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April 17, 2014

Big Belchy Buffet Bloating

Trip starts on a bus. Trip ends on a bus. This trip was buffet induced. I did my best! Read on!

Normal people pack clothes first for a trip. I pack food. I hate leaving my favourite foods behind. If there was a way to bring a personal size oven and kabocha squash with me I would! Work conferences are the hardest. Not that there isn't endless supplies of food, snacks and treats laying around, as my tagline goes "making the healthiest choice your first choice". I am only human and temptation under your nose makes eating healthy while away harder than when you are in your own house surrounded by your favourite healthy foods.

Butternut Squash Pasta

I love my zucchini pasta using my spiralizer. I love it so much I have made four recipes on the blog already. However, the pasta is a tad boring looking and it's not that easy to find the proper size zucchini all the time for using my spiralizer. So again with the squash? Why not! Butternut squash is such a beautiful color! And since it doesn't trick you with having a ton of seeds and innards, you can make a massive amount of noodles with just one squash.

Frozen Egg Whites

Are you looking for some additional protein in your daily life? Do you work out early in the morning and need some pre-fueling the night before? Do you need a little treat at night when your belly is telling you to root through the cupboards and eat everything in sight?

What this is not. This is not a substitute for a real dessert craving. But it beats eating a can of tuna or a chicken breast at 9pm at night. It has been a real winner for me as I find it has been giving me just that little bit of kick I need at 6am when I am out running.

The entire recipe gives you around 25 grams of protein for less than 150 calories. I can't eat the whole thing so I usually split into two portions (70 calories each). I make up a few batches on Sunday nights, but you could make 3-4 hours before you want to eat it as well.

In this version, I took out of freezer added in some yogurt and xanthan gum for a smoothly ice cream finish!

Ingredients:

Egg whites - from a carton, must be pasteurized - 3/4 cup

Dash of unsweetened almond milk

1 truvia packet

1 tbls unsweetened cocoa powder

Cinnamon, dash

Optional: banana or berries

Directions:

Put everything in a blender and blend for around 45 seconds

Pour into desired freezer friendly containers

Freeze for 3-4 hours

I usually take it out of the freezer around 20 minutes before trying to eat

Toppings:

Peanut butter

Yogurt

There you have it. A frozen protein treat. The pictures aren't pretty, but not everything is magazine friendly. Let me know if you make it and what variations you come up with!

Lentil & Barley Chili

I love a good warm bowl of hearty stew or chili once and awhile. I am always looking for ways to eat more lentils and barley and so why not a delicious chili? This recipe made around 16 cups and is 125 calories per cup. It is very filling and freezes really well. I wish there were more meals in the day as I don't have time to eat all of this delicious food! My freezer is full of wonderful freezer bags of this stew right now! #musteatbeforesummer

Skinny Classy Chicken (Version 2)

I start this post with the "husband friendly version". I also start this post with the "mother friendly version". After making the first version of the skinny version of classy chicken I have been scared to serve it to my mom. She is after all the originator of this childhood classic recipe. I knew that I could convince her to get rid of the mayonnaise but was always worried that I couldn't sell her on the recipe if it wasn't coated in five inches of cheddar cheese on top. Challenge accepted.

Since discovering nutritional yeast I have been wanting to try this recipe again using the nutritional yeast. End result. SUCCESS!!! You can see above that the husband friendly version involved putting cheddar cheese on his portion of the meal. But look at how great the rest of it looks. It was delicious and both husband and mom gave RAVE reviews! Just like an iphone gets updates, so do recipes! Here we have it! Classy Chicken Skinny Version 2.0.

Mom and I having our standard tequila treat when we cook on Sundays.

This recipe has the same calories as the first recipe but way tastier!!! The entire dish is around 1,500 calories (not including the husband friendly cheese added at the end). We split 5 ways and I used 2 cups of cauliflower rice for a total meal of 350 calories.

And nutritional yeast. I dare you to try it! Reasons I love it: It's a vegetarian source of Vitamin B-12, high in protein, high in fiber, gluten free and it's a great source of folic acid.

Ingredients:

Chopped garlic (3 tbls)

3 -4 chicken breasts (.5kg)

Broccoli florets - 8 cups

1 can low fat cream of mushroom soup

1 package sliced brown crimini mushrooms (227 grams)

4 tbls curry powder (and a some tandoori curry if you have it!)

1 tbls lemon juice

1/2 cup plain yogurt

Shredded Parmesan cheese (50 grams)

Nutritional Yeast (3 tbls)
Rice bread crumbs or panko (50-60 grams)

Rice for the husband

Cauliflower rice for the wife

Directions from Original recipe are here. The only change is the topping, which I missed the Parmesan cheese, nutritional yeast and rice flour and spread on top. I also cooked this time for 60 minutes rather than the original 35 minutes.

Put in oven uncovered at 350' for an hour.

Skinny Simple Braised Cabbage

I will never win a cooking competition. I realize this as my goal is to make things healthy and delicious. How could I compete with those that want to make it delicious but use the cheater non healthy ingredients? - main one being butter. Butter makes everything better. I could make anything taste could if I used butter.

Stay on track Erinn. We are talking about cabbage. Specific to this recipe, my competitors would add in bacon or sugar or both. No doubt they would win. However, I can do my jeans up without needing to suck in and lay on the bed. #winning.

Add cabbage to your repeat grocery items that you purchase weekly. I purchase a large green and large purple cabbage every week. Yep. that is how much cabbage we consume on a weekly basis. A quick search of my own blog revealed that I have a ton of cabbage recipes already! But why not have more!!! I also have been eating a ton of the spa bowls at Browns and decided it was time that I tried to braise it myself.

Ginger Cilantro Baked Tilapia

I love how this recipe came to be. Brett went up to visit is grandma (who is rocking it at 102 years old) for lunch. We had a good snarky chuckle in the car ride to work that morning about how he should have a big breakfast as we "assumed" the retirement food served would be bland and gross. When he got back that night, not only was he raving about his lunch, he was towing with him a big bag of tilapia fillets. I myself love white fish but struggle to get Brett to eat it. I was overjoyed when he said he had tilapia for lunch and not only was it delicious, he even bought a ton for our freezer. I immediately went to work to create a recipe that I could convince him that this was a new staple in our house for dinner! The trick to a husband friendly version of anything is to encrust in some sort of crust. Anything that reminds my husband of a chicken strip seems to fly.

Good Intentions #11

I haven't done a good intentions post in awhile. Probably because I haven't been eating out as much. This is by choice, but I am becoming such a food snob that I would much rather eat at home. I love my oatmeal so much that I turn down all breakfast invites. Find me a restaurant that makes fluffy oatmeal with egg whites and blueberries and perhaps I will go for breakfast with you. Oh and find me a restaurant that opens at 6am as that's when I like to eat breakfast. Lunch is always eaten at my desk as I would give up going out for lunch to do bootcamps or yoga any day. And then dinner. How the heck do you have a food blog if you aren't trying to new recipes for dinner? And I LOVE my food. LOVE. So why go out for dinner? My husband has made our house so fantastic that with some great music, mood lighting and a good bottle of wine, it's like we are at a restaurant anyways.

However, there is the social side to eating out and the fantastic people watching and my poor carnivore husband can order whatever red meat he desires! This week I went out for breakfast, lunch and dinner all in one week, so a post is deserved. For those new readers out there, good intentions is all about my trials and tribulations of trying to eat healthy when going out to eat. Enjoy!

Raw Daikon Sushi

I started my blog one year ago today with sushi. I have posted many recipes on sushi since then, cabbage, cauliflower, all rice free and still loving them! Link to recipes here. It only seems appropriate that I do another sushi recipe one year later! This time, a raw Daikon sushi!

I made four rolls at 100 calories per roll. Show me a rice roll that tastes this good for 100 calories a roll. Eat all the food. I want four rolls of sushi. I don't want one roll of sushi. My brain requires much more hand to mouth movement of chop sticks than just 8 small pieces of sushi. Don't knock it till you try it.

Raw daikon sushi is a great QUICK sushi recipe as you don't have to cook rice or wait for your cauliflower to cool, it took me start to finish less than 15 minutes to make my dinner! Just because it looks fancy doesn't mean it needs to take all night.

Ingredients:

1/2 small acorn squash, roasted into small strips
1/2 of a medium daikon, shredded
1/2 cucumber, peeled and cut into strips
4 nori sushi paper
shredded beets (50 grams0
thai sweet chili sauce (2 tbls)

Directions:

Roast your squash (if your using squash)
Shred your daikon and place on a cheese cloth. Daikon is a radish so it is mostly water, which means you need to squeeze as much water out as you can! I swear, I got about 2 cups of water out this time.

Seems like there was nothing left once I was done squeezing out the water!

The easy part. Lay out your sushi paper, cover with daikon "rice" and then add your desired insides. I did a roasted squash, cucumber and beets.

And a small trick to roll. I used some sweet chili sauce and placed on the very end of the sushi paper. This way when you roll the rolls the paper has something to stick too. Without sticky rice or something warm, the paper wouldn't let you complete a good roll!

And my second trick. Why cut into bite size sushi pieces? I cut my rolls into three pieces. I didn't want them all falling apart and this way I could eat with my hands as well and avoid chopsticks since I wasn't using soy sauce (the sweet chili sauce was good enough! )

Crunchy, raw, healthy, filling, delicious. Have I convinced you to try it yet?

Strawberry Broccoli Salad

I love going to potluck dinners as I can make new salads to test out on my always "grateful" family members. I am quite selfish about my salad making. I tend to not give any consideration to what is actually being served for dinner. What do I mean? Well this dinner was a mexican taco night so I bring a fruit inspired salad with broccoli? C'est la vie, it's what I wanted. And you know what? The salad disappeared with no leftovers so that is my sign that it must have been successful.

Black Bean Butternut Squash Bake

My love for squash makes for endless recipe ideas. Butternut squash is current craze and there are so many great recipes you can make with this! This is a great side dish or casserole to serve with a salad. It was very filling and met all of my needs for "comfort food".

BBQ Spaghetti Squash Stirfry

This post is inspired by my never ending desire to eat as much food as possible. Using spaghetti squash in your stirfry will result in a GIANT bowl of spaghetti squash with fresh veggies. I was really craving BBQ theme this time, normally it is asian, but today I needed that BBQ flavor in this spaghetti squash bowl.

This recipe made two giant servings for 300 calories each. A normal person could split this into 4 and serve as a side or just not be as piggy as I am.

Ingredients:

Broccoli, chopped 1.5 cups
Mushrooms, crimini 2 cups sliced
Baby spinach, 2 cups
Veggie ground round, 1/3 cup
Spaghetti squash, 2 cups cooked
Sweet bbq sauce, 2 tbls
Sour cream, to garnish

Directions:

Prepare the spaghetti squash:

Cut the spaghetti squash in half and place face down in small amount of water and cook in microwave until the tops of the squash are soft (usually 10 minutes)
Remove from microwave and let cool for a few minutes
Take a fork and scoop out into a bowl

Prepare the vegetables:

Cook the broccoli, mushrooms to your desired tenderness
Throw in some jalapeno's if you want
Add the veggie ground (if you are using fresh chicken or turkey or ground beef, then cook first)

Add in the spaghetti squash at the very end and cook for another 5 minutes or until the squash is hot again (I am assuming that it cooled down on your counter while you were cooking the rest of the meal).

Then add your BBQ sauce. Of course you could make your own, but I don't have time for that!

Place in your giant salad bowl and marvel at how great you are.

Add some more hot sauce and some sour cream and enjoy your creation!

Celery Root Mashed "Potatoes"

The whole roasted celery root excitement had me running back to the store to purchase more!!. To my dismay, I couldn't find a ball the same size as the first time. Heart breaking. Of course I still purchased it though as I wanted to try "mashed potatoes" with this root.

Also, who has 2 hours to wait for the whole head to cook unless its a weekend. So this time I tackled this puppy with the microwave. Following the same instructions as the first time, I peeled and then put in a microwave friendly dish in a little bit of water and cooked for around 10 minutes. Done!

Using my immersion blender, mashed this root up, mixed in some fresh dill and voila! Mashed celery root! Husband friendly version (throw down a giant STEAK and tell him its mashed potatoes).

Random vegetable thought of the day. There are so many ways to cook vegetables that my brain never stops thinking of endless modifications. I suspect that this is not the last time you will see a celery root post. Roasted and now mashed....more options are brewing in my vegetable brain.....

Whole Roasted Celery Root

I have always been intrigued by the ugly brain looking type vegetable in the grocery store. Others would probably just ignore it or walk by. I have stood there many times over the last couple of years looking at it, smelling it, touching it. I finally got the energy to buy it, of course putting it in my cart last so I could confirm the price (kinda like oyster mushrooms where you can spend anywhere from $5 to $25 if you aren't careful). Price came in at $3.20. Sold. Took it home and then stared at it on the counter for at least a week before I decided it was time to tackle this root vegetable.

Known most commonly as celery root or celeriac this vegetable is similar to most other root vegetables with around 40 calories for 100 grams. That is without the skin, I couldn't imagine eating the skin...... This ugly monster was not going to be easy to convince the husband that we were having it for dinner. My strategy was to plan dinner so that if it turned out this was just an added bonus. Husband sold. Production began.

Ingredients:

There really is only one ingredient to this recipe, celery root. The size of the ball that I used was around 1,000 grams. What was interesting (well at least to me anyways) is that after I peeled, I lost almost half of it!

Overall I was thrilled about the result. A typical food blogger reaction. Jumping for joy, taking pictures, texting my close friends to rave about new recipe, talking (or yelling as Brett says when I get excited) about all of the other recipes I could make with this new found vegetable. This oven roasted beauty sliced cleaner than ham, had a great taste and could be used in so many different ways!

We served ours on salad. As I mentioned earlier, we couldn't risk our whole dinner by making this root ball the main ingredient. Next time I eat it though it will be centre stage. It will also take up half my plate like most of my vegetables do and it might be sprinkled with some parmesan cheese....oh the endless possibilities.