Recipe Archives - GoodFitFam

Protein Pancakes

February 26, 2023 by Chris Leave a Comment

Welcome, fellow foodies, to our blog post about the benefits of protein pancakes over regular pancakes. Here at America’s Test Kitchen, we are always on the lookout for delicious and healthy recipes that nourish our bodies and delight our taste buds.

Let’s start with the basics. Regular pancakes are made with flour, sugar, eggs, milk, and butter, and are often served with syrup and butter on top. While they are undoubtedly delicious, they are also high in carbohydrates and calories and low in protein.

Protein pancakes, on the other hand, are made with ingredients such as rolled oats, low-fat cottage cheese, eggs, and protein powder, which are high in protein and fiber and low in carbs and calories. They are also gluten-free, which makes them an excellent choice for those with gluten sensitivities or celiac disease.

But what are the actual benefits of eating protein pancakes over regular pancakes? Let’s take a look:

They keep you feeling full for longer.

Protein is known to be a satiating nutrient, which means it keeps us feeling full for longer. This is because protein takes longer to digest than carbohydrates and fats, which means it stays in our stomach for a longer period of time, keeping us feeling satisfied and reducing our overall calorie intake.

They can aid in weight loss.

Since protein pancakes are high in protein and low in carbs and calories, they can be an excellent choice for those looking to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. Studies have shown that increasing protein intake can boost metabolism and reduce appetite, which can lead to a reduction in calorie intake and weight loss.

They are a great post-workout meal.

Protein is essential for muscle repair and growth, making protein pancakes an ideal post-workout meal. The high protein content in these pancakes can help repair and rebuild muscle tissue that is damaged during exercise, which can help with muscle recovery and growth.

They can help regulate blood sugar levels.

Protein is also known to help regulate blood sugar levels, which is particularly beneficial for people with diabetes. By combining protein with a low glycemic index carbohydrate like rolled oats, protein pancakes can help slow down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream, preventing spikes in blood sugar levels.

So there you have it, folks. The benefits of protein pancakes over regular pancakes are clear. They are not only delicious but also a healthy and nutritious way to start your day or fuel your workouts. Give them a try and see for yourself!

Ingredients:

1 cup of rolled oats
1/2 cup of low-fat cottage cheese
2 eggs
1 scoop of protein powder
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (Our Favorite Brand)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup of unsweetened almond milk
1 tablespoon of coconut oil or cooking spray

Instructions:
In a blender or food processor, pulse the rolled oats until they turn into a fine powder.
Add the low-fat cottage cheese, eggs, protein powder, vanilla extract, baking powder, salt, and unsweetened almond milk to the blender, and blend until the mixture is smooth and well-combined.
Heat a non-stick pan or griddle over medium-high heat. If using a pan, add 1 tablespoon of coconut oil, or if using a griddle, coat with cooking spray.
Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, pour the pancake batter onto the pan or griddle. Cook until the edges start to dry and the surface is bubbly, about 2-3 minutes.
Using a spatula, flip the pancake and cook for an additional 1-2 minutes on the other side, or until golden brown.
Transfer the cooked pancakes to a plate and repeat the cooking process until all the batter is used.
Serve the protein pancakes warm with your favorite toppings, such as fresh fruit, maple syrup, or almond butter.

Enjoy your delicious and nutritious protein pancakes!

Note: If you prefer a thinner batter, add more unsweetened almond milk to the mixture. If you want a thicker batter, add more rolled oats. You can also customize the flavor of these pancakes by using different flavors of protein powder or adding spices like cinnamon or nutmeg.

Develop Healthy Eating Habits by Changing your Kitchen Defaults – Part 1

January 2, 2020 by Chris Leave a Comment

Develop Healthy Eating Habits by Changing your Kitchen Defaults – Part 1

Our little guys tried more varieties of food before they turned five than Karen and I have before turning twenty-five. One reason is availability. Specialty foods have gone mainstream so a Slim Jim has to cozy up to sheep jerky and pomegranate is about as exotic as Peanut M&Ms. Taking advantage of variety has really aided in developing our boys’ robust palate.

We’ve been asked how we go about designing our meals as well as what we buy at stores. This is a two-parter since Karen has a professional background in picky eating and I’m just a reformed picky eater who tries to keep it healthy.

He had a dream to have crackers with four dips for breakfast.

Here are some default settings I generally follow. The first thing to make your unhealthy foods yourself. If I crave a muffin or brownies we try to make it from scratch. So we can appreciate the work that it takes to make it and what ingredients it takes. We have cookies in the house but they’ve not made by Nabisco. Cooking your own food, even if not totally healthy, will give you knowledge that translates to healthy cooking.

Another default is planning your meal around the veggie. We always have proteins in our meals, but ensuring the vegetable is cooked in an appealing way ensures the kids get the nutritional benefit. This could mean leaving some foods raw, like snap peas or bell peppers or steaming broccoli or boiling peas. I also invited other veggies in every recipe. We add cooked sweet potato to pizza crusts or adding green vegetables to store-bought mac n cheese. Sneaking veggies into foods is all the rage and half the pasta aisle seems to be made up of noodles from everything from spinach to seaweed.

Tips & Tricks

Here are a few other tips/tricks and defaults we turn to make cooking and planning with kids.

A treat at the supermarket is letting the kids pick their own fruit. They’ve had fun picking out dragon fruit, jicama, and other strange-looking fruit that just wasn’t available twenty years ago.
If kids pick it, pack it, stir it, chop it and add it, chances are they’ll eat it.
Never toss out bananas. The darker they get, the sweeter they’ll taste in a smoothie. Freeze them. The kids love designing their smoothies. They’ve used just about everything in the fridge and spice rack.
Never tell them it won’t taste good, even if it’s a cumin, basil, banana, and watermelon smoothie.
Pack your pancakes with fruit and greek yogurt. I don’t like greek yogurt but find it pretty good if it’s been hidden in something baked.
Add frozen berries to cooked oatmeal to cool them down faster.
Not just pancakes use greek yogurt in everything. It’s super versatile and adds a bit of tanginess to Italian dishes. It’s also a great way to stave off your appetite at night.
Only use half the Mac n’ Cheese additives in boxed mac and cheese. Use the extra additives in your burger mix for a little extra cheesiness.
It’s okay to toss unhealthy foods. If you wouldn’t feed it to your dog, it’s better off in the bin.
Use a calorie counter. It’s a good practice to check the cumulation of the foods you’re taking in as a baseline — no need to do this every day. Many apps can handle this, and you don’t need to be obsessive about making it happen. It’s a good idea to check on occasion what nutrients you may need help with or if you’re taking in more sugar than you realize.
Our favorite snacks – unsweetened applesauce, carrots, greek yogurt, snap peas, pb&j, naked popcorn, bell pepper slices, string cheese, as well as every type of nuts we can find.

The thing is, keeping it healthy has gotten harder. Our rules haven’t changed much since they were two, but they are much more independent at five. Now they don’t always think rules apply, and that’s perfectly fine. They will still go to the fridge and pull out snap peas or finish off a pint of strawberries at a sitting because that’s what they like and it makes them feel good

We’ll be back soon with Part 2 – Grade School Snaking

Spicy Sweet Potato Ginger Soup

January 19, 2019 by Chris Leave a Comment

In the past I’ve been mostly a soup purchaser. I love soup but I had zero interested in learning how to make my own. I thought it was hard. Turns out I was wrong.

As long as you have butter you can be pretty sure it’ll taste like soup. Making it good that’s a different story.

I made a Cheddar ale soup a week ago. Turned out better than I expected. It was 50% recipe and 50% my own. Today I present a recipe I made up because I couldn’t find the one I was looking for. I couldn’t remember if I bookmarked it, saved it to a collection on Instagram, read it in a magazine. No, bother. I used what I had around and made really tasty soup.

First thing. prep your food.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp Red Chile Paste
2 tsp Ginger
1/2 Scallion minced
2-3 Cups of Chicken or Vegtable Stock
1 Cup Unsweetened Coconut Flavored Almond Milk
2 Large Sweet Potatoes Cubed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Drop in the Red Chile Paste in a dry pan on medium heat. After a minute or two it’ll bubble and become very fragrant. This is the spicy part.
Once the chile Paste gets nice and hot. Drop in the butter and scallions. Bring up to medium high. Stir a bit to keep the scallions from burning and to mix in that paste with the butter. It’ll be a nice dark color.
Now add the cubed sweet potatoes and ginger. I used purple sweet potatoes. I thought they were ube’s but inside they were bright white so definitely not the variety common to the Philippines. Give it a quick stir so it mingles with the paste and butter for half a minute or so.
Add in the stock. I used chicken stock but vegetable would be perfect too. Pour in enough to cover the potatoes. Add salt and pepper
Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are tender. This will vary based on the volume and size of cubes but somewhere around 15 minutes
Once the potatoes are tender add in the milk. This will give it a bit of sweetness to balance the spice. Bring back to a boil then reduce to a simmer.
Use an immersion blender and combine ingredients. Simmer to get the desired thickness. Season to taste

Top with cream and croutons

Help Kitchen Visual Guides

March 26, 2018 by Chris Leave a Comment

Help Kitchen Visual Guides

Fire up the color printer because we have 16 of our favorite kitchen diagrams. We need these because we never have all the ingredients, always wonder if that’s still good to eat, and what is the best wine to pair with string cheese. In all seriousness, tape some of these up on the inside of your cabinets for a fast answer to simple kitchen questions.

1. Easy Soups

Hold up, you may not need to run to the store to pick up dinner. Here are 10 soups you can make combining an odd can of beans, the last veggies in your fridge and seasonings that may have expired.

2. Spice Pairings

Did you know you can use Caraway with Cottage cheese?

3. A Guide to Cooking and Baking Substitutions

This one is super useful. We have made entire recipes using only substitutions.

4. Cooking Methods

Disappointed the torch method can’t be used for Grilled Cheese.

5. Guide to Flavoring with Spices

Another spicy visualization.

6. Conversion Chart

For when you find a recipe on a British Blog… Or when you’re anywhere else in the world and need to know what the American’s are talking about.

7. Kitchen Volume Conversion Aid

When you need to turn the volume up in the kitchen…

8. Healthy Oil Cooking Guide

If you watch Food Network, you may not know you can’t use Olive Oil for everything.

9. The Onion Breakdown

This is helpful in some dishes but I normally ignore everything except the Red Onion bit.

10. Egg Substitutions

If I don’t have eggs, I normally have bananas. The PB substitution is mind-blowing.

11. How Much to Serve at a Party

Cupcake ratio seems a bit low.

12. Veggie Cooking Cheat Sheet

You can’t throw in all veggies at the same time and expect it to taste good.

13. Perfect Cookie

All look good to me, but 7,3,6,5,4,8,2,1

14. How to Store Your Groceries

Have you stored a peeled banana more than a day? I’d like to hear the story behind that.

15. Real Good Cheap Easy Food

Lots of good recipes and note the shopping list on the sides.

16. Wine & Cheese Pairing

Everyone knows Boursin and Gruner Veltliner pair well, but you may not know cheddar and merlot are BFF’s

Eggs – It’s What’s for Dinner

January 19, 2018 by Chris Leave a Comment

Dinner Eggs Recipes

Most families have pizza night or taco night, but no body has egg night. Recently I was at a farm to table restaurant and saw they have an Omelette of the day on the lunch menu. That day it was made with potatoes and chorizo and it looked beautiful. I make omelets everyday by 6 am but omelets would even be better at 6pm. The image of that beautiful omelet inspired me.

Eggs are cheap, easy and filling. They are digested slower than most foods you normally eat at night so you may make it to bed without pangs of hunger. Best of all it feels like you’re eating carbs

In the morning I tend to go with a simple, four-ingredient omelet with 5 whites and 2 whole; it takes all of 7 minutes and there’s no cleanup. At night when your taste buds are searching for more flavor, you can spice it up, dump some leftovers or go veggie crazy. There are no wrong answers.

Here are five eggcellent recipes to eggspire you. The best part is eggs will love you no matter how you vary the recipe.

All you need for survival is peppers and eggs.
C Dinner Eggs Recipes reamy Scrambled Egg Stuffed Bell Pepper with Veggies -Via FitMenCook

Easy Mediterranean Style Egg Casserole Recipe – via The Mediterranean Dish Egg Casserole Recipe for Brunch

Meal planning is a cinch. These taste decent cold so you can eat them on the go.

Mini Quiche with Sweet Potato Crust via Eating Well.

Mini Quiches with Sweet Potato Crust

This one is not as healthy as the others but your taste buds will thank you.

Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Has – via Tasty

Tolkien said the most beautiful sounding phrase is cellar door, but I think it’s Huevos Rancheros. Via Serious Eats Quick and Easy Huevos Rancheros With Tomato-Chili Salsa Recipe