healthy blog recipe night

last night i had my friend jeannie over for dinner; we planned in advance to cook healthy recipes from some of the blogs i’ve been obsessed with lately.

the butternut & white bean patties are adapted from healthy happy life‘s “toasty pumpkin chickpea fritters” recipe, and the baked apple is pretty faithful to for the love of kale‘s version.  both recipes turned out AMAZING, and it was such a fun night!  (disclosure: two bottles of red wine were also involved.)

click-through for my cooking notes and the nutritional information…

easy, low-sugar crockpot apple butter

this past saturday i went apple picking with some friends at stuart’s fruit farm… i get apples as part of my CSA share every other saturday, so even though i eat an apple almost every day for my mid-morning snack, they are starting to stockpile up in my fridge. i still wanted to take part in the apple picking fun, so i resolved to find a recipe that would use up most of my haul and keep for a while. apple butter is perfect — it’s kind of like a super-reduced apple sauce, so you get highly concentrated apple flavor, but without the volume of the apples you start with. stored properly, it keeps for over a year. this batch made 12 1/2-cup jelly jars’ worth, so i will be giving some out to friends and family, and storing some in the pantry. it’s great on toasted raisin bread, and i plan on using it to top pancakes and waffles as well. i could also see it being delicious in greek yogurt, or being a great dip for a banana, or even being incorporated into other baked goods (swirled in a cheesecake, maybe?). my super-simple recipe is below!