Three ingredient energy bar

I love Larabars. I love, love, love them. But I don't love paying for them. On a good day they are $1 a piece and I am just too cheap for that.

I scoured the internet looking for recipes and I found several. But some of them turned out too sticky and some of them turned out too crumby. So I just kept playing till I found a take on a recipe I liked.

What I love about this recipe is that there is nothing in this that will hurt you. No sugar, nothing processed, nothing you can't pronounce. And even better it only cost me about $3.00 to make 10 bars!

What you'll need:

1 cup almonds

10 oz. pitted dates

1/4 cup cherries

1/4 cup flax seed (OPTIONAL!)

Food processor or blender.

Throw the almonds (and flaxseed if you're using it) in your blender and process them in to small pieces. 

Next drop in your cherries and dates and blend them all together.

Then dump them in a pan and grab a handful and make a little ball.

Flatten and shape that ball into a rectangle. This should yield 10. Should- depending on how big or small you make them.

Store in fridge. Or you can even freeze them for later. Just wrap them all indiviudally in plastic wrap.

Five Ingredient Fish Dinner

We are keeping up with our simple week of recipes. We had a 3 ingredient dessert, 4 ingredient bread and now a 5 ingredient fish dinner.

I figured out how to cook fish in aluminum foil when I was on a diet last year and constantly exhaused. I learned later my exhaustion was not my diet, I was pregnant. Ha ha!

Anyway, because this recipe was cheap, easy and healthy I began to make it a lot when I was pregnant. I was coming home from work late in the evening and I needed something that could be prepped and cooked in under 30 minutes.

This is very healthy, it has protien, fiber and all the minerals and nutrients associated with squash and zucchini like vitiamin C and magense. And it's so inexpensive I made mine with Tilapia and it costs about $1.90 per person or about $2.06 if you eat over rice.

What you'll need:

Four pieces of tilapia (or red fish or salmon)

Two zucchini

Two squash

Fresh or dried cilantro

Soy sauce

Aluminum foil

**I have also put onion, oranges and lemon pepper. You can use pretty much anything. That's the beauty of this recipe.

Preheat your oven to 350 and let's get started.

Chop your veggies and make certain your fish is fully thawed.

Tear off four peices of foil. Place a piece of fish one each piece of foil. Sprinkle the fish with soy sauce and cilantro.

Cover each peice of fish with a healthy portion of the vegetables. Beleive me, two zuchini and two squash go a long way.

Fold the foil over the veggie and fish like a little envelope. Place all four foil packs on a baking sheet and place in the oven. You will need to cook it about 25 minutes.

Enjoy!

Super banana, berry (avocado) smoothie

Okay, okay, okay, I know that sounds gross. But I promise it isn't.

A couple weeks ago I made a butternut squash soup that was, well, soupy. So instead of adding milk I added avocado. You couldn't even taste it. So I have been thinking about this. I love avocados. They are loaded in health benefits. What if I added them to more things?

I have been making smoothies because, well who doesn't love a smoothie? And they are quick and I can drink them with one hand while I type, feed a baby or clean the kitchen. (Ha, like my kitchen is ever clean.)

Last week I made this Super banana, berry, avocado smoothie with milk and raw honey. It's loaded with calcium, potassium, vitamins C,K, and B6.

What you'll need:

One small banana

about 6 frozen strawberries

one avocado

a cup of milk and a little honey to sweeten.

Throw it all in the blender and blend, blend, blend. This makes two. Take a sip. You're welcome. ;)