Alright guys so the holidays are coming up and I know a lot of you are trying to
go vegan or even experiment with being vegan so if you're worried about your
family maybe giving you a hard time or making it a little awkward when you're
out at big family functions this video is for you! Alright so in this video we
really want to share like little tips and tricks I feel like that's what we're
good at you know sharing almost like little easy ways to incorporate being
healthier going vegan and Erica has some really insane facts about how many
calories and just how much healthier it's gonna be when you just make these
little adjustments and that's all it is little adjustments you don't have to
change your entire life to go vegan or to be healthy let's start with like
something really easy I feel like cozy holiday drinks are such a thing
especially for me like we've got pumpkin spice the peppermint mocha the vanilla
whatever like right just too many things so what's the most classic holiday drink
hot chocolate right so I'm gonna show you guys how to make a really healthy
vegan hot chocolate at home and you'll need a few ingredients so the first
thing you need is unsweetened almond milk or coconut milk really any nut milk
will do so if you like rice milk hemp milk totally your call then you need 1/4
a cup of dark chocolate chips I personally recommend the brand Lily's
it's vegan it's dark chocolate its sweetened with stevia stevia is the one
sweetener I recommend to everyone it's really the best one so some people don't
like the taste but when it's in these chocolate chips you really can't notice
it so you need the nut milk you need the chocolate chips a little bit of vanilla
extract and that is it and it takes about 5 minutes so this versus like a
packaged hot chocolate drink which is full of sugar that's just gonna make you
gain that weight it's gonna make your skin break out it's gonna cause diabetes
just lots of not fun stuff and it's processed the least process we can do
the better so so the next thing I want to talk about is like cozy holiday
drinks so you know like what's your favorite like Starbucks drink if
calories weren't an issue if health. Mine would be a Peppermint mocha if calories weren't an issue. So I want to teach you guys there's like a few
little spices that you can have at home that are really amazing for you they
have tons of health benefits and they kind of give you that like coziness
right all right so let's grab our spice lets see why don't you talk about these I'll
grab these so what do we got here so the first one is pumpkin pie spice and the
second one is ground cinnamon which by the way these are only a dollar
ninety-nine at Trader Joe's so stock up a lot of people think that they love
pumpkin because of the pumpkin like pumpkin spice spice but actual pumpkin
doesn't really taste like that in fact it's like really bland. It's extremely bland. So you're not
really that into pumpkin you're into the pumpkin spice so I highly recommend
literally adding this into like tea into your coffee like into anything
oatmeal it's so good. You can even add it to like your cookie recipes anything! Much better than just buying something packaged and not
knowing what they're adding into it these are at least clean and then
cinnamon we all love cinnamon I love cinnamon I post about it all the time if
you guys follow me you know I'm obsessed with cinnamon I put it in everything
because not only does it give you that cozy flavor it also helps regulate your
blood sugar so it's like a double whammy win-win you know I mean you should add
cinnamon to like your parents and grandparents stuff just like sneak it in
that way we can prevent diabetes it's just a sweet thing to do right you know
and then we've got ground cloves ground nutmeg so these might not taste that
great on their own but sometimes what I do is make like a little spice cocktail
like I just put them all together and like throw them in food and drink so
instead of going out getting those sugary drinks just try this at home
definitely top it with like a little coconut milk almond milk if you don't I
don't have a steamer at home I know that kind of seems intimidating I just heat
it up on the pot so super easy how much do you add I just like sprinkle
it in the good thing about these is there's no sugar there's no like bad
calorie so it's really up to you like you don't have to stress over it I'm not
a very good Baker that's probably like I don't know measurements and Eric is good
at baking I'm all about the DASH! you can DM her or ask her exact measurements Amy
you can figure something out for them something right okay now let's get to
the best part baking I love this part you've got your little facts right I'm
excited to share these facts with you guys so baking and
cooking so this can this is gonna fall in line with like you know stuffing
recipes, rice, cookies, pies like so many different things that you need butter,
eggs, and milk for you really don't need any of them so let's talk about
alternatives let's start with butter because I like this fats so obviously
butter can go into different I mean who do you cook with butter and like mac and
cheese maybe or like in potato it can go into anything even if you don't
necessarily want to go vegan I'd highly recommend switching to either coconut
oil or applesauce when you're baking so let's just give you like a little
calorie info here even if you don't care about being plant-based okay so I was
doing the math and if you were to make regular cookies and use the directions
on a bag so like a Toll House bag of cookies you use one cup of butter which
is two sticks and for one cup of butter it's 1,600 calories that's like
literally almost most people's entire day it and one cup of like oh that's
awful right so that would go into your cookies and that usually makes about
three dozen cookies so you can do the math there however you can supplement
the one cup of butter with half a cup of unsweetened applesauce which comes out
to 52 calories. Like 52 to 1600 like this isn't even just a little jump this
is a huge jump it's huge and way healthier yeah right I think that's a good point to
stress is that you know it's not all about like the vanity and wanting to
looking good even though that's totally fine like you're gonna look better and
you're doing something better for your health like you're preventing heart
attacks and high blood pressure and cholesterol like this is just the right
choice all around so you know if you're if you're with your family just kind of
suggest this sneak in and there maybe do it without them knowing and then just
have them taste it and they won't know the difference I like doing that too I
do that all the time. You do? I'm the Queen of telling someone that it's normal and
it's not and not that it's not normal but it's not the way that they're
expecting it it's healthier it's way healthier I always do that
nobody ever knows the difference I will tell you that cooking with applesauce
versus butter the texture is slightly different but it's not a massive jump if
that's what you're concerned about so I definitely recommend that okay you can
also supplement one cup of butter with one cup of coconut oil which one cup of
coconut oil is a little over 1,800 calories so it is more calories but it's
more calories but it's the right kind of calories like I said you're
actually getting nourishing healthy fats like coconut oil is amazing for energy
so you could even turn these like chocolate chip dessert cookies into
energy cookies you know like vegan energy cookies and honestly coconut oil
has the best taste like it just gives like a little coconut essence so it's up
to you if you want to go for maybe the little like the same texture and you
don't care about the calories go with the coconut oil if you want to watch the
calories and go with the applesauce if you want to eat more cookies go with the
applesauce exactly hahaha the next fact we have normally with when you're baking a batch of cookies you
use two eggs and two eggs they're about 80 to 90 calories each and you can actually
supplement them with flax seed eggs or chia seed eggs and the difference in
calories is that for two flax seed eggs its 110 calories and then for the Chia
seed eggs its 138 calories so there's not really too much of a difference there
but the health benefit is massive again the health benefits massive so one
little fact about chia seeds if you ever put them in water if you ever seen they
kind of turn into like that jelly substance and they expand this is the
same thing they do in your stomach so you eat them they expand in your stomach
they hold water they're full of fiber and this is actually what keeps you full
so these you know putting these in two different meals will keep you fuller
it'll give you more energy it's giving you healthy omegas great for your hair
great for your skin great for your heart so I highly recommend it! So there's a
lot of different recipes you can see you can literally Google one so my favorite
way to make a chia egg is just one tablespoon
chia seeds three tablespoons of water you should let it sit about 10 to 15
minutes just until it kind of congeals and forms like that little jelly
substance and then just a little extra fun fact is that if you do substitute
the applesauce for the butter and then the chia seeds for the for the eggs
right, for the eggs you're actually cutting about 50 calories out of each cookie. That's really good - 50 calories per cookie is amazing and that's just supposed
be like one little dessert exactly okay and the last thing I want to go over is
milk so obviously dairy or regular milk is
required in a lot of baking recipes and mashed potatoes and different things I
promise you you can sub so many different nut milk rice milk there's so
many things you could do and you really won't notice the difference in fact I
think almond milk and coconut milk give desserts like a better flavor
it's like nutty alright I like it I like it I drink it out like right in the
glass like as if it was a glass of milk so you know you can get everything un
sweetened and that'll keep it healthier hemp milk has a lot of protein if you're into
getting more protein you know there's hemp milk coconut milk
soy milk rice milk almond milk I think I covered them all so one thing to note
when you're doing these substitutions is that when it's milk you can usually
substitue milk for milk so you can do if it's one cup regular milk you can
usually do one cup coconut milk if it's butter and applesauce or any sort of
other things I would definitely look online to make sure you're substituting
the right amount because you don't want to mess up you're right your texture may
be one more thing to add if you're cooking something like mashed potatoes
or rice you might not want to do applesauce or coconut oil because
obviously it gives it a different taste that's when you go to something like
cold-pressed olive oil still a better choice and it's still going to give you
that nice texture alright guys I hope you enjoyed this video and just keep in
mind if you want to go healthy for the holidays or if you want to go vegan it
is possible you don't have to make it a big deal and it's something you can
really incorporate into you and your family's dishes and if you guys have any
questions or have any Oh suggestions please feel free to
comment below so like subscribe comment below and we'll see you next time
Later!
Bye! hahaha