Ecuadorian Peanut Butter Plantain Recipe

Peanut Butter Plantain Recipe PinThis Ecuadorian Peanut Butter Plantain Recipe was introduced to us by our Russian friend, Olesya, who lives with an Ecuadorian family here in Cuenca, Ecuador. She said her host family makes this recipe all the time, and we know why. IT’S DELICIOUS!!!

You can make this plantain recipe with green (verde) or ripe (maduro) plantains (platanos). We’ve tried both and prefer ripe plantains. They’re sweeter and more dessert like. The green plantains require more sweetener.

When Olesya made us this plantain recipe the first time, she served it in a small bowl and we ate it with a spoon. Since then, Amelia has done some experimenting with the recipe. We’ve found that we like forming them into balls and baking them in the oven for a bite sized finger snack/treat.

It’s also good with some cocoa powder or chocolate chips mixed in, or topped with some dried fruit. The options are endless!

If you like plantains, you may also enjoy our Oil-Free Grilled Plantains Recipe.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Chickpea Chocolate Cookies (Gluten Free)

Chickpea Chocolate Cookies PinThis Vegan Chickpea Chocolate Cookies recipe is so delicious! The cookies are moist and oh so chocolatey. They’re perfect for non-vegan potlucks. They’re also great if you’re suffering from an intense chocolate craving because you can have them ready to eat fresh from the oven in about 20 minutes.

There’s no flour in this recipe. The chickpeas do all the heavy lifting. That means it’s gluten-free as long as all the other ingredients don’t have gluten. The chickpeas also make these cookies a protein powerhouse with 4 grams per cookie.

The peanut butter combines with the cocoa powder to make a really rich chocolate peanut buttery taste. The vegan chocolate chips are optional since the cookies are already very chocolatey. By omitting them, you’ll cut the saturated fat in half and the calories by a third. Each cookie is 82 calories without the chocolate chips.

If you like moist chocolate desserts, you’ll also LOVE our Vegan Beet Brownies.

Chickpea Chocolate Cookies Cooking Video

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If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Peanut Butter Hummus

Peanut Butter Hummus PinThis Peanut Butter Hummus recipe was inspired by a freak weather event in Atlanta. Amelia had travelled back to Denver for her day job and on the day of her return flight to Atlanta, we had 8 inches of snow, which cancelled hundreds of flights.

She was able to fly back the next evening, but the roads were slushy from all the melting snow and the temperatures were predicted to drop below freezing after sunset. Since her flight wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 8PM, we decided to get a hotel room near the airport so we wouldn’t have to drive back to Marietta on icy roads.

Amelia has tons of Marriott points from her years of travelling for sales, so we reserved a room at the Renaissance Hotel. It’s still not easy to eat vegan at hotels (or on airplanes), but they did have a few options for us.

One of them was a version of hummus made from a local culinary favorite: boiled peanuts. We had never heard of boiled peanuts before our stay in Atlanta, but it’s a popular appetizer on area restaurant menus. We ordered some at a restaurant with some friends and Amelia loved them, but I didn’t like them. They were too messy for me. I’d rather eat them as nature (and ballparks) intended…out of the unboiled shell.

Or in delicious hummus! Rather than go through the hassle of boiling peanuts and deshelling them to match the Renaissance Hotel’s Boiled Peanut Hummus, we decided take the easy route by using peanut butter.

Basically, we used our Classic Vegan Hummus recipe and swapped out the tahini with peanut butter, and it’s absolutely delicious! It goes really well with pita chips, apples, celery or your favorite hummus delivery device.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Apple with Peanut Butter

Apple Peanut Butter PinApple with Peanut Butter is one of Amelia’s favorite snacks, and now it’s one of mine, too! For most of my life, the only way I would eat an apple is if it was baked into an Apple Pie. More recently, I added Healthy Cooked Apples to my repertoire. But now…I eat ’em raw!

In his book, “How Not To Die“, Dr. Greger mentioned how much he liked Honeycrisp Apples. He said they were sweeter and juicier than other apples. This was news to me. I thought all apples came in two varieties: sweet or tart. I didn’t realize there were different levels of sweetness and tartness and juiciness!

The only apples I had tried were Red Delicious and Granny Smith. Red Delicious apples were always mealy, not very juicy, and not very sweet. Granny Smith apples were always too tart for me, unless they were cooked into a pie with lots of sugar.

Following Dr. Greger’s recommendation, I bought a Honeycrisp Apple on our next trip to the grocery store. He is absolutely right: it’s sweet and juicy. And unlike any raw apple I’d ever tasted, it wasn’t mealy either…very crispy.

On our next trip to the store, I was determined to load up on those delicious Honeycrisp Apples. However, my curiosity was peaked.

“Do all the apples taste differently? Are there other kinds I might like better?”

As I was contemplating buying a different type just to try it, a woman reached in front of me for a Pink Lady Apple. So I asked her what they tasted like, and her eyes lit up. She said they’re even better than Honeycrisp Apples! I had to have one!

The Pink Lady is both tart and sweet at the same time, and it’s just as juicy as the Honeycrisp. The Honeycrisp is a little sweeter, but without the tartness. Both offer a flavor explosion in your mouth, without the mealy texture.

Now, I can’t get enough apples. They’re one of the healthiest foods on the planet, so I finally have a vice that won’t kill me!

You can eat them plain, but I prefer them with a little peanut butter. It’s a nice compliment to their sweetness. Be sure to buy organic peanut butter, or better yet, grind it up from fresh organic peanuts. Most Whole Foods and some smaller natural stores have nut butter grinders available.

If you’re trying to lower your cholesterol or lose weight, you may want to skip the peanut butter. I know Greger says it’s ok and that oil-free peanut butter is healthy, but I’m going with Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish on this one. My cholesterol was still very high and I was still overweight eating a WFPB diet for over 2 years until I reduced my fat intake to 10% or less of calories. The only way to eat a truly low-fat diet is to significantly reduce all sources of saturated fat, including nuts and avocados.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

Peanut Butter Banana SmoothieThis Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie recipe will make you think it’s a delicious dessert. It’s rich and creamy, but packed full of nutrients.

Bananas are a great source of potassium, but they’re also a great source of complex carbs, and the dates are too. Those complex carbs will help you power through your next workout and the peanut butter slows down the absorption so you get a nice and steady burn.

If you make this smoothie ahead of time, you can take it to work with you for lunch. And if you add a little spinach to it, you won’t taste it but it’ll add extra nutrients and the green hue will keep the refrigerator poachers at bay.

You’ll need to freeze your bananas ahead of time, but be sure to peel them first. It’s not easy to peel a frozen banana…

You can make this peanut butter banana smoothie raw by using fresh ground peanut butter and homemade almond milk.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Vegan Overnight Oats

Vegan Overnight Oats PinThis raw vegan overnight oats recipe is fast and easy to make, and it works great for busy morning schedules. The hardest part is remembering to prepare it the night before!

Oats are a nutritious way to start your day. According to Dr. Greger, “Oats contain anti-inflammatory and antioxidant phytonutrients that can help prevent buildup in the arteries and maintain arterial function. The fiber in oatmeal binds to cholesterol, resulting in lower blood cholesterol levels. In fact, just one serving a day of oats or barley may lower cholesterol.”

Oatmeal is also great for your weight loss goals! “The soluble fiber of oatmeal forms a gel in the stomach, delaying stomach emptying. The oatmeal fiber makes people feel full for a longer period, helping with weight loss. In a double-blinded randomized trial of overweight and obese men and women, almost 90% of the oatmeal-treated subjects reduced their body weight compared to the control group that had no weight loss.”

We like vegan overnight oats because it’s a hearty breakfast that you don’t have to cook in the morning. This recipe makes enough for 4 servings so for us, we can eat it on two different mornings. I don’t recommend keeping it more than two days, though, so you’ll need to finish it quickly.

If you love oats like we do, you might also enjoy our raw Rolled Oats Breakfast recipe.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Peanut Butter Protein Balls

Peanut Butter Protein BallsThese Peanut Butter Protein Balls are a simple and delicious snack that also satisfies your chocolate cravings. Just remember that each ball has 114 calories so don’t go crazy and eat them all in one sitting if your goal is weight loss.

Amelia and I like to keep a sealed container of these in the refrigerator so we have healthy chocolate snacks available when our chocolate cravings hit. As a kid, Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups were my favorite candy and these protein balls have a similar chocolaty-peanut butter taste in a vegan, protein rich package.

You can substitute the peanut butter with cashew butter, almond butter or your favorite nut butter if you prefer something else.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Chocolate Tofu Pudding

Chocolate Tofu PuddingThis Chocolate Tofu Pudding is a protein rich, chocolate peanut butter tofu pudding dessert. It’s been a favorite of mine for years and only takes a few minutes to make. You will need a blender, though.

Before switching to a vegan diet, this was the only recipe of mine that used tofu. Looking back, it’s odd that the only time I used tofu was in a creamy dessert. Now we cook with it all the time. Tofu doesn’t have much flavor of its own so it tastes like whatever you’re cooking.

We pour the pudding into small glass serving bowls, but you can also use small glasses or sealable containers. It’s best to eat them within 2 days or they get a tough pudding film on the top.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Peanut Butter Banana Bites

Peanut Butter Banana BitesThis Peanut Butter Banana Bites are a delicious treat that Amelia loved as a child, but I just had my first one today.

I told her, “These are amazing! Who knew banana and peanut butter went so well together?!” And she replied dryly, “Elvis.” I guess that’s an inside joke because I have no idea what she’s talking about.

This is a great pre-workout snack. It has healthy complex carbs from the banana to give you an energy boost. Plus protein from the peanut butter to slow down the absorption. It’ll give you a nice slow burn.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.

Steel Cut Oats Recipe

Steel Cut Oats Recipe PinThis Steel Cut Oats Recipe is a staple breakfast for us. It’s filling and easy to prepare, with lots of healthy nutrients. While they’re almost nutritionally equal, steel cut oats fill us up more than Cooked Rolled Oats and seem to stick with us longer.

Chia Seeds and Flax Seeds are considered by many to be super-foods because of their nutritional density. They have lots of fiber and protein, and they’re also a great source of omega-3s, which are important for us plant-based eaters to get since we don’t eat fish.

The peanut butter thickens up the oats and adds more protein while the fats slow the absorption of the carbs helping to control blood sugar spikes, which can lead to hunger once your blood sugar crashes a few hours later. With the spices and fruit, this makes a delicious and nutritious breakfast.

If you have a sweet tooth, you can add more sweetener. We used stevia because that’s easy to find here in Ecuador while other natural sweeteners are either hard to find or very expensive. Feel free to use your favorite sweetener, or skip it entirely.

Steel Cut Oats RecipeWe suggest consuming some calcium fortified non-dairy milk every day to help ensure you’re getting enough calcium in your diet, especially if you’re a vegan. Some studies show that vegans who consume less than 525 mg of calcium per day suffer increased fracture rates compared to non-vegans and vegans who consume more than 525 mg of calcium per day.

For most brands, 8 ounces (1 cup) of calcium fortified non-dairy milk contains more than 400 mg of calcium so that puts you almost there for the day. You can easily make up the rest of your calcium needs with whole plant foods like kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, beans, potatoes, etc. All plants have some calcium, but not all is easily absorbable so you just need to eat more of them to get your calcium needs met if you don’t want to drink fortified non-dairy milk.

If you make this recipe, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And please share with your friends to help spread the word about healthy plant based eating.