This is hands down my favorite of all time way to grill chicken. You're probably thinking someone who makes pasta as often as I do doesn't know sh*t about how to cook meat on a grill. This is true, except for chicken. I can freaking make some damn good chicken on the grill.

I start off with a salt water brine (at least two hours or overnight) and then I use garlic powder and cayenne pepper and I brush layers of BBQ sauce onto the wings as they cook. If you don't have BBQ sauce they are just as good with the cayenne and garlic powder. You can use any part of the chicken for this recipe. I've done it with breasts, drums, thighs and wings. (Wings and drums are my fave!!)

As far as amount goes: make sure to have enough chicken for the number of people you plan to feed, which is obvious but there's always one person that will ask if I am not SUPER clear, lol. The salt water brine ratio is 1 cup water : 1 tsp salt, so however many cups of water it takes to cover the chicken in an airtight container or ziplock bag + the appropriate amount of salt.

I always hesitate to put the word healthy in my recipe captions because I feel like there will be at least one health nut that will try to call me out saying "that's actually not healthy" but for me, this is a lot cleaner version of any dessert I would normally eat...and it's really freaking good!! Also, I've always been in love with the color of fresh raspberries! It's so perfect.

Let me know if you have questions in the comment section - it makes different amounts depending on if you slice it into squares or rectangles but this recipe is definitely enough to feed a crowd of around 8-10 people. 

 Why is alcohol so good? I mean of course having a glass is amazing but I'm also talking about in food...because , some of my most favorite pasta sauces have either wine or vodka in them.

I was making my vodka sauce the other day with white wine (since I was out of vodka) and I was tempted to skip the last step of adding heavy cream to it and eat it how it was in the skillet because it just looked so pretty and smelled so good. So the next day, I did just that and here we are! SO this is basically my vodka sauce minus the cream and butter with wine + fresh garlic and shallots living in the sauce. You could leave the diced garlic and shallot as is in the sauce for texture or puree them like I did for a smoother sauce.

Korean glass noodles were my first Asian-noodle obsession aside from the more common stuff like lo mein or rice noodles. There used to be a restaurant in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland called BAC and I would go at least once a month to order their spicy kimchi dish. I remember it being so spicy that I could only take a few bites at a time and would have to wait a little before having more lol. So the good thing about making it at home is that you can control the level of heat you put into it.

Anyways, I found glass noodles at a nearby Asian supermarket and they ended up becoming the main ingredient of my Spicy Noodle Soup recipe that won Zoup Soup's National Recipe Contest in 2015! #funfacts

The noodles are made from sweet potato starch so they are naturally gluten free and vegan!! You could add protein to the dish but my favorite way to eat the dish is with veggies, kimchi and spicy sambal oelek. If you've never had sambal oelek, it's a chili paste that gives a pretty hard kick to any dish - I have it listed on my favorite products page on Amazon so tap here if you want to order some! The glass noodle brand I use is also available on Amazon and on my favorite products page, click here to order them!

So here's what you can do with all of that quarantine banana bread you've been busy baking. You're welcome. They're also completely gluten-free and nearly vegan besides the egg I used in the banana bread which you could easily sub out for a flax egg. Feel free to change it around to whatever way you prefer to eat!

Layer one: Gluten free graham cracker crust with honey and butter.

Layer two: Mashed gf banana bread + raw banana + coconut butter, maple syrup and collagen power.

Layer three: Melted dark chocolate and flakey sea salt.

If you're looking for a stronger banana flavor to be present amongst all the other flavors and also want the banana bread portion of the bar to more like batter than bread, you can add one mashed banana to the banana bread crumbles.

​I used a ton of different products that are my favorite so I'll list them here incase you want to use the same thangs! Pamela's gluten free honey grahams, Melt Organic vegan butter, Vital Proteins unflavored collagen powder, Bob's Red Mill old fashioned rolled oats and then Eating Evolved's coconut butter. (Since I can't eat nuts I love using coconut butter or @avokween's granola butter in place of almond or cashew butter.)

If you told my former self that I would one day be eating a pasta sauce made out of beans I would probably run away. Lol. Jk. BUT, I grew up absolutely hating any and every sort of bean!

Turns out, I love them now. Also turns out, they can add a super creamy texture to sauces once they are pureed. The end result for this dish sort of tastes like alfredo but it's waaaay better for you because even though there's still a decent amount of parmesan cheese in there, there's no heavy cream or dairy besides that. Cannellini beans are full of fiber, folate, iron and magnesium so it's a great way to sneak some good stuff into your diet.

As far as subs, you could replace the parmesan cheese wit nutritional yeast to make it vegan or sub out the wheat pasta for brown rice pasta to make it gluten free!

This is hands down my favorite dish to order from any Thai restaurant I visit. Everyone else seems to go straight for the pad thai but not me! It's traditionally made with fresh, flat wide rice noodles but if you're in a pinch and don't feel like heading to a Thai supermarket to find them you can use dried rice noodles too. (That's what I did, click here to see the brand I use on my Amazon shopping page!)

If you're not an Asian food freak like me you probably don't have oyster sauce or dark soy sauce at home. Those can be ordered on Amazon as well, I have the brands I prefer on my Amazon shopping page too!

Okay so I now have two vegan mac and cheese recipes on my website. This one is more nutritious because of the pureed veggie ingredient + the nutritional yeast factor but it still remains nut free just like the other one! A creamy vegan mac and cheese recipe without cashews?? YEP. It might not be as beautiful as my other recipe but it's really good, better for you and WAY easier to make. If you're looking for my other recipe with actual vegan cheese in it, tap this link! Both are super good despite the fact that there's no dairy in either of them!

I also love how flex this recipe is. You could sub out the potato puree that I used for a number of things like butternut squash, sweet potato, carrots or cauliflower puree. As long as you turn whatever veggie you use soft enough via steaming or boiling to make sure that they completely blend into the sauce! I honestly considered adding some baby food to my next grocery list so I don't have to puree whatever veggies I plan to add in, LOL. 

I prefer to use potato because of the starch content in it - when using less starchy vegetables like BNS I add in a teaspoon of arrowroot starch to help it thicken better. (Also, be careful if you use frozen veggies because they have a bit more water content then fresh veggies do.)

This recipe makes enough for two but it can easily be cut in half for a personal version! I like making it for myself and saving half of it for another day.