The Healthy (and Tasty) Recipes I Promised

Lightening things up with cookies, chocolate muffins, and ... beef liver pâté

Hi again everyone!

Thank you for patiently reading my long jargon-y essays about synthetic vitamins and going down the “folic acid” rabbit hole.

As I promised, here are three of my favourite recipes I’ve been enjoying a lot of this pregnancy. Also child-friendly!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Muffins

Ingredients:

2-3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup natural peanut butter (no seed oils!)
3 eggs (preferably free-range and organic)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup maple syrup (the real kind!)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons beetroot powder
4 tablespoons chia seeds or chia seed powder
1/2 cup cocoa powder
Optional: 2 teaspoons Moringa leaf powder
Optional: 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions: Pre-heat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Mash bananas, add peanut butter, eggs, vanilla, and maple syrup. Beat until well blended. Add dry ingredients and stir well. Add chopped walnuts if desired.

Coat a muffin tin with coconut oil. Add batter evenly to make 12 muffins. Cook at 350 for 23-24 minutes or until cooked through. Let cool a little bit before removing.

My daughter is obsessed with these! They’re pretty popular with friends and family I’ve shared them with too.

With the walnuts and Moringa leaf powder, each muffin is just over 200 calories and contains a high amount of manganese, riboflavin (B2), and folate (B9) (more than 20% your daily needs), and moderate amounts of iron, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, selenium, copper, niacin (B3), Vitamin B6, and Vitamin E (more than 10% daily value). It also contains traces (less than 10% daily value) of calcium, potassium, choline, Vitamin A, thiamin (B1), Vitamin B5, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, and Vitamin D.

You can also add cream cheese icing: blend equal parts cream cheese and butter (grass-fed is best!) and maple syrup to desired sweetness and a touch of vanilla. Icing is on the runnier side, but it’s healthier with the maple syrup than with icing sugar — and I think tastier too :-)

If peanut allergies are an issue, just swap for a different nut butter! Almond is pretty good.

If you have a mini-muffin tray and prefer to go small, cook at 350 for about 13 minutes. They come out a little drier, but I know my toddler prefers the little ones over the big ones.

Keeps for about 5-6 days in the fridge.

Warning: Moringa leaf has a strong flavour, so if you opt to add it for a healthy boost, don’t add more than two teaspoons! (And you might want to add a little more maple syrup to cancel out the flavour). Ideally, you won’t be able to taste it. I only started adding it because I have it in my house as a pregnancy supplement and try to sneak it into foods. It adds a lot of Vitamins A, B2, and E, but if you aren’t concerned about this, I’d just leave it out.

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Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

1 ripe banana
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup blackstrap molasses
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups organic rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/8 cup dark chocolate chips
1/8 cup raw cacao nibs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions: Pre-heat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Mash banana, add peanut butter, egg, vanilla, blackstrap molasses, and maple syrup. Beat until well blended. Add dry ingredients and stir well. Add chocolate chips, cacao nibs, and chopped walnuts.

Grease two baking sheets with coconut oil and make about 18 cookies. Bake one sheet at a time at 350 for about 13 minutes. Let cool a little before removing from sheet.

Extremely yummy too! I occasionally send my husband to work with some to share and apparently they’re a hit.

Each cookie is around 150 calories and contains a high amount of manganese (more than 20% your daily needs), moderate amounts of iron, magnesium, selenium, and copper (more than 10% daily value), and traces (less than 10% daily value) of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, choline, and Vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, B12, C, D, and E.

As with the last recipe, if peanut allergies are an issue, just swap for a different nut butter. I haven’t actually experimented with anything other than peanut butter here but I think they’d still be good with almond or something. I’m not sure about swapping the nut butter for regular butter though.

Keeps for about 5-6 days in the fridge (I think? To be honest, they have never lasted more than 3 days between me and my husband).

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Beef Liver Pâté

Okay, I’ll admit this isn’t exactly delicious but it’s a pregnancy superfood and pretty darn good given that we’re talking about beef liver here. The base recipe for this one was given to me by a friend (thank you!! The miso paste is genius), but I added the herbs because I like herbs.

Look up how to cook prepare beef liver safely before trying this one! You buy it frozen and it only lasts less than a day in the fridge uncooked once you transfer it and can be a little finicky. I’ll admit I’m too much of a princess to try cooking it myself and I make my husband do it for me.

Ingredients:

8 ounces beef liver (grass-fed, organic)
1 small yellow onion, chopped
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced or finely chopped
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Juice from 1 lemon
4 tablespoons miso paste
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
3 tablespoons fresh sage
3 tablespoons fresh rosemary
3 tablespoons fresh thyme

Instructions: Sauté the beef liver, onion, and garlic in a cast iron frying pan in olive oil until fully cooked. Add to a food processor along with other ingredients. Blend well. Add more olive oil until desired taste and texture is reached (should end up being around 1/4 cup used in total, but there’s wiggle-room here).

Serve on crackers or bread. Avoid eating with dairy as the calcium will negatively impact iron absorption! It’s a little weird eating it warm (although I usually do) so I’d cool it in the fridge before serving.

Keeps for about 3 days in the fridge. This will make quite a lot, so I usually split it into three batches and freeze two in glass Tupperware. According to the Internet, this can last up to 3 months in the freezer but I’ve never let one sit longer than 4 weeks. In terms of pregnancy supplementation, I go through all three containers (with my husband and toddler stealing quite a bit) in about a week and a half to two weeks on average, eating it every day for 3 days, taking a break, then starting another batch. Beef liver is very nutrient dense and it’s not recommended (or particularly desirable, I think) to eat more than 3 ounces per week.

Assuming the recipe is split into 9 servings (3 servings per Tupperware), each serving has around 125 calories, and:

• Around 600% of your daily B12 needs

• Around 275% of your daily copper

• Around 140% of your daily Vitamin A

• Around 50% of your daily riboflavin (B2)

• Over 30% of your daily B5 and Vitamin K

• Around 20% of your daily iron, selenium, niacin (B3), folate (B9), and Vitamin B6

• Over 10% of your daily phosphorus, zinc, and choline

• Between 2% - 9% of your daily calcium, magnesium, potassium, manganese, and Vitamins B1, C, and E

Anecdotally, I’ve had one migraine during my current pregnancy … and it significantly alleviated after I ate some of this pâté. If I go more than week without eating some, I start to notice slight drops in my energy and mood and cravings for it (even though I’m not a big fan of the taste). Surprisingly, my toddler is actually kind of into it, but I think a big part of that is that she just likes crackers and dipping them into stuff.

Do not take a supplement with synthetic Vitamin A or eat any foods fortified with synthetic Vitamin A if you are eating beef liver. While the high (but not too high) amounts of natural Vitamin A are safe, there is a risk of Vitamin A toxicity if you are also consuming the synthetic stuff.

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Cheers! I’ll be back in a bit with more of my usual longwinded and citation-heavy content. If subscribers are interested in more posts sharing the odd recipe, let me know in the comments. I have a bad habit of cooking-by-instinct without measuring out the ingredients but I’m happy to try to figure out the rough ratios I use in, for example, my epic pasta sauce (a modified family recipe from the Italian side!) and to ramble a bit about the health benefits. Also please let me know if I made any mistakes with the nutrient claims, this was a bit tricky to research TBH and I’m always happy to edit.

For more superfood recipes, check out my psilocybin mushroom tea recipe (can also be made with non-magic mushrooms like Lion’s Mane or something if you aren’t into psychedelics). If you ARE into magic mushrooms, this tea will not only make for a smoother trip and more intense healing, but actually tastes pretty darn good, which is an accomplishment for magic mushrooms.