5 New (food related) Faves!

These last couple weeks I've discovered a few new food favorites of mine and I'd like to share some with you!

Earthbound Organic mixed baby kale. I was at a normal grocery store and was about to put this brand of baby spinach in my cart, when I saw they had something new. I've had kale good salads before and this just looked so yummy for a salad too. I'm so glad I tried this now. I ate the entire container by myself in three days!! It was so good! My favorite way to eat these is a couple handfulls of kale, half a large apple diced, a small handfull of chopped walnuts, and dressing: pure maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, and cold pressed olive oil... Which leads me to my second fave!

Cold pressed, unrefined, extra virgin olive oil. I've been using this a lot on my salads lately. I don't buy much salad dressing from the store lately because of all the corn syrup, dairy, and MSG added to them. It's easy and cheap to make at home anyway. I used to use the regular olive oil, but knowing all the benefits of coldpressed extra virgin olive oil I decided to get it and save the other stuff for baking and frying. The first thing I noticed is that it has so much more flavor than the normal kind and now I think I'm hooked forever!

Amberlyn sugar free dark chocolates. I saw these chocolates at the health food store. Normally when I see something that says Sugar Free on it, I don't even give it a chance, knowing that most "Sugar Free" things have aspartame or other harmful things in them. Being that I was in a health food store, though, I decided to stop and read the label. I was pretty swept off my dark chocolate loving feet when I read it. All of the different flavors had less than ten ingredients each and it was all super simple ingredients. Absolutely nothing harmful and zero added sugar! I'm guessing the little bit of sweetness you can taste in it comes from the natural vanilla in it. If you try these, I suggest getting the espresso dark chocolate. I like all of them(A LOT!) but the espresso is by far my favorite! I don't think I'll ever go back to a different kind... why would I?!

Chia Seed Pudding. I saw the recipe for this originally on Daniel Hampton's Instagram. The recipe seemed super simple and healthy, so I gave it a try. You can mix in some sweetener(honey, stevia, etc.) with it while you make it, but I decided to leave it plain and eat it with fruit. The texture of it seems to go perfectly mixed with fruit, so I think that's my favorite rout when making this. Here's how you make it. 1/4 Chia seeds to 1 cup coconut milk. Mix and put in refrigerator for 2-3 hours(I did it over night). It turned out so good! Let me know what you think, if you try it.

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Local Farmer's Market's. This isn't something new for sure, but this year I've been going a lot more than normal. I went to a new local one for the first time and the variety they had impressed me so much. It's amazing how much cheeper some of the stuff is compared to grocery stores too and since I've been trying to eat what's in season, it helps a lot. I also noticed I've been making a lot less trips too the normal grocery stores AND I get to help out local farmers! You just can't go wrong visiting your local farmer's market's a little more!