raisins

How to Make the Best Broccoli Salad

This healthier take on classic broccoli salad features fresh, crunchy broccoli florets topped with a light dressing with a little sweetness from golden raisins, cranberries and pineapple for a super summer salad.

Where some visitors to a new city or town search out the best restaurants, bars or bakeries, you’ll find me scouting out grocery stores and specialty food shops. I may not even need groceries, have a kitchen on hand or be planning to cook at all, but a visit lets me know what ‘might’ be available should I happen to be in need.

What is wrong with me??

One of my beeline destinations is the grocery store deli case. That’s where you’ll see me peering over toddlers muddying the glass with their chubby little hands as I look for ideas of what people are really eating. Because if a grocery store is going to give space for a salad, side or main in the ready-made case, it’s likely that it’s a dish people are gonna want.

Broccoli salad is one of those recipes I see time and time again in deli cases across the land. But let us not think these salads are all created equal. Hardly.

continue to the recipe… about How to Make the Best Broccoli Salad

Loaded Monster Cookies

Whole wheat pastry flour, nuts, raisins, popcorn, coconut and chocolate bits all combine to make one monster of a healthier cookie.

This post is sponsored by Lifetime’s production of Jim Henson’s Turkey Hollow premiering Saturday, November 21, 2015.

These cookies. They’re so ugly, they’re crave-ingly cute. Just like Jim Henson’s classic puppeted creatures and those in the new holiday movie, Turkey Hollow, these Loaded Monster Cookies are destined to become classics.

When Lifetime asked if I’d like to preview their new Jim Henson movie and make a treat to eat along with it, I was all for it. I grew up with Jim Henson and his cast of characters. I know every line to Rainbow Connection. I can still sing the opening credits to the original Muppet Show TV series.

And as for Kermit and Miss Piggy? They’ll always be a the ultimate celebrity couple in my eyes. I’m just waiting for a reunion.

Until then…these cookies.

By using smart ingredients like whole wheat, heart-healthy nuts, raisins and oatmeal, not to mention that chocolate is good for you (here’s 10 reasons why!) these cookies pack a fortified punch. Your kids’ll never know you snuck in all that good stuff into these perfectly-imperfect, Henson-inspired cookies.

continue to the recipe… about Loaded Monster Cookies

Slow Cooker Baked Oatmeal with Bananas and Nuts

Layered like a strata in the slow cooker, this irresistible oatmeal is loaded up with bananas, pecans, raisins, applesauce, and brown sugar, but it can also be baked in the oven if you prefer.

Why is it that every year come January there’s an avalanche of healthy recipes just knocking at our door? Why in the dregs of winter does one feel so compelled to say, “Yes! This is the day I’m going to eat healthier, read more, kick those bad habits to the curb, clean out my closets and be a better person.

I mean, why can’t we all just do it every day, all year?

I’m blaming the weather for making us all cuckoo in the head.

So today, I’m sort of joining the fray and sharing a recipe that’s overall really pretty healthy, if you consider that it’s chock full of whole grains and healthy fat. And it’s packed with fruit if you count almost ready to expire bananas on my countertop mixed with raisins and applesauce. The only devil in the details might be brown sugar and a whizzle of maple syrup.

But since we’ve been working so hard to stay in front of that January health kick avalanche, I’d say a little sweetness should balance us out just right in my book.