Vegan Banana Muffins

These muffins are moist and delicious. Abbey adapted her usual banana muffin recipe to make these vegan. There is fat, but only in the form of monounsaturated canola oil, and they use whole wheat flour. So, delicious and nutritious!

Vegan Banana Muffins

4 bananas, mashed

1/3 cup canola oil

1 cup sugar

for egg replacement: 2 tbl water, 1 tbl canola oil, 1 tsp baking powder, mixed together in a bowl

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups whole wheat white flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mash the bananas with a fork or potato masher. add oil, sugar, egg replacement, and vanilla to the banana. In another bowl, put the flour, salt, and baking soda; mix well. Combine the contents of both bowls, but don't over mix. divide the batter in a 12 cup muffin tin. Bake for 20-25 mins.

You could make this healthier by using an unrefined sweetener, but refined sugar is a known quantity. But experiment! Try palm sugar or brown cane sugar. Just stick to non-liquid sweetener.

Enjoy!

Banana Ice Cream

Had a hard time getting a flattering picture of this stuff, but I can't emphasize enough what a delicious and simple treat this turned out to be.  Peel, chunk, and freeze3 ripe bananas in a freezer bag.  Place them in the blender with a 1/2 cup of soymilk to start.  Blend until smooth, adding a few drizzles of soymilk when the stuff starts to lock up on you.  The consistency is creamy, but it's basically a sorbet with very little added sugar and basically no fat.  I drizzled a touch of agave nectar over this serving and it was perfect!  A wonderful cold summer snack you can feel good about.

Bring on the Superfoods!

The namesake of this blog has made it known that he wishes to modify our current diet plan.  We will languish no more in the fruitless (literally) pursuit of South Beach weight loss.  While keeping some of the low carb principles in place, we're allowing far more fruit into our diet.

We're getting out the blender and we're not afraid to use it.  We feel the benefits, the fiber, the vitamins, and the delicious flavor, far outweigh the concern over sugars in our diet.  Phase 2 just seemed too restrictive in this area.

Exhibit A:  The Sunny Bunny...a smoothie I first experienced at Columbia, Missouri's Main Squeeze.  It fulfills Michael's new diet requirement, which is to say it tastes good and it's good for him.  It's a glass full of superfoods.  Carrots taste good.  We've been told all our lives that they're good for us, and they're loaded with vitamin A.  Oranges taste good.  They're packed with vitamin C and folate.  Bananas taste good.  One banana has 422 mg of potassium.  It's all quite fresh, organic, and good for him.  I got out the old Osterizer and juiced seven huge carrots.  I put a couple bananas in the blender with the carrot juice and the orange juice and blended.  When making smoothies, one can't be bothered with measurements.  You put in what you like and it will taste good to you.  Go on, dust off your juicer.  You know you wanna.