Yummy whole grain no-bake energy bites and a great place to find natural groceries!

I'm a big fan of Pinterest. I feel that it makes me a better woman, what with all the workout tips and recipes and tips for keeping an organized home in your free time. Unfortunately, that joke applies to me - I see so many great ideas, if I could just stop pinning long enough to get up and go do them!

I have tried a couple of recipes and crafts, though, and here's one of them - No Bake Energy Bites
from fooddoodles.com.


Oh. My. Goodness. I'm ashamed to say I ate them for dinner.

I followed the recipe exactly this first time, and they were delicious. I used 1/2 chocolate chips and 1/2 sesame seeds for the mix in and 1tsp of cinnamon for the spice. I also added 1 Tablespoon of flax oil, just because it's good for me. :)

They were really sweet, though. These are as much of a dessert as they are a snack to me (except when they are dinner...ahem). The ingredient list is very natural, though, and they're really easy to put together. Next time, I'm going to use flax seeds as my mix-in and try replacing most of the honey with more peanut butter. Then, I can justify eating as many as I want! Of course, if you're not as sugar sensitive as I am, you can leave the recipe as is!

* It tried the recipe again, and it was still really good with less honey - I used about 2 tablespoons of honey, and replaced the rest with more peanut butter. I also used flax seeds, but still added some chocolate chips. They were just as tasty. I think more tasty! It's also amazing how filling these little suckers are!

Here's the recipe in short:

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp vanilla
pinch of sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup sesame seeds (or flax seeds)
1/4 cup chocolate chips

mix the first 5 ingredients
stir in the rest of the ingredients
chill in freezer for 30 minutes
shape into little balls (I did a rounded teaspoonful for each one, they were a good bite size that way)
store in freezer or refrigerator

I think they would be good with cocoa powder added for chocolate ones!

Also, because a few of my ingredients are those healthy, hard to find ones, I want to share about a website I recently discovered and am loving - Vitacost.com.

I'm betting you've heard of it, they're advertising everywhere from youtube to your email homepage. I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought if I hadn't heard all about it on another blog. So I'm passing the news on to you. :) You're welcome.

Vitacost.com is a great website where you can find just about any healthy supplement, snack food, baking ingredient, cosmetic product, herbal supplement, essential oil, you name it. I've had a lot of people asking me where to find the ingredients for things I've talked about on this blog, and my new answer is always Vitacost.com.

Why? Because in the past, I've resorted to saving up my list until I can drive to my nearest Whole Foods and then face the dilemma of trying to buy it all and stay in budget. I've tried shopping online, but I'm just not committed enough to find the best price and then order from a bunch of different sources.

With Vitacost.com, the prices are consistently the lowest I've ever seen, and it's all coming from one order, one place. It's so much more convenient. It's really helped me with finding some of the harder to find ingredients for my recipes I'm trying from my Nourishing Traditions cookbook.

Also, if I order at least $49 worth, I get free shipping. All customers get $10 off their first order, and last time I got a 5% discount coupon for my next order. It's just a great deal all around.

*Except it's easy (as always) to get carried away and order stuff you really don't need - then you haven't saved any money. I'm not advocating blowing your budget, here! I simply add things to my Vitacost.com shopping cart as I realize that I'm going to need them soon, and place an order when I get up to $50.

If you recruit a friend, not only do they get $10 off on their first order, but you get $10 off on your next order, which I think is a great marketing plan because it benefits us, the shoppers!

So, go ahead and check out Vitacost.com, I promise, you'll be amazed.

I've used the website to buy (among other things)
- coconut flour $5.81/lb.
-coconut flakes $3.27/12 oz.
-flax oil $7.66/1 lb.
-natural sea salt $2.65/2 lbs.
-turbinado sugar $4.66/24 oz.
-whole wheat pastry flour $5.39/ 5lbs.

I also ordered some taco shells from them, just to see how good there packaging was. I was expecting to get a box of crumbs, but everything was wrapped so securely. All of the "powdery" things were double bagged, and the liquids were double wrapped in bubble wrap!

Next time, I plan to order their Vitacost brand coconut oil for sure, it's only $20.09 for 54 ounces! That's a much higher quality coconut oil for the same price I'm paying at the grocery store!

So, go check out Vitacost.com. If you don't mind, if you do decide to sign up, come back over here to Raising Isabella and click through here to get your $10 off coupon, and then I can get some free groceries, too! Thanks!

Have you ever ordered from Vitacost.com? What do you think?

This post was shared at Monday Mania, Fight Back Friday


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