After posting a photo on my Instagram of my breakfast the other day, which included these power balls, I got a few reqests for the recipe, so I decided to create a post to share with everyone!
These were inspired by the ingredients in my Apple Rose Caramel Tart, a low fat raw vegan dessert I served for my birthday guests this year. I took the same basic ingredients and added nuts and oats into the mix and voila, power balls were created.
Instead of buying the premade superfood chocolate bars at your local health food store, try making your own! This way, you can probably save in the long run, and you'll be able to make the chocolate with any add ons you want. What's also great is that you can half this recipe when you make it, and make up different combinations to see which you like best. This is a great present as well!
For this recipe, I just used a Trader Joes's 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar that I had on hand and was comfortable with (ingredients wise), but feel free to use any chocolate you want, you can even use chocolate chips (so long their its vegan of course). If you use a raw chocolate bar, let me know how it goes so I can try it out. And, if your even fancier, you can even make your own chocolate bar. I haven't done it yet, but I will hopefully be trying it sometime in the future.
I finally got around to making pesto kale chips!
After my family and I had a pizza night, we were left with extra pesto to use up. I have been making this pesto so often that I almost just opted to throwing it out. My mom, being a mom, took it and stuck in the freezer instead (thank you mom, this recipe would not be here without you!).
So one day, when scouring through the freezer for some frozen fruit for an afternoon snack smoothie, I found a jar filled with something green. I had no idea what it was and to my pleasant surprise it was the pesto that was left over from pizza night. This gave me an idea to make a new snack that I had never made before, and these chips were born!
I grabbed some kale from the garden, washed it, removed the stems and tore it into medium sized pieces. I dumped the pesto over it and massaged massaged massaged until the kale was soft and the pesto was well incorporated. I pre-heated the oven, lined my baking sheets, and baked the kale until crispy.
This was actually the first time I have ever made kale chips with oil and salt. I know it may be shocking to most as kale chips traditionally use oil to make them light and crispy, but think again! I have made numerous flavors of kale chips without oil and I usually use my green salt in place of normal salt. One of my favorites is my Spicy Cheezy Kale Chips, which was actually the first recipe I ever posted on my blog. Let me tell you that salt or no salt, oil or no oil, all the homemade healthy kale chips you will make will turn out equally as delicious.
Yay for vegan ceviche! I love love loved ceviche growing up, and it was actually always so tempting when my mom served it at family gatherings after going vegan. Ceviche is always a staple dish at our summer potlucks in my family, especially at our days by the pool. I honestly have no idea what the reason for this is, as my mom's side of the family is from the Philippines and it is not a dish traditional to their country, but everyone seems to now think of it as one. They make it with crab, fish, and sometimes even salmon. Every auntie of mine has a signature ceviche style that they alternate bringing. but my favorite was my mom's shrimp ceviche.
When I was at the Los Angeles Vegan Potluck a few weeks ago, Shannon had brought a vegan sort of sauerkraut type ceviche made from cauliflower that was really quite delicious. Everyone was guessing that it was made of heart of palm, but the cauliflower addition really blew our minds. From all of the talk of heart of palm ceviche, I started to crave it. Oddly enough, I had never made heart of palm ceviche, or even tried it, but I think my cravings were stemming from my old love for my mom's ceviche. So shortly after the potluck, I got my booty to the market to pick up a jar of Melissa's heart of palm and got ceviche makin'!
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