smoothie: probiotic berry-banana

A favorite before school breakfast, or after school snack. 

Probiotic Berry-Banana Smoothie

(makes about 4 cups)

• 2 ripe bananas
• 2 cups kefir (sweetened or unsweetened, plain or flavored, your choice)
• 1 cup non-dairy or dairy milk (I usually use hemp or almond milk)
• 1 cup organic strawberries (or mixed berries)
• optional - 2-4 pitted dates to sweeten

Combine all ingredients in a high-powered blender. Blend until smooth. Store any leftovers in the fridge, and simply shake or whisk before serving if the smoothie separates. 

smoothie: "peanut butter and jelly"

Packed with protein to fuel my kiddos through sports, playing in the yard, and homework.

"Peanut Butter and Jelly" Smoothie

(makes about 6 cups)

• 2 cups non-dairy or dairy milk (our favorite for smoothies is vanilla hemp or almond milk)
• 2 cups whole milk kefir (we like these ones from Lifeway)
• 1/2 cup nut butter (I use almond butter)
• 2 cups frozen organic mixed berries
• optional - you can add maple syrup, honey or a few pitted dates for sweetness, though this probably won't be necessary

Combine all ingredients in a high-powered blender and blend until smooth. My kids like their smoothies thick, but you may add water if you want to thin the smoothie out. Store any leftovers in the fridge and give them a shake or whisk before serving if the smoothie separates. 

simple clean eating smoothie: blueberry-almond with ALOHA daily good greens

Please note that this post contains affiliate links. Same price of goods to you, but I am compensated for recommended products that my family and I genuinely enjoy. Thank you, in advance, for considering purchasing through these links and keeping The Full Plate Blog out of hobby status!

I know, from working with Dr. Hyman on the launch of his 10 Day Detox, that a well-made smoothie sustains me until lunchtime, leads to glowing skin, and gets my day off on a good note-- setting a pattern for healthy eating the rest of the day. This week, I am sharing a favorite of mine. If you have some ALOHA Daily Good Greens on hand, this is a perfect way of "sneaking" them in. 

Blueberry-Almond Smoothie with ALOHA Daily Good Greens

(makes about 4 cups)

1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1 cup water (or more to reach desired consistency)
1 cup frozen or fresh organic blueberries
1 or 2 packet(s) ALOHA Daily Good Greens 
1/4 cup raw almonds
hearty handful organic spinach (about 2 cups)
optional - 1 banana (if you like your smoothies sweeter)
optional - 1/4 avocado (if you like your smoothies creamier)

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until desired consistency. 

Looking for other smoothie ideas? Here are a few more favorites:

• Avocado-Mango Smoothie
• Green Machine Smoothies
• Ginger-Cucumber Smoothie

{heart-shaped} egg-in-hole

It's snow day season in the Northeast! 

Whether the call from school comes in at 5am, or you go to bed knowing you'll have a 'leisurely' morning ahead, we might as well embrace the extra time we have to make breakfast, right?

"Egg in Hole" has become my go-to these past two weeks of {seemingly} endless snow days and delays. Any shape cookie cutter will do, but since it's February, I'm mortifying my boys with lovey dovey hearts.

All you do is cut the center out of piece(s) of bread, and

pop that center piece into the toaster. {You'll be treating the cut-out piece like toast.}

Then the outside crust goes into a buttered fry pan, and you crack an egg into the center.

Use a butter knife to scramble the egg a bit {if your kids are like mine and will avoid the yolk if it's whole…}.

Flip it when the egg starts to set.

My kids love this meal a) because it takes a few extra minutes for me to make, which means a few extra minutes for them to play with their LEGOS and b)

b/c they can pick it up with their hands.

Voila! Egg in Hole. So easy, but seems special. Especially on a snowy morning.

simple spring asparagus with olive oil fried eggs

Spring is finally here in the Northeast, and organic asparagus is popping up in the produce section. 

Pair that with me wrapping up Mark Hyman MD's 10-Day-Detox, making a real effort to eat super healthfully and fill my plate with nourishing whole foods, and you've got my recent favorite: olive oil fried eggs over broiled asparagus. 

The recipe is quick and easy… but not one my children have warmed up to yet. So, on nights when I want this for dinner, I pull one of my homemade freezer meals out for them, like baked taquitos, chili, or power green pesto.

When my husband first saw me making this he announced that "there's no way I am eating all of that asparagus" and "is that all we are having?".

Note that he later proclaimed the meal, "really good" and "more filling than I thought it would be". 

The trick is to get really good eggs. If you have chickens or a farm near you, lucky you. I don't, but I did find Happy Eggs at our local market… and they happened to have a deal where you got 1/2 dozen eggs if you bought some amount of groceries, making dinner almost free! {Except for the exorbitant bag of speciality foods I purchased in order to get the free eggs… this is the sort of logic that drives my husband nuts.}

Anyway, back to our simple springtime recipe. You can absolutely roast/broil the asparagus ahead of time. I did this earlier in the afternoon when I was waiting on the school bus, then I just left it out on the counter {at room temp} so it was good to go when I came home from baseball, tennis and tae kwon do chauffeuring. 

When we got home, I warmed about 1 1/2 - 2 Tablespoons olive oil over medium heat and fried the eggs until the whites were fully set, and the yolks would still be runny. {You can fry your eggs longer if you don't like the yolks runny. Of course, be mindful if salmonella is of concern to you.}

I served our eggs and asparagus with a side of the pickled red onion that I had leftover from Day 1's dinner from the 10 Day Detox (which was Roasted Salmon with the Onion Relish; that's my amazon affiliate link). If you're not doing the detox and/or don't have any of the relish leftover, you could also serve it with some jarred artichoke tapenade, a sprinkling of shredded Parmesan, some lemon zest, or crumbled cooked bacon. Or you could just serve them as is. If you leave your yolks a little runny they become a decadent sauce over the asparagus. 

Olive Oil Fried Eggs over Asparagus
(serves 2 as an entree)

• 1 1/2 lbs asparagus (usually 1 large bunch)
• olive oil
• 4 eggs
• sea salt and pepper, to taste
• optional accompaniment(s): pickled onions, artichoke tapenade, lemon zest, Parmesan, bacon

Snap the tough bottom end of asparagus spears. Line them up, single layer, on a lightly oiled rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle asparagus with sea salt and pepper. Broil until asparagus is tender and lightly charred, about 6-8 minutes, shaking tray and/or flipping asparagus at halfway point. Asparagus can be made ahead, and served room temp, or chilled. Divide asparagus between two plates.

In a fry pan, warm olive oil over medium heat. Crack eggs into pan, sprinkle with sea salt and pepper, and cover for about 2 minutes. Remove lid, and continue to cook eggs until whites are completely set and yolk is set to desired firmness. (For runny yolks, this will be another 2-3 minutes… longer if you want your yolks set too.) Transfer two eggs per plate, placed on top of your asparagus. Drizzle with cooking oil, if you'd like. Serve with pickled onions, or any other choice of accompaniment for extra flavor, or simply enjoy as is.  Enjoy for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. 

Baked Eggs and Sausage in Hash Brown Cups

This winter, I mastered the art of the make-ahead breakfast. Each and every week, I did a few minutes of  cooking on Friday, and reaped the rewards of leisurely mornings on Saturday and Sunday. OK, truth be told, we were hustling everyone onto the ski mountain by 8am, so the mornings weren't really relaxing per se, but knowing breakfast was taken care of {not to mention, delicious and nourishing}, made these family ski weekend mornings much more fun.

This was one of the family favs. Made with just 3 ingredients, these are a keeper. Click here for the recipe. 

First, you spray 12 muffin cups with your choice of cooking oil spray, then press thawed hash browns {that you have squeezed as much water out of as possible} into the base and up the sides of each cup. Sprinkle each has brown cup with salt & pepper. Pop the tin into a 375 oven for about 30 minutes, or until the potato cups are crisp.

You'll see that the potatoes "shrunk" a bit. That's totally fine.

Simply top each potato cup with a few slices of sausages. We like Applegate's Chicken-Apple or Chicken Maple ones.

Next, crack a medium egg in each cup. I say medium because if you try to fit a large or jumbo sized egg it'll probably overflow the muffin cup… not a big deal, but it's kind of messy. I mean, if you can avoid trying to catch slimy egg whites as they roll off the muffin tin all over your counter, you might as well…

Then the muffin tin goes back into the oven for about 10-15 minutes for soft-set eggs and 16-18 minutes for hard-set eggs. Gently run a butter knife around each egg cup to remove it from the tin, and serve them warm.

I typically made them hard-set because then they became a breakfast you could pick up with your hands. And when you're 7, that is wildly exciting.

maintaining swell: a detox-friendly recipe for an Herb-Walnut Frittata + this one happens to be St. Patrick's Day friendly as well!

While there's a sense of accomplishment {in addition to looser jeans} when you finish Mark Hyman MD's 10-day detox, for me, I knew I was going to have to expand my repertoire of delicious recipes that stuck to similar parameters {sugar, dairy and gluten-free} in order to continue to feel good {and lose a few more of the lbs that had crept on in my 40s}. I still start most every day with one of the protein-packed smoothies from his book. That's been an easy habit to adopt, that keeps me feeling energetic all morning long.  

{BTW, if you're just joining me, and have no idea what this detox is that I am talking about, you might like to read the back story here. And if you're on Facebook, you can join my adventure in getting back to "swell" here.} 

Alright, so I am a few weeks out now, and I've realized I am a better mom...and wife...and friend if I continue to integrate a few of the other detox principles into my every day life. The pic above was snapped by one of my kids. Despite looking like I am death-gripping the wheel, I'm not stressed. This is my norm. I spend most of my afternoons/evenings driving to and fro, right up until dinnertime.

Which is why this pic my little one snapped of me a few weekends ago is also key. I need to make time to get outside. Daily.

That was one of the tenets of the 10 Day Detox, but when your normal walking route looks like this {pretty, but that's a 4" tick slab of ice, people}, sometimes it's hard to rally.

So, what's a girl to do when winter just will not melt away?

Yak Tracks. Don't laugh. They work.

I also need to just take some time to relax. Each and every day. If I can take one of the detox baths, great. But if there's no tub, or my family needs me, then I need to unplug and recharge my own batteries.

And then there are the meals. I loved that each of the meals in the 10-day detox was chosen for me, and that each one was delicious… that made it easy to follow. There's some comfort in knowing exactly what to eat and when. But after I was done with the detox, and had cycled through the rest of the recipes in subsequent weeks, my mind started to wander. I'm not really one to follow recipes per se, but I read cooking magazines like some read romance novels.

Since wrapping up the detox, I've started looking at recipes differently. Some I zero in on right away and am thrilled I can add them to my repertoire. Others I know I'll have to tinker with until I get a new version perfect for the way I want to eat. Recently, I flipped through a cookbook on a friend's counter and saw a recipe for an Herb-Walnut Frittata that looked delicious and pretty post-detox-friendly. But I knew I could tinker with it a bit and make it even better. So, I did so and recently shared the new iteration with a family-owned market in our town.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know I am a fan of anything that can be made ahead. And if a recipe can be served for breakfast, lunch or dinner, even better! For this recipe, I made a thick "pesto" of various herbs, greens and nuts, and I warmed the pesto to gently toast the nuts.

Then, using the same food processor, I whisked the eggs, poured them over the pesto...

gave it a whisk...

and popped it in the oven to bake.

Voila!

The first evening I made it, we enjoyed it warm for dinner.

The next morning, I served it warm for breakfast, with some Applegate Farms chicken sausages on the side.

And a few days later, I was thrilled to find some leftover, which I had room temp for lunch. If you'd like to see a few of the original recipes that inspired me here's one, here's another and here's another. My version bumps up the good fat, omits dairy, and makes enough so a family of four has plenty of leftovers!

Herb-Walnut Frittata
{makes 8 servings}

1 cup raw walnuts
4 cloves garlic
2 cups fresh cilantro
2 cups fresh parsley
2 cups chard, spinach or kale
1 bunch scallions, white and light green parts
salt and pepper, to taste
2 Tablespoons grapeseed, olive or walnut oil
8 eggs, whisked

Preheat oven to 350. In a food processor, combine the walnuts, garlic, cilantro, parsley, leafy greens, scallions. Pulse until a thick pesto is formed. Add salt & pepper {to taste}. Add the oil to a 10" oven-proof skillet. Saute the pesto until the nuts become fragrant. Turn the burner off and whisk in the eggs. Transfer the skillet to the preheated oven and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the center of the frittata is set. {It will spring back when touched.} Frittata may be served warm, room temp, or cold. Any leftover frittata will keep, in the fridge, for 3-4 days. 

I know this recipe might have caught some of your eyes because it's so perfect for St. Patrick's Day. Looking for other green food ideas? I've got you covered! Click here to go to my Pinterest board where I've gathered a few of my favorites for my family. Enjoy!

Note: The above links will take you to Amazon. When you click, it takes you to their website, and anything you purchase there will help support swellmom and the full plate blog. Thanks in advance for the support.