Peanut Stew

Peanut Stew  Rating: 7

This was one of my freezer/slow cooker meals I made along with 11 others on a marathon meal making day.  It was good.  Kids ate it up. Lots of nutritious things in there but then there's the debate that long exposure to high temperatures thwarts that.  Still the convenience of the slow cooker wins out some days.

She doesn't give measurements for the spices so I'll definitely be a little more heavy handed with the cayenne next time.  Just to warn you, the house will smell strong while the cabbage cooks down but the taste doesn't overwhelm the dish at all. We were just shy of a cup of peanut butter and it was plenty for us. 

You will have leftovers for sure because it makes a ton.  We have two adults and two toddlers and we could probably feed ourselves 3 times on this one pot alone.  Guess what's for lunch tomorrow?!

Chicken Tagine

Chicken Tagine  Rating: 8

Hurray!  I totally got to use my food processor for this recipe.  It doesn't matter if it chops or slices every peice uniformly because it's a slow cooker recipe and all slow cooker recipes come out looking like slop anyway.  And it did.  It came out looking like slop and tasting really good!

Changes we made were using 1 lb. of chicken breasts instead of thighs, 3 cloves of minced fresh garlic for the garlic salt, and vegetable stock instead of chicken.  Okay, and we used brown rice instead of couscous and it was great but I do prefer it over couscous.  Wonderful, sweet aromas fill your home while this cooks all day.  Easy, tasty, makes enough for left overs.

Hearty Chicken Stew with Squash and Quinoa

Hearty Chicken Stew with Squash and Quinoa  Rating: 9

Party in our mouths!  Sweet, briny, fruity...yum!  We really enjoyed this recipe and it came together pretty smoothly.  We did make a few substitutions for what we had on hand--vegetable stock for chicken stock, kabocha squash for butternut, and a red onion for the yellow.  You must include the kalmata olives!  They make the dish.  Makes 6 very generous portions.  So happy we ran into this recipe.  We'll make this again and again.

Chicken Tikka Masala

I love Indian food and one of my goals is to get Keri to like it too (she fears the heat).  To that end I have been slowly introducing Indian flavors at home.  Garam Masala is the key to this recipe and can be found in any Indian grocery store.

I've split the recipe into two parts for convienence.

Chicken Tikka Masala  Rating: 9

Marinade
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
5 tbsp Garam Masala
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and Pepper to taste
Cayenne to taste
2 Chicken Breasts, sliced into strips

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and add the chicken.  Marinate at least 1 hour but overnight is much better.

Sauce
1 tbsp butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 15oz can tomato sauce
1  14oz coconut milk
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp paprika
3 tsp garam masala
Salt to taste
Cayenne to taste

Preheat your grill.

Saute the onion and garlic with the butter to the pot over medium heat until the onions soften, about 3-5 minutes.  Add the spices and mix together, being caseful to not burn the spices.  Add the tomato sauce and cocnut milk and simmer on low for 20 minutes.

While the sauce is simmering grill your chicken for about 4-5 minutes per side, its not necessary to cook your chicken all the way through because it will be added to the sauce later.  Remove chicken from grill and allow to rest for about 5 minutes.  Cut into bite size pieces.

After the sauce has simmered for 20 minutes add the chicken and allow to simmer an additional 10 minutes.

Serve with Basmati Rice and Naan

Roasted Butternut Squash, Sausage, and Pasta in a Brown Butter Sage Sauce

WARNING:  This is a recipe of the unhealthy kind.  I actually wrote, "So high in fat, it is only to be served once a year or less!" at the top of my printed recipe page.  Notwithstanding, it receives a 10 rating.

Roasted Butternut Squash, Sausage, and Pasta in Brown Butter Sage Sauce  Rating: 10

I used an apple chicken sausage that was the perfect match for this recipe.  I also used demerara sugar in place of the dark brown and campanelle pasta as opposed to the orecchiette pasta.  Aren't the campanelle cute?!  Perfect for catching all that heart-stopping butter.

Neal and I just kept eating forkful after forkful and looking at each other knowingly.  The look of sweet sorrow--that this was a 10 but that we knew we were killing ourselves by eating it. And we are quite open to eating full fat products; but this recipe was ridiculous. 

My dear four-year-old strongly attests that "ridiculous" is a bad word and we should not say it.  She is deaf to our objections.  So I will say that this recipe was "redonkulous," which is perfectly acceptable in her mind.

It tasted like heaven.  Glug, glug...was that my heart?!

Healthy Chicken Salad

This is a recipe we've made before and really enjoy. 

Healthy Chicken Salad Rating 9

We served this on top of a bed of romaine lettuce with slices of cucumber.  We were going to have some nice slices of Gouda cheese with it but somehow I forgot the cheese.  HOW DOES ONE FORGET CHEESE?!  Still trying to forgive myself.   

We subbed in fresh thyme for tarragon and black grapes for red because that's what we had on hand.  Also we used a full fat plain Greek yogurt for the non-fat option.  We omitted the fennel because I didn't have any and upped the celery to counter a bit.  It would be great with fennel though.  If you are sensitive to salt you should probably cut it a bit or use kosher, a larger grained salt.  We've served it on pumpernickel bread before and it's great that way but we were trying to use up some romaine before it got sad.

Broccoli Tangerine Salad with Spicy Sesame Chicken on Asian Quinoa

All items on this menu received a 9 rating.  The Spicy Sesame Chicken (Rating 9) I take from a recipe for Chinese Chicken Salad just minus the salad and dressing.  We just use chicken tenders.  One tender was a single serving for us, when atop the quinoa. Wear an apron when preparing the chicken as the oil really likes to spit and pop. 

The Asian Quinoa (Rating 9) is a cinch and can be made even easier by tossing it all into a rice cooker.  It had really good flavor.  Quinoa (pronounced keen-wha, I just love words that are fun to say) is a grain high in protein. It can be bought in bulk at Sprouts.  Rinse it in a sieve to remove its bitter coating prior to cooking.

Neal and I regularly check out books at our local library and often bring home cookbooks.  Tonight's salad was adapted from At Home Healthy Cooking's Chinese Long Bean Salad with Tangerine and Sherry-Mustard Vinaigrette.

Broccoli Tangerine Salad (Rating 9)
Serves 6 as a side

Ingredients
3 crowns of broccoli, florets cut into bite-size pieces, stalks removed
3 tangerines, peeled, 2 1/2 tangerines separated into sections, remaining 1/2 squeezed for juice
1/2 cup sweet onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
Pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper

For Vinaigrette:
3/4 tsp. cornstarch
1/3 cup vegetable broth (used homemade)
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. white wine vinegar
juice from 1/2 tangerine (mentioned above)
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 tbsp. demerara sugar
1 clove garlic
healthy pinch of salt
pinch of freshly ground pepper

Method
1. Bring pot of water to a boil. Add in the broccoli and boil for a couple minutes.  Drain and cool.
2. Place broccoli, tangerine sections, onion, and seeds in bowl.  Season with the salt and pepper.
3. For the vinaigrette, combine cornstarch with 2 tbsp. of the veggie broth and mix.  Bring the rest of the broth to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.  Remove from heat.
4. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the saucepan and bring it all back to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened. Remove from heat and let cool.
5. Combine the remaining vinaigrette ingredients in a small bowl and whisk in the thickened broth.
6. Pour over broccoli mixture, toss, and serve.

Today is Bean Day!--Four Recipes

No, really!  It is National Bean Day in the good ol' U.S. of A.  I have a suspicion that it is always on the eve of Flatulence Day.  But remember beans are good for you (see here).  In fact this is the sixth post of our young blog and four of those posts have included legumes in some way.  To have fun with this food holiday I served beans all day long! 

We started the morning with Southwestern Tofu Scramble (Rating: 8) which I have made several times since our move to healthier eating.  It's quick and a great way to get protein and veggies in before your day even gets going. Served it with a bit of salsa.

I'd say this is a pretty safe way to introduce yourself to tofu if you haven't.  The seasoning is nice.  Don't think "eggs" when you put it in your mouth because it is not.  Think, "I am eating something new (tofu) and my mouth gets to explore!"

For lunch we had basic Black Bean Quesadillas--corn tortillas, black beans, corn, onion, cheddar.  With a bit of full fat sour cream.  Easy, quick, yum.

Dinner was a new dish for us.  We ate Italian Sausage and White Beans (Rating: 10).  Yes, our first 10 rating for the blog!  Woohoo!  We all gobbled it up.

We used some chicken and basil sausage we had in the freezer from Sprouts.  I also only used 2 links because that's what we had, we tend to use meat more as a condiment and we had plenty of bean protein this day. Also I used fire-roasted tomatoes because I love myself that much, slipped about a cup of finely chopped kale in because it was our only leafy green today, and used my homemade vegetable stock instead of chicken/wine.. Super yummy and easy! 

And dessert! What?!  You put beans in your dessert?!  Yes! Yes! Yes!  I've done it once before in some awesome pumpkin sesame cookies and again tonight in our Chocolate-Chip Blondies (Rating:8) from Chocolate Covered Katie.  We used dark chocolate chips.  They were best when completely cooled and did not taste like beans.  Neal didn't even know they had beans in them until I told him.  They were not overly sweet or decadent and for a healthier blondie Neal and I were both pleased. I wanted to up the chocolate chips but I always want to do that.

She has some fun recipes I'd like to try because I like sweets and hers always have a twist, like beans.  Her recipes are healthy but often high calorie because Katie need to keep weight on, not lose it.  So beware if you are trying to drop pounds.

Anyway, it was a fun, fiber filled day and if you know what is good for you, you won't be coming by our house tomorrow as we "reap the rewards" of celebrating Bean Day.