leanKitchen » Lunch

Peach Mint Salad

leanKitchen — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:21:58 +0000

Part of why I love summertime so much, is the CONSTANT variety. Right now, in my garden, arugula is running rampant! I harvested some of that, some fresh dill, chives, sage, rosemary, and another green and red leafy head of lettuce. Once I’d brought them inside, I rinsed well (to get the dirt and bugs out), and let that sit on a paper towel with another on top, weighed down with a bowl, to really get all the water out).

Then, I peeled and diced a cucumber and, seeing a leftover peach from the kids snack, cubed that up as well. When I was rinsing off the peach in the sink, though, I saw what really put this salad together- my spearmint plant I’d just watered. I pulled off several leaves, and threw that in the salad as well. I put it all together, took out some cooked (and seasoned with Old Bay) haddock, draped atop, and VOILA! Take a look:

And again:

The kids LOVED the peaches inside. They thought it was so delicious!

Kid approved, supportive, delicious, healthful. I scored a perfect 4 out of 4! Yay!

(Kid number 1 preferred peanuts)

(While number 2 prefered ham…..to be one, that is)

Paper Towel Toasted Tomato Sandwich

leanKitchen — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:30:56 +0000

When I was a kid, spending long summer days at my grandparents, some of my fondest memories spent with my grandmother are (shocking, I know…) her FOOD! To this day, I don’t know what it is, but I swear she makes the best EVERYTHING I’ve ever eaten!!

Take TOAST for instance. She makes the BEST toast I’ve ever had! Granted, all she does is put a piece of bread in the toaster and butter it, but it’s the best I’ve ever eaten! She’s my food-spiration!! To this day, my stomach’s conditioned to start rumbling as soon as I’m in her driveway. I saw her this past weekend, and she told me she’d tried my Bacon-wrapped Scallop Salad, and I welled up with pride- SHE had tried one of MY recipes. Wow!

But when my brother and I were little, we used to have these all the time at their house. They were the perfect summer sandwich, when it was too hot to cook, and the produce was plucked fresh from the garden.

My grandmother would toast the slices of bread, put a layer of mayonnaise on, slice the tomatoes (the beefsteak kind, but any tomato will do), salt and pepper them, and serve the sandwich on a paper towel, with a side of fresh-from-the-garden cucumbers.

I, of course, had to go and put my spin on things, doing much of the same, except instead, I slathered my toasted bread (Check the labels! Sprouted Wheat is your best bet, if you’re trying to lose fat), with plain Greek yogurt, rather than mayo. I (of course) still salt & peppered and served on a paper towel, cut on the diagonal, with cucumbers on the side, the way my Grammy served it.

These are also FABULOUS with cukes inside, or any roasted veggie, or with cheese added. Yum!

The Bee’s Knees Fresh Fruit Bruschetta

leanKitchen — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:30:51 +0000

Today, the power and beauty of the internet brings you a guest blogger from Hamburg, Germany! Carla writes another food blog called The Bee’s Knees Kitchen.

When Carla first wrote, and sent me the link to her site, I was immediately intrigued by the beautiful, colorful pictures. Seriously, I’m not sure which I’m more impressed with, her food or her photography.

Here’s what Carla had to say about her site:

Guten Tag, I am Carla Aguas, the creator behind the Bee’s Knees Kitchen, the raw food blog aimed at discovering healthy, simple recipes to satisfy your sweet tooth and hungry belly!

The Bee’s Knees Kitchen is a blog I started in February 2010 to chronicle my adventure into the raw food world. My objective was to find healthy meals and desserts that use the same basic ingredients and were easy to prepare.

As a former Oregonian living in Germany and food addict, I wanted to be able to share my recipes with family back home and it blossomed from there. I come from a family of foodies and I take my inspiration from foods I recall from my parents and being raised in such a bountiful place as the Pacific Northwest.

I know that my raw food diet is my lifestyle but my recipes transcend the boundaries of ‘raw’ culture and are pure bliss. My food appeals to all of your sense without even realizing that you are being held to “raw” standards. Fresh produce is continually my main inspiration, and I am persistently searching far and wide for desserts and meals to appease my varied palette. Please visit my blog, create, comment and share a more nutritious way of eating that doesn’t sacrifice the flavor or beauty of what food should always be!

Alright, so what was the recipe that Carla won me over with??

The Fresh Fruit Bruschetta!!!

Without Further ado, here’s Carla’s recipe!

After being home in the States and experiencing the Pacific Northwest spring weather for the first time in over 6 years I forgot how absolutely beautiful it is! The flowers and trees are in fuller bloom than here in Germany and it was wonderful sitting in the yard taking in all the floral smells and fresh green air. Living in city centers for the past 7 years, I can truly appreciate what a treasure this is! So while I was home enjoying the luxury of having Whole Foods around the corner, and seeing all the fresh organic seasonal produce, I had the inspiration to make a full fruit treat. Theses Fresh Fruit Bruschettas are refreshing and sweet with a small twist of lime flavor. They are so beautiful and appealing looking and not to mention healthier for you and these are so versatile that they can be served as a starter, breakfast, dessert or snack!

Fresh Fruit Topping

1 c Strawberries, cubed

1 c Kiwi, cubed

1 c Mango, cubed

10-12 Blackberries

Gently mix all the fruit in a bowl and set aside.

Cucumber Baguette

1 Cucumber

Cut the cucumber vertically into 1/4 inch thick slices. This will create 10-12 slices depending on how long the cucumber is.

Agave Citrus Dressing

1 tbls Lime juice

2 tbls Agave Nectar

Lightly mix the lime juice and Agave Nectar in a bowl being sure to give it an additional stir before serving.

To assemble, plate the cucumbers and top with 2 tbls of the Fresh Fruit Topping. To keep the blackberry in place cut a toothpick in half and stick the half into the center of the Fresh Fruit topping and gently push down the blackberry on the toothpick. Drizzle the Agave Citrus Dressing over the top of the Bruschettas and sprinkle with Lime Zest.

Makes 10-12 Bruschettas

Beautiful!!!

With a dollop of Greek yogurt, this could even count as a gorgeous, supportive breakfast.

Thanks so much, Carla!

Purple Pizza Rolls

leanKitchen — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:07:23 +0000

No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, and no, I haven’t closed the leanKitchen. I’ve just been reaaaallllllly busy. Yes, I’m always realllllllllllly busy, but at the moment, moreso than normal.

I know I don’t talk a lot about my mom’s passing on here, it’s too personal, and I try to keep this page fun and happy, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it CONSTANTLY, and that it isn’t a daily effort to be fun and happy. She passed from cancer just a few weeks back at age 47, and so, in commemoration and in her honor, I’ve taken on a team captain role for a local Relay for Life Team for Ben’s Bootcamps called “Bootcampers Beat Cancer.” I didn’t expect it to totally take over my life, but admittedly it has, as my focus is purely on never seeing or hearing about another person having to go through this horrific disease. But true to my word, I won’t talk about it here. If, however, you’re interested in reading my story, or donating to my team, please click here to check out my story, and also to read about my wonderful mother and her courageous fight.

Purple Pizza Rolls

So maybe my world has been painted a lovely shade of American Cancer Society Purple (the universal color symbolizing cancer survivors), but I made this delicious meal on a whim with a few ingredients I had lying around. The main component? A lovely purple eggplant!

First, preheat the oven to 425. Then, thinly slice an eggplant as thin as you can get it. Think lasagna noodle thin! But whatever you can do. Don’t wanna cut yourself! Then, salt them heavily, and wait till the bitterness comes out (exactly like I did in this recipe for Eggplant parm for 1). While you’re waiting, spray a frying pan with cooking spray, and saute a chopped onion, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic (whole; more or less to suit your tastes), and a handful (again, more or less to suit your tastes) of washed mushrooms. I used Baby Bellas. Saute till the onions are translucent, and you can smell the essence of the garlic in the air.

Mushrooms sauteeing

In your food processor, mix an egg, 2 cups of cottage cheese (low-fat, fat-free, whatever you like) and 1 cup of shredded cheddar. Process till smooth. Then, add your mushroom pan, pulse it, and you’ve got your roll up filling!

Purple Pizza roll filling

Next, after you’ve rinsed off and paper toweled the eggplant slices, carefully roll them up (mine were sort of funnel-shaped) and put them seam-side down into a baking dish. Fill with the cottage cheese filling, top with pizza sauce. Any kind of tomato sauce will do; I typically use homemade tomato sauce like the one I make here, but I had only one tomato when I went to make this. I had made english muffin pizza’s with the kiddo’s this weekend, and had some leftover jarred pizza sauce, so I poured that on, topped with more shredded cheddar cheese (or mozzarella or parm),

Purple Pizza Rolls

and baked till cheese was browned and bubbly. It was AWESOME!!!

I didn’t peel the eggplant first, but after making this, I would recommend peeling first, then slicing.

This is a DELICIOUS, tasty dinner, totally comparable to stuffed shells. Enjoy!!

P.S. Thank you if you choose to donate to our team!!!

Sunny Sundried Tomato Pesto

leanKitchen — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:54:39 +0000

In celebration of our sunny weather, I made some sunshine tomato pesto!!

……Alright, that was a lie.

Really, this recipe was a fluke, but a wonderful one! See what happened was, last night when making dinner, I thought I had a MUCH bigger container of basil than I really did. I realized when I was cleaning my basil that I didn’t, in fact, have anywhere near enough. So, I pulled out my thinking cap, and here’s what I did:

I took my 2 oz clamshell container of basil (rinsed, then stripped the leaves from the stems), ¼ c. of pine nuts, 1 clove of garlic, ¼ cup of cheese (it’s usually parmesan, I used shredded sharp cheddar cause it’s what I had). Next up came the replacement for the Basil…what in the world was I going to use?? I looked in my fridge and saw I had a 8.5 oz. container of sun-dried tomatoes in oil (Bella Sun Luci, my favorite if I have to buy them in jars), so I dumped half of them, plus the olive oil (which had infused with that awesome sun-dried tomato flavor) into my food processor.

Pesto!

Then, I pulsed for literally 4 seconds. It was super fast.

SUNNY SUNDRIED TOMATO PESTO

I enjoyed this on a nice hot bowl of spaghetti squash (that I prepared the same way as I always do), topped with more cheese and some shrimp I’d thawed (and of course, topped with Old Bay, my favorite!!). Supportive, nutritious, and incredibly delicious!!!!! (Yes, I’m aware that rhymed : )

Sundried Tomato Pesto with Shrimp over Spagetti Squash

…and yeah, the kids were fooled again ;- )

This would be fabulous with chicken, or with maybe marinated tempeh or veggie meatballs as a complete vegetarian option.

Carrot Ginger and Chicken Soup

leanKitchen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:21:45 +0000

As many of you know, my favorite food is SOUP! One of my all-time favorite soups is carrot ginger. Because it’s basically veggies and broth, it’s not supportive, as there’s no lean protein. Well, I changed that!

First, I softened 3 cloves of garlic, 2 onions, a 1 one or two inch peice of ginger, and roughly ten carrots (don’t bother peeling, I just washed and chopped) in about 4 tbsp. of olive oil.

Carrots, Ginger, Onions, and Garlic

Once soft, add a 32 oz jug of low sodium chicken broth:

Simmering in Chicken Broth

once the carrots are thoroughly cooked through, puree (either with an immersion blender or in a regular blender), and add back to the pot.

I pre-cook my proteins on Sundays, so I had some chicken breasts in the freezer. I took 1-1/2 breasts out, thawed, chopped up, and added to the puree.

It looked like this:

Carrot Ginger Chicken Soup

Super-fast, super-delicious, and super, super flavorful. Give this one a try, you won’t be sorry. Yum!!!

And for all my vegetarian friends, simply omit the chicken and subsititute chicken broth for vegetable broth.

P.S – No clue what’s in this picture, pretty sure it was a scratch in my camera, because I know it’s not a hair in my soup!

P.P.S- Hallie brings up a good question in the comments section below. Read what she has to say, and the response.

Mexican Black Bean Burgers

leanKitchen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:21:26 +0000

Once again, dinner inspiration happened in the form of my friend Erica. She had sent me this e-mail, chocked-full of technical terminology : )

Spicy Black Bean Burgers:

1 (16 ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed 1/2 green bell pepper, cut into 2 inch pieces 1/2 onion, cut into wedges 3 cloves garlic, peeled 1 egg 1 tablespoon chili powder 1 tablespoon cumin 1 teaspoon Thai chili sauce (or 2) 1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used VT Kitchen whole wheat)

Mash the beans with a fork unti mushy (that is a very technical term). But all the veggies in my mini food processer and diced to very small (again with the technical terms). In another bowl I mixed the eggs and spicy stuff – and then added that to the beans. Add the veggies and the bread crumbs and form into patties (made three good sized patties). Bake for 10 minutes each side.

I had mine with a slice of avacado, tomato, a thin slice of jack cheese and I served in on some faux slaw – red cabbage with some cider vinegar.

Ok, so to Erica, Kristi, and everyone else who has submitted recipes only to have me doctor them up “my way,” I do hope you realize it’s not for any reason except I use what I have in my pantry/fridge/possession. I hate getting all excited to try something, and not be able to because I’m missing one thing…I just substitute.

Sooo…here’s what I did tonight. I took a can of black beans (16 oz.), 1/2 a green pepper, 1 small onion, 3 cloves of garlic, a packet of taco seasoning (I had a medium spice level), 1 egg, and a spoonful of roasted red pepper paste leftover from my Thai Corncakes. I put it into a food processor:

Beans, veg, and seasoning ready to process!

I then pureed that till it was smooth, like this:

Black Bean Puree

Next up, I added what I had for beef- a 2 lbs 93% lean burger, and processed it in the food processor more, resulting in this:

Burger and Bean mixture

Next up, I had a nice hot (and I mean HOT) oven preheating- I had the broiler on at 500 degrees. I put about 4-6 patties at a time in a shallow dish, broiled for about 5-6 minutes on each side (flipping once during cooking) then topped with cheese, and put back in just till it was melted. Here’s what they ended up looking like:

Spicy Mexican Black Bean Burgers

These bad boys were DELICIOUS!!! Moist, super-flavorful, and supportive. I ate them all by theselves, my kiddo’s had them with whole-grain buns and sweet potato fries.

Enjoy!

Spaghetti Night

leanKitchen — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:14:03 +0000

It’s pasta night here in the leanKitchen, as I have some spaghetti-lovin’ kiddo’s in my house. I thought that tonight, it would be fun trying to pull the wool over their eyes. So I started by poking some holes all over a whole Spaghetti Squash:

Spaghetti Squash-Pokin' Holes

Next, I stuck it in the microwave for 9 minutes, took it out and cut it in half. Here’s how it looked:

Cooked Spaghetti Squash, cut in half

I scooped out the seeds and was left with this:

Forkin' out the "Spaghetti"

….and THAT’s the moment I knew, this scandalous trick, this slight of hand, this Tomfoolery was gonna work. My kids were gonna fall for this one hook line and sinker.

Next up, the sauce. I’ve gotta tell you, I don’t love regular canned/jarred sauce for two reasons. These are 1. all the added sugar and carbs, and 2. the preservatives. I also wanted to make it supportive by adding a protein source, so I took some chicken sausages (I used Bilinski’s All Natural Chicken Sausage – Spinach and Garlic flavored) cooked ‘em up nicely in a hot frying pan (no oil) till they were cooked through, then covered them with 2 cans of stewed tomatoes, and turned off the burner. Because the pan was already hot, it warmed the sauce without burning it. I typically use the most natural tomatoes I could find, with just tomatoes and water. The one I used tonight was the “Italian style,” so it also had basil, onion, and garlic.

Pasta Sauce

I used a fork to scrape the squash out, topped with the sauce and shredded cheese, and put some bread on the side (kids are used to bread with their pasta) and …ummm…I couldn’t tell the difference!!! I sure as heck didn’t think they could!

Pasta night in the leanKitchen!

So I put it in front of them, watching, waiting. They knew something was up (well, I had a camera in their faces, so that could be why), but had no clue what it was…

The Princess is fooled...

: …and the Prince twirls it like real Spaghetti!

..and continued to clean their plates. Ahhh. And while they always eat their veggies anyway, it always feels good when you know you’re giving your kids the best!

Lightening Fast Weeknight Tropical Cod

leanKitchen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:51:11 +0000

If you’re anything like me, you’ve only got a couple of nights a week to get errand-type things done, am I right?

Tonight was my grocery shopping night, but I stayed late at work, then ran a couple of errands, then grocery store last. Looking at my clock and seeing it was already past 7PM, I knew I was going to have to do something, or risk eating something unhealthy and unsupportive. Remembering I had some Fresh Mango Salsa (cherry salsa would work, too!!) leftover in my fridge, I pulled my favorite trick, and used my resources. I asked my Price Chopper Seafood department to steam up some fresh Cod, and had him season it with a lemon pepper seasoning. They will do it for you, free of charge, in four minutes. What could be better?! Upon my arrival home, all I did was pull out a plate, transfer the fish on, scoop on the salsa, and stick a fork in it!

Weeknight Cod with Mango Salsa

Addendum to the leanKitchen Shepard's Pie

leanKitchen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:45:43 +0000

A couple of nights ago, I had a hankering (love that word) for Shepard’s Pie again, but I didn’t have any yellow peppers, and I had ground chicken instead of beef. So, I did what I do best, and substituted! I had a red pepper and a green pepper, diced them into corn-kernel-sized peices, browned up the chicken, and made it using the same technique as I did the first time. I also omitted the crunchy topping.

Shepard's Pie

Turned out fabulous! Definitely a keeper in this house!