Raspberry Mint Yogurt Bites

My parents’ garden is filled with raspberries. I love how easily they want to grow. Every day there is a ton of new ones ripening and they are simply delicious! No pesticides here, oh no. Why would we want to sacrifice taste to make sure a fruit is bug-free? Who cares if there’s a bug in there or if the raspberries come out big or small? I think flavor is what really matters in a delicious fruit.

Take non-organic strawberries for example – they barely taste like anything. Regular strawberries seem to have no flavor to me, similarly to many other berries as well as cherries. But try an organic berry and your world will be blown. The flavor is so intense and complex it simply bursts in your mouth and your tastebuds dance in joy as they have never danced before! Now that’s a celebration of fresh fruit!

Combining raspberries with fresh mint leaves seemed like a great idea. Adding yogurt to the mix, similarly how I did with the chocolate-covered yogurt bites a while back was the basis for the creation. This delicious snack does a great job at cooling you down on a hot summer day all while delivering important antioxidants and protein from the yogurt.

Gotta love quick (kinda) and easy summer desserts. This is why summer is my favorite. Nothing in the world beats fresh home berries. Yum!

Strawberry Kiwi Quinoa Muffins

The other day, I went ahead and visited a nearby Farmer’s Market. I’ve been dying to check it out from all that you guys talk about how awesome they are – and how much cheaper all of the produce is! Unfortunately, as I talked about yesterday, the prices were not very competitive, they were actually quite a bit higher than I expected them to be. Not horrible of course, but higher than I thought. Plus there wasn’t as much stuff there as I expected to find either.

I did however find some amazingly flavorful organic strawberries. I paid $6 for a pint and I was in heaven – the flavor of these babies was just as good as the strawberries I remember from Poland. So much flavor in every bite, this sweetness, the delicate tartness… oh man, I just love berries. So much!

I had some kiwi left over from my recent grocery trip and I’ve been getting tired of eating them by themselves. So after mixing and matching with ideas and what I’ve seen all around I put all of the stuff I had together, including the unopened box of Quinoa flakes.

Strawberries, kiwi, and quinoa flakes. I bought the quinoa flakes 2 months ago because I found a cool recipe for it. But you know, what else is new, I lost the recipe. So the box has been sitting there unopened ever since. Until now, that is 🙂 When these muffins were baking the whole apartment was filled with the aroma of strawberries and kefir. Such a nice fragnant scent.

I enjoyed a muffin with a glass of strawberry banana protein shake post workout 🙂

Oh no, a strawberry is drowning!

Chocolate Zucchini Protein Mini Muffins

I had some zucchinis laying around and I thought I would have time to cook with them, but unfortunately, I don’t think I will. I’m leaving the city on Saturday morning because of the NATO summit. There is no way I’m gonna be anywhere near here for this – everyone is saying it’s going to be crazy. Security and police is everywhere already and secret service and FBI are stopping at random establishments to make sure everyone is ready to take on the protesters. I hope there will be no violence involved.

So yeah, I’ve made chocolate zucchini bread before and I loved the taste of it. I don’t have a loaf pan in this apartment thought and I just ran out of chocolate chips, so I went for chocolate zucchini muffins sans chocolate chips.

The second muffin is still kind of frozen, that’s why it looks weird lol

I still love making muffins and although I was going to veganize this recipe (like I have been doing lately with all my muffins), I decided against it, simply because I had egg whites that needed to be used up anyway. Might as well. So sorry, vegan friends, this one includes egg whites.

For an extra protein boost, I added protein powder. And I enjoy it smeared with almond butter. I love protein and that’s that.

Chocolate Almond Muffins

Hey everyone, I hope everyone spent their Earth Day well. I met up with my parents and aunt and we made a visit to the Botanical Gardens. I haven’t been there in 2 years now, I think. Unfortunately, there was some event set up going on and almost all of the areas of the gardens were closed. Such a shame. I did get to snap some pictures though, so if you’d like to see some they can be found on my photo blog. Let me know what you think.. Here’s a preview.

Anyway, I’m all out of my bran apple muffins and need a new vegan breakfast that can be quick. Today marks the end of my vegan challenge but I have decided to incorporate as much veganism into my life as possible – especially limiting dairy and eating more veggies than before. While my body didn’t respond necessairly bad or good to the challenge, I found myself being more anxious than before. I have no idea if this can be contributed to the dietary change or not. I did also notice that I would not be bloated very often which was awesome.

So here is another muffin recipe for you guys to introduce into your breakfast or as a snack. Preferably with peanut butter. Everything’s better with nut butters.. mmmm.

Chocolate. Almonds.

They are low in calories and fat. And they are vegan!

They are very fluffy. Nice light snack or breakfast. Yum.