Recipe post: Baked Bean Brownies

Baked Bean Brownie

One of my joys in life is indulging myself with sweets. This definitely counters with the other side of me, where I try to stay healthy and fit. So in the past few years, I've been researching substitution baking. This is where I attempt to substitute everything possible In a recipe. Most of it are experiments. I get my inspiration from recipes online and I try to make edits to them to make them a little more healthy. I have made banana cakes, protein pancakes, tofu cheesecake etc. Now I'll share some of these bad boys to you. Try if you dare.

When it's near that time of the month, my greatest craving is chocolate. I just want to eat all the chocolate in the world. So I made brownies... But minus most of the carbs

They still look like brownies right?

But surprise surprise, no sugar was added in to this recipe, nor flour. So what's the secret? Beans! These guys make excellent substitutes in dense cakes and cookies! Plus using baked beans adds a hint of sweetness to the brownies. 

Here's how I made it

Ingredients 

1 can of baked beans

1 cup of cacao powder 

1/3 cup of peanut butter

1/3 cut of grated coconut

Half a banana

1 cup of dark chocolate chips

Optional: nuts for texture and taste

1. Preheat oven to 375F 

2. Blend all ingredients minus chocolate chips and nuts in a food processor

3. Stir in half the chocolate chips and nuts

4. Pour in a 8 x 8 baking pan

5. Bake for 15-20 mins. Enjoy!

Quick, simple and easy. Perfect for a post work-out protein filled snack.

The DIY Juice Cleanse Plan - Recipes Included

So before I delve into the whole plan, I want to emphasize the fact that this is not a go to quick lose 5 lbs kinda guide. The cleanse isn't for losing weight. The weight that is lost during the cleanse is water weight. These aren't permanent in weightloss. water weight gain and lost is controlled by your body's equilibrium system. Science Blurb of the day: Solutes and water are moved through their concentration gradient and osmosis, respectively. Sodium is one of the driving causes for water movement. As you may already know, increased toxins and salts in the body drives water to be retained instead of being filtered out. This is the point of the juice cleanse. To replenish your body with lots of fluids while maintaining to give it some top grade nutrients.

The cleanse should be between 2-3 days. You don't want to throw your body into starvation mode. In starvation mode your body will retain fatty acids and other building blocks in case it needs a reservoir of energy. 

The cleanse consists of 6 juices, consumed at 2 hr intervals. It's suggested that when you wake up in the morning to have a cup of green tea first. 

A typical schedule would be something like this: 

0630 - wake up and have a cup of green tea then get ready for your day

730 - green juice

930 - grapefruit juice

1130 - green juice

1330 - spicy lemonade 

1530 - cup of green tea

1830 - green juice 

2030 - almond milk

Here are the list of ingredients you'll probably need:

Some of my Ingredients

• Spinach
• Mini Cucumbers of 2 Cucumbers
• A bag of Lemons
• Ginger
• A bag of Green Apples
• Cinnamon
• Grapefruit
• Cayenne Pepper
• Honey
• Celery
• Almond Milk
• Almonds (can be whole or slivered depending on the power of your blender)
• Vanilla Extract

So here are the recipes and their individual benefits.

Note: I used a magic bullet kinda thing for all this and sift out the fibres our after. Also I would add water to all of the recipes too, enough to fill a 250mL mason jar. 

I got these recipes from the TravelJunkette (Check our her site!) But I made some modifications since I was making them as individual servings and had no juicer. I'm a poor student!

Green Juice

The Green juice is the most important component of the cleanse because it is the core of the nutrients and vitamins. Spinach is packed with vitamin A and calcium. Ginger is added because it aids in absorption of nutrients. According to recent studies, ginger contains gingerol, an anti-inflammatory agent, as well as dermicidin, an antibiotic peptide. This makes ginger an excellent additive to the juice for a better immune system and improved immune system. Cucumber is an excellent source of Vitamin A, calcium and sodium. (Yes I said previously that increased sodium  is bad, but its also an essential component of life. For example we need sodium for our nervous system to work as well as our kidneys water regulation system to work).

So a quick summary of that is: GREEN JUICE IS FULL OF ANTIOXIDANTS, ANTI-INFLAMMATORY AGENTS AND VITAMINS!

Ingredients:

1 Green Apple
2 Celery Stalks
1 Mini Cucumber
A Handful of Spinach
1 inch of Ginger
1/2 a lemon

Optional: 2 Kale leafs and/or Romaine Lettuce Head

Drink Factor: 9/10

This was the easiest to drink. The green apples gave it a sweet flavor while the cucumber and celery added a refreshing flavor. The ginger might be a hit or miss. I liked it, it gave it a bit of a zing and spicyness.

Grapefruit Juice

Grapefruits are bursting in vitamin C and A. These vitamins reduce your risk of cancer, heart diseases as well as maintaining healthy vision, teeth and skeleton.

Ingredients:

1 Grapefruit
1/2 Green apple
1 Celery Stalk
Cinnamon

Blend all these ingredients together.

Drink factor : 7/10

The grapefruit is a little bitter. I would recommend maybe adding a bit of raw honey in it for flavor. But this was a nice fruity break from all the greeness.

Spicy Lemonade

So this juice was a derivative from the infamous master cleanse. The idea of the master cleanse, in my opinion, was to restrict calories while attempting to boost up your metabolism, forcing it to work in complete deficit. I don't think it's the greatest idea, since I don't believe in temporary fixes to anything. It'll just freak your body out and make you store more fat the next time you eat. BUT, that saying, it does have it's benefits. For example, lemons are an alkalizing agent for the body, it helps balance the body's pH system. It also helps detoxify your liver. The cayenne pepper helps boost your body's metabolism and immune system. It's also good at reducing cholesterol and acts as an anti-inflammatory agent. 

Ingredients:

1 lemon

Cayenne Pepper

Honey

The honey kind of soothes all the burning sensation. I honestly hated this drink and skipped it... every single time. I'd aim for like 10 sips then I'm just like....screw it. I let my classmates try it too, and tey were just like holy crap, it's awful.

Drink Factor : -10000/10

Almond Milk

This last addition is kind of a nice ending to all those liquids. Nuts are supposed to be a source of protein, omega-3s and fibre. As you know protein helps rebuild muscles. So taking protein before sleep means your body gets to rebuild and restore your body while you rest! How awesome is that? And not to mention it tastes....awesome!

Ingredients

1 Cup of almond Milk

1 tbs Vanilla Extract

A handful of raw almonds

Optional: Cinnamon, chai, cocoa powder and any other spices of flavours you wish to add. I mean you deserve it after all!

This was honestly a treat. I'm lactose intolerant, so I've always drank almond milk on a regular basis. I'm also a vanilla-addict. So this juice (can you even call it juice??), is honestly a happy ending.. haha. 

Drink Factor : 10/10

At the end of the cleanse, I definitely felt more rejuvenated. I didn't have as much carb-attacks that I usually get. I did lose weight, but it was probably just water weight. Let me know how this all works for you!

References:

Livestrong.com

TravelJunkette

Trying to get drunk off fruits - DIY Juice Cleanse (Recipes Later)

It's final exam seasons for me and I've been munching on a lot of junk and drinking a lot of rockstars. A few days ago I noticed how bloated I was getting so I thought I'd give these bad boys a try.

Now my goal here isn't to lose weight. I've been having really bad digestive problems for the past year and have been into the emergency a few times. I'm supposed to get some colonoscopy done, but god knows when that is happening because doctors are the most helpful people on earth *rolls eyes*. (I'll get into my topic of that another time. DRAMA.)

I don't have all the time in the world to do this cleanse, and maybe I will properly do a longer cleanse next time. But so far its Day 1 out of 2.

It's not particularly too hard to drink these juices, since I think I eat pretty clean in general. I'm not a big meat eater. My diet pretty much consists of rabbit food + seafood and the occasional chicken. I love seafood, and I will probably die from mercury poisoning one day. (Which is also another reason I committed to this cleanse).

Although my eating habit is clean, I don't have the cleanest lifestyle. I occasionally like to drink one, two..maybe 15 shots in one sitting. And a night consists of multiple sittings. I like wine, which is healthy. But I don't do glasses. I do them by the bottle... one, two...three!?

There's no quick fixes to the damages i've done to my body. I know, I have a science degree and I work at the hospital. But it doesn't kill to give my digestive system a vacation time. You deserve it intestines!

So here are my juices. I don't own a juicer, so it was a tedious task to blend and filter my juices. I'm missing two other juices here, but I'm so full from these four i just can't handle another ounce of liquid.

2 Green Juices, 1 Green Juice with added Ginger and a Citrus juice to lighten up the day

This cleanse I'm DIY-ing consists of 6 juices. You drink these 2 hours apart.

My schedule was:

8:00 Green Juice

10:00 Grapefruit Juice

12:00 Green Juice + Ginger

2:00 Spicy Lemonade (Which I just couldn't gurgle down)

4:00 Green Juice

6:00 A nice glass of Almond milk

I don't usually, or try not to, eat after 7pm. It gives my system time to metabolize the contents.

This was my first one. I have to say this one tasted pretty amazing. My classmates, being male predominent and eats crap, agreed that my greens in a glass tasted pretty awesome. Maybe next time we can throw in some vodka in there as celebration. Just kidding. not really. I'm dying of alcohol. 

My Green Juice which I could drink gallons of

Overall, all my juices tasted really good. Minus that spicy lemonade. Holy crap, it was hard to gurgle down. So hard that I just didn't bother.

I'll post updates on the contents and preparation of the mini DIY juice cleanse in a bit. I'll also share with you where I got these ideas from ;) so just you wait! Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Little ol'me

I must be the world’s worst person at blogging. I get so caught up with life and then I have 0 time. But this is for real a complete restart. 

A new me.

I’m K. I grew up in Vancouver. Throughout my entire youth I was a super nerd. I studied hard, and on my spare time I played hard…..on the piano. For fun I did math drills and maybe played some Final Fantasy and Tekken…. maybe played a lot. Yes. I am your typical asian with the typical crazy asian mother.

I remember one year, I had 1 B on my report card. My mother flip the shi* at me in a restaurant and I balled my eyes out. I got a B in PE! Don’t get me wrong, I was athletic. I was on the volleyball team and….yes….badminton team. I played badminton for a club as well! I got a B because my PE teacher was a big DOU**.

Growing up was a toughy. I was always teased for being a chubster. I didn’t care… then puberty hit, and I was STILL a chubster. I cared tons.

After highschool I finally got to meet the real world. I fell out with friends, made new friends, grew apart from friends and made new friends. I went in and out and in and out of relationships. I’m not really good at this whole relationship ordeal.

So here’s me. All bare and completely new to the world once again. I’m walking into society andgetting ready to step out into the real working world. Wish me luck!

- K

Rambling of the Day: Spring Time

Spring time is here and I can't wait until the vancouver weather to stop being so shitty. I never understood that misconception of Vancouver is absolutely beautiful and enchanting. It maybe pretty when it's sunny, but honestly, it rains here 99.4% of the time. So the sad truth is that Vancouver is only beautiful 0.6% of the time. When it's beautiful, it is really breathe taking. When I was a child I think about creating this large fan that would just blow all the rain containing clouds away. Stop hovering over us and let us some sun!! But anyways, those were some photos that put me in a sunny, spring-feeling mood.

Recipe: Avocado Shrimp Salad

Avocado and Scallop Salad (modified version of Jean Carper's recipe)

So I've been trying a few recipes that included a combination of my favorite food and low calories. My secret to staying skinny is eating my favorite food, but keep count of my calorie. It's a tad obsessing, but hey it works. I have this current obsession of reading labels now, and I have this secret feeling that everyone is judging me. 

Ingredients

For 2 servings

16 - 20 Scallops

1 Tomato (diced to cubes)

1/2 Avocado (diced to cubes)

1/2 cup Cilantro

1/2 cup Parsley 

1 Green Onion

1/2 a lemon (juice only)

1 tsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

salt and pepper to taste

The recipe is super simple. In a small pan, heat up some water. When the water begins to boil, throw your scallops in and let them sit there for roughly 2 minutes. After the 2 minutes, let the water drain out and place them in the fridge. While waiting for the scallops to cool, cut all your other ingredients (cilantro, parsley, avocado and tomato). Next combine the scallops and your diced ingredients. Mix in your lemon juice and olive oil and serve it. Bon appetit! This simple salad yields less than 200 calories, so eat all you can! :) 

Current Obsessions: Kemp Muhl

This is how I'm going to start my first post. I guess using Blogger makes me less intimated by Wordpress. New year new start, new blog. Charlotte Kemp Muhl is my current obsession apres watching that Maybelline Fit Me commercial that keeps disturbing me during my Youtubing hours. But good job Maybelline, because I am completely bedazzled by her looks and edgyness. Also, my hair needs to look like that. Cheers.