Hi there! Today I have a delicious and creamy dressing recipe for you guys. It may not be a looker but it’s sure packed with flavour and goes great with any salad combo! I used some delicious fresh basil from my plant (throwback to last year when I did Herb Month) and it adds so much!
This dressing takes five minutes to whip up, and has all of the taste of a balsamic dressing, but is much creamier and has that extra basil in there. It’s the consistency of a good ranch dressing. I like it because oftentimes I’ll make vinaigrettes, and it’s nice to have something more unctuous. Isn’t that a great word? When something is unctuous you know you want to eat it.
For lunch lately I’ve just been roasting a bunch of veggies (including sweet potatoes, of course) and tossing them with some lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and a sick dressing like this one. It just ties everything together and still tastes so light and fresh! Some other things you could slap this on would be sandwiches, wraps, and bowls. It’s so good! Here’s the recipe;))
Creamy Avocado and Balsamic Dressing
Serves: 4
Total Time: 5 minutes
Ingredients:
1/2 a ripe avocado
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
4 small leaves of fresh basil, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 tbsp water
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Mash the avocado very well in a small bowl. You want as few lumps as possible.
Whisk in the rest of the ingredients, then serves in salads, wraps, bowls or sandwiches.
Hope you like this dressing! It’s great for summer;))
Smoothie bowls are my ABSOLUTE favourite breakfast! They’re so refreshing, and make me feel like I’m having a treat on vacation somewhere. You can pack a bunch of veggies in there without even noticing, and the topping combos are endless. ENDLESS!
It took me a while to get the perfect smoothie bowl thickness, but I think I’ve finally cracked the code. You want to have the ingredients as cold as possible, and limit the amount of watery fruits that you put in your smoothie. The base of all of my smoothies is a frozen banana, because that’s what makes them thick and creamy. If you don’t like banana you can try using mango, because I’ve found it has a similar effect. The ingredients might take a little while to come together in the blender, but eventually they’ll form a mixture that’s almost like soft serve in texture. Using a tamper is critical here, because you can continually push the ingredients towards the blender blades.
In this post, I’ve included two different recipes for summer smoothie bowls, because I couldn’t decide which one to pick! One has banana, berries, and spinach, and the other has banana, spinach, kale, and watermelon. Yum! My watermelon didn’t get completely frozen, and so the result was a slightly more watery smoothie bowl. Make sure that you leave it in the freezer at least overnight! These recipes are definitely some of my favourites though, because they TASTE LIKE SUMMER and allow you to get some greens in!
Lets talk toppings. Really anything goes when you’re topping your smoothie bowl, but some ideas are more fruit, granola, dates, nut, seeds, and nut butters. I like a few different toppings on my bowl because it keeps things interesting. Some granola recipes that go GREAT on smoothie bowls are my Nutty Granola and Chocolate Coconut Granola. I’ve also been known to top my bowls with a Seedy Energy Square or two….. it’s so good!
I hope that these recipes get you hooked on smoothie bowls!
Add all of the smoothie ingredients to a powerful blender and blend on low, using the tamper to push the ingredients down.
Once the ingredients are starting to come together, turn the speed to medium and continue using the tamper. It may seem like you need to add more water, but continue until a thick, soft-serve like mixture forms. This can take a few minutes.
Scoop the smoothie into a bowl and top with the strawberries, granola, and peanut butter.
Add all of the smoothie ingredients to a powerful blender and blend on low, using the tamper to push the ingredients down.
Once the ingredients are starting to come together, turn the speed to medium and continue using the tamper. It may seem like you need to add more water, but continue until a thick, soft-serve like mixture forms. This can take a few minutes.
Scoop the smoothie into a bowl and top with the chopped dates, granola, and peanut butter.
Enjoy!
I know I’ll be enjoying these bowls all summer long! Thanks for reading and I’ll see you Wednesday:))
I’m so excited about this recipe! You don’t even know. Obviously with the pandemic going on I haven’t been eating out as much, and yesterday I was just craving something different. Something that made me feel like I’m at a restaurant somewhere. The ingredients that I had on hand didn’t seem very restaurant-quality (canned tuna isn’t exactly a star protein), but I came up with something that HIT. THE. SPOT.
I love tuna poke- I love raw fish of any kind, really, but getting a big chunk of tuna steak is kind of expensive and it’s not the kind of thing that I just have lying around in my fridge. HOWEVER, I do have a large quantity of canned tuna. I mixed it with mashed avocado, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and ginger to make an amazing mixture that definitely reminds me of delicious poke! Plus I formed it into little balls to serve, which really brought the restaurant vibe!
For the other components of this bowl, I tried to get creative and really have fun. We have some HOMEMADE pickled veggies people! Homemade!! They’re so simple to make and sooooooo tasty! Plus you have some wild rice, which contains tons of good-for-you vitamins, spinach, thinly sliced cucumbers, and a sprinkle of hemp hearts. Delish!
I really hope you give this bowl a try! It’s so fun to make and eat, and makes for a slightly-fancy at home dinner for when you can’t go out. Enjoy!
Tuna and Avocado Poke Bowls
Serves: 2
Total Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients:
For the Tuna:
1 can of light chunk tuna, drained (I used yellowfin)
1/2 a ripe avocado
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 1/2 tsp soy sauce
1 1/2 rice vinegar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
For the Pickled Veggies:
1/2 a large carrot, cut in half width-wise and shaved into thin strips with a veggie peeler (see Thai Ribbon Salad)
1/4 of a red onion, sliced very thinly
1 cup white vinegar
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 clove of garlic, minced
For the Bowl:
1/2 cup wild rice
1 tbsp rice vinegar
A couple of handfuls of spinach
1/2 a cucumber, sliced thinly
Hemp hearts or sesame seeds for topping
Directions:
Combine the wild rice with 1 cup of water in a pot. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook for about 30 minutes, until all of the water has evaporated. Then remove from the heat, fluff with a fork, and let stand for 5-10 minutes.
After the rice starts cooking, mix the vinegar, garlic, and chilli flakes in a small bowl. Add in the shaved carrot and thinly sliced red onion, trying to make sure that most of the veggies are covered by the pickling liquid. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for a least 35 minutes to pickle.
In a medium sized bowl, mash the half avocado and stir in the soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, sesame oil and tuna.
Once the rice is cooked, stir in the rice vinegar. Split the rice up into two serving bowls, and top with the pickled veggies, cucumber, a handful of spinach, half of the tuna mixture each, and some hemp hearts or sesame seeds.
Enjoy!
Hope you’re all having a great week! See you Friday;))
Hey there! Today I have a quick and easy recipe for you guys that you can just throw together and top with whichever protein you’d like! This Thai Ribbon Salad looks super fancy, but all you need is a veggie peeler and some veggies and you can whip it up in a snap!
In this salad I used zucchini, which is one of my favourite summer vegetables, along with cucumber, carrots, and bell peppers. Top it all of with some spinach, crispy quinoa, sunflower seeds and a protein of your choice (salmon goes amazing in this salad), and you’ve got a perfect summer salad!
Did I not mention the dressing yet? Because it’s AWESOME. I used the peanut dressing from my Asian Kale and Quinoa Salad with Peanut Dressing. I had to put the dressing in the name because THAT’S HOW GOOD IT IS. I’ll link to the recipe in the ingredients down below. In the meantime, lets get to the salad!
Using a veggie peeler or mandolin, slice the zucchini, cucumber, and carrots into thin strips. Start by dragging the peeler down the outside of one side of the veggies so that you don’t get a piece of all skin in your salad. Then continue to drag the peeler down lengthwise to create thin pieces. Once you’ve reached the middle of the vegetable, you can turn it around and repeat on the other side. It might be hard to get all the way through the middle of the veggies, so you can save that part for a lil snack later;)
Toss the veg with the peppers, spinach, sunflower seeds, quinoa, and dressing. Top with a protein of your choice (or leave as is) and enjoy!
Mushrooms are the best man! They’re so meaty and full of deliciousness. Which also means that they stand up great to AWESOME MARINADES like this one! Honestly, I feel like marinating a mushroom is the only way to eat it after eating these mushrooms. Say that ten times fast. Seriously though, this marinade is full of herbs and garlic and all of the good stuff that you want in your mouth.
After a good hour or so of marinating, everything goes into the pan with some tomatoes to get cooked down and delicious. At this point you can try to resist the urge to eat them all right there and eat them in a wrap, on some avocado toast, or as a little side salad. All of these options are amazing! If you’re not a mushroom fan, I definitely think that this recipe will convert you. Give it a try!
Marinated Mushrooms with Tomatoes
Serves: 2
Total Time: 90 minutes
Ingredients:
8 cremini mushrooms, halved
1 tomato, diced
1/4 cup packed fresh parsley
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 stalk of green onion, chopped
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
In a small bowl, mix together the parsley, garlic, green onion, vinegar, oil and salt and pepper. Dump the marinade into a ziploc bag with the mushrooms, seal it, and give it a good toss to make sure the mushrooms are coated. Place the bag and the fridge and leave to marinate for about an hour.
Heat a pan over medium heat, and add in the marinated mushrooms and the diced tomatoes. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the mushrooms and tomatoes are soft and most of the excess liquid has evaporated.
My Day Is Booked 