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Category Archives: Healthy
Dinner Tonight: Giant Salad
Thursdays are free lunch day in my office. It’s a fantastic perk, but sometimes it means that I just eat too much during lunch. Today’s lunch was a favorite: steak tips and macaroni and cheese that we get catered from Max and Dillon’s in Charlestown. It’s one of my favorites because somehow they manage to cook their steak tips perfectly even though they’re cooked in a large batch and then delivered. The macaroni and cheese is excellent as well.
My giant salad.
So, tonight, I just ate a huge salad for dinner. I love salad. It’s filling and healthy and there are so many fresh flavors and interesting textures. It’s really sad that salad gets a bad rap as something people eat in misery while dieting. My salad tonight was a mix of romaine lettuce, shredded carrots, thinly sliced red onion, tomato, mushrooms, chick peas, and hard boiled eggs topped with homemade balsamic vinaigrette. I was a little bummed that I didn’t have any feta or goat cheese in the house — that would have made this salad just a teeny bit better than it already was.
I also tried a new recipe that my sister found on Pinterest for Honey Roasted Chickpeas. She asked me to make them last weekend, but I spent too much time making bagels and pecan bars that I didn’t get around to it. We are attending a board game event on Saturday and wanted to pack some snacks — so I thought it would be a great time to make them.
Even though I still need to experiment with these -- they are a very tasty snack.
The recipe was…ok. For some reason, the chickpeas did not all cook uniformly, so there are some delicious, crunchy chickpeas and some that still have a little softness to them. I think next time I should stir the chickpeas more as they are cooking to help even out the cooking. Overall, the flavor is good though, so I will try again. Fortunately, chickpeas are cheap so I can experiment a bunch to get it right.
Posted in Beans, Healthy, Starch, Vegetarian
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Dinner Tonight: Oven-fried Pork Schnitzel
Wow. I am still recovering from this weekend! I had a fun weekend with some wonderful ladies at a beach house in Plymouth — but I didn’t get enough sleep and I just don’t function without enough sleep.
The weekend was a girls’ weekend to send-off our good family friend Joanne who is leaving for two years to work and live in Greece. It’s a super exciting opportunity for her, but we’ll miss her a lot! Lucky for us, Joanne’s sister owns a fantastic beach house that she very recently renovated–and she invited us down to stay. The place was amazing as was the company. We did a lot of chatting, drinking, eating, watching movies, and playing games.
I wish I had more of these for breakfast tomorrow!
Whenever I get invited anywhere, I feel like I need to make something to bring with me. It’s the easiest way for me to say thank you. In this case, I decided I wanted to bake some bagels for breakfast. I used to be very nervous about making yeast bread, but I’ve come to realize the hardest thing about making bread is waiting for the dough to rise. This recipe from King Arthur flour is relatively quick — it only took about 1 1/2 hours to rise. And the bagels take just over 20 minutes to bake. These were great, chewy bagels. I know they came out well because my sister ate two — and she’s pretty picky! I think I’ll be making them again soon.
This week will be light on new recipes. We have lots of leftovers in our freezer and decided to take it easy this week and use those up.
Tonight, however, I did make this great pork dish. As I’ve written before, I really like oven frying as a healthy option for making yummy, crispy food without all of the oil. We had some frozen, boneless pork chops in the freezer and decided to make oven-fried pork schnitzel. It came out crispy and juicy — I can’t wait to make this again!
Oven-fried Pork Schnitzel
Yum!
4, 4 oz. boneless pork loin chops
1/2 cup flour
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. chili powder
2 eggs, whisked
1 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
One at a time, place each pork chop in between two layers of plastic wrap. Use a meat mallet to pound the pork chops so that they are about 1/4 inch thick.
Set up a breading station by combining the flour and spices in a shallow pan, the whisked eggs in another shallow pan, and the bread crumbs in a third shallow pan. I like to use my round cake pans.
Dip each piece of pork into the flour so it’s well coated on each side — shaking off the excess. Then dip into the egg mixture to cover each. Finally dip into the bread crumbs to cover each side. Place breaded pork onto a lightly oiled wire rack over a baking sheet.
1. Place pork chops between two layers of plastic wrap; 2. Use a meat mallet to pound out to 1/4 inch thick; 3. Bread; 4. Bake on a wire rack over a cookie sheet
Bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. Flip and bake for another 5 minutes.
Posted in Healthy, Main Dish, Meat, Pork, Quick & Easy, Recipe
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Dinner Tonight: Red Lentil and Sausage Soup
I’ve been really into the crock-pot recently. It’s so nice to come home and know that dinner is ready with just a little preparation the evening before. Plus, it’s one pot so it makes clean up a snap (for Sean since I rarely do dishes.)
We’ve also been trying to pare down our pantry and use ingredients we already have. In this case, we had a bunch of lentils and a bunch of potatoes, carrots, and kale from our Boston Organics boxes. And we recently stocked up on spices at Penzey’s so we had plenty of flavor agents. We only needed to purchase chicken stock, canned tomatoes, and sausage for this super healthy, filling, and tasty meal.
In my experience, you just never know how something will actually turn out in a crock-pot. It’s a bit of a roll of the dice (did I put in enough liquid? too much liquid? will everything disintegrate to mush? will the beans still be crunchy?) This recipe came out awesome! On a scale of 1-10, I gave it an 8 1/2; Sean gave it an 8. The lentils broke down during the cooking which made the consistency super creamy; the potato and carrot were perfectly tender without being mushy and the sausage kept its integrity and flavor. Coming home after our 2 mile walk with the dogs to a huge bowl of this soup made the end of the day a happy one.
Red Lentil and Sausage Soup
Serves 6-8
Comfort food that's *really* good for you!
1 medium onion, diced small
2 large carrots, diced small
5 cloves garlic, minced
4 small potatoes, diced small
1/2 lb. ground sweet Italian sausage.
1 bunch of kale, cleaned, stemmed, and chopped
2 cups dried red lentils
1, 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1, 28 oz. can water
1 quart chicken stock
2 tbsp. smoked Spanish paprika
2 tsp. dried basil
2 tsp. dried thyme
Salt, to taste
Grated Parmesan cheese, to taste
Crushed red pepper, to taste
In a large crock-pot, combine the onion, carrots, garlic, lentils, potato, and kale. Make mini-meatballs out of the ground sausage. I was able to purchase bulk sausage, but if I couldn’t find that, I would remove the casing of sausage links and make that into meatballs. Add the meatballs to the crock-pot. Add the tomatoes, water, and chicken stock. Add the paprika, basil, and thyme. Stir to combine. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Taste and add salt to your liking. Serve in large bowls and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper.
This Week’s Lunch: Crock-Pot Jambalaya
It is going to take me forever to fill in that green background!
This weekend was one of the laziest weekends I’ve had in a long time.
Friday, I had the pleasure of hanging out with Chrissy — an extraordinarily crafty friend and a brand-new blogger. We hung out and watched some bad TV and did some crafting. She’s working on a very cool/geeky Klingon baby hat (no, really — check it out.) I worked on the cross stitch bird that I found on MarthaStewart.com (via Pinterest.) I’ve got a big art project planned for my bedroom wall and this is just one little piece of it. Considering how long it’s taking me — I might be finished in 2015…
Look close and you can see Barley's cute snow beard.
We had our first very snowy day on Saturday and I used that as an excuse to stay home. Sean and I took Barley on a cold, snowy walk. I worked on my cross stitch. I baked fresh Italian sub rolls and almond sugar cookies. I watched a whole bunch of Psych. I did not change out of my pajamas all day. It was fantastic.
Is there any smell better than fresh baked bread?
Sunday followed suit though I did change into real clothes briefly to do some grocery shopping. And we went to the gym. But, otherwise, it was another restful day without any real plans. I did manage to make our weekly lunches; I enlisted the crock-pot to help me create this lazy man’s jambalaya.
Crock-Pot Jambalaya
Made 9 Lunches
So, so easy in the crock-pot!
1 large onion, diced small
3 medium green bell peppers, diced small
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. andouille sausage, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
2 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into medium chunks
1, 14 oz. can diced tomato
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp. Cajun seasoning
1 lb. 41-50 count shrimp, cleaned and peeled
1, 40 oz. can kidney beans, drained
9 cups white rice, cooked
Mix the onions, peppers, garlic, sausage, chicken thighs, tomatoes, chicken stock, and Cajun seasoning in a large crock-pot. Cook on high for 3-4 hours. During the last 30 minutes of cooking, add the shrimp and kidney beans. Serve on top of white rice.
Dinner Tonight: Oven Baked Fish Tacos
Today…was a day. All of my Monday meetings were pushed up a day along with all of my Tuesday meetings which meant time at my desk was scarce and I didn’t actually get to serious work until after 5:00. You’d think that leaving the office at 7:00 would mean no traffic. You’d think.
MEH!
Ok, now that I vented, there were three highlights of the day.
First — key lime pie. I made this last night for a meeting today and used some of my precious allotted calories on a slice. Heaven. I was almost transported to Key West for a millisecond.
Second, I got my new laptop speakers in the mail today. These have a great design — they clip on the back of your laptop screen and plug in through the USB port. Super space saving, there are no extra plugs, and they sound great! I’m now enjoying the soulful sounds of Joss Stone from our new media center while I’m typing this blog post. Maybe I’ll torture Sean with some Garth Brooks soon (guilty pleasure from my high school days! Go ahead. Mock away.)
Finally, we had fish tacos for dinner tonight. One of my absolute favorites and it allowed me to use up some leftovers I had from the salads we had on Saturday.
I make fish tacos A LOT. I decided to try an new way of cooking the fish. Normally I saute it with onions and peppers, but tonight I decided it would be quicker and easier to just put it all on a baking sheet and shove it in the oven. Since I used flounder which has thin fillets, it cooked up in 6 minutes! Dinner was ready in 15 minutes … and I was a much happier girl.
Oven Baked Fish Tacos
Makes 6 tacos — served 2 hungry adults
The best part of tacos is that you get to design your own!
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. chili powder
2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. salt
1 lb. flounder or tilapia fillets (these fish are nice and thin and will bake up super fast!)
1/2 avocado, sliced
1 recipe simple slaw (or leftover greens of your choice mixed with a simple vinaigrette)
Sour cream
Your favorite salsa
Cilantro, rinsed and pull the leaves off the stems
6 corn tortillas, warmed
Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Whisk together the olive oil, chili powder, cumin, and salt.
Spread a baking sheet with parchment paper or spray with non-stick spray or rub a thin layer of olive oil over the sheet. Place the fish on the baking sheet and use a pastry brush or spoon to spread the paste you just made over both sides of the fish.
Place the fish in the heated oven for about 6 minutes or until the fish is cooked through and flaky.
Serve on the tortillas with the slaw and avocado. Add sour cream, salsa, and cilantro to your taste.
Posted in Cabbage, Cuisine, Fish, Healthy, Main Dish, Meat, Mexican, Quick & Easy, Recipe, Vegetables
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Dinner Tonight: Asian Chicken Salad
What a great weekend. On Friday, I decided to bake some cupcakes — my friends on Facebook helped me choose between lime and coconut or lemon with raspberry icing. Lime and coconut won the Facebook vote. I was leaning that way anyway because I’m getting excited for our trip to St. Martin in March where I expect to drink lots and lots of limey, coconut-y rum drinks! I spent the rest of the night watching Pretty in Pink and Project Runway. Love lazy Fridays!
This is my dessert tonight!
On Saturday, we went to a belated holiday party where we took part in a Yankee swap — I lucked up and ended up with a great scarf from Ecolissa. Sean got the new hot game among our friends, Quelf. It’s a pretty silly party game. He broke it out at the party. I sat out and still had a great time just watching. It was HILARIOUS!
Today, we met up with Ana & Jesse for dim sum. They just got back from Brazil where they got engaged! It was great to see them for some congratulatory dumplings. It was Jesse’s first time going to dim sum. I hope he liked it so we can do it more often.
We spent the rest of the weekend working on a project that we’ve been wanting to accomplish for a long time. We are creating a media library using an external media storage drive. Turns out it takes a long time to rip CDs into MP3s — after many hours, we’re still probably not even near half way done. But, it’s a good project to continue through the winter. I’m excited to finally have easy access to all of our music — and to be able to box up our CDs and move them to the basement so they aren’t taking up space.
Before we headed to the party on Saturday, I wanted to fill up on something that was filling and healthy. Like everyone else in the universe, I’m trying to eat healthier after the holidays. I didn’t want to get to the party and eat a bunch of junk. We had half a head of cabbage in the fridge, so I used that as inspiration to make this salad. It’s super fresh, flavorful, and filling. The salad base gets an extra punch from the cilantro and green onions mixed in.
This recipe makes a ton, so we had these for dinner last night and tonight. Plus we have leftover salad mix which we’ll use later in the week for something else (stay tuned!)
Asian Chicken Salad
Makes 6 HUGE Salads
GIANT, delicious salad.
Salad
1/2 medium head of cabbage, thinly shredded
1 head romaine lettuce, thinly shredded
2 large carrots, cut julienne
5 green onions/scallions, chopped
1 medium bunch of cilantro, remove the bottom couple of inches of the stem and then roughly chop the bunch
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, poached, cooled, and shredded
1 14oz. package of fettuccine style rice noodles, cooked and cooled (found these at Whole Foods — you could really use any noodles you like.)
3/4 cup of sliced almonds, toasted
Toss all of these ingredients together. If you are going to split this up over multiple meals, hold out the almonds and use them to garnish before each meal.
Dressing
6 tbsp. rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp. honey
3 tbsp. olive oil
3 tsp. soy sauce
3 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
3 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. granulated garlic/garlic powder
1 tsp. sesame oil
Whisk all of these ingredients in a bowl. Or put all of them in a plastic container with a tight fitting lid and shake, shake, shake until everything is well combined (this makes for easy storage for leftovers!)
Dinner Tonight: Vegetable Green Curry
On Sunday, I did a bunch of cooking — and part of that was making a huge batch of green curry paste. Green curry is one of my favorites when I get Thai food. It’s not difficult to make on your own, but making the paste necessary for the curry does require quite a few ingredients and a little bit of time to whiz them together in the food processor. You can buy it in a jar at the store, but fresh tastes so much better.
I found the recipe that I used on Instructables.com It made A LOT. I froze the curry paste into 30 pucks using my mini-cupcake tins. Now I have at least a year’s supply.
Tonight, I went out for drinks with some co-workers. It was a really fun evening. I didn’t get home until 9:00 — thankfully, I was able to throw together a batch of vegetable green curry in minutes and we were having a healthy albeit late dinner by 9:30.
Vegetable Green Curry
Makes 2 Big Servings
Thank you green curry pucks!
1 tsp. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 medium green bell pepper, sliced into strips
2-3 tbsp. green curry paste
1 can light coconut milk
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. Thai fish sauce
1 large sweet potato, diced large
1 carrot, sliced
1/2 head of cauliflower, cut into florets
1 can of chick peas
2 cups steamed white rice
In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onions and green peppers and cook for 2-3 minutes until softened. Add the coconut milk, curry paste, brown sugar, salt, and fish sauce. Bring to a boil. Add the vegetables. Cover the skillet and cook for about 10 minutes until the vegetables are cooked through and tender. Add the chick peas and cook for another minute.
Serve over white rice.
Posted in Asian, Carrots, Cauliflower, Cuisine, Healthy, Main Dish, Peppers, Recipe, Sweet Potato, Vegetables, Vegetarian
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Dinner Tonight: Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin
Hey there! It’s my second post tonight — and my second post in over a year. I’m resolving to keep this blog up-to-date with lots of updates small and large. I hope I can keep this resolution!
So, how was your weekend? Mine was a nice mix of friends and productivity. On Saturday we went to a birthday tea party at Upstairs on the Square in Harvard Square. It was a great afternoon tea with lots of delicious bites. I think I drank my weight in tea! I also helped my mother with her new business website. Busy day!
Sunday was the first day in WEEKS that we didn’t have any plans. It was fantastic. Sean, Barley, and I went for a long walk. Sean and I planned our weekly menu, went to Penzey’s for a major spice shopping spree, and did our grocery shopping. Then I spent the evening cooking for the week and watching a few episodes of Psyche. There might have been a few glasses of wine in there, too.
Tonight, I made this honey mustard pork tenderloin. This was super easy, very quick, and really tasty. The whole thing was done in 25 minutes.
Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin
Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin with Smashed Carrots & Parsnips and Mac & Cheese
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 tbsp. butter, melted
1/4 cup honey mustard
1 pork tenderloin
Salt
Pepper
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
Mix together the panko bread crumbs with the butter so that all of the bread crumbs are coated with butter. Transfer the bread crumbs into a shallow baking dish.
Season the pork tenderloin by sprinkling with salt and pepper. Then rub with the honey mustard so that the pork is evenly coated.
Dredge the pork into the bread crumbs so that the entire tenderloin is coated with bread crumbs.
Place the pork tenderloin on a pan lined with parchment or coated with cooking spray. Cook for about 20 minutes until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees and the bread crumbs are browned; let the pork rest for 5 minutes and then carve into slices for serving.
Posted in Healthy, Main Dish, Meat, Pork, Quick & Easy, Recipe
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This Week’s Lunch: Turkey Black Bean Chili
A couple of months ago, I decided that I’d test out a new way of dealing with lunch. Throughout my professional career I’ve gone back and forth with bringing lunch and eating out. Over the past year, I’ve gone mostly in the direction of the latter. It gets expensive to eat out all of the time and can be less than healthy. My plan was to start making one big entree on Sunday and portion it out for the week.
This has been one of the best ideas I’ve had in a long time and has stuck as a new habit. I’m saving money and eating better. It takes a couple of hours on my Sunday, but it’s time well spent.
This week, I made this turkey black bean chili perfect for these cold winter days.
Turkey Black Bean Chili
All of our lunches packed up for the week!
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced small
4 poblano peppers, diced small
3 jalapeno peppers, diced small
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can tomato paste
6 tbsp chili powder
3 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp ancho chili powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
2 lbs. ground turkey
1 lbs. dried black beans, soaked overnight
1, 10 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 medium zucchinis, diced small
12 oz. dark beer
4 cups chicken stock
In a large pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the onions, peppers, and garlic. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes until they get soft.
Add the tomato paste and spices and stir together. Everything will combine together and look like a paste. Stir in the ground turkey and break it up.
Add the beans, tomatoes, zucchini, beer, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer. Simmer for 2-4 hours until the black beans are soft.
Posted in Comfort Food, Healthy, Main Dish, Meat, Recipe, Soup, Turkey
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Fish Taco Wraps with Simple Slaw
Sean and I headed to Albany this weekend for a pre-Thanksgiving celebration while his sister was in town from Reno. We spent Saturday at the New York State Harvest Fest where we sampled lots of NY State wine and foods. Then we had dinner with the family — roast pork, cabbage, latkes, and homemade applesauce.
On the drive home on Sunday morning we discussed our dinner plans. We decided to make fish taco wraps to use up a lot of the stuff we had in the fridge and freezer. Far from a gourmet meal, I bought frozen fish sticks at Whole Foods a few weeks ago (way better than the fish sticks you remember as a kid!) and used those.
Way better than Gortons!
Fish sticks, chimichurri sauce, simple slaw, and avocado. Yum!
I also had a quarter of a head of cabbage and a zillion carrots and red onions, so I whipped up this simple slaw to go with the tacos. I love a little cabbage on my tacos — and it’s fairly traditional when you get tacos from authentic taquerias. I also love slaw on sandwiches for an extra crunch and tang.
A note: I use a special vegetable peeler to shred my carrots. It’s a pretty awesome tool. But you can also just julienne the carrot with a knife — or just buy a package of pre-shredded carrots (I won’t tell!)
Oh yeah, I also baked a whole bunch of cupcakes for work — food porn below.
Simple Slaw
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. honey
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 medium head of cabbage, thinly shredded
1 large carrot, shredded
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced
In a small bowl, combine vinegar, salt, pepper, cumin, garlic powder, and honey with a small whisk. Slowly whisk in canola oil.
In a large bowl, toss together the cabbage carrots, and red onion. Pour the vinaigrette over the shredded vegetables and toss well to combine.
Simple Slaw for Tacos
Cupcakes -- yellow with chocolate icing by popular demand.
Posted in Cabbage, Carrots, Cuisine, Healthy, Mexican, Recipe, Side Dish, Tools & Equipment, Vegetables, Vegetarian
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