Black Bean Salsa Quinoa and Super Healthy Banana Oat Cookies

Before I starting off this post, I want to say Happy National Peanut Butter Day! I love peanut butter. It's delicious, especially on sandwiches or with bananas. I even ate a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast today. It's full of protein and has heart healthy fats in it. Just make sure to choose the kind that have no trans fat!
Anyway, back to what I originally wanted to talk about. So, yesterday, I said that I'd be posting a quinoa recipe. Well, here it is (I'm also posting a super healthy cookie recipe). It's Mexican inspired because, of course, the salsa. I love salsa.  Just make sure that the salsa is lower in sodium than the other brands and that you can actually read and understand what ingredients are in it, meaning, make sure it's just plain regular ingredients you know. You can also make your own salsa instead of buying it from the store! Anyway, here's this delicious recipe.

Servings: 4
Calories: ~260 calories
Protein: ~ 11 grams of protein

Ingredients:

• 1 cup dry quinoa
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup salsa
• 1 can 15 oz black beans, drained 

Directions:

1. Cook the quinoa with the water. 
2. Once the quinoa is done cooking, mix in the salsa and black beans. Make sure the black beans have no salt added or low sodium. Even though draining and rinsing the beans removes some of the salt, it's better that it says low sodium or no salt added. 
3. Serve and enjoy. 

If you guys want to make it non-vegan, you can add 1 cup of shredded cheese and some cut up cooked chicken breast. It'll up the protein a lot. For vegans, you can add tofu or non-meat protein you want. 

Super Healthy Banana Oat Cookie Recipe

So, this recipe is from blogilates. Cassey, the creater of blogilates, created this recipe and it's alright. I have a similar recipe on my blog that I like better. Here's the link

These cookies were a bit dry but I guess it's because I used a smaller banana. Anyway, here's the recipe. 

Servings: 12

Calories: ~44

The entire recipe has 530 calories. 

Ingredients:

• 1 banana
• 1 cup oats
• 1/3 cup craisins

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. 
2. Mash the banana and the oats together. 
3. Mix in the craisins. 
4. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and place on a baking pan. 
5. Bake for 10 minutes. Enjoy. 

They are really healthy and filling. You guys might enjoy it (along with adding dark chocolate chips to it!). 

And, now I have one more food review. It's the LaraBar Chocolate Coconut Chew. 

Texture wise, it's like any other larabar. I like how it had real pieces of walnuts in it. The downside of this bar is that it barely had any sweetness to it. It was a bit bitter and I barely tasted any coconut. I did taste the walnuts though. Not my favorite. But, I would choose this over the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor. 

What types of food do you guys like? 

Have you tried quinoa before?