Sweet Vegetables and Recipe: Carrot Fritters

Last year, I completed an online program from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and became a certified Health Coach. Pursing a career as a health coach is one of the dreams I had mentioned in the post last night. I learned so much from that program and this year I plan on listening to a lot of the classes again and sharing some really useful knowledge regarding nutrition. There was a lot of information on cravings and how they are actually a totally normal physical reaction that you can't avoid. A craving is simply your body's way of telling you that something is missing. So a sweet craving isn't necessarily some evil ploy meant to keep you out of your skinny jeans, it means there's something going on physiologically. Sometimes it means you've got too much salt in your system (sweet and salty tend to balance each other out), but other times you may just need something sweet! Of course, your body is probably not telling you it needs a double chocolate fudge brownie. I tend to believe that our body's signals are quite primal and I doubt the cavemen were scarfing down brownies in between hunts. However, there are a lot of naturally sweet foods out there. Fruit is the obvious one but since I'm not eating fructose right now (sugar is sugar and right now I need a true break from it) I turn to sweet vegetables instead.

Sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots and onions are my favorite. When cooked the carbs in these vegetables break down into really sweet treats. Add some butter/coconut oil and some cinnamon and you practically have a dessert. Any time I've gone sugar free I make sure I stock up on these foods. I usually roast about 3 sweet potatoes per week to have on hand when I'm really having a craving. And I caramelize onions all the time to add to my greens, eggs or most dinner dishes I make.

Something I found this go around is a recipe for carrot fritters. It's from the blog Delicieux which I haven't had much of a chance to check out yet. A great side that is super easy to make. My Little Peanut loved them! I used oat flour but I bet almond or brown rice flour would also work great.