it was frozen and really liked the taste of it, I am sure the chocolate would make it even better, but it does taste awesome without the chocolate covering.   I am defiantly going to make this recipe again and again.   This is the first protein bar recipe that I have made and really enjoyed.  Just as good if not better than the packaged ones that can be full of sugars and processed stuff.    It says it makes two servings and is 299 Calories a serving with 18g protein and 11g sugar.   I am sure the count is somewhat lower because I didn't use the dark chocolate to cover it. Also I just break small piece off of it when I want something sweet and have gotten more than five servings off of it.    A definite keeper in my book.   Tonight I am trying the Mexican Roll up from one of the Biggest Loser Cookbooks.  Picture and review to come later.

Goal for my Blog

My reason for starting this blog is to review recipes that I find in my clean eating and other healthy magazines.  I look through them and say "I would like to try that recipes" and sometimes I do and most other times the magazine gets put back on the book shelf thinking I will get to it later.  Later comes and goes and nothing.  So I have decided to sit down and go through my magazines and write down all the page numbers and what magazine they are in and give it a go.   I realize that I buy the magazines but don't get my money worth because I don't try the recipes.  I am determine to break that habit and see how good the recipes are and which one I can live without.   You have to give everything a try.  I love eating clean but find that my family gets bored with it.  I can eat the same thing in and out but they love to have variety.  My kids are a harder audience with the clean eating and I am trying to change their habits and get them to eat healthier.   My goal for this blog is to make the recipe and review how easy or difficult it was to make and find the ingredients in my area and if I had to order anything online.  Also I will be seeing what I think of the taste and what my family thinks of the taste.   I know everyone has different taste and I want to be completely honest with the how we feel about a recipe. So with that said, I am going to try a few recipes each week to see how they turn out.  I also have some clean and healthy cookbooks that I plan on trying recipes from too.   I look forward to this challenge and see how the recipes turn out.