When I was little, my grandma always baked apples in winter, especially during Christmas time. It was a special time for many reasons.

Today my chilldren and I baked some apples at home, and we enjoyed it so much that from now on it will be our family winter tradition.

Baked Apples with Walnuts and Raisins

5. Place each apple in a baking dish.

6. Bake for 45-60 min.

7. When done, sprinkle with powdered sugar!

A few days ago I made this super easy and tasty Fruit Salsa and Chips. I served it as appetizer for our guests, and it was a hit. This recipe is rated #1 appetizer on allrecipes.com with more than 3000 reviews, so I knew it would be hard to mess it up. 🙂

2 kiwis, peeled and diced

2 Golden Delicious apples – peeled, cored and diced

8 ounces raspberries

1 pound strawberries

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 tablespoon brown sugar

3 tablespoons fruit preserves, any flavor

10 (10 inch) flour tortillas

butter flavored cooking spray

2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar

 1. In a large bowl, thoroughly mix raspberries, strawberries, kiwis, Golden Delicious apples, white sugar, brown sugar and fruit preserves. 

Cover and chill in the refrigerator at least 15 minutes.

 2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

3. Coat one side of each flour tortilla with butter flavored cooking spray.

4. Cut into wedges and arrange in a single layer on a large baking sheet.

5.  Sprinkle wedges with desired amount of cinnamon sugar. Spray again with cooking spray.

6. Bake in the preheated oven 8 to 10 minutes. Repeat with any remaining tortilla wedges.

7. Allow to cool approximately 15 minutes. Serve with chilled fruit mixture.

Bon Appetit!

Here is my new discovery that doesn’t let me lose weight easily. It’s Banana Crumb Muffins. When we had family over, I wanted to make something easy, but tasty. Sure enough these muffins were delicious and very easy to make. It took approximately 35 min to make and bake it. I found the recipe in allrecipes.com, and it has almost 8000 review with 5 stars, so I didn’t think I could go wrong with it. Love it!

Click here, and the link will take you to this recipe on allrecipes.com or you can scroll down, and see it here. 🙂

Banana Crumb Muffins 

Today I made a very tasty Tomato Basil Soup. I consider it healthy, and my whole family really liked it. Here is the site where I found it www.allrecipes.com, and here is what you need to make it:

Tomato Basil Soup

 – 4 tomatoes – peeled, seeded and diced

– 4 cups tomato juice

– 14 leaves fresh basil

– 1 cup heavy whipping cream

– 1/2 cup butter

– salt and pepper to taste

Directions: 

1. Place tomatoes and juice in a stock pot over medium heat. Simmer for 30 minutes. Puree the tomato mixture along with the basil leaves, and return the puree to the stock pot.
2. Place the pot over medium heat, and stir in the heavy cream and butter. Season with salt and pepper. Heat, stirring until the butter is melted. Do not boil.

Bon Appetite!

Last week I made Crêpe-style pancakes Nalysnyky with salty ingredients, and today I made them sweety-sweet for dessert. I rolled them with condenced milk and poured melted chocolate on top. The addition of fresh strawberries made me feel like I was eating somewhat healthy. 🙂

You can see the recipe for the pancakes I made today here.

Bon Appetite!

Nalysnyky are thin pancakes that can be served for breakfast, lunch or even dinner. It all depends on what they are served with. You can roll them with sweet filling like jem, honey, Nutella, berries or peanut butter for breakfast. You can stuff them with salty ingredients like meat, vegetables, cheese or mushroom sauce (my favorite) for lunch. You can also easily transform it into a dinner dish when served with caviar or a dessert when served with ice cream. 

Nalystnyky is a food that my mom was always making for me, and so it makes me feel very good to make them for my children.

 To make it easier, below are step-by-step photos on how to make it:

2. Add 2 eggs.

3. Pour 2 cups of milk into the bowl.

4. Mix it until smooth. The batter should be thin. In fact, sometimes I add a little water if it seems a little thick.

5. I use approximately 1 tbs of sunflower oil to grease the frying pan. Make sure the pan is heated to a medium heat before you pour the batter. Also, for each pancake you have to use just enough batter to cover the greased pan. That way nalystnyky will be thin and tasty.

6. Cook nalystnyky on medium heat for about 1 minute or so, then turn it over.

7. Your pancake is ready!

Stuff it with your favorite filling and enjoy! 🙂

Bon appetite!

I love salads, especially if they consist of chicken and apples. Just add some healthy ingredients to it like onion, celery, nuts, eggs, and mix with mayonnaise. I don’t think you can go wrong with that, at least not with me. 🙂 Here is one of my salads!

Ingredients:

Roasted Chicken Breast

1 medium apple (I like gala)

¼ cup of finely chopped onion

1 cooked egg 

½ shredded cheese

Mayonnaise

 The ingredients will be put in layers with a thin layer of mayonnaise on almost all of the ingredients. Here are the steps:

 1 layer – finely chopped egg white,

 2 layer – cubed apple

(cover with a thin layer of mayonnaise)

 3 layer – finely chopped onion

 4 layer – cubed chicken breast

(a thin layer of mayonnaise)

 5 layer – shredded cheese

 Decorate with egg yolk and apple.  

Make sure you cover with a thin layer, as you don’t want your salad to taste like mayonnaise only.  

Bon appetite! 🙂

Low-Carb Protein Cookie

Today I would like to share with you a recipe of one of my favorite cookies. I consider it somewhat healthy, because it doesn’t contain flour and white sugar, instead it has good proteins like eggs and peanut butter. Plus, you don’t have to make a special trip to the store to get all the ingredients, they are already in your pantry.

One cookie has approximately 85 calories, 9 g carbohydrate, and 3 g protein.

Low-carb Protein Cookie

1 cup creamy peanut butter

¾ cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground ginger

½ tsp sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all the ingredients: peanut butter, brown sugar, egg, cocoa powder, cinnamon, and ginger.
2. Stir until well blended.
3. Shape dough into 24 (1-inch) balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheets.
4. Flatten balls with fork.
5. Sprinkle every cookie with sea salt.
6. Bake 10-12 min until cookies are firm and lightly browned. Cool on cookie sheets 5 min.

Enjoy…

This post I made for Clare’s blog. It is my first time guest posting, and I want to thank Clare for giving me the opportunity. I am very excited about it! You are a very sweet lady and I love your blog and style.

Here is the link to Clare’s blog Understated Classics and the link to my post on her blog http://www.understatedclassics.com/2012/10/guest-olya-creative-side-of-me.html.

Please check it out 🙂

This recipe is also a part of link-up party. Click here to see it 🙂http://bloomdesignsonline.blogspot.com/2013/01/link-party_23.html

There is a very tasty Russian dessert called “Bird’s Milk”. I don’t know why it was named like that and what kind of bird would have milk :-)…but one thing I know for sure is that this dessert is absolutely tasty. As long as I remember myself, every time we celebrated something, we had a box of “Bird’s Milk” on the table. In fact, even now, every time I go to a Russian store, I get one!

A few days ago a friend of mine introduced me to a homemade version of it, and I loved it! I asked her to give me the recipe, and she sent me the link to a blog, and here it is. There are step-by-step pictures of how to make it. It was fun, and the whole process took me approximately 20 minutes. Here is the result…

Enjoy!