Lunch A-Jar

If there is such a thing as "trends" for lunches, then the lunch-in-a-jar is the hottest trend right.  Being the food blog and cooking magazine fiend that I am, I started to see these meals in a jar pop up on several sites/articles these past couple of months, and so if you are like me, then this trend is not breaking news.  However, I'm here to report that I've had and enjoyed several lunch-in-a-jar's and this trend has staying power!  I'll admit, I was first lured into the idea just based on the aesthetics (the layered look in the jars is so colorful and interesting) but after a week's worth of test tests I was hooked.  The big 32oz mason jars were big enough to build a delicious, layered, and filling (and super healthy!!) salads.  I did one full week of basic "create your own adventure" salads and then another week of more involved "out of the box" salads from a Clean Eating article.   The blog, Lunch Box Bunch, started it all for me has a great tutorial and good ingredient ideas for the make your own salads.  And true to what the blogger attests too; I made 4 salads on a Sunday night and they stayed fresh all the way through my last one on Thursday.  As the CE salads, they were also really good, however I have a couple notes about each one and my biggest gripe with them is that they took a lot of dishes and prep to make.  And CE also advises only eating them 1 day in advance of making the salads.  So, they might not be perfect for work week lunches, but they would make excellent picnic lunches or to take camping, hiking, or on a flight if you need a healthy to-go lunch option.

Here's a pic of my build-a-salads:

Notes about the CE Salads: I thought Asian Stir Fry Noodle Salad the ingredients were really tasty, but the dressing just needed a little something.  I guess it depends on your taste, so if you make it just taste test it and see if you think it needs more soy sauce, maybe some ginger, siracha for spice, maple syrup or teriyaki sauce.  Depends on what you gravitate more, I thought it could use more spice and soy sauce to add a little more spice and salty flavor.  For the Moroccan Chicken and Carrot Salad, this was my favorite of the three CE salads that I tried, but I would caution that if you aren't a big mint or parsley fan or like your herbs to be more subtle, then I would either finely chop the mint/parsely leaves or omit them altogether. and maybe replace with mixed greens. The dressing also needs a pinch more salt, but again taste test it for yourself because you might like things less salty than I do! And for the Tri-Color Pasta Salad with Tuna, I liked this one a lot and it could really be made with chicken, tuna, tofu, tempeh, or whatever.  The sun-dried tomato dressing is good with lots of balsamic vinegar flavor.  I also put goat cheese on this instead of mozzarella cheese.

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Vaca-tovation

Vaca-tovation: the act of going on vacation, stuffing yourself with delicious foods and drink and then coming home with new motivation to eat healthy again.  

Sorry for the long hiatus folks, but to tell you the truth, I haven't been all that motivated or inspired in the kitchen lately.  So we've been having a lot of throw-together dinners consisting of a lot of salads, vegetables, grilling out, and pulling out whatever we froze 4 months ago.  It's also been extremely hot here for the past few weeks, consistently at triple digit temperatures; and call me crazy but slaving over a hot oven or a stove for 30-45 mins after I get home from work just hasn't sounded appealing.  HOWEVER, this post is about "vaca-tovation" and that's just how I feel now.  Went on a wonderful trip to Hawaii with my husband and our good friends and had a completely glutinous week of good food and tropical drinks and now I'm back home and newly motivated to get my eating back on track.  This is one of the upsides to getting back from vacation, so embrace it!  In the past 6 weeks of not blogging, I did manage to make a few recipes that I thought were post-worthy.  So I'm happy to share and maybe help some of you become vaca-tovated after your summer trips.   

The first recipe, "Shrimp and Corn Cakes with Heirloom Tomato Salsa" is from Cooking Light magazines' June Issue and I made this for a dinner with a girl friend.  It was really good and really filling.  I did find heirloom tomatoes and the salsa turned out delicious and fresh tasting, but I'm sure it would taste just as good with regular on-the-vine tomatoes or Roma tomatoes.  This also made for an easy lunch the next day.  I thought it was a nice twist on a traditional crab cake type of recipe without as much fat and calories.  

The next recipe, "Hoisin-Glazed Salmon Burgers with Pickled Cucumbers", also from Cooking Lights' June issue,  is definitely going to be a make again recipe.  Jon and I loved the sweet and salty taste of the burgers and the pickled cucumbers added a lot of flavor and got me thinking about pickling more of my own stuff!  We just paired this with some sweet potato fries.  This may even be a good burger recipe to make ahead freeze to use for our nights when we just want something quick.  I'll give it a try and let you know!

The following couple of recipes are two summer treat recipes that I thought were really nutritionally dense without breaking the calorie/fat bank.  As a side note, for the "Peach Cobbler", from Clean Eatings' June issue, I just used normal sugar instead of evaporated cane juice and I used arrowroot powder instead of potato starch.  Arrowroot and potato starch powders are just thickening agents, so you can use corn starch as well. 

The "5-Ingredient Almond Date Bars" was an online recipe find off of the site Ohsheglows.com and I actually ended up making the bars in a pan and then freezing them for about 4 hours and then cut them into bars and kept them in the refrigerator.  They were way too soft to try and cut after first assembling them!  And just a side-note about dates: they are packed with fiber and other great nutritional benefits as well as being extremely sweet.  I've started replacing sugar with dates in my smoothies or chopped up over oatmeal.  Give them a try!

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As Advertised

Working full-time again leaves me with little patience to make dinners that take more than an 45 minutes to make, so when I come across recipes that claim they are "super fast" or "30 minute meals" I get excited.  However, maybe, I'm just slow at cooking but often I find these recipes are not usually as quick as their claims.  If you've had similar experiences with these so-called quick weekday meals, then you will be pleased to know that the recipe I'm posting today is completely as advertised!  As a slow cook, I think I was able to make this recipe and get it on the table in about 18 minutes!  It was also super tasty, filling, and made great lunch leftovers the next day.  One of the things that shaved a couple minutes off this recipe time was that I used pre-shredded cabbage (the kind you can buy for cole slaws).  The only cooking you are doing with this recipe is grilling the steak and we used our barbecue which cooked the steak perfectly with just a little salt and pepper and a couple sprays of cooking spray.  There's no overnight marinading or added fuss, which I liked and appreciated on a busy weeknight when I really want to just eat and be done with dinner...and get the glass of wine and couch-relaxing part of the evening! This recipe comes from my monthly issue of Cooking Light and had lots of fresh flavor for a relatively simple meal.  We just ate the salad, but if you wanted to add a little something on the side or even added the salad you could make wonton crisps.  Purchase a package of wonton wrappers, and brush with egg whites and sprinkle with salt, sesame seeds and if you like spice, a little cayenne pepper.  Bake on a foiled lined baking sheet at 375 for 10minutes or until lightly brown.

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Impressive, no. Delicious, yes!

So, this week included just a couple old-favorites and two new recipes to try.  On Sunday, I started the week off with my no-fail, easy-peasy slow cooker chili -- 2 cans chili beans, 1 can black beans, 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 can mild diced green chiles, 1 diced red bell pepper, 1 diced yellow onion, 1/2 cup broth or water, and a bag of meatless crumbles or some cooked, ground turkey or lean beef.  Throw in a crockpot with some of your favorite spices, I do some cumin, cayenne pepper, dash of cinnamon and some salt to taste; heat on low for 4-5 hours.  It's simple and we had this for leftovers twice this week.  Another night, I came home from work late to a lovely, spaghetti and meat sauce dinner prepared by my wonderful husband!

As for the new recipes we tried this week; I made a "Chicken Spring Rolls" recipe from Clean Eating and discovered that making spring rolls is not so easy!  The rolls were delicious, but my rolling skills with the rice paper left a lot to be desired and left us with a pretty messy dinner.  Of course the recipe makes it look so easy, but I just couldn't get my rolls to be as tightly wrapped as they always are at Asian restaurants when we have them.  I have to also preface that the rice wrappers I bought are the kind that are hard and brittle and then you soak them to soften.  So trying to wrap the rolls as the paper was still softening might have been the problem.  I might try buying egg-roll wrappers next time and baking these.  All-in-all, they were really good and filling.  We had this recipe with peanut dipping sauce and cucumber salad.  The other recipe I tried my hand at was from one of my favorite cookbooks, Rebar, Modern Food Cookbook; and I made the "Tempeh Tacos".  Tempeh is becoming more and more one of my weekly standards now as I'm loving all the recipes I've made with it.  It marinades and cooks great, and really adds a nice crispy, dense texture to your dish.  I'm sure this recipe would also be great with tofu, meatless crumbles, or any type of meat.  After you make the accompanying salsas, this recipe comes together super quick and we had plenty of salsa left to enjoy with some sweet potato chips!

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Sunday Recipe Dump

I knew this would happen...I could see it coming from a mile away...I knew I would get busy and the first thing to fall to the wayside would be this blog.  I'd be one of those bloggers who have all the gusto and intentions of being diligent about this project and then after a couple months become one of the hundreds of thousands of people who suck up domain names and space on the internet with their abandoned blogs. However, all excuses for my hiatus aside, I'm happy to say I'm busy because I got a full-time job again and now I'm getting back into my Sunday meal-planning routine.  When I'm working, I know that there is no task I hate more than the after-work grocery stop because I know don't have what I need to pull something together for dinner.  So the best defensive against this is an offensive Sunday dinner plan.  I take a few hours on Sunday mornings to plow through my latest recipe magazines, favorite cookbooks and old favorites and pull out 3-4 recipes to make that week, make a list and head to the grocery store.  For our little family of two, 3-4 dinner recipes will feed us for a whole week with leftovers for a couple other dinner nights and lunches.  Getting into this habit has been monumental for us because without it, I'm usually a cranky person when I feel like I'm constantly scrambling on what to make and making more than couple trips to a grocery store in a week.  Jon is also tasked with making dinner one night a week and I let him know that if he doesn't get his request in by the Sunday list, he's on his own for getting supplies!

Anyways, why am I telling you all of this?  Because this blog entry is my recipe dump on what I made and planned for last week and I'm considering adding blog-writing to the usual Sunday meal-planning commitment.  So, ta-da!! Welcome to my Sunday. The recipes I'm sharing come from my Cooking Light, Clean Eating subscriptions and one from a random SELF magazine that I received in the mail.  All the recipes were fairly easy and quick to pull together on a weeknight.  The "Thai Turkey Lettuce Wraps", from SELF, were spicy and deliciously messy.  My recommendation for the "Thai Chicken Soup", Cooking Light, (yeah, it was a Thai kind of week) is get the pre-cooked rotisserie chicken; the soup was good but needed that extra flavor from the roasted chicken.  The "Chicken in Parchment", Cleaning Eating was very simple and if you can find the parchment packets, opt for that, but I loved how pretty it all looked.  The "Crispy Salmon with Carrot-Ginger Vinaigrette", Cooking Light, is going to be a new standard!  I loved the carrot-ginger dressing and we had it on shrimp later in the week.  Alright, so now I'm off to plan our meals for this week!

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Meatless Monday

This seems to happen about every couple of weeks.  I start to get the feeling that Jon and I have been eating nothing but meat, meat and more meat and I get the itch to dive into my vegan cookbooks and get us out of a meat-eatin rut.  Eating vegan about once or twice a week for a whole day is a goal or compromise between Jon and I and I vouch for it for a few reasons:  1. I feel that most vegan recipes get us more veggies in our meals than normally as a side dish to meat and the recipes as a whole are usually packed with lots of protein, fiber and un-refined carbohydrates.  2. vegan recipes are just interesting, unique ways to cook and eat different foods and 3. this is just the environmentally-conscious person in me, but eating meatless even one day a week can have a positive effect on our environment and lessen the enormous drain on our resources that it takes to manufacture meat production.  If you are interested here is a good article: http://www.vegansa.com/veganism-and-the-environment.php

So, for these reason this is why I'm sharing two recipes today from one of my favorite vegan cookbooks, The Vegan Table,by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.  The first is a delicious and messy version of the typical Middle Eastern shawarma or kabob.  In discussing this recipe with my other "occasional vegan" friend, Amy, we both agreed that we are loving tempeh the more we cook with it.  If you've never cooked with tempeh, then it's definitely an adventure, but worth it!  I find mine at Whole Foods and I like the flax kind.  Tempeh is basically a protein in the form of consolidated grains and soy.  It's low-fat, tons of protein and when marinaded and pan-fried, gets nice and crispy.  For the "Carmelized Tempeh Shawarmas" recipe the tempeh does a great job replacing meat and the soy sauce and maple syrup sauce give it a nice sweet and salty taste.  I ended up pan frying the tempeh with sliced onions for this recipe so that both ingredients got caramelized.  And just as a side note, I sliced my tempeh pretty thin.  The other recipe is a veggie-packed white bean dish with great flavor such as sun-dried tomato and sage.  We had this as a main course with some garlic bread and it was really filling!

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Edible Containers

As a general rule, I usually like all food where the container is edible.  Some beloved examples of this are: soup in a bread bowl, corn dogs, brie wrapped in puff pastry, ice cream in a waffle cone...you get the point. However, it seems more often than not, edible containers tend push food into the "not so healthy" category rather then the healthy.  So when I find a recipe that is not only healthy, but also includes an edible container, I get pretty excited!  The recipe I am sharing comes from last month's issue of Clean Eating and comes from famous chef, Guy Fieri.  This is a recipe for stuffed acorn squash, which is not particularly in season this time of year, but you should be able to find it at any grocery store.  The squash is roasted with a light drizzle of olive oil and then stuffed lean, ground turkey and veggies.   Jon and I found this recipe to be very filling and so far, it's been really easy to re-heat and eat as left-overs.  It's also turned out to be very pretty looking, so I could see this being a good pot-luck dish to bring to someone's house!  Or alternatively, I think this recipe could be pre-made and frozen until thawed, heated and broiled with the ricotta.

As a note on the dairy in this recipe:  I replaced the ricotta in the recipe with a dollop of mashed potato, to cut out the dairy.  I also sautéed the veggies in olive oil rather than butter and used about 1/2 the oil the recipe suggests.  I say suggest because I've found that a lot of times when it comes to oil in recipes that call to sauté something, that this is really a taste preference and it's a good opportunity to cut down on fat if you'd like.  Now, I do caution, that this comes with trial and error.  You don't want to skimp too much, so I'd also suggest, making enough recipes to know what the difference between 4 tbsp vs. 2 tbsp of oil tastes like, for example.  Broth and water can also be good alternates added to cover the reduction in oil.

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Soup's On

I have a love/hate relationship with cooking food while my husband is TDY (Air Force business trip); I love it because I can make things that I know he would normally not be so excited about...such as things with kale, flax, and/or bulgar and I hate it because whatever I make, since I'm a party of one, I will be eating for the next 8 days.  So, this past week I lined myself up to make dinners to share with some friends   because I had just recently gotten my Cooking Light and Clean Eating mags and I was itching to try out some recipes.  The recipe I am sharing today was the hit of the week!  It is an Italian wedding soup recipe that comes to together in less than 30 minutes and makes for a complete meal with the combination of orzo pasta, veggies, and meatballs.  This recipe makes 6 generous servings, but we (3 women, 2 kiddos, and a baby) polished off that whole pot of soup in one sitting!  Combined with whole wheat dinner rolls this soup filled our bellies and I was even a little sad about not taking home some leftovers! Oh well, I'll just have to make it again. :) 

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Hummus love

In the spirit of my new hobby, this is another post about making sauces and condiments from scratch.  I want to pass along my own concocted recipe for an easy hummus.  Hummus is one item that I will no longer buy pre-made from grocery stores because it's so simple.  Jon and I really got into hummus when I gave up dairy because hummus was a good swap in a sandwich for cheese or as a dairy-free snack.  The hummus we used to buy from one of the British grocers was so good; creamy and flavorful and it became a household staple for us.  So, when we moved to Las Vegas, I picked up a container of your average pre-made hummus and we were sorely disappointed!  It was drier and a lot less tasty.  This is when I looked up the ingredients for basic hummus and made my own.  Here's my own version of hummus and really it can be altered or tailored to suit how you like it best:

Chipotle-Cilantro Hummus
2 cans garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1/3 c. tahini butter (sesame seed butter, usually found near peanut or almond butters)
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1 tsp. salt
1 lemon, juiced
1-2 chipotle peppers canned in adobe sauce (depending on your spice preference)
1/3 c. chopped fresh

Olive oil

1. Blend all ingredients in a food processor and then add olive oil to desired creaminess.  This is isn't an exact science, but if I had to guess I'd say about 1/4-1/3c. olive oil.  See, simple. :)

This recipe makes about 18 servings (2 tbsp per. serving)

If you want to make variations on this, omit the peppers and cilantro and add your flavors such as kalamata olives, roasted red peppers, or fresh herbs.

Ok, so that's the hummus recipe but I also want to share this page from this month's, Cooking Light, which featured 4 delicious sandwich recipes that all require....hummus!  My favorite is the "Grilled Veggie and Hummus Wraps".

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Getting Saucy

Finally, back up and running after a major computer transition and I've got two really great sauce recipes to share.  I've made both in the past couple of weeks and although the ingredients lists on these recipes is a little on the long side, they are so worth it.  Both of these recipes come from a cookbook called Rebar, Modern Food Cookbook.  More than half of the recipes are vegetarian and can be altered to be vegan, so that's another reason why I love this cookbook.  Rebar is a hip restaurant in Vancouver, BC and I imagine most of the clientele who eat there are all very concerned if whether beef they are about to enjoy comes from a happy, grass-fed existence or whether the flax to granola ratio in the oatmeal cookies is 80/20.  I joke about this, but I'm not going to deny that this type of new-age organic-conscious food revolution isn't a wonderful thing, however, what I love most about the recipes from their cookbook is the fusion of flavors, and whole, interesting ingredients.

One of my new favorite things to do in the kitchen lately, is to take on making things that we normally buy from the grocery store that are processed and chock full of preservatives.  So pulling the peanut sauce and barbecue sauce recipes from this book got me excited to try making sauces that Jon and I both love, but usually I grab the convenient pre-made versions at the grocery store.  Now, I'm not saying that convenience isn't a good thing, but there is a certain satisfaction is making something yourself and some of those sauces can be expensive when you probably already have 90% of what you need to make them at home already!  I made the peanut sauce to have with chicken-vegetable skewers and the barbecue sauce went on pretty much everything for the week and half that it lasted in my fridge...I poured that delicious sauce on my sweet potatoes, burgers, baked beans, chicken, broccoli....  Enjoy and get sauced!

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Food Nostalgia

This past week I made a couple of recipes that reminded me of Jon and mine time living in England and it has made me realize how much I really loved the food over there.  England is not known for having superb culinary history; their food usually a lot like the weather: bland and mushy, however, now that I'm back to living in the states I find myself missing the wholesome honesty of the food there.  It's not as over salted, fat-laden, sugared, and generic as a lot of the menu options I see at American restaurants that I used enjoy!  Even the ethnic food in England seemed more flavorful and true to origin, than what I now can see and taste as the "Americanized" versions of Japanese, Thai, Indian, and Italian.  Why we have altered ethnic cuisines to suit our American taste-buds and why we tend to drown out the unique flavors of different cultural foods is food for thought, but one thing I know is that living aboard has permanently changed the way I view food forever.  

Now, on to the recipes! One type of cuisine that I became obsessed with in England was Indian food.  England has a very large population of Indian people and I'm guessing that this is the reason why you can find an Indian restaurant on just about as many streets and corners as you can find Starbucks in Seattle.  I found a couple great Indian restaurants that I loved in Cambridge, where Jon and I lived, and I literally could not go more than a few weeks without eating there!  I haven't tried any Indian food restaurants yet here in Las Vegas, but I did become inspired when I was flipping through my latest issue of Clean Eating.  Every month they have a "Global Gourmet" feature and this month's was Lamb Vindaloo, so I thought I'd try my own hand at making an Indian dish.  Vindaloo is basically just a meat dish with lots of spices, which is typically served with rice and if you are smart you also order a delicious warm, soft naan bread.  I've never made much of my own Indian food before other than very simple curries, but this recipe seemed pretty easy.  The hardest part is actually having all the spices and I was not able to find cardamom pods at my local grocery store, but the lamb vindaloo turned really good nonetheless! Spice-wary people be warned, this is a pretty spicy recipe.

The other food that I came to know and love in England was bread pudding.  Now, I know that bread pudding is probably on the menu at tons of American restaurants, but for some reason I had no desire to order it when up against a brownie sundae or piece of cheesecake.  However, bread pudding is very popular dessert in England and I can't believe my insatiable sweet-tooth had not discovered this before!  Bread pudding is probably typically made with pieces of torn bread, soaked in sugar, eggs, and milk and baked...and I'm sure somewhere in that process a lot of butter is involved.  For our Valentine's Day dinner last week I pulled to make a bread pudding recipe from a recent issue of Cooking Light titled "Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce" and let me tell you, it was true love.  :)

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Just a touch of spice

On a typical week, I usually reserve some time on Sunday to peruse my usual recipe sources, make a dinner plan, and mindlessly make a grocery list for the ingredients I need.  I'm guilty of flipping through my cooking magazines and just pulling the titles I think sound good, without even looking at the ingredients or the cooking instructions and this has gotten me into trouble several times!  I will go start making dinner with the recipe I pulled and it says to marinate for an hour or takes a long time to prep and cook and often, I've had to abandon that dinner plan and just pull something quicker together at the last minute, thus throwing the whole plan off!  However on my usual weekend recipe hunt a week ago, I pulled this recipe because I had been craving jambalaya and when the title said "quinoa" I instantly thought "quinoa=healthy" and it would be a good way to use up some turkey kielbasa and shrimp that I had on hand.  So, in my usual fashion, I assembled the ingredients and when it came time to make this dinner one night, I finally read through the cooking instructions.  This recipe is from Clean Eating magazine and is fairly simple, which is why I'm sharing it, however, I got the sneaky suspicion that this recipe was going to end up being a little blah on the spice factor.  What is jambalaya without a little heat?! Here's what I did to perk up the recipe a bit...first, I sauteed some chopped onions in a little bit of olive oil, and then carried on with step 2, and then I added about 2 tsp of cumin to the shrimp-sausage mixture and 1 tsp of chili powder.  And then to the quinoa, I added a few dashes of salt and a dash of cayenne pepper.  Yeah, I added a touch of oil, which rendered the recipe slightly less "healthy", but the extra spices really helped kick this dish up a notch and Jon and I really enjoyed it!  Sometimes recipes are really great bases and it just takes a few trial and error dinners to find what other spices and flavors will really enhance it.  It's probably good cooking practice to read through recipes before you decide to make them, but it's also really rewarding to add your own spin to something and make it your own.  

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Good Advice

When it comes to who I turn too for good recipe inspiration and advice, I usually turn to my friend, Amy; who in my opinion is probably one of the best cooks I know! So, when Amy tells me to try out a Moroccan Chickpea Chili recipe from the cookbook we both have in our arsenal, I don't hesitate.  It's actually kind of funny how she will find recipes I haven't even thought about trying, because I had probably passed over that recipe a hundred times while going through the cookbook looking for dinner ideas!  This recipe comes from Cooking Light's, The Essential Dinner Tonight Cookbook and I thought I'd pass it on to my blog readers for several reasons: one, it's very healthy; two, from start to finish it only took about 30 minutes; and three, it helps fulfill my quota of trying to have at lease one vegan dinner a week.  Like, I mention in my introduction, I really like eating vegan and this Moroccan Chickpea Chili is hearty and loaded with protein, so you are left feeling satiated.  And I'm not making a blog about this recipe because I think everyone should try eating vegan, but this is a different way to get protein other than meat, and I think keeping things different and adventurous always makes cooking more fun.  To complete the meal, I even found Lavash bread (at Walmart, of all places!) and warmed that up in the oven a little and served along side of the chili with a little bit of olive oil.

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Fourth Baked Potatoes

I look forward to the November issue of Cooking Light every year because it always supplies plenty of ideas to shake up the conventional ways of cooking holiday foods.  Of course, we all have our favorite versions of holiday foods, so I sidelined a few of the recipes I wanted to try at a different time so that I could enjoy my traditional versions on the actual holiday.  One of my favorite dishes on Thanksgiving are sweet potatoes, served buttered, sugared and marshmallow-ed.   It's basically a dessert and you get to have, guilt-free, along side your other Thanksgiving side-dishes knowing that what is actually the dessert is still coming later.  I'm a sweets person, through and through, so I find this concept to be awesome.  This past year the holiday issue of Cooking Light categorized all the different holiday dishes into recipe sections and in the "Potatoes" section, I found a recipe that sounded good, but was a little cautious because it wasn't a sweet sweet potato recipe.  The recipe is called "Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes with Chipotle" and I ended up making this recipe for the first time this Christmas, because with only having one guest over for dinner I didn't want to make traditional mashed potatoes and a sweet sweet potato recipe to go with the brisket I was serving.  This recipe sounded like it would be a good blend of sweet and spicy, so I decided to give it a holiday try-out.  Words can not do this recipe enough justice, so do yourself a favor and make it!  I've titled this blog entry "Fourth Baked Potatoes" because in the last month alone, I have made this 4 times; it's that good.  This recipe is also easy to bring to get-togethers, which is why I made this recipe for our Super Bowl gathering and they turned out to be quite the crowd-pleaser.  Going out of my holiday comfort zone really paid-off and I think I've found a new holiday favorite...that is if Jon and I aren't tired of eating twice-baked sweet potatoes with chipotle by next Thanksgiving! 

Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes with Chipotle

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Chicken or Fish?

We have a couple weekly regulars in our dinner rotation and it usually involves having chicken or salmon as our main and then I'll just throw together a side or two to make it a balanced dinner.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Well, if you are a recipe connoisseur like myself, then you are continuously getting bored with the same ol' way to cook chicken or salmon so the "easy" dinner becomes harder and harder to get excited about.  First, let me preface, that this difficult to start with because I am just not that into chicken and would much rather prefer to eat salmon.  Seeing and dealing with raw chicken has always left me less than jazzed, however, Jon loves it and marriage is about compromise, right?  I have a hard time getting motivated to buy it at the store and then bring it home and decide what to do with it, but I know that salmon is pricier and chicken is still a good source of protein.   So like a prayer answered to get me amped about chicken breasts I had in the freezer, I was in luck this past month because my issue of Cooking Light featured over 50 different ways to cook chicken.  A lot of the recipes looked and sounded tasty, and to my surprise I marked several that I wanted to make.  The first recipe I tried from the issue is called Miso Chicken and it ended up being really, REALLY good! So much so, that I'll probably make it again when chicken comes up in the rotation.  In fact, I might choose it over making salmon. :)


Miso Chicken
After the hour of marinading, this recipe comes together really quickly.  The recipe says to only saute the chicken 4 minutes on one side, but I did 4 minutes.  Also, if you are like me and have no clue where to start with finding miso in your grocery store, I found mine in the asian food section and it's basically a grainy liquid in a bottle that is essentially what you pour into hot water to make miso soup.  At least, that's what I found and it seemed to work just fine.  This would taste great with a quick vegetable sir-fry, cucumber salad, rice noodles or soba noodles.

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Corriander-Rubbed Wild Salmon

As for a good salmon recipe, here's one I tried recently from an issue of Clean Eating.  I liked the infusion of coriander and lemon and I thought the fish came out tender, flaky and deliciously simple.  I also made it with wild rice and used fresh spinach instead of swiss chard.

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Workin' With What You Got

I had a friend over for lunch yesterday and in the course of our chatting we started talking about how we both feel like we need to use and eat more of what we already have in our pantries, fridge or freezer.  As someone who loves trying new recipes all the time, I know that I am guilty of buying a lot of recipe ingredients, using just what I need and then moving on.  Or like my previous post about slow cooking and then freezing half, which sounds great until I forget I made it and it sits in the freezer forever! So as I cooked and prepared the Butternut Squash and Smokey Black Bean Salad recipe that I had planned on making (which I've included in this post because it was really good!) for us, I decided that for dinner I would not head to the store in a panic as usual towards the end of the week but rather get inspired and pull together a dinner with what I already had.  What I ended up making was a Sun-Dried Tomato Spiced Shrimp recipe from one of my all-time go-to cookbooks, Cooking Light's, The Essential Dinner Tonight Cookbook, which features an entree recipe and then two accompanying sides while also giving you a sort of schedule or time frame to pull it all together.  It's a great cookbook and I love that they give you a nice photograph of every recipe.  For last night's dinner, I passed on the side dish ideas, but I chose this recipe because it called for jarred sun-dried tomatoes which I had happened to buy a couple weeks ago; I used 1-2 tomato halves out of the jar and then plopped it into the fridge amongst the other various condiments and that's where it's sat since.  Curry paste is another ingredient in this recipe that I had bought for another recipe and you only really use a little each time, but it keeps and I'm slowly chipping away at it.  The recipe also called for other fridge staples in our house such as a lemon and fresh cilantro.  I recently bought a big Costco sized bag of frozen shrimp, which are easy to thaw in a hurry so we tend to always have shrimp on hand if we need to add a little protein.  The recipe is pretty straight forward and Jon and I both thought it tasted really good!  I paired the shrimp with some roasted Brussels sprouts and a slice of french bread, both of which had been impulse buys on my usual Sunday grocery trip and by Thursday were needing to be eaten.  All in all, I think it feels pretty good to "budget" your pantry, fridge and freezer!

Sun-Dried Tomato Spiced Shrimp

A couple notes on this recipe: I did not strain the tomatoes; I just picked them out of the jar with a fork and figured by not straining them the residual oil on the tomatoes was enough oil for the marinade.  I tend to skimp on oil content when I can to keep the fat amount down.  However, I do not recommend skimping on oil with making roasted Brussels sprouts...they need it! Another note, is that I would probably cook the shrimp about a minute longer on each side just to get them a little crispier, but I caution that because shrimp can get over-cooked really quickly, so my advice would be to set a timer. 

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Butternut Squash and Smokey Black Bean Salad
This doesn't quite go with the theme of this post because I got the ingredients for this recipe specifically to make this for my friend and I, but like I said it was really good and very filling.  This recipe does have goat cheese in it, which tends to be easier on my stomach than cow's milk cheese.  My friend and I loved this salad because of the goat cheese and I knew my husband wouldn't go near this salad with a 10 foot pole!

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Slow Cooking

Now, that I've found myself unemployed, I've decided to do something I've always wanted to do but just didn't have the extra time for, a recipe share blog!  This week I had a couple of friends write to me asking for a meal ideas that are easy and nutritious, so I've decided to start this blog by highlighting my current love affair with my crock pot.  When I am working, I can't tell you enough what a delight it is to come home to house smelling delicious and a meal requiring little to no prep-to-table time.  I've gathered a few of the crock pot recipes that I've tried recently and they all made about plenty of servings.  If you don't currently have a crock pot, I suggest getting one (today!!) and buying one with a timer because that way if you are out longer than the cooking time, it will switch to the warm setting.

Ratatouille

This recipe comes from a Williams Sonoma cookbook, called Food Made Fast - Slow Cooker, that my sister-in-law gave to me.  The ratatouille made about 10 servings and combination of veggies was really tasty.  This went great with pasta, along side a chicken apple sausage, filling for a wrap with hummus, and over a baked potato.

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Turkey in Mole Sauce

This also comes from the WS cookbook and it was excellent!  I think Jon and I have both agreed that meat just tastes better when shredded.  A couple notes on this recipe is that I just used butterball skin-less, bone-less turkey breasts because at my local grocery store the only turkey breasts with the bone-in had a lot of extra added fat and seasoning.  I think I could have also just used 6 chicken breast fillets and it would have turned out the same.  I did 8 hours on the low setting and meat was so tender that I just shredded it all and put half in the freezer.  The recipe made about 16 servings.  One thing I'd recommend with this recipe is to up the amount of chocolate.  I thought the sauce was delicious, but it wasn't as chocolate-y as I remember other mole sauces being.  This recipe goes great with some warmed flour tortillas, avocado, cilantro, and chopped tomatoes.

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Thai Chicken Tacos

This recipe comes from one of my cooking magazine subscriptions, Clean Eating.  This is a great magazine for people who like simple recipes focused on whole foods.  Again, this is a variation on a shredded meat taco, but I love the infusion of a little Thai flavor.  One recipe recommendation, however, would be to add a little salt to the chicken mixture.  This made way more than 4 servings, I'd say closer to 8.

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