Christina Najjar

Pumpkin Spice Smoothie (Paleo, Vegan)

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For someone who doesn’t eat sugar, the struggle to find a pumpkin spice smoothie recipe can be real. Recipes tend to be sweetened with bananas, maple syrup, or honey (or any combination of these). For those who can tolerate natural sugars, that’s great.

Pumpkin Pie Spice Smoothie Christina Najjar

I’ve been focusing on completely sugar free foods for a number of reasons lately. For one, my hormones haven’t been cooperating with me. Over the last two months, all my sugar has come from vegetables (except for the occasional alcoholic beverage). It’s funny how much of a difference that alone can make. My energy levels are up, my moods are more stable, cramps have significantly reduced, and I’m more in control of my body in general.

The other main reason I’ve been experimenting with sugar free foods is that there has been a need for it with my clients. People who find their way to my office have all kinds of health concerns that require completely cutting out sugar. This ranges from Lyme Disease to leaky gut (digestive disturbances) and PCOS.

And of course, the issue that most people who go see a nutritionist have in common, adrenal fatigue, improves much faster without eating sugar. Click here to read more about adrenal fatigue. It’s the kind of health issue that needs to be addressed right away to improve most other health concerns.

This pumpkin spice smoothie is surprisingly good. I was actually kind of skeptical it would be palatable when I was making it. I find that protein powders have a way of reducing the enjoyment factor of most smoothies. Usually, the stevia is too overpowering for me. It just blended right in with this recipe though. The texture is also great. It’s thick and creamy, no chunkiness. It tastes like a dessert which is perfectly acceptable to have for breakfast.

Pumpkin Spice Smoothie (Paleo, Vegan)

Ingredients
1/2 cup ice
1 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk (I used my homemade almond milk)
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1 scoop vanilla protein powder (I used Genuine Health Fermented Vegan Proteins+)
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp allspice
OR can sub in pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice
Optional: A few drops of Stevia

Directions
Combine all the ingredients in a blender in the order listed. Serve right away. Makes 2 cups (1 serving).

Green Tea Muffins (vegan)

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I usually keep my posts nice and short, but this week, I want to bring up the issue of body image. If you would like to skip ahead to the green tea muffins recipe, scroll down to the picture.

For a very long time, society has told us that beauty meant being thin. While the definition of beauty has been expanded to include a bigger variety of body types, there still seems to be this ideal in place that being thin is attractive.

I raise this issue from the position of a small girl. I’m 5’2″ and wear size 00 or 0, depending on where I shop. It’s not that I’m unnaturally skinny; I just have a small build. I have what some people would call an “ideal” body shape: a small waist, and curvier hips.

So, what’s the issue? Let me bring up a few examples to demonstrate my concern. I work in retail, and my store has recently relocated. The new location has skinny mirrors, meaning that these mirrors that are designed to make people look thinner. I personally dislike the mirrors, but many customers seem to become excited at the sight of them.

Clothes shopping feels like an ordeal to me because I have such a hard time finding things in my size. Yet, when I complain to friends or coworkers about it, they’ll often take a sarcastic tone and reply something along the lines of, “Oh, poor you, you’re thin”.

Sometimes, conversations will turn to the topic of complaints we have about ourselves; “My feet are too big…” or “I’m so small that I never get taken seriously, since I look so young…”. What shocks me about these conversations is when someone’s complaint is dismissed with “Yeah but men like that”.

That should be plenty of examples to illustrate my concerns. Simply put, we are still letting society think for us. Rather than accepting our unique, beautiful bodies, we get stuck on how to fit a practically impossible mold in order to be perceived a certain way by others. That becomes exhausting quickly. Or maybe that’s just me.

The only person standing in your way is you. I know you’ve heard this many times. I feel that it applies here. Think of how much time to truly accomplish yourself would open up if you stopped getting stuck on the size of your thighs. On your deathbed, you won’t complain about how you wish you had toned your belly muscles more.

I have a lot of work to do that in that regard, but it’s always good to reflect upon these things. Hopefully, you’ll join me in my reflection in order to unleash your potential!

Green tea muffins

Now, the green tea muffins! I’m a fan of matcha powder, but it’s on the expensive side. I had 5 free bags of tea to claim from David’s tea so I ended up getting 4 bags of matcha powder. Not bad, huh? I decided to make these green tea muffins as a solution to my boredom with my breakfasts lately.

Green Tea Muffins

Ingredients
1 cup brown rice flour
1/3 cup tapioca starch
3 tbsp potato starch
1 tsp xanthan gum
3 tbsp organic cane sugar or alternative
1 tsp matcha powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup oil

Directions
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 6 cups of a muffin pan. Avoid using muffin liners. No, seriously. The muffins will stick to the paper.

In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients and mix well. Spoon into the greased cups of the muffin pan.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Gluten free Cinnamon Raisin Bread (vegan)

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When I was younger, when I went to Calgary with my mom, we would go to the Eau Claire market and get the best cinnamon raisin bread ever. The memory of that bread stayed with me. Since I can no longer buy amazing raisin bread, I took it upon myself to make beauty happen.

Homemade whole grain cinnamon raisin bread

I’ve officially lived in four different apartments in the last year. I moved again last week, hopefully for the last time in a looong while. I decided to downsize because my last place was costing me more than I could afford. I found a nice roomy studio with a great kitchen. This one will save me a few hundred dollars a month. Plus, now I live in my favourite neighbourhood in town.

I finally got settled in yesterday. I spent several hours unpacking box after box. I do still have a few boxes to unpack, but all the important stuff has been taken care of. I’m glad, because I ate pre-made meals for a week straight, while all my pans and utensils were held hostage in cardboard. It was too late yesterday to make bread by the time I was done working on the apartment, but I set to it when I woke up this morning.

Gluten Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Ingredients
2 cups water (room temperature for bread machine, slightly warm for oven)
3 tbsp flax meal or chia meal – this will be part of the wet ingredients
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp maple syrup (or try honey)
1 cup brown rice flour
1 cup teff flour
1/2 cup starch (tapioca, potato, arrowroot, or a combination)
2 tbsp sweet rice flour
2 tbsp sorghum flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp xanthan gum
2 tsp cinnamon
1 package regular yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
1 cup sultana raisins

Directions
In the bread machine:
Add all the ingredients in the order listed, except for raisins. If your bread machine has a gluten free function, use that one. Otherwise, a regular function will do. This recipe will make a 2 lb loaf.

When the first mix cycle is finished, check on the dough to make sure there are no lumps left.

Remove the loaf from the bread machine immediately when it is done. Otherwise, it will become soggy. Wait at least ten minutes before cutting it.

In the oven:
In a small bowl, combine water, maple syrup, and yeast. It should take about ten minutes to proof the yeast (foam will form at the top). If the yeast doesn’t proof, it’s no longer good. Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. When the yeast has proofed, add in the rest of the wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ones and mix well.

Transfer the dough to a greased loaf pan. Cover with a towel and let the yeast rise for an hour in a warm place (try over the fridge).

Heat the oven to 350F degrees. Once it reaches that temperature, put the loaf in the oven and bake for one hour. Let the loaf cool down before cutting.

Breakfast Double Chocolate Muffins (vegan)

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A few months back, my naturopath recommended that I eat more protein with breakfast. When that happened, I researched which flours contained the highest amount of protein and made chocolate muffins based on that. It turns out that oat flour does contain a decent amount of protein, but that it doesn’t have the best texture and properties for baking. I had to make a few batches of these before getting them to be actual muffins.

With that said, I leave it up to you to decide whether you want to make these chocolate muffins or not. If healthiness is the biggest factor for you, I recommend these for you. If you’re looking for the best chocolate muffin in the world, keep looking. These aren’t horrible, but the texture is just not quite right.

Part of the challenge with these muffins is that I refused to add xanthan gum, so figuring out the right amount of chia meal for oat flour and almond meal proved to be a little tricky.

Because I find vegan chocolate chips expensive and sometimes a bit disappointing, I buy a 70% dark chocolate bar and break it into chunks. I welcome you to do the same.

Breakfast double chocolate muffins

Breakfast double chocolate muffins (vegan)

Ingredients
3/4 cup almond meal
3/4 cup oat flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp corn free baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp chia meal
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup flax milk
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Chocolate chips or chunks to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 375F.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and mix well. In a smaller bowl (or a large measuring cup), combine all the wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients. Mix well and let it sit for a couple of minutes to allow the chia meal to absorb some of the liquid. I let it do that while I turn my chocolate bar into chocolate chunks.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the muffins comes out clean. Makes 12 regular muffins.

Manoucheh + Your Suggestions!

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Manoucheh (Lebanese flatbread with zaatar)

When I was little and I lived in Montreal, my family would always stop by a Lebanese bakery to pick up some manoucheh and some spinach fatayer (little spinach pies). I hated both as a child. I feel terrible about it now. I had this amazing food at arm’s reach and I snubbed it. After having finally developed a taste for some amazing food, I found out I could no longer eat gluten.

I am now left with two options: I can forget about manoucheh, or I can make my own. As it turns out, it’s a lot more difficult to unglutenize some recipes than I had anticipated. My manoucheh (if I can even call it that) didn’t turn out quite right. I know I made a few mistakes, but I don’t think fixing those mistakes would quite give me traditional manoucheh. For one, because I was multitasking, I forgot to add a bit of oil to the dough. I know I also didn’t roll out the dough thin enough. I definitely thought I had rolled it out thinner.

This is where your suggestions come in! Have you ever had or made manoucheh? Can you offer some ideas to make these closer to the authentic thing? I’m talking air bubbles and all. If I manage to improve this recipe, I’ll post updates.

Manoucheh

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 cup potato starch
1 tbsp xanthan gum
1 cup warm water (not hot)
1 package traditional yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
1 tbsp olive oil

Zaatar mix – I used about 2-3 tbsp (You can find this at Middle Eastern stores or find a recipe online)
Olive oil – just enough to make a spreadable paste

Directions
Combine the warm water and the yeast. I do this in the measuring cup. Proof the yeast. If you’ve never used yeast before, you just need to let it sit in the water until it foams at the top. This can take 10-15 minutes. If it doesn’t end up foaming, the yeast is probably dead and won’t work.

In the meantime, combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. When the yeast is done proofing, add the liquids and mix well. I did this by hand. Form into a big ball in the bowl. Cover with a warm towel and let the yeast rise for about an hour. To quicken the process, place this in the warmest part of your house.

When the yeast is done rising, preheat the oven to 400F. Roll out the dough really thin. Seriously, really thin. I did this on my stoneware pan. I love my stoneware. Bake for ten minutes.

While it’s baking, mix some zaatar and olive oil. When you take the manoucheh out of the oven, spread the zaatar on top. I turned the dough over before putting zaatar because the bottom looked better.

Enjoy while it’s hot! And while you do that, reflect on how to improve the recipe. When your belly is full, send me your suggestions.

Pudla (Vegan Chickpea Flour Pancakes With Veggies)

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When I went to see my naturopath last week, she told me that I need to eat more protein with breakfast. Because breakfast is a rare occurrence around here, I wasn’t surprised to hear that. While I do try to make overnight oats for any day that I start work at 8 or earlier, I always seem to think I’ll have time for breakfast with later shifts. But who am I kidding… I did do some research and found this thing called “pudla”.

Forums are loaded with good ideas, though those ideas don’t all work for me. Pudlas, however, seem to work well for me. They’re chickpea flour based vegetable pancakes from Indian origin. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned how much I love Indian food, but I LOVE IT. Oh what? Half my recipes are Indian food? Oh, I guess I must have mentioned it before!

To be honest, I have no idea if my pudla recipe is anything close to the real thing. I found guidelines for making these pancakes and I added the spices with inspiration from onion bahji. If you don’t have fennel seeds, you can skip them, but it brought these savory pancakes to a whole new level.

Chickpea flour pancakes (pudla)

Pudla (Vegan Chickpea Flour Pancakes With Veggies)

Ingredients
2 cups chickpea flour
1 tsp each: baking soda, salt, turmeric, cumin powder
1/2 tsp fennel seed
1 cup water
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 medium sized white mushrooms, sliced
3 green onions, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
Oil for frying (optional)

Directions
Combine the dry ingredients. Mix in the wet ingredients. Add the veggies.

Heat a bit of oil (if using) in a frying pan over medium heat. Pour a quarter of the batter into the pan and spread evenly. When the top looks like it’s not liquid anymore, flip the pudla over and cook for another couple of minutes. Makes 4 pancakes.

Vegan Paleo Breakfast Apple Crumble

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Vegan paleo apple crumble

Since discovering the secret to vegan gluten free pancakes, I’ve been making a lot of those. I wanted to make something different for an interesting Sunday brunch. Quinoa bake came up as an idea, but that just didn’t seem to fit my craving. I figured I’d use some of the apples I had in my fridge and put a nice topping on it. You could call this a non-traditional apple crumble.

I’m always up for expanding my cooking/baking horizons. I recently saw a recipe online that used tahini as a substitute for oil. It really gave me a new way to look at recipe creation. Not only does that cut down on hydrogenated fats, but it also increases the nutrient content in food.

This crumble isn’t your typical crumble with half a cup of brown sugar. It relies on the natural sweetness of the apples, the cinnamon, and the coconut, along with the flavour of the almond meal and the tahini. The minimal amount of maple syrup is plenty for this recipe. Cinnamon is also a helpful in balancing blood sugar levels. While I chose to serve this as a tasty breakfast, you could just as well serve it as a healthy dessert.

Vegan Paleo Breakfast Apple Crumble

Ingredients
3 small apples (or 2 large)
3/4 cup almond meal
1/4 cup desiccated coconut
2 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp maple syrup
About 1/2 tsp of cinnamon (or to taste)
Another 1/2 tsp of cinnamon

Directions
Preheat oven to 375F.

Peel and chop the apples. I like to place them in an aluminium pie pan. Sprinkle them with part of the cinnamon (you can really go on a to-taste basis here). Combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Spread the crumble somewhat evenly over the apples.

Bake for about 15 minutes, keeping an eye on it. It’s ready when the crumble topping is pleasantly toasted.

Any-Flavour Green Smoothie Template

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Breakfast on the go. That’s how I try to live my life. I know, it’s terrible, but it’s an improvement. At least I try to actually eat something now. Or drink it, in the case of this green smoothie. I’ve been walking to work for the last two weeks, now that the weather is nicer, and that my bus pass has expired. I feel that $96 a month is a bit steep for a 5-10 minute bus ride, especially when the alternative is vitamin D and exercise.

My breakfast method is the following: make a green smoothie while I get ready in the morning, pour it in my reusable bottle, and drink it whenever I have to wait for the pedestrian light to pop up at intersections. Since I’m going to stand around and wait anyway, I might as well do something useful. If you think I should just drink my smoothie while walking, you’ve never seen what kind of a clumsy disaster I can be.

If you’re detoxing, try replacing the milk substitute with water. Milk substitutes can often be quite processed, which makes them less detox friendly. You can add a sugar free sweetening syrup instead to improve the taste.

Any flavour green smoothie template

Any-Flavour Green Smoothie Template

Ingredients
1 cup frozen fruit (I like raspberries)
1 ripe banana
1 cup greens (spinach is my favourite, or try kale, parsley, romaine lettuce, beet greens, chard, carrot leaves,  or dandelion leaves)
1 cup milk of choice (water can be used for detox, raw, paleo, etc.)
1-2 tbsp seeds (hemp hearts, chia, and flax are my favourites)
Optional: sweetener of choice to taste

Directions
Combine all the ingredients in a blender. The order that works best in my blender is (bottom to top) greens, frozen fruit, banana, seeds, and then milk. Find the order that works for yours. Blend for two minutes or until nice and smooth.

Banana Buckwheat Pancakes (vegan)

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When going gluten free, learning how to use all the different kinds of flour can be a bit overwhelming. To try to avoid that, I resisted trying all sorts of flours I felt weren’t going to be of use to me. Big mistake. Now that I’ve come to terms with using specific flours for specific items, I see the advantage of the kinds I avoided.

For some reason, I avoided buckwheat flour up until last week. I had bought some, but it had been staring at me from my pantry shelf for a while. I had some ripe bananas kicking around, so I decided to give banana buckwheat pancakes a try. Fruit puree is often used to replace eggs in baking, but the mashed banana in this recipe makes it go from “good texture” to “OHEMGEE-AMAZING-TASTE!” with no effort.

I had previously posted another recipe for vegan sugar free pancakes, but that recipe called for xanthan gum, which can be problematic for lots of people. I’ve read somewhere that buckwheat doesn’t require any gums, so I went ahead without xanthan gum. I’m actually quite surprised at how well it turned out.

Banana buckwheat pancakes

Banana Buckwheat Pancakes (vegan)

Ingredients
1 1/4 cup buckwheat flour (make sure it’s labelled gluten free – not all are)
1/2 cup tapioca starch
2 tsp corn free baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 small/medium mashed banana
3 tbsp liquid sweetener – if using sugar, cut down to 2 tbsp
2 tbsp oil (plus more for frying)
About 1 1/2 cups water or milk of your choice

Directions
Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the wet ingredients. When adding the water or milk in, start with 1 cup, and then slowly add the rest until you have a thick batter.

Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat (unless using a non-stick pan). Scoop some batter into the frying pan and quickly spread it to be the shape of a pancake. When you see a good amount of bubbles in the uncooked side of the pancake, flip it over and cook for about 2 minutes more. Repeat until all the batter is gone.

Sugar Free Superfood Granola

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Homemade granola superfood

Oh, breakfast. If you read my blog, you know I have a weird relationship with breakfast. As much as I know breakfast is important, my stomach can’t seem to want to allow me to eat breakfast right when I wake up. This tends to be problematic for work. I climb up ladders and run around like a headless chicken for hours before I can take a break and get something decent to eat.

I’ve been bringing smoothies to work, but they aren’t substantial enough, and I end up being hungry fairly quickly. My new attempt at fixing this problem is granola. The good thing about granola is that you can change the recipe to include all sorts of different flavours and nutrients, according to your mood and your needs.

Since there is a possibility I will be moving in a couple of months, I wanted to use up some of the extra little bags of food I have. I wouldn’t usually put almonds in my granola (but maybe that’s going to change), but I had a bag of slivered almonds laying around. I was debating using raisins, but then decided there was enough variety in this granola. I’ll save the raisins for the next one.

If you’re doing one of those vegan, gluten free, sugar free, alcohol free detoxes, this granola is perfect. It doesn’t even have to be a breakfast. You can snack on it while sipping a cup of green tea. It’ll fill you up enough to avoid snacking on junk.

Sugar Free Superfood Granola

Ingredients
2 cups rolled oats – not the quick cooking kind (I use Only Oats)
2/3 cup slivered almonds – mine were blanched
2/3 cup unsweetened coconut shavings
2 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp hemp hearts
2 tbsp flax meal – using whole flax won’t get you all the nutrients
1 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp oil (use coconut oil if detoxing)
1/4 cup maple syrup

Directions
Preheat over to 350F.

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl (my chia seeds tend to all end up at the bottom). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (I highly recommend it). Spread the granola in an even layer and bake for 30 minutes. Cool before transferring to an airtight container.

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Christina Najjar - Natural Nutrition

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