My favourite go-to healthy salad dressing

I stopped buying salad dressing years ago when I realized that it's super simple to make healthier versions at home. Like really simple. You likely have olive oil and some type of vinegar in your cupboards and that alone is fantastic. If I'm too lazy to make a proper dressing, I'll just pour a bit of each on my salad and that's it. But my go-to salad dressing is the Everyday House Dressing from the book Ultimate Foods for Ultimate Health. It calls for balsamic vinegar but I've been using apple cider vinegar lately to give it even more of a health boost. (Read about the benefits of apple cider vinegar here).

Everyday Power House Dressing
Adapted from Ultimate Foods for Ultimate Health

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar (like Bragg or Eden Organic)
1 Tbsp + 1 Tsp of extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp grainy Dijon mustard
2 tsp honey*
1 clove of garlic, chopped**

Mix everything into a container with a lid, shake and use! It's that simple. The recipe in the book says that this will be good in a sealed container in the fridge for a week.

*The dressing is great without the garlic if you don't have it on hand.
**Use raw honey to make this a power house dressing!

Make it! You'll never buy store-bought dressing again.

healthy spelt banana nut muffins

I've been on a bit of a baking kick over the past two weeks, likely for two reasons: 1. I'm pregnant and want baked goods 2. My past is coming back to me (I was once told by a psychic that I was a baker in a former life, so this reason is making total sense to me!).

Anyway, I had some gross looking black bananas in the freezer, so I put them to good use in some banana muffins.

I like pretty healthy baked goods, so I typed "healthy banana muffins" into Google and this is what I found: Healthy Banana Muffins by DDHMAMA on Spark Recipes. I changed it up a bit. Here's what I did:

Minutes to Prepare: about 15
Minutes to Cook: 20 (my oven is a bit cooler than most)
Number of Servings: I got 12 out of this but DDHMAMA got 20 somehow

Ingredients:
- 2 cups spelt flour
- about 1/8 a cup of agave nectar (I basically squiggled it around the bowl)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- dash or two of pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 cup ground flax seed
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup almond milk
- 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup mashed bananas (2-3 bananas)
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400

Directions:
- Combine all dry ingredients in one bowl: spelt flour, baking soda and powder, salt, nuts, spices, ground flax
- Beat the egg in a separate bowl. Whisk in milk, applesauce, agave nectar, and vanilla to the eggs.
- Whisk wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Fold bananas in.
- Divide the batter among a greased or paper-lined muffin tin. I used a flowery, silicone Pampered Chef pan which I have to say I really love.
- Bake for about 18-20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Yield:
- Makes 12 muffins

Review
I could have added more agave nectar (these turned out a bit on the slightly blandish side which is fine by me because I can sweeten them up with some apple butter ;)) and the recipe called for molasses which I totally forgot to add. I also think I could have added one more mushy banana. Overall, they're good for me, pretty healthy and I don't feel bad about giving them to the little one.