Clean Eating Oatmeal Cookie Pancake recipe

I love cooking breakfast on Sunday mornings. I usually try to get creative and try new clean eating breakfast recipes. Last week I came across Rachel Ray's Oatmeal Cookie Pancake recipe and my mouth started watering. I immediately scanned the ingredient list and figured out how to clean it up. My adapted recipe below...

Ingredients:
2 cups of oatmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup plain greek yogurt
3/4 cup of water
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2 really ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup of raisins
2.5 teaspoons of agave nectar
Sugar free or light Maple Syrup for topping

1 - Combine all ingredients (except for syrup) in a large bowl. 

2 - Mix as good as you can with a wooden spoon and then pour into blender. I used my NutriBullet to blend the batter. I had to do it in about 3 different batches, which is why it's important to mix it up as good as you can before adding to the blender.

3 - Heat skillet and spray with extra virgin olive oil. Heat pancakes until bubbles form on top, then flip. Since there are walnuts and raisins in these, they aren't going to look smooth like normal pancakes, but more like a oatmeal cookie. 

This recipe made about 10, very filling pancakes. Definitely enough to feed 4 people. Since it's just me and my husband, I froze the leftovers and pop them in the toaster for a quick breakfast when I'm in a hurry. They are so good toasted!

Do you like to cook breakfast on the weekends? If so, what's your favorite dish? Please share below! And if you're interested in more recipes, check out my other clean eating recipes.

Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cups Recipe

Happy New Year all! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! I sure did, as you can probably tell from my lack of posting, we've been very busy throughout the holiday! Lots of visiting with family and friends, and I loved every minute of it.

I thought it would be fun to share one of my favorite clean eating desert recipes to kick off the new year. Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cups. They got rave reviews from the parties I brought them too this year. They are super yummy. Clean eating doesn't mean bland eating, it can be fun too! Below is a modified version of the recipe from HeandSheEatClean.com (love this blog...I get a lot of clean recipes from it!).

Ingredients:
3/4 cup all natural peanut butter (make sure the only ingredient is peanuts!)
1 heaping tablespoon of natural honey
20 oz of chocolate, 60% cacao, I used 2 bags of Giradelli chips
Mini cupcake paper cups



1 - Mix the peanut butter and honey together and set aside
2 - Melt chocolate chips in the mircowave in 30 second intervals, stirring after each 30 seconds.
3 - Once chocolate is completely melted, pour enough into each little cup to cover the bottom
4 - Layer on a dab of the peanut butter mixture in each cup
5 - Cover the peanut butter mixture with another layer of chocolate
6 - Freeze cups for an hour and the voila! Clean eating peanut butter cups!

This recipe makes about 50 small cups. I purchased a decorative holiday tray from my local grocery story and arranged them on this for the parties I went to. The tray was a nice leave behind as a hostess gift.

What did you bring to holiday parties this year? Or if you hosted, what did the menu include? Please share!

Clean Eating Apple Pecan Protein Bar Recipe

Last weekend we went to the apple orchard with my husband's family. It was a beautiful day and the orchard was packed! I asked my husband to buy the smallest bag for apples. So what does he get? A full bushel!

Now I have a bushel of apples that I need to use in a week or two. The first place I turn for recipes? Pinterest! I found a Clean Eating Apple Cinnamon Raisin Pecan Protein bar recipe on Far Cleaner Life and made a few changes to create my own bars. Ingredients are as follows:

3 scoops of whey protein (I used 2 scoops of chocolate and 1 scoop of vanilla)
1.5 cups rolled oats
1 medium apple, cored and chopped into small pieces
1/2 cup of pecans, chopped
1/2 can of 100% pure pumpkin (make sure no preservatives have been added)
1/2 cup of natural unsweetened applesauce
3 egg whites
4 Tbsp of ground flax
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Combine all ingredients into a medium size bowl and mix well
3. Grease 8x8 baking dish (I used coconut oil) and pour mixture into dish and spread evenly
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes
5. Let cool, cut and serve! You can wrap bars in plastic wrap and store in refrigerator for later.

These turned out delicious. 1/2 can of pumpkin is just enough pumpkin flavor (any more than that can be a bit over bearing). I love these types of bars for traveling or a quick breakfast with coffee in the morning.

What's your favorite apple recipe? Please share below in the comments...I have a whole bushel left to go through!

Clean Eating Apple Crisp Recipe

As much as I love Summer, as soon as October hits, I'm all in for Fall. Bring out the tights, bold nail colors, and cider mills. Last year we went to the orchards in Long Island and it was SO MUCH FUN. We brought back two huge bags of apples and I made a large bowl of apple sauce. But after one serving of it, as good as it was, I was kind of over it. So when my neighbor dropped off a bag of apples from a Michigan orchard, I hit the interwebs and researched some clean eating recipes.

Apple Crisp it is! I found several clean recipes but many still called for butter and brown sugar. I found this recipe on The Slender Grapefruit that looked good, and did my own variation.

Here's what I used:

7 small green apples
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup natural honey
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cups oats
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup granola (I used Nature's Path Organic Coconut Chia Granola from Costco)
2 tbs of ground flax
1/4 cup plain greek yogurt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Wash and chop up apples into cubes, toss with vanilla extract, and set aside
3. Mix honey, cinnamon and nutmeg, set aside
4. Mix oats, almonds, granola, ground flax and Greek yogurt in separate bowl
5. Spread apples in a 9x13 banking dish.
6. Coat with honey mixture, and then top with oat mixture. Cover apples evenly.
7. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until apples are soft

I served this over a little bit of Greek yogurt, instead of the usual ice cream that comes with crisp. Just keeping it clean! This got rave reviews from my husband and brother in law.

What are your favorite 'apple' recipes? I'd love to hear about them in the comments below! Please share!

Clean Eating Blueberry-Raspberry Jam

I've been on a huge fruit kick lately. I realized how cheap Costco is for buying fruit and I've been stocking up. I get 3x the amount of strawberries and blueberries at Costco for the same price of what I pay for a small amount at my local grocery store. Costco is the way to go! What we don't eat in a weekend I freeze for smoothies or parfaits for a later time.

I normally just buy strawberries and blueberries but this past Costco visit the raspberries were calling my name. They looked so perfect!

I've been wanting to make my own jam for awhile now. I don't buy it from the store because it contains so much sugar, and the sugar free jam, to me, tastes awful. I found recipes from two of my favorite food blogs, Oh She Glows & PaleOMG and used them both to make Blueberry-Raspberry Clean Eating Jam. Here's what I used:

2 cups of fresh raspberries
1 cup of frozen blueberries
1/2 cup of all natural honey
2 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp lemon juice (or a juice from one lemon)


1. Add blueberries to a small sauce pan over medium heat. As they defrost they will start 'popping' open, and juices will start to come out.
2. Add raspberries, honey, and lemon juice
3. Continue to stir and mixture should start to get thicker
4. Add in chia seeds
5. Stir until all fruit is broken apart. I kept mine over medium heat for about 25 minutes, and then 10 minutes over low
6. I let it cool and then put it in my one of my grandmother's mason jars :)

I used this jam on my toasted Ezekiel cinnamon raisin English muffins for breakfast on Saturday morning and it was delicious!

Clean Eating Sloppy Joes

It was hard to find a clean eating sloppy joe slow cooker recipe...so I just made one up! They turned out delicious. So delicious, that my husband and brother in law ate them all before I could take a picture. Here's what I used:

Ingredients: 
1.5-2lbs of ground turkey, beef or venison (I used venison)
1 cup of all natural ketchup (make sure it doesn't contain a bunch of added preservative junk)
1/4 cup of hot sauce (if you don't like spice you can leave this out)
1 chopped green pepper
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 tbsp of sweet pickle relish
1 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
8 whole wheat or multi grain buns (I like to toast my buns :)

1. Brown the meat in a large skillet. Once it's no longer pink, drain, and add to the slow cooker.
2. Add all other ingredients and stir well.
3. Cook for 8 hours on low (may very based on your slow cooker). This is a 'cook while at work' approved recipe!
4. Serve 1/2 cup of mixture on a toasted bun and enjoy!