If you live anywhere in the United States, but ESPECIALLY in the Midwest right now, I know that you are freezing. The temperatures have been below freezing for the past two weeks, leaving me wondering why I have not moved to a tropical island yet???

Luckily, if there is one thing that makes cold weather a little better, it’s wrapping yourself in a blanket and eating warm cozy soup (and preferably not leaving the house all day). So, naturally, in the last couple of days that I have before school and work start back up, I have been making different soups for the whole family. First up- lentil soup!

My mom has been making lentil soup ever since I can remember, it is an extremely popular food in my Bulgarian family. I have been watching her make it for years, and this recipe is pretty much my mom’s recipe, but with a couple more spices added for a little bit more of a kick. My family said they loved it, and I know I sure did! Hope you enjoy 🙂

After all of this holiday baking (AKA the most fun EVER) I have declared my gingerbread cookies my official favorites- both to make and eat!

After experimenting a couple of times (and fixing some mistakes I made with my last batch), these cookies turned out super soft and chewy and all of the spices gave them so much flavor!

Cookie decorating is my favorite and, being the extra person that I am, I thought I would decorate my gingerbread men extra festively, soooo I made them hold some candy canes. Because what says Christmas more than peppermint and gingerbread?!

This year for Christmas, my mom thought she would utilize my love for baking to help her around the holidays and she asked me to make some holiday cookies for the family for Christmas. Well, she probably didn’t realize what she was getting herself into when she asked because we now have five different types of Christmas cookies at home and we have been eating cookies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past week.

But there are just too many amazing recipes to try out; I had to make them all!

Sugar cookies have always been one of my favorite cookies and I really wanted to make a vegan version that was so good that not even my milk and butter loving relatives would suspect they were vegan.

I definitely had a few failed attempts, but after Googling and reading some tips on baking, I learned a few crucial tips that helped me perfect these cookies.

Here is the recipe and steps on how I made them!

It has been so long since I’ve been able to share a new recipe! This semester at school was by far the hardest one I have ever had and I am so relieved that it’s over and even more happy that I am back home where I can bake and make more recipes.

This matcha protein ball recipes is one I like to make as a snack during any time of the year, but I figured with all of colors it looks perfect for the holidays! Plus I absolutely love matcha- I have recently gotten really into matcha lattes, and this dessert is another perfect way to enjoy matcha!

Hope you give them a try 🙂

Oatmeal is one breakfast that I can never get tired of. It is so delicious and nutritious, and there are so many different ways to enjoy it! There are a ton of different recipes out there, but I wanted to share three of my favorite, healthiest oatmeal recipes that I love to make all of the time. They are all naturally sweetened, include lots of healthy ingredients, and take less than fifteen minutes to make. Here they are:

Classic Creamy Oats with Berries

• Servings: 1
• Time: 10 minutes
• Difficulty: easy
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This is one of my favorite oatmeal recipes because the combination of cashew milk and mashed banana create a really creamy texture in the oats and they turn out super thick and delicious! I find that cashew milk is a little bit creamier than almond milk, which is why I use it in this recipe. The ripe banana also helps in thickening up the oats and it is a great natural sweetener. Top with chia for some extra nutrients and crunch and strawberries, blueberries, and kiwi for some extra tart, sweet, and fresh flavor!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1 ripe banana
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cashew milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon chia seeds
• fresh fruit of your choice- I used strawberries, blueberries, and kiwi.

Directions

1. Mash up your banana and add to a pot together with your oats, cashew milk, and vanilla extract. Stir well.
2. Cook over medium heat for about 2-5 minutes, until the oats thicken.
3. Top with fruit and chia seeds.

Chocolate Banana Oats

• Servings: 1
• Time: 10 minutes
• Difficulty: easy
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These chocolate oats are so awesome because it seriously tastes like you are having dessert for breakfast. The oats turn out really soft and creamy and the cacao nibs, almonds, and coconut add an awesome crunchy texture.

Ingredients

• 1 ripe banana
• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1/2 tablespoon raw cacao (cocoa works also if you don’t have any)
• a pinch of vanilla extract and cinnamon
• raw almonds
• coconut shreds
• cacao nibs

Directions

1. Mash your banana with a fork and mix with the oats, almond milk, cacao, vanilla and cinnamon. Boil in a pot over medium heat for 2-5 minutes.
2. Top with almond, cacao nibs, coconut shreds, and fresh banana.

Cinnamon Apple Oats

• Servings: 1
• Time: 15 minutes
• Difficulty: easy
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Apples are one of my favorite fruit and the combination of apples, cinnamon, and oats is perfect for a fall day, or any morning at all!

Ingredients

• 1 apple (I used honey crisp, but any kind of apple would work)
• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• optional: walnut, pecans, or raisins

Directions

1. Cut your apple in half. Use a cheese grater to grate one half of the apple.
2. In a small pot, mix the grated apple, almond milk, and cinnamon and boil over medium heat for at least five minutes.
3. After the apple has had time to cook, add the oats to the mix and cook for another 2-5 minutes.
4. This recipe tastes great topped with fresh apple, walnuts, blueberries, or raisins.
5. Enjoy!

There are so many awesome ways to eat oats for breakfast, but these are some of my favorite ones. I hope you try them out and love them as much as I do 🙂

Granola- it’s perfect on smoothies, yogurt, chia pudding, as a bar, or just by itself! I used to buy store-bought granola, but I found that no matter what brand I bought, they always had so much added sugar and oils that don’t add any health benefits and just aren’t needed. I wanted to make a granola recipe that is filled with only nutritious ingredients that help me start my morning the right way and provide a lot of energy for the day.

So I combined some of my favorite and healthiest ingredients – oats, pecans, hemp, flax, and chia. I added some extra delicious flavors like coconut, vanilla, and cinnamon, and sweetened it with a ripe banana. The end product turned out so delicious and it is now my favorite crunchy granola to add to any breakfast. And as an added bonus, it is full of fiber, potassium, Vitamin C, calcium, and iron! Here is the recipe with the exact ratios that I used.

Healthiest Homemade Granola

• Servings: about 4 (depending on how much granola you like to use)
• Time: 25-30 minutes
• Difficulty: easy
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Super easy and quick to make homemade granola without all of the added sugar and oil of store-bought granola. Made with the healthiest ingredients only and is vegan and gluten free.

Ingredients

• 1 ripe banana
• 1/2 cup oats
• 2 tablespoons of crushed pecans
• 1 tablespoon ground flax seed
• 1 tablespoon coconut shreds
• 2 teaspoons hemp seeds
• 1 teaspoon chia
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Mash the ripe banana in a bowl.
3. Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
4. Spread the granola on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, depending on how crunchy you want it.

I love making food for other people- I think good food brings people together and it is just so much fun to make too. I have been going to a lot of graduation and birthday parties this summer and I have been making some different desserts that I want to share on this blog. These dark chocolate peanut butter balls are one of my favorite desserts to make for parties, especially for my friends who are also into eating healthy. They are vegan, high in protein (about 5g of protein per truffle), gluten free, and the only sweetener comes from natural maple syrup. I made 18 truffles with this recipe, but you can definitely make more if you make them smaller, or double the recipe. I love these truffles because they are delicious and really filling, and they also just look nice (at least I thought so!), so they are perfect to bring to events. I hope you give them a try:)

If you’re anything like me, you’re always craving something sweet (and often times unhealthy). Fortunately, there are ways to create amazingly delicious versions of the best unhealthy desserts by just swapping the bad ingredients with good ones. I first made this recipe with my best friend, who is also a model. Since we both have to stay in shape, we always bake with only healthy ingredients, which is how these truffles came to be. We wanted to make them simple and quick, and this is what we came up with. We are now obsessed with these and make them all of the time.

The preparation time is less than ten minutes and, honestly, the hardest part is waiting for the batter to freeze without eating it all;) These truffles are such a great snack for the summer because they are cold, and yet super nutritious. The recipe is high in iron and calcium, and if you make 12 truffles like I did, each one has 2.5 grams of protein, about 2 grams of fiber, and only 74 calories! They are seriously one of my all time favorite desserts and, personally, I think that they taste just like brownies!

From castings and shoots, to classes and homework, I don’t have a lot of time in my schedule, so I always try and create the fastest and easiest recipes that are also super nutritious and don’t require any unhealthy ingredients. These four ingredient oatmeal cookies are one of my favorite cookies to make because they require less than 20 minutes total to make, and I can store them away and snack on them all week when I have a sweet craving, need a study snack, or need something quick and filling to take with me when I am on the run. So many cookies have a bunch of added sugar and other ingredients that don’t really provide any nutritional value and end up making me more hungry, so whenever I want cookies that are delicious and nutritious, I turn to these.

I have also been having so much fun with food photography and taking and editing photos of my food; it’s something I just started doing this summer and I didn’t realize how much I would fall in love with it. I’ve also been seeing really awesome recipe videos and they I thought that they looked like a blast to make. I think they are also so engaging, and I thought it would make it easier for people to create the recipe when they see exactly how it’s made. So I created a video of how I made these cookies; it took a lot of time and work to make, but it was such a fun little project and I loved every minute of it. I actually think it turned out decent for my first recipe video and I’m so excited to share it! I included it in this post to make it super easy to see how to create this super simple recipe.

I hope you give it a try:)

There are so many amazing smoothie and smoothie bowl recipes out there and I love to experiment with different fruit, bases, and toppings. Now that it’s summer and the weather is slowly but surely warming up here in Chicago, I have been making smoothies for breakfast almost daily. I wanted to share one of my favorite smoothie recipes that I have been making constantly lately. It’s light and refreshing, but also filling. When it’s really hot outside, I love having a light fruity breakfast like this because I find that having a really big or heavy breakfast makes me slightly tired and drains my energy. I love having a several of lighter, nutritious meals and snacks throughout the day. This smoothie bowl combination is a perfect example of one!

Mango Banana Tropical Summer Smoothie

• Servings: 1
• Time: 5 minutes
• Difficulty: easy
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The perfect smoothie for a warm summer day!

*This recipe has a total of 300 calories and is high in fiber, Vitamin C, and Calcium.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup frozen mango
• 1/2 frozen banana
• 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla coconut milk yogurt
• 1 tablespoon coconut shreds
• 1 tablespoon hemp seeds
• 1 tablespoon cacao nibs

Directions

1. Blend the mango, banana, and yogurt and top with coconut, hemp, and cacao nibs.

Enjoy:)