5 Free Sources for Healthy Recipes

These brownies look decadent but they are made over using healthier ingredients.

Earlier this week I had lunch with a new friend who is a chef.  She hasn't been able to find a job in her field while here in Germany and was excited to have an opportunity to spend an entire lunch discussing food.  I was excited to talk about my newly formed goal of someday owning a yoga studio/cafe.  My husband is in the Army so I have at least 8 1/2 years until he retires to build skills and figure out how I'm going to make it happen.  Right now, in addition to improving my yoga teaching skills with every class, I'm paying more attention to my cooking.  I'm keeping track of flavors that I like together and ways that I can make healthier substitutions for traditional ingredients.  I'd like to begin developing my own recipes.  My friend brought a bag of books to our lunch date for me to borrow to see if I wanted to buy any new books for my collection.  A couple of weeks ago she gave me an old edition of Professional Baking and I was so thrilled with the instructional quality of it I wanted to know what else she had at home that might have a healthy flavor to it.

She brought me a couple of textbooks that were great but they lacked the instructional quality within the recipes that really drew me to Professional Baking.  As an Army family we have to be concerned about the weight of our household good and finding places to put our things in our different houses.  I'm getting pretty selective about the books that I add to my shelves.  I've made a big push in the last year to make new purchases on my iPad or Kindle.  I was pleased that a couple of the resources she brought me could be found online for free.  She introduced me to Ellie Krieger from the Food Network and she let me borrow an issuer of Clean Eating magazine.

Here's a list of free resources for healthy recipes that I've been using as well as new ones that I'm going to start turning to.

1. Ellie Krieger.  Ellie is a registered dietitian as well as the host of Food Network's Healthy Appetite. I've never seen the show because we're over here in Germany but I immediately looked her up online after perusing her cookbook The Food You Crave.  You could of course buy one of her many cookbooks, but she has over 300 recipes for free here on Food Network's website.  She also has some recipes here on her website.  I like to have recipes always available to me on my iPad, wifi or not, so I went ahead and downloaded her Vegetarian Meals booklet for 99 cents.  If I like her recipes I might spring for the full digital books.  I really like that The Food You Crave includes instructional pages like "Building a Better Muffin," "The Story on Eggs," "10 Grab and Go Breakfasts," etc.
2. Clean Eating Magazine.  A different chef friend recommended this magazine to me awhile back.  I looked at it at her house but hadn't had a chef to read an issue cover to cover.  I intended to try some of the recipes available free online but never remembered to go back.  When I had the chance to finally read through an entire issue I saw the 14-day meal plan at the back of the magazine that was full of in season ingredients I decided that I needed to subscribe to the iPad edition so that I could have fresh infusions of seasonal recipes all of the time.  And if you know me, you know that I'm a sucker for a plan.
3. myrecipes.com.  You can find unhealthy recipes at myrecipes.com but Health and Cooking Light are two of the magazines in their collection that they publish from so there are plenty of good recipes to be found.  I love that you can type in ingredients that you have on hand and the site will spit out recipes that you can make with those ingredients.
4. Vegetarian Times.  Vegetarian Times is another great online resource for healthy recipes.  I often forget to check there when I'm looking for a new recipe.  I wish My Recipes would include them in their lineup!
5. Yoga Journal.  Yoga Journal uses the recipes from Vegetarian Times but I thought I would include a link because they have a lot of good articles about food and you can access the recipes from the same page.

Have you started craving healthier recipes?  Do you have some favorite resources?

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