Five minute healthy chocolate pudding

No-cook five minute healthy chocolate pudding: perfect for a brown bag lunch, a healthy snack or a guilt-free dessert. #backtoschool #glutenfree 

OK. Labor Day was yesterday so now I can be excited about fall and back-to-school time!

(Although I refuse yet to be excited about pumpkin. Plums and apples haven't even had their chance to shine yet, people. Let's save all the pumpkin hooha for October, shall we?)

Anyway, back to back to school. I'm not going back to school nor are my dogs (although they could probably use it), but I'm excited regardless. And the reason I'm excited is this super easy, five-minute healthy chocolate pudding.

Yes, pudding. Why do pudding cups excited me? Because I pack lunches. Healthy lunches. And who could possibly say no to a healthy chocolate pudding cup in his lunch bag?

Not Mr. Ninj, the recipient of my healthy lunch bags.

Let's be honest. Whether you're 8 or 48, it's pretty sweet to have a little dessert-y type item in your lunch bag to finish off your noontime meal. In fact, it has been proven that eating something sweet at the end of a meal signifies to your brain that you're full and you should stop wanting to eat more food. (It's a true fact because I read it somewhere once. Yep, super scientific, you can quote me on it.)

Heck, I even went out of my way to style the photos of my five-minute healthy chocolate pudding in such a way that the lunch-bag-packing intention was entirely obvious.

Baked ranch tofu 'chicken' nuggets

Healthy baked ranch tofu nuggets have all the meatiness and flavor of a traditional chicken nugget. A meatless entree or appetizer that even the pickiest eater will love!

So, if you knew me 20 years ago, you're probably laughing hysterically at the fact that I'm posting about tofu. Suffice it to say, I have not always been a healthy eater (I lived on Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies and Cool Ranch Doritos in college). In fact, I was pretty reliant on processed and packaged foods until I started reading more about where my food came from and making the effort to read and decode food package ingredient labels.

Even as a healthy eater, espousing The Way of Better Eating, I'm pretty new to tofu, not being vegetarian or vegan (remember -- I have been known to call myself The Meatasaurus). But I've been giving tofu more of a chance lately as a way to enjoy meatless meals during the week.

If you've seen but never tried a tofu nugget recipe before, you're not alone. I was super skeptical, especially of the ones that claimed to have a meaty texture. How the freak could jiggly tofu ever seem meaty? But Cheryl of 40 Aprons did a pretty good job of convincing me, once she revealed the secret: Freeze the tofu.

Yes! It's totally freakish but it works! Something all science-y about the freezing and thawing process changes the tofu's texture so that it's meaty. Seriously: meaty. I kid you not. Even Mr. Ninj, who gave me his you-haven't-hidden-some-nasty-pureed-vegetables-in-this-have-you sideways-stink-eye, gobbled them up and praised the meaty, genuinely nugget-ish texture.

Pumpkin maple smoothie {$100 gift card giveaway}

This healthy pumpkin maple smoothie, made with silken tofu, is gluten-free, dairy-free and refined sugar-free. A creamy, delicious, on-the-go fall-flavored breakfast or afternoon treat.

You'd have to be living under a very, very large rock not to have encountered some kind of Pumpkin Spice Whatevs this fall. While this craze may seem -- well -- more than a little cray cray, there's a reason why we all tend to get so worked up about pumpkin in October -- other than Halloween and jack-o-lanterns, of course. One whiff of pumpkin and cinnamon and nutmeg together can conjure up all sorts of memories of cool weather, falling leaves, cozy sweaters and crackling fires.

Which is probably why pumpkin spice is such a coffee house favorite -- you need a comforting beverage to keep you warm as you site by the crackling fire in the cool weather in your cozy sweater, watching the leaves fall.

But since I'm no longer a coffee drinker, I wanted to come up with a way that I, too, could enjoy Pumpkin Spice Whatevs this fall, without falling too far off the healthy food bandwagon.

As luck would have it, I got the opportunity recently to try some Mori-Nu Silken Tofu, which inspired me to focus my pumpkin spice attention on smoothies.

Now, before you freak out that I added tofu to my smoothie, let me explain. Mori-Nu is different because it's silken tofu, which has a very smooth and custard-like texture, so it adds a great creamy texture to smoothies (with no bananas required!). And it never needs to be pressed or drained, so you can use it as-is, straight out of the box -- you know The Ninj is all about speed and simplicity in recipes.