What We've Been Eating Lately!

Happy Wednesday! How is your week going? Today, I'm going to talk about what we've been eating lately as I love reading about what others are cooking. It usually gives me some much-needed inspiration! As you can see, we tend to eat a lot of Mexican and Indian dishes as these are flavor profiles we love. Plus those cuisines tend to be naturally gluten free.

1. Picadillo from my new Milk Street Kitchen Fast and Slow Instant Pot Cookbook. This is the first recipe I made from this book and it was a hit! Paul's portion is shown on the left below. I served it with beans and rice (we ate it on top of beans rice, I kept his separate as I wasn't sure if he'd eat the picadillo). It yielded several meals of leftovers and then Phil and I finished it off on Sunday - he put it on top of eggs and hashbrown. That was a really good combo! For those not familiar with picadillo, it's a Cuban dish with green olives, tomato paste, and spices such as cumin.

2. Chipotle Chicken Kabob tacos. This recipe caught my eye when a finance blogger I follow posted it. It's a kabob recipe but I skipped the kabob process and just cooked it over the stove top along with some peppers and onions. Originally I was going to cook this on a grill basket on our grill, but the heat index was 110F that day and I could bear to stand over a hot grill in that heat. I should have halved the chipotle in adobo sauce like the blogger did. It was too spicy for our toddler, but he did take a few bites. I used the leftovers to make burrito bowls for lunches using Spanish rice leftovers from another meal and black beans.

Sauteing the peppers/onions and the chicken while warming the corn tortillas.

My tacos with a little guac on the side for chips. I topped mine with a little sour cream to offset the heat of the chipotles!!

3. Lentil Enchiladas. The recipe I use is in the Peas and Thank You Cookbook, but this version is a copycat. We use real cheese and extra olives when we make ours. I also use green lentils instead of red so our filling takes longer to cook. I served this with Spanish rice. This is Phil's favorite meal I make and Paul loves it, too!

4. Rogan Josh from the Milk Street Kitchen cookbook. This recipe was kind of putzy as you had to reduce the sauce after the chicken cooked but it was worth the effort! It was on par with Indian take-out in my opinion!! I served it on Basmati rice with green beans from my garden. Paul did not eat any of this as I figured the Indian flavors would be too strong for him. So he had beans, rice, and enchiladas. I tried giving him some green beans but he wouldn't touch them. He's missing out!

And that's a wrap! Tell me what you've been eating lately! Typically we would have had one grilled meal during the week but the extreme heat/humidity made grilling less appealing last week!

My Favorite Instant Pot Recipes

Look - a post that isn't about Paul or maternity leave! I guess it's sort of about maternity leave as I'm talking about a gadget that has made meal prep during maternity leave easier - my Instant Pot.

For those who aren't familiar with the Instant Pot, it's an electric pressure cooker. I think electric pressure cookers were rare or maybe didn't exist before Instant Pots came on the market, but don't quote me on that. My previous experience with pressure cookers was the stove-top one my mom used when she canned things when we were growing up. I also got a stove-top one at our wedding shower to use for canning. I used it for the first time this summer when I canned salsa verde. A stove-top pressure cooker is definitely a bit more intimidating. It's still not bad - you just have to watch it closely to make sure the pressure doesn't increase too much and you need to adjust the heat on the burner to make sure the pressure cooker stays at the pressure you want it at.

But the Instant Pot is easy peasy. You decide if you want to use high or low pressure (every recipe I've made calls for high pressure). You set a timer for how long you want the food to cook at that pressure level, and that's about it! The pressure will build in the Instant Pot and once it reaches the pressure level you've set (high or low), the timer starts. When the timer is up, the pressure naturally releases - or you can manually release the pressure by moving a pressure valve.

This might all sound really complicated, but I promise that it's straight forward once you start using an Instant Pot! The Instant Pot is actually a multi-purpose gadget, though, as it can be used as a rice cooker or a crockpot. It also has a saute function so if you make a recipe, like chili, that requires you to brown the meat or veggies, you can do that in the Instant Pot instead of dirtying another pan.

Since this is a fairly new gadget, I thought I'd share some of my favorite dishes we've made with ours! A quick tip:  One thing to keep in mind with these recipes is that they call for cooking at high pressure for a certain amount of time, but you also need to factor in about 10 minutes for the Instant Pot to reach high pressure, or possibly longer if you are making a soup because the contents of the Instant Pot need to heat up before it starts to generate steam.

1. Chicken Tikka Masala with Cauliflower and Peas - This is probably my favorite dish we've made in the Instant Pot. Phil and I LOVE Indian food so it's no surprise that we love this dish. This one takes a bit more time as you have to bring it to pressure twice - once when you cook the chicken with the spices/tomatoes and again after you add the cauliflower and peas. But it comes to pressure pretty quickly - especially the second time since the contents of the pot are already hot. If you like Indian food, I highly recommend this! We always have all the spices it calls for on hand and frozen peas, so it's an inexpensive dish to make as we just have to buy the chicken, ginger, and cauliflower.

2. Hard Boiled Eggs - Hard boiled eggs are something you can easily make on the stove-top, but they are sooo easy to make in the Instant Pot. Plus the eggs come out perfectly cooked and the shells literally slide off of them. You do need a steamer rack or trivet to make them in the Instant Pot, though, as the eggs can't touch the base of the Instant Pot. But my Instant Pot came with a steamer rack so hopefully that is the case for most! You just place the eggs on the steamer rack (make sure they aren't touching), add 1 coup of water and cook them on high pressure for 5 minutes, let the pressure naturally release for 5 minutes, manually release the rest of the pressure, and rinse them in cold water. You need to peel them right away but it's such a cinch to peel them!

3. Spaghetti Squash - I eat a lot of spaghetti squash in the summer and fall when it is in season. In the past I roasted it in the oven for 45-60 minutes, which really heats up the house. Cooking it in the pressure cooker is much faster as you only have to cook it on high pressure for 7 minutes! This is another recipe that requires a steamer rack or trivet.

4. Indian Vegetable Rice - This is one of our new favorite side dishes. I usually have all but a couple of the ingredients on hand so it's an easy side dish to make.

5. Moroccan Chicken - This is a new recipe that we tried this week that turned out great. I like that you don't have to cut up much for this recipe - just the onion and lemon (we actually left the lemon out as I forgot to buy one!). You also have to chop garlic but I don't consider that "cutting" since I use a garlic press.

6. Corn on the Cob - I know some people like to grill their corn on the cob but we prefer to steam it. To make corn on the cob in the pressure cooker, you just place the ears on top of the steam rack or a trivet, add a cup of water, and cook on high pressure for 2 minutes. I usually manually release the steam instead of letting it naturally release to avoid overcooking the corn.

We use the instant pot multiple times a week these days. I make hard boiled eggs every week as that's a great high protein snack or add-on to my breakfast. And this gadget is great for the summer months as it doesn't heat up your kitchen like the oven does!

Do you have an instant pot? Have you ever used a stove-top pressure cooker?

Canning Salsa Verde!

Since this is my second garden-related post of the week, you can tell what is on my mind and consuming my time these days! This year my heirloom tomato plants are not doing well. I think they got blight. :( So I likely won't be canning any marinara unless I buy some tomatoes in bulk. Womp womp. But fortunately, my tomatillos are doing great! I guess I must have beginners luck with gardening because my first year of growing heirloom tomatoes went great and now my first year of growing tomatillos has gone great.

Last week I picked all of these tomatillos plus a few more on Saturday.

I had about 4 pounds of them so needed to come up with something to make so they could be put to use! Since chips and salsa is practically a food group for me (seriously, is there a better snack?), I decided to make roasted tomatillo salsa. After googling around, I decided to make this recipe. Spoiler alert: this recipe calls for WAY too many serrano chiles - more on that later in this post.

I started off by roasting the tomatillos, garlic and serrano chiles under the broiler.

The start of awesome salsa verde

It took quite awhile to do this. But I was able to blend batches of roasted veggies while roasting the other veggies, so multi-tasking made feel like it went fairly fast.

Roasted goodness

When I got to the half way point, I tasted what I had blended so far, which was about 2 pounds of tomatillos, 4 serrano chiles, and 1/2 of the cilantro, onion and garlic. Thank God I tasted it before blending the rest of the  serranos because it was HOT HOT HOT. I thought the ratio of 1.5 pounds of tomatillos to 5 serrano chiles seemed a bit off - and I should have trusted that judgment! So I left out the other 6 serranos, added the rest of the tomatillos, onion, garlic, and cilantro and it tasted perfect. It still has a kick but an appropriate amount of kick.

So if you ever decide to make this recipe, unless you want a 5-alarm-burn-your-mouth salsa, halve the amount of serranos the recipe calls for!  I also added the juice of one lime to balance things out. I will also note that when I looked at other recipes, they called for about 1/2 of the amount of chiles that this recipe called for, so it's not just me thinking it was overkill to include 5 serranos.

~11 cups of salsa, ready to be canned!

Next it was time to can! I made 2 1.5 pint jars and 5 1/2 pint jars. A 1/2 pint (1 cup) of this is like a serving size for me (ha!) but I figure we can gift the smaller jars to friends this summer and fall.

I feel such a sense of pride when I can things I've grown. I feel like I am channeling the spirit of my maternal grandma Val. She did LOTS of canning. She passed that knowledge onto her daughter, my mom. And now I'm canning. It's pretty cool to keep a vintage skill like this alive!

There are lots more tomatillos that will be ready to be picked later this month so I am planning to make this recipe again!

Zucchini for Daaaaaays

I changed up what I planted in my garden a bit this year, and one vegetable I added was zucchini. I only planted one hill, but that hill is producing like CRAZY!!  I've lost count of how many zucchini I've picked, but it's a lot. I feel like I could sit by my garden and literally watch it grow! Luckily I was able to off-load some on my siblings and parents when I was at the lake, I gave another bag to a friend, and there is also a donation bin at our community garden that a member takes to a local food shelf (love this!).

While I've given quite a bit away, I've also used quite a bit of it. I thought I'd share some of the recipes I've made in case you or someone you know has a ton of zucchini and needs ideas about how to use it!

First up - sausage stuffed zucchini boats. This is one of my favorite dishes to make with zucchini. It's perfect for garden zucchini because you need a bigger zucchini to make these boats (the dinky ones they sell in the grocery store aren't big enough to stuff). The blog this recipe came from has a bunch of other ideas for stuffed zucchini but I've always stuck to this version because I love it so much!

Last Monday I made zucchini "meatballs" which I served on a bed of GF spaghetti. The recipe calls for bread crumbs but I was able to find some at the grocery store so it was easy to make a GF version of this. Next time I would either make them smaller or bake them for longer as they weren't quite as done in the middle as I would have liked. But they were still good!

I've made Creamy Parmesan Zucchini Rice twice this month when we've either hosted or went to another couple's house for dinner.  It's really yummy and a very easy recipe. I also think it would be kid friendly as the zucchini blends in really well and you mostly just taste the cheesy, creamy rice!

This past weekend I made a batch of Flourless Chocolate Chip Zucchini Banana Muffins. Since they are flourless, they are naturally GF. I didn't have almond flour so used peanut butter instead and they came out great.  If I made these again, I would use my food processor instead of a blender, though, as the batter is quite thick before you add in the banana and zucchini so it was a lot of work to get it out of my blender!

On Saturday night, we hosted my Julia Child aunt and uncle for a recipe testing night as Julia Child is just over a month away (we are having it early this year). This year, Julia Child is going to Southeast Asia. I wanted to make a salad or side that would use up some zucchini so I googled Asian zucchini salad, and found this recipe. We liked it so much that we decided to use it for the salad course for Julia Child Night! It's a really light, bright, delicious salad.

I've also made Gluten-Free Zucchini Coffee Cake and Zucchini Casserole (this uses 4 cups of zucchini so is a great recipe if you have lots of zucchini to use up!), but I don't have pictures of either. I've made the coffee cake recipe many times (it's soooo good!) and will make the casserole dish again.

Do you like zucchini? Do you have any favorite recipes to share?

Try This at Home Tuesday: Farmers Market Salad

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone had a great long weekend (at least for those that live in Canada and the US!). After a long absence from any "Try This at Home Tuesday" posts, I'm back with a salad idea. I've been on a salad kick since the beginning of the year as it's a great way to get lots of veggies into your diet and if you change up the toppings and/or dressing, it keeps things interesting. That said, I've been eating the same salad for the last several weeks and don't see it changing anytime soon! I do modify it slightly as the vegetables I use can vary depending on what is available at the farmer's market/my garden.

I thought I'd share it today in case anyone is looking for some lunch-time inspiration. I think it's pretty easy and not very time consuming which is ideal for these busy summer/fall weekends!

First up, you chop up whatever vegetables sound good to you. This week I went with 2 green peppers, 1 onion, a small bunch of organic rainbow carrots (I recommend buying organic so you don't have to peel them!), and a large zucchini. I know that is a lot of vegetables, but I like a high topping-to-greens ratio for my salad - otherwise it's not filling enough for me. After chopping everything up, I tossed it with some olive oil, put it on some foil-lined baking sheets, and seasoned it with salt, pepper, and dried oregano (which came from my herb garden!).

The veggies before going in the oven.

Then you roast them at 425F for 20-25 minutes. I usually have a couple of pans going so I switch the racks the pans are on after about 10-12 minutes, otherwise one cooks way faster than the other. The cooking time will vary depending on the size and the type of vegetable.

The finished product!

Roasted vegetables are so good as the roasting process brings out so much flavor and they can get a bit caramelized in the oven, especially the onions.

Next up, it's time to make the dressing. You could buy it from the grocery store, but check out the list of ingredients in Kraft's Balsamic Vinaigrette:

Ingredients:

Water, Balsamic Vinegar (Wine Vinegar, Grape Juice, Water), Soybean Oil, Sugar, Canola Oil, Salt, Contains Less than 2% of Dried Garlic, Dijon Mustard (Distilled Vinegar, Mustard Seed, Water, Salt, White Wine, Tartaric Acid, Citric Acid, Spice), Spice, Xanthan Gum, Dried Parsley, Oleoresin Paprika, Potassium Sorbate and Calcium Disodium EDTA (to Protect Flavor).

You really only need 5 ingredients to make a great vinaigrette, and those 5 ingredients are things that are probably in most people's kitchen. 

Salt, pepper, olive oil, dijon mustard, and your vinegar of choice

I combine 1 T. olive oil, 1 T. vinegar (lately I've been using a white balsamic), 1/2 t. dijon mustard, and a couple of grinds of salt and pepper. Easy peasy and so delicious! You could probably cut these ingredients in half depending on how big your salad is.

For the salad assembly, I've been using grilled chicken or shredded rotisserie chicken for the protein, a 50/50 mix of spring greens and baby spinach, the roasted vegetables, cherries tomatoes, and chopped cucumbers (which come from my garden!). When packing this salad for lunch, it works best to put the toppings at the bottom and the greens on top.

Do you bring your lunch to work? If so, what is your favorite lunch to bring?

Adventures in Gardening: Canning Tomatoes

Happy Monday, everyone. I hope everyone had a great weekend! In a word, mine was productive as I spent most of Saturday in the kitchen canning about 45 pounds of tomatoes! I appreciated being as busy as I was on Saturday because on Friday night I got the tragic news that my uncle had a heart attack and died. He was only 60 and appeared to be in good health so it was a total shock to our family. My heart just breaks for our family. Make sure you hug your loved ones every chance you get - this weekend was a reminder that life can change in the blink of an eye.

But back to the post topic at hand. My tomato plants have been producing like crazy and a girl can only eat so many tomatoes. So I decided to do some canning so we can enjoy the fruits of my garden in the cold winter months. Going into this canning project, I was pretty intimidated. I had helped my mom can when I was young but it's one thing to be the helper and a whole other thing to do the entire process by yourself! Phil was there for moral support and he helped move the heavy water bath pot on and off the stove but besides that, this was a solo project.

First up, I used 10 pounds of tomatoes to make a double batch of tomato salsa, using this recipe. I opted to broil the tomatoes as the recipe said that would enhance their flavor.

One of several piles of broiled tomatoes, waiting to be peeled.

I was nervous about the hot water bath canning process but it all worked out and all 8 jars sealed! Success!

8 1.5 pint jars of salsa. Yum!

Next up was the biggest project of the day - turning 25 pounds of tomatoes into this spaghetti sauce recipe. 

This is what 25 pounds of heirloom tomatoes looks like!

This was definitely the most time consuming recipe as it tok quite awhile to peel all of those tomatoes! For this recipe, I used the blanching method to peel them. After peeling all those tomatoes, I added all the other ingredients and let it simmer away on the stove for about 5 hours.

Lots and lots of marinara, simmering away.

 While that was simmering, I turned 10 pounds of tomato into roasted tomato marinara sauce using this recipe. This was definitely the easiest thing I made that day as the recipe did not require you to skin the tomatoes. Besides using my tomatoes for this recipe, I also got to use up some of my fresh oregano which has been growing like crazy!

1 of 2 pans of roasted goodness!

I decided to freeze this recipe to save some time. 

8 pints of marinara, ready to be frozen.

The other marinara was still simmering away on the stove at this point so I took a break, read for a bit and then we made this delicious dinner! We grilled the potatoes and halibut and I boiled the green beans. The green beans are from my garden and the halibut was caught by my friend's dad on a fishing trip to Alaska. It was such a healthy, delicious meal!

After dinner, it was time to process the marinara. I had to do it in 2 batches so it was a bit time consuming. But in the end, all 12 quarts sealed so it was another success!

I feel really proud of myself for taking on this project. It helped that I could call and text my mom with any canning questions as she is a canning pro! Canning certainly is a lot of work but it will be so worth to be able to enjoy homemade goods throughout the year.

Have you ever tried canning? Would you be willing to try it?

Breaking in Our Grill

Last Saturday, we had a "date night in" and broke in our new grill! We debated what we should make for our first meal on the grill and decided to go with chicken as I needed a protein for my lunch salads.

I often think that grilled chicken can be a bit dry, so I did some research and discovered that the trick to perfectly grilled chicken is to pound it to an even thickness beforehand so it will cook evenly. I think that made a huge difference! I had some fresh oregano that I wanted to use up, so I looked around for a Greek marinade and found this one. It was so good!

Besides the chicken, we also grilled some potatoes and asparagus (not pictured below). We usually grill potatoes in a foil packet but tried a different technique which worked pretty well. I don't think they are necessarily better than foil packet potatoes, but they cook much quicker!

The grill master

Grilled goodness!

It was a beautiful evening so we ate our meal outdoors. Phil had a beer with his dinner, and I had my new favorite mocktail, made with this concentrate that I picked up at the farmer's market:

I love that the brand is "Phil the Shrubber."

I mixed it with 8 ounces of tonic water. You obviously have to like beets to enjoy this drink, but as a beet lover, a drink like this is right up my alley. It was nice to have a fun drink to enjoy so I didn't feel like I was missing out when Phil was having a beer. For any local readers, they have a couple other flavors besides this one. It's made locally (less than a mile from our house!). I purchased it at the Kingfield Farmer's Market.

I'm looking forward to lots of grilled meals this summer and fall! Next up, we'll be grilling brats when my nephew comes to stay with us on Saturday night!

What is your favorite food to grill? I pretty much love all food from the grill, but my favorite thing is probably brats! I also love grilled veggies. I'd like to experiment with grilling an entire chicken this summer. Phil and I are total novices when it comes to grilling but it will be fun to try some new things this summer.

Whole30: Week 4 Review

Tomorrow is the last day of Whole30! Woo hoo!  It's definitely been a challenge to follow this program but I have actually enjoyed the process. That said, it will be nice to be less restricted. Although the program ends tomorrow, it's not like I go back to my normal eating habits on Wednesday as the next step of the program is the reintroduction phase which I'll describe more at the end of this post.

Since I am coming to the end of this program, I thought I'd skip the "what's  helping me succeed/what's been the hardest" section and focus on what I tried this week. 

New recipes I've tried:
- Moroccan Chicken Salad - I highly recommend this salad as it has so many great ingredients with different flavors and textures. Modifications included leaving out the avocado (felt there were enough ingredients without this) and making a white wine vinaigrette because I couldn't stomach buying another bottle of vinegar (I had to replace my red wine and balsamic vinegars since they had sulfites in them so I've purchased enough vinegar recently). 

- Banana Soft Serve - I needed a little treat after my RA injection last week, so I made some banana soft serve. You just put 1-2 chopped frozen bananas in the food processor or blender (let them soften a bit first) and add almond milk until it reaches the desired consistency. Then you can add a little cocoa powder at the end if you'd like (I did). This is borderline cheating as you aren't supposed to recreate treats with Whole30 ingredients, but oh well. I really need a pick-me-up after my injection because I still hate doing them, even though I've been giving them to myself for 2.5 years.

 
- Chicken Chowder - This is from the Whole30 cookbook but I couldn't find the recipe online. I know the green color is a bit off putting but it was actually very good! The green comes from the broccoli in the soup as you puree cooked broccoli with coconut milk and chicken broth. It also has jalapeno in it so it has a hint of spice. I'd definitely make this again!

- Crockpot Thai Beef Stew - This is probably the best recipe I've made during Whole30. The combination of flavors and spices is so delicious and the crunch from the jicama and carrots gives it great texture. This will definitely go in our regular meal rotation. We ate it over cauliflower rice. 

  What comes next:
- The reintroduction process starts on Wednesday. The way it works is I add back one food group for one day, starting with legumes, and have something from that food group with every meal. So on Wednesday I'll have black beans with my sweet potatoes and eggs for breakfast, an apple with peanut butter at lunch, and chickpea curry for dinner at our favorite Jamaican restaurant (but no rice). Then the next 2 days I go back to the Whole30 diet and assess how I feel. The order of reintroduction is legumes, non-gluten grains, and dairy.  I obviously won't be reintroducing gluten since I already know I have an intolerance to it but that would be the last thing non-gluten sensitive people would add back. 

- I'm curious to see how I feel after introducing things back. I am pretty sure I will not go back to eating dairy as I think that's the main stomach issues culprit. Also, in week 2 I ran out of the medication I take for my acne and decided to not refill it and see how I do. So far I haven't had any breakouts. I've eliminated dairy from my diet in the past to help with my complexion so I know there is a connection there. I haven't really missed dairy all that much during Whole30 so avoiding it in the future wouldn't be too hard. But we'll see how I feel when I add it back during the reintroduction phase.

Are there any foods that you have a sensitivity to or think you might have a sensitivity to? 

Whole30 Week 3 Review

3 weeks down, 1 week + 2 days to go!  I can see the finish line!

Last several people asked about Whole30's recommendation to not snack, so I thought I'd follow up with their brief explanation for this. First off, though, this is not a program rule; instead, it is a recommendation. The rules (i.e. no sugar, dairy, alcohol, legumes, etc) are not optional. However, the recommendations are ideal, but you can still stay true to Whole30 and not follow the recommendations. Here's an article that explain the rules and the recommendations, which includes a brief explanation of the no snacking rule.

Now back to my weekly review! My grocery shopping haul was much smaller since I had made and froze my evening meal of sweet potato chili the previous week.

As usual, lots of vegetables, some meat, and eggs

What's helping me succeed:
- Reminding myself this is Whole30 not WholeForever.  There is a reason that this program only last 30 days. For me, it's not a sustainable lifestyle but it's not meant to be a sustainable lifestyle since they only have you do the program for 30 days. So when I find myself getting frustrated, I remind myself that it's temporary.


What's been the hardest:
- There is sugar in waaaaay too many things. One thing Whole30 has done is open my eyes to how many foods have sugar in it.  WHY must there be sugar in sooooo many things. It's incredibly frustrating, especially when you plan to make a recipe where you think all of the ingredients will be fine until you get to the last thing on your grocery list (chipotle peppers in adobo sauce this past week) and realize you can't get them because they have freaking sugar in them.

New recipes I've tried:
- Paleo Pad Thai - A coworker recommended this to me after she found out I was doing Whole30 as this recipe is Whole30 compliant. Phil said I should make it again so it was definitely a hit. I skipped the egg step at the recommendation of my coworker, added shredded carrots, and served it with zucchini noodles instead of spaghetti squash. Next time I make it I'll add thinly sliced red peppers. Also, just a heads up in case anyone is curious, the recipe does call for snap peas, which are technically a legume. However, Whole30 allows you to eat them because the peas are so small compared to the pod they are in. The same goes for snow peas.

I topped mine with cilantro and chopped cashews

- Crockpot Barbacoa - This is a chimichanga recipe but I obviously only made the meat part of the recipe. I'm all about crockpot recipes these days since they are easy peasy. I had to made a couple of modifications to this recipe - I substituted coconut oil since vegetable oil isn't a Whole30 compliance fat and I had to leave out the chipotle in adobo since all three brands of that ingredient at my grocery store had sugar in it.  Bleh. But even without the chipotles, it was still very good and is something I'd make again.

- Ratatouille Zucchini Boats - When my friend Erin shared this recipe with me last month, I immediately added it to my meal plan for Whole30. I love ratatouille and I love zucchini boats so it was like this recipe was made for me! Of course to make it Whole30 you need to skip the cheese but they were still great without it! I served them with the barbacoa.

How I feel:
- I'm still having weird dreams about food. For example:  one night last week I dream that I was at a mall (which never happens, I hate malls!) and I took a sample of sunbutter that someone was handing out, which makes no sense because who hands out samples of nut butters? After eating it I freaked out because I didn't ask to see the list of ingredients and there was likely sugar in it. I guess I am super paranoid about making a mistake and eating something forbidden by the program!

- My stomach still feels better than it would normally, but I honestly do not feel the "boundless energy" that others have described. It probably does not help that it's been rainy/cold for the last week or so. A friend of mine who did the program in January speculated that I don't feel as much of a change in energy since I ate so healthy in the first place. I certainly don't feel less energy so I'm not concerned and I recognize that everyone will react differently to the program.

Whole30: Week 2 Review

Greetings and happy Monday! I hope that everyone had a great Easter weekend! As of today I am half way through Whole30 - I have to say that it's gone pretty fast so far!

Here is my week 2 grocery haul. Not pictured is the ingredients in the crock pot for the carnitas pork I made. I bought more groceries than usual this week as I made an extra meal to freeze as I knew I wouldn't have much time for meal prep over Easter weekend.

As usual, my grocery haul contained a whole lot of vegetables and some fruit

What's helping me succeed:
- Finding simple meals that come together quickly. While I do most of my meal prep on the weekend, I do occasionally throw together simple meals. One simple meal I've been enjoying lately is a sweet potato hash with onions and chicken apple sausage topped with an egg cooked over easy. It's delightful!

I know this is a BIG plate of food but the Whole30 program encourages you to eat bigger meals and minimize snacking in between.

- Finding new Whole30-compliant snacks. Like I said about, Whole30 doesn't encourage snacking so I have really limited my snacks between meals. However, on days when I'm particularly hungry, I've been trying new snacks like the one below which is a banana with sunbutter (which I had to order online because I couldn't find one without sugar - even at Whole Foods!) and a grind of sea salt. The sunbutter I bought has no salt in it so I need that little grind of salt to add some flavor.

What's been the hardest:
- Program fatigue.  The program has been going pretty well for me but I did have a night last week where I just felt tired of preparing Whole30 compliant meals. The meal that night felt pretty uninteresting, too, as I made roasted chicken breast and roasted cauliflower for Phil and I and it just sort of felt "meh," not to mention monochromatic. I guess nights like that are inevitable occasionally and luckily I've rarely felt bored with my meals.

- Easter temptation. Oh boy, this weekend was a bit challenging as there were so many Easter sweets and treats around me. Phil is not doing Whole30 so I've seen him eat ice cream and salted caramel chocolates and such but this weekend was especially tough since his mom had some Easter treat bags for us. But I stayed strong!


New recipes I've tried:
- Slow cooker sweet potato chili - I actually made this in a dutch oven on my stovetop as my crockpot was already in use. I was nervous that I wouldn't like this since it has cinnamon and cocoa powder in it but it was delicious! I'll definitely be making this on a regular basis going forward. I ended up freezing most of this and will have it for dinners this week.


- Crockpot mojo pork - This recipe wasn't actually new to me as I'd made it before, but it had been about 9 months since I made it so it felt new to me. It's such an easy recipe and the results are so delicious! I've been eating it with sweet potatoes and/or brussel sprouts this week.

How I feel:
- I definitely felt less tired than last week, thank goodness! Last week I felt like a zombie some days, so I am glad that feeling has passed.

- I do feel much less bloated/gassy (sorry, that's probably TMI!) than I normally would and I think my stomach is less noisy than it normally is. It's nice to see some positive things that are happening as a result of the program.

- Besides the day where I felt bored by my options, overall it still has not seemed ridiculously hard. Sure there are days when I struggle a bit and miss non-compliant foods but overall I still feel like I have a lot of options and I try to focus on what I can have.

- I've started to have dreams about food, which is common when you do Whole30 apparently. The 2 dreams I've had involved situations where I was somewhere where there was nothing that was Whole30 compliant so I wasn't able to eat. 

Here's hoping the 2nd half of this program goes as well as the first half did!

Try This at Home Tuesday: Shredded Brussel Sprout Salad

Greetings and happy Tuesday!  Here we are in the final week of January which means I have one last salad recipe to share with you. It's been fun to focus on salads for this past month. I've learned a couple of things along the way but the biggest lesson I learned was that I should never buy salad dressings again because they are cheap and easy to make and taste WAY better than the processed ones I used to buy.

For my final week of salads-for-lunch, I made a  Shredded Brussel Sprout Salad. I had made this as a side dish for Thanksgiving but it's hearty enough to stand on it's own as an entree salad. I did make some modifications, though, such as substituting roasted butternut squash for the pear and toasting the almonds. I also added some chicken for protein and celery for extra crunch.

The balsamic maple dressing for this salad is sooooo good and very easy to make.  I doubled it so I'd have enough for 4-5 salads:

2 T. balsamic vinegar
2 T. EVOO
1 T. pure maple syrup
1 t. dijon mustard
salt & pepper to taste

Shredded brussel sprouts are such a great substitution for greens as they area  bit more hearty and will be more filling than lettuce, I think. 

It's been fun to focus on salads for the last month. That said, I'm looking forward to switching back to warm and savory dishes, especially since I crave warm things during this time of year. But this challenge showed me that salads can be filling and enjoyable on their own. 

What are you planning to eat for lunches this week?

Try This at Home Tuesday: Petite Crust-less Quiches

Greetings and happy Tuesday!  I'm shifting the focus of this week's post from salads to breakfast, mostly because the salad I prepped this week was a Greek salad, which is such a basic, easy salad. I picked it as it isn't labor-intensive, which is good since my hands are still stiff/tender from my RA flare so I'm trying to not overuse them.  I did make a good, refreshing dressing that I wanted to share, though, as I know some of you have been enjoying the salad dressing recipes.  So here are the ingredients for the Greek vinaigrette I made.  I doubled it so that it would yield a little over 1 cup of dressing. Similar to other dressing recipes I've made, I only had to buy 1 ingredient (lemon) so it was low cost:

- 1/4 c. EVOO
- 2 T. red wine vingear
- 1/2 of a lemon, juiced (recipe calls for 1 lemon but I found it to be a bit too lemony)
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 t. dried oregano leaves
- 3 pinches of salt
- 10-15 grinds of black pepper

This week I wanted to share the new breakfast that I've been eating this month. For the last 3+ years, I have been eating GF oatmeal with a banana for breakfast nearly every day of the week. What can I say - I am truly a creature of habit! However, lately I was feeling a need for a change but it needed to be something that is as quick and easy as oatmeal. Then I saw this recipe for Petite Crust-less Quiche on Skinny Taste's most popular recipes of 2015 post.  I tried them for the first week of January and they were excellent so this is my new go-to breakfast at least for the time being.

What I like about this recipe is:
- they refrigerate/freeze well and taste great when re-heated.
- they are versatile. The recipe calls for onions and green peppers, but you could substitute whatever vegetable you would prefer or have on hand. Some things I'll be trying in the future will be broccoli and asparagus.
- they are very filling. It helps that they are packed with protein (18 g). I eat them with a little salsa on top and have been able to push back how early I have my mid-morning snack of yogurt and granola, so these are definitely more filling than the oatmeal + banana I was eating.

If you make these, one tip I have is to buy liquid egg whites instead of separating eggs yourself. The recipe calls for 4 egg whites and I think it's hard to find a use for 4 egg yolks (at least for me). So it's much less wasteful if you just buy liquid egg whites, which can be found near the egg beaters in the grocery store. According to my carton, 3/4 c. of eggs whites = 4 large egg whites.

Do you have a breakfast regimen or do you change up what you eat each day/week? For me, I value something that is fast, easy and healthy versus full of variety. But I'm all about making it easy to eat healthy.

Try This at Home Tuesday: Chopped Asian Salad

Happy Tuesday!  I'm back with salad idea #2 of the month. Last week's salad will be tough to beat but the Asian Chopped Salad I made to bring for lunches this week will give it a run for its money.

The star of this week's salad is the combination of toppings which have different textures and flavors and a whole lot of crunch. Toppings include:

- shredded rotisserie chicken
- edamame
- sliced radishes
- snow peas
- green onions
- celery
- cilantro
- red and green peppers

The base of the salad is a mixture of shredded carrots and red and green cabbage. I tried to buy pre-shredded cabbage but the bagged stuff looked so unappetizing so I opted to chop my own, which obviously added to the time spent chopping and slicing and dicing but I think it was worth the effort as I'll enjoy the salads way more.

Soooo much chopping!

For the dressing, I made this asian citrus dressing that I found on Iowa Girl Eats. Here are the ingredients:

- 2 1/2 T. rice wine vinegar
- 2 T. orange juice
- 1 T. lime juice
- 1 T. tamari (or soy sauce if you can have gluten)
- 2 t. honey
- 1 t. freshly grated ginger
- 1/2 t. sesame oil
- 1 clove garlic, minced

I had all but one ingredient on hand (lime juice) so it was easy/inexpensive to throw this dressing together. I ended up doubling the recipe as I'll need enough for 5 salads and the recipe only yields about 2 servings.

One big salad ready to go for the week!

This week I was curious about the cost per portion so I kept my receipt and added up all the ingredients. I definitely have more than 5 servings worth of cabbage, so I will need to figure out another use for that, but if I assume I will get 5 meals out of all the ingredients I bought, it totals to $29.39 or $5.88/salad, which is pretty inexpensive for a healthy, filling salad made with fresh ingredients. And chances are I will probably get 6+ servings out of it since I have so many toppings and cabbage.

This was a pretty labor-intensive salad as it requires a lot of chopping but luckily that's something I enjoy and find soothing, and it gave me an opportunity to get caught up on some podcasts in my queue. Plus I'd rather put in a couple of solid hours in the kitchen on the weekend versus doing meal prep during the week.

How do you handle meal prep? Do you tend to consolidate your meal prep into a block of time over the week or do you do meal prep every evening?

Try This at Home Tuesday: Roasted Vegetable Salad

Happy Tuesday!  I'm kicking off a new post series today called "Try This at Home Tuesday" which will have a healthy living focus, at least for the month of January. I once heard the quote, "ounces are lost in the gym, pounds are lost in the kitchen" and I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. I'm carrying around a little extra holiday/post-marathon (I tend to gain a bit after a race) weight so in January I will be focusing on cleaning up my eating. But sometimes healthy eating feels daunting because it requires a lot of research and effort in the kitchen so I think it's helpful when other share what they are doing. So hopefully those of you who are looking for ideas will be inspired to make something I share.

My focus in January will be salads to try at home. The salad I made for the first week of January is a copycat of a salad I have had a couple of times at a local salad place. It costs about $11 at this salad place so I was motivated to make it on my own. It is a winner because it has lots of different flavors and textures which is what I need in order to enjoy a salad as an entry.

The main feature of the salad is roasted vegetables. For mine, I roasted butternut squash, brussel sprouts, and beets. I roasted them at 400F. The squash and brussel sprouts were done in about 30 minutes, the beets took closer to 50-60 minutes.

Mmm, roasted beets are delicious and so easy to make!

The other star of the salad is the dressing, which is an apple cider vinaigrette.

The recipe yielded more than this but I had already portioned out some before taking this picture.

Every time I make a salad dressing, I ask myself why I ever buy salad dressings, which are loaded with preservatives. I had everything on hand that this recipe called for:

- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1 T. Dijon mustard
- 1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
- 2 T. lemon juice
- 1-2 T. honey, as needed for sweetness (I used 1 T.)
- 1/3 c. extra-virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste

The green base of my salad is a 50/50 mix of spinach and a spring greens mix, and other toppings include shredded rotisserie chicken, cooked wild rice, craisins, sunflower seeds, chopped celery, and blue cheese. I realize that is a lot of ingredients but I need a high ratio of toppings to greens to make a salad filling.
 

My salad for lunch, all portioned out. I find it works best to put the toppings at the bottom and the greens on top, and I keep the craisins, sunflower seeds, blue cheese and dressing separate and mix before eating.

In total, I would say that I spent about an hour of active time prepping this salad. The food I prepped will yield at least 5 servings so the time spent is well worth it in my opinion. You could cut back the active time by buying a butternut squash that was already cut up. Lastly, while I did not calculate the cost, I know that it is well below the $11/serving that I would have paid at the local salad place, so it's also economical!

Do you pack your lunch for work?  If so, what do you tend to bring?

From Terrace to Table: a Great Use for Basil

As I mentioned in my post on Monday, my basil is growing like a weed.  I can barely keep up with it!  I rarely use dried basil when cooking so I have been trying to find recipes that utilize fresh basil.  Luckily I found one - pesto!  I really like the Skinny Taste version of the recipe because it does not call for pine nuts (which are typically pricey and not something I keep on hand). 

If you have a lot of basil on hand, I highly recommend this recipe as it refrigerates well and it also apparently freezes well.  The recipe calls for 1 cup of basil but I had 2 so I doubled the recipe.

All washed and ready to be put to use!

The recipe called for things I had on hand (garlic, fresh parmesan cheese, and olive oil plus S&P for seasoning).  In a matter of minutes, the pesto was done!

A week went by before I used it, so I can attest to the fact that it refrigerates well.   Last Thursday we used the pesto to make grilled pesto shrimp skewers.

They were so good and delicious!  We paired them with grilled corn on the cob and Mexican rice, which was obviously not grilled but still delicious!

Have you grilled much this summer?  We have not grilled much as neither of us has our own gas grill.  I have a charcoal grill but it's not worth heating it up for quick recipes like this one.  Luckily my condo association has an area with gas grills - we just need to be better about using them!