GF Brownies! {broccoli style}

Hey Friends!

It’s Friday! “Cheers to the freakin weekend!” as Rihanna would say and I hope you all have fabulous plans for the weekend. The BYU Cougars are playing tomorrow, It’s bountiful basket saturday, and tonights movie night! Sounds like a fabulous weekend to me:)

I attended a Gluten Free Cooking class at Whole Foods last week taught by the lovely Tara Rayburn.  She is a mom who lives a gluten free life and highly values the importance of a nutrient dense diet.  The one thing I respected about her is that she started off her lesson by simply stating that she “is not a doctor or a nutritionist, and doesn’t want to be one.  I’m simply a healthy habit coach.” Now, I have a huge respect for doctors as well as nutritionists but, as I have mentioned before, I’m neither of those things and It was great to see that I can someday be like her. Tara has her own gluten free cookbook out and you can check it out here.

I loved the class at Whole Foods! I like I was the youngest one there by about 20 years, but I didn’t mind.  She stressed the importance of not only living gluten free, but feeding your body nutrient dense foods.  Her kids are picky and so she has found effective ways to sneak nutrients in everything they eat! We sampled cupcakes made with a gluten free all natural mix that she threw some pureed squash into.  The cupcakes were moist and there wasnt a hint of a sqaushy taste.  She told us that she uses purees of veggies or another nutrient dense food, in all her baking recipes! We even sampled some tacos that she sauteed the meat in the squash puree!

I knew I had to try this…

So I picked up a gluten free brownie mix at Trader Joes that contained zero wheat, soy, milk & dairy, corn, tree nuts, or peanuts, read the ingredient list and decided it was perfect:)  Just because it says gluten free doesn’t always mean healthy! Be sure to read the ingredient list and decide for your self.  I had a whole bundle of broccoli that I needed to use so I threw it in the steamer.  I put the steamed broccoli heads in a tuber ware for tonights dinner and decided to puree the stalks. (nobody eats those anyways so why waste them?)

The mix called for:

1 farm fresh egg

1/2 C oil (I substituted 1/4 coconut oil, 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce)

1/4 C water

and I added my broccoli stalk puree 🙂

Before you freak out and think “no way can I put broccoli in a brownie”, think again.  I devoured a brownie square and forgot there was a nutrient dense veggie inside it.

This gets me a little excited because now there are unlimited possibilites of what I can do! So many ways to include nutrients in everything I eat!

Carson approves!

I think I’ll take them to work tonight and see how they go over with the Cast! Enjoy your weekend and don’t forget to get moving.  The weather is beautiful and what a great opportunity to exercise outside:)

Enjoy your weekend:)

***** Did you enter the NuNaturals Stevia giveaway?!*****

xoxo

Jessie Ann