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…

eggplant & kale nooch bowl

as some of you may know, i’ve been attempting to shift to a more plant-based diet.  i’m not ready to commit to being vegan (and not sure if i ever will be!), but i had already pretty much limited my animal-based food intake to fish and dairy, and have now found that further reducing the amount of dairy in my diet gives me less digestive issues and higher energy.  exploring vegan pantry staples has been a fun exercise for me — for example, nutritional yeast (nicknamed “nooch”) is a go-to product, but was totally new to me.  this simple dinner satisfied my craving for earthy, umami flavors and hearty (almost “meaty”) textures, but was entirely plant-based… filling, but surprisingly light.  cooking method after the jump.