We at Sustainable Manila are proud and honored to present our very first guest blog post by Denise Castillo, sharing with us her yummy recipe for cinnamon apple banana fritters with coconut flour. Enjoy!

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Denise writes:

In 2009 I got into a major accident that stopped me from longboard skating competitively. Months after that I found myself out of shape and really wanting to get strong again. I had never tried any diet nor followed a healthy way of eating at that point. My first meal out of the hospital was instant noodles and a Jollibee meal. So I started working out, signed up at a gym, and tried to watch what I ate. My typical breakfast then was a bowl of high fiber cereal, some yoghurt and maybe a boiled egg. Months later I started taking protein shakes and only ate half the amount of rice I would normally eat. But when the weekends came, I would eat any thing and everything. And I do have a legendary appetite. So the vicious cycle went on of trying to make up for the calories during the week by endless hours on the treadmill then bingeing on the weekends. I lost some weight but I hit a plateau early on and started to miss being challenged.

A good friend of mine introduced me to my Crossfit coach late last year. Over ten months, my paradigm regarding health, exercise and nutrition has changed dramatically. What I thought was "healthy" before was totally challenged. During our Foundation Class, our coach taught us about the Paleo Diet. He told us to try experimenting with it. See if it works for us and take it one meal at a time. So I tried it, for one month, slowly wean off grains, processed food and sugar. I lost six pounds.

After that I took Crossfit and the Paleo Diet head on. The only way I could train as hard as I wanted was if I fueled my body with the right food and slept properly. It wasn't anything complicated. Eat real food.

Now I'm not perfect, I do slip up sometimes. And there are times when I do miss things like pancakes and dessert. But I did enjoy cooking and preparing my meals. So I started getting creative and looked for recipes online. I would modify them based on what was available locally. I would document my meals so I could keep track of what I ate and also because the food just looked so darn good.

And this brings me to the recipe Feanne asked me to blog about. It's Cinnamon Apple Banana Fritters With Coconut Flour. I usually cook it for breakfast, but it could work as dessert. It's easy to bring to school or work for a quick snack. It is a complete meal in itself with the protein from the free-range eggs, carbohydrates from the apple and banana, and fat from the coconut.

Ingredients:
4 granny smith apples
5 eggs
1 ripe banana (or 2 tbsp honey)
1/4 cup flax meal
2 tbsp coconut flour
1/4 cup shredded coconut (or desiccated coconut)
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmegvirgin coconut oil for frying

Instructions:
Shred apples (or chop finely), then dry with paper towels. Mash banana. Combine with other ingredients. Add batter to hot pan with oil. I scoop the batter with a 1/4 cup measuring spoon to make things easier. Fry 2-3 minutes then flip.

Serve with nutbutter or in my case, BACON! This is also delicious served with some Paleo Icecream (maybe for another next blogpost?).

EAT!

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Denise Castillo is a Motion Graphics Designer by day, Crossfit Athelete by night, Cavewoman cook in between. Follow her at http://followgram.me/iganding.

Thank you so much Denise for sharing your recipe and pictures on our blog! And we are definitely looking forward to that paleo ice cream blog post.

For anyone else who'd like to share something on our blog as a guest author, do get in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you.