Mini Whole Wheat Persimmon Bran Waffles

Happy 2017!  Are you looking forward to a new year and a fresh start at things?  Or are you sad because 2016 was a great year for you and this one might be worse?  I for one am super excited, not really for anything in 2017, but because I got an awesome little mini waffle maker over Christmas!  I haven’t had homemade waffles since five years ago when my old waffle maker broke, but now my new waffle maker is adorable and portable and there are a ton of things I can’t wait to make with it!

This week I have a surplus of persimmons, and a handful of them have become overripe and mushy.  So I whipped up these mini persimmon waffles that make a great healthy breakfast.

Chocolate Cherry Apricot Chia Seed Pudding

A few weeks ago, I made chia seed pudding for the first time, and since then, I have completely fallen in love with it!  I’m not one to follow health food trends very closely, so back when the whole chia seed craze started, I’d always heard of chia pudding but was never extremely eager to try it or know how it worked.  Now it feels like I’ve missed out, not just on all of the great health benefits chia seeds have, but also on how mind-blowingly simple and versatile chia pudding is.

Creamy Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Fudgesicles

It’s been really hot lately.  In fact, if it weren’t for the air conditioning blasting throughout my house right now, I would be melting away as I write this.  On top of being insanely warm, these past few days have also been especially humid.  The drought in California is getting pretty bad, enough that I can be fined for washing my car with a hose (since it wastes water), so to have humid days, cloudy skies, or any possibility of rain gets me excited and hopeful.  It doesn’t rain much here, but when it does, it’s the biggest relief from the sunny, skin-cooking California weather.

Healthy No-Bake Fiber Bars

These fiber bars make an awesome on-the-go breakfast or snack; they are not only delicious, but are gluten-free, easy to make, and packed with fiber from natural sources.

Two-Ingredient Mango Ice Cream

I can’t believe summer is already half over!  In fact, it hardly feels like summer to me.  The afternoons are super sunny as always in southern California, but where I live it seems like the days generally have been cooler and cloudier, and certainly not as hot as I imagined it would be in the middle of July.
Back in May, I shared a recipe for an easy blueberry Meyer lemon blender ice cream made from four simple ingredients.  This mango ice cream follows the same concept, except it’s even creamier and made with just two simple ingredients, mangoes and cream.

Chocolate Cherry Banana Smoothie

I don’t drink smoothies very often, but when I do have one, it’s usually on a hot day.  Now that summer is approaching, not only is the weather getting warmer, but cherries are also coming into season.  I’ve been looking for a way to use them in a recipe, and knowing that cherries pair well with chocolate, I came up with this chocolate cherry banana smoothie.

Healthy Loaded Breakfast Muffins

I originally wrote this recipe for the purpose of using up some of the leftover carrots in my fridge.  But what started out as a simple carrot and raisin muffin recipe soon became a “throw-in-as-much-stuff-as-you-can” muffin recipe- or should I say, a “throw-in-as-much-good-stuff-as-you-can” muffin recipe.  I call these “Loaded Breakfast Muffins” because they are loaded with all kinds of good stuff.