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Category Archives: Vegetables
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
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.
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
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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This Week’s Lunch: Sweet & Spicy Chicken and Green Beans
I’ve been making a lot of Mexican and Tex-Mex flavored dishes for lunches lately — burritos, enchiladas, chili — so this week, I decided it was probably time to change it up a bit. I was inspired by one of our favorite Chinese take-out dishes: spicy string beans.
In this case, I added some chicken and made the dish sweet and spicy. It took forever to process the green beans, but otherwise it was quick to throw together. This dish hits all of the same flavors that I like when we order Chinese while remaining very healthy. Knowing this is in my lunch box will help getting back to work tomorrow after this long weekend much easier.
Sweet & Spicy Chicken and Green Beans
Makes 8 lunch portions
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 1/2 cups water
1 tbsp. garlic powder
1 tbsp. ground ginger
1 tbsp. crushed red pepper flakes
2 tbsp. corn starch
24 oz. green beans, stems picked off and cut in half
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, sliced thin
24 oz. chicken breast, cut into medium cubes
8 cups white rice, cooked
In a large bowl, combine the brown sugar, pineapple juice, soy sauce, water, garlic powder, ginger, crushed red pepper flakes and corn starch. Whisk together until well combined and the corn starch is mixed in without any lumps. Set the sauce aside.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add a big handful of salt. Add the green beans and boil for 3 minutes. Drain into a colander filled with ice. Set aside.
In a large saute pan, heat the olive oil over high heat. Add the onion and saute until it gets soft and starts to brown. Add the chicken and saute for 5-7 minutes, stirring often so that all sides get browned. Add the green beans and the sauce (whisk it together one more time before adding to help redistribute the corn starch.) Stir to combine all of the ingredients.
Cook covered over medium high heat for about 10 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce is thickened.
Serve over white rice.
Posted in Asian, Chicken, Cuisine, Green Beans, Main Dish, Meat, Quick & Easy, Recipe, Rice, Starch, 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!
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
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
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: Tomato & Squash Pasta with Sauteed Shrimp
I am in love with this unseasonably warm weather. I am not into winter sports and I’m very clumsy which makes icy sidewalks my nemesis all winter.
Sean and I have been taking advantage by taking lots and lots of walks instead of going to the gym which is fantastic this time of year when the gym gets super crowded.
Tonight we took the 2 mile loop around the neighborhood with Barley and it was so warm I had to stuff my gloves and hat in my pocket! I wonder if I could bribe Mother Nature with some cupcakes to keep this weather coming.
After our walk, I whipped up this pasta. If you know me at all, you know I’m my own worst critic — so you know that this pasta is delicious when I tell you that after three bites I started to get sad knowing my bowl would be empty soon!
Tomato & Squash Pasta with Sauteed Shrimp
Salt
Pepper
1/2 lb. medium-to-large shrimp, cleaned and shells removed
2 tbsp. + 1 tsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. unsalted butter
6 large cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp. dried basil
1 large red pepper, diced medium
2 small summer squashes, diced medium
6 plum tomatoes, cored, seeded, and diced medium
1/2 lb. dried spaghetti, cooked al dente and drained
Parmesan Cheese, to taste
Heat 1 tsp. of olive oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the shrimp with salt and pepper. Once the oil gets hot, saute the shrimp for 2-3 minutes until the shrimp get pink and just cooked through. Remove from heat and set aside in a bowl.
Add the rest of the olive oil and the butter to the saute pan. Heat over medium-high heat until the butter is almost melted. Add the garlic. Cook for about 2-minutes stirring to make sure that the garlic doesn’t burn. Add the red pepper, summer squash, red pepper flakes, and basil. Cook for 2-4 minutes until the squash and red pepper start to cook through stirring to distribute the heat. Add the tomatoes.
Cook for about 10 minutes stirring occasionally. The tomatoes will start to break down creating a bit of a sauce and the summer squash will be cooked through. Toss in the spaghetti and stir to combine (I find stirring with tongs helps distribute all of the vegetables into the spaghetti.)
Serve in large bowls and top with the sauteed shrimp. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese to taste.
Posted in Cuisine, Italian, Main Dish, Pasta, Peppers, Quick & Easy, Recipe, Squash, Starch, Vegetables
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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.
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.
Posted in Cabbage, Carrots, Cuisine, Healthy, Mexican, Recipe, Side Dish, Tools & Equipment, Vegetables, Vegetarian
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Kale and Butternut Squash
One of the reasons I started getting Boston Organics delivery is because I wanted a reason to be creative. I figured that if I didn’t have a say about what I was getting each week, I’d need to create new, delicious dishes. This is one of them. It’s super simple and a great way to use up scraps of butternut squash — which was the starting point for this particular brainstorm. You need about 10-minutes to get this on the table and it’s super nutritious, too!
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups butternut squash, diced medium
1 tsp. chili powder
1 bunch kale, roughly chopped
salt, to taste
Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a non-stick saute pan. Add the garlic and cook for a minute but don’t let brown or burn. Add the butternut squash and chili powder and cook, tossing or stirring frequently, for about 5-minutes until mostly tender.
Add the kale and cook until the kale is tender and cooked, stirring often. Add salt to taste.
Posted in Kale, Quick & Easy, Recipe, Side Dish, Squash, Vegetables, Vegetarian
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Crispy, Oven-fried Eggplant
Recently, I had an eggplant hanging around and I had some leftover spaghetti sauce, so it made sense to make eggplant parmesan. I didn’t really want to take the time to fry it — plus, I really hate the mess that frying makes. And, while I do LOVE fried foods, I’m also trying to be more conscious of what I’m shoving into my face.
So, I decided to oven-fry my eggplant — and it came out DELICIOUS! It made for fantastic eggplant parm. And tonight, I decided to oven-fry another eggplant and stuff it into pitas with hummus and call it dinner.
Ok, ok, I know you’re wondering, “What the hell is oven-frying!?!” Basically, by oven-frying, I’m referring to breading a product and then cooking it in the oven at a super high heat so that it gets a nice, crispy texture that’s somewhat close to the texture you’d get when frying. I do this a lot with poultry, fish, and veggies — this is the first time I’ve tried it with eggplant.
I think it might actually be the best version of oven-frying I’ve tried. It was super crispy on the outside and soft and creamy on the inside. Aside from eggplant parm, and pita stuffing, I this eggplant would also be great on homemade pizza or just munching on as a snack.
Crispy, Oven-fried Eggplant
1 eggplant, cut into 1/4” rounds
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup egg beaters (or a few eggs, beaten)
1/2 – 1 cup seasoned bread crumbs
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Spread the eggplant out over a cookie sheet. Sprinkle liberally with salt and wait 15-20 minutes. The salt will draw out water from the eggplant and you will see water start pooling up on top of the eggplant. After 15-20 minutes, use a paper towel to dry off the water — this will also remove some of the excess salt.
Set up a breading station — flour, eggs, and bread crumbs. Dip the eggplant into the flour and shake off the excess. You only need a thin layer of flour. Then dip into the egg and then the bread crumbs. Evenly coat the eggplant with breadcrumbs.
Place the breaded eggplant slices on a cookie sheet that you thinly coated with oil (or sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes. Flip the eggplant and bake for another 10 minutes. Eggplant should be brown and crispy.
Posted in Appetizer, Eggplant, Healthy, Main Dish, Quick & Easy, Recipe, Side Dish, Vegetables, Vegetarian
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