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. 

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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". 

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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!

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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.....

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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.

Directions:

• Peel (to the best you can)
• Cut away big chunks
• Cut off celery stems
• Cover with oil and seasoning (tandoori, curry powder)
• Wrap in tinfoil into a ball
• Cook at 375' for 2 hours
• Take out of oven and slice

Directions (With Pictures):

Peel, peel, peel

Cut away larger bits or skin that wouldn't peel

Cut off ends and place on tinfoil

Rub in oil and cover in spices (your choice!)

Wrap into tight ball on cookie sheet

Check after first 1.5 hours

When cooked, a fork will slide right in!

Slice like a ham!

Seriously, delicious!

Because we were having on salad, I sliced into thin strips. 

I also saved some and had some the next day as a "small salad"

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Skinny Thai Green Curry

Skinny Thai Green Curry! Of course its not been going to be appealing or delicious as regular Thai curry that uses tons of coconut cream, oil and sticky rice, but eating this no regret curry will leave you satisfied and not having to unbutton your jeans. Also, way cheaper than ordering in, start cooking at home more! This was an unplanned recipe but was too delicious to not take photos and post.  

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Kelp Noodle Stirfry

A quick and easy dinner post idea, bringing back the kelp noodles! This will make the fifth recipe using these lovely noodles (Kelp Noodle Recipes). The options are endless! As long as you always stock your house with kelp noodles, PB2 (or peanut butter), some sweet chili sauce and some vegetables, there shouldn't ever be an excuse to not have a great dinner!

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Sweet Cabbage Soup

I am trying to come up with the best words to describe this soup so you will jump off your computer, iphone, samsung, blackberry, ipad, android and run to the store to purchase a giant head of cabbage. It is delicious! A little sour, a little sweet and tastes even better with a nice spoonful of sour cream when served. Freezes well and is less than 100 calories per cup. Aside from some cabbage bloating that may occur, this soup is a keeper!

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Wasabi Green Beans

This post is dedicated to my dad who passed away this week. A good friend of mine gave me some great advice today when I was struggling with what to do in-between funeral planning. She told me to put my energy into a food post for my dad. He was a foodie. I have followed in his footsteps.

After a nice long walk and some reflection, I had to laugh that green beans is what came to my mind. Food was our shared passion. We don't just throw things together. We discuss. We search the internet. We then change our minds. We try new recipes. We succeed. We fail. We shared many good laughs in the process.

That is why green beans came to my mind. We didn't just boil up beans when we cooked. We tried endless recipes. The last green beans he made for me involved cream of mushroom soup and fried onions. It wasn't a winner, but not all recipes are.  Never was there a dull moment when it came to cooking and the effort was put in our recipes, right down to the green beans. So there you have it. This ones for you dad.

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Popcorn Cake

POPCORN CAKE? WHY NOT! 

After making my nephew a birthday cake for his 6th birthday, it only seemed fair that I would make his little brother his cake for his 3rd birthday. If you remember, Jared's cake was full of chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Link to recipe here.

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Grill your way to a Bikini Body

Its January, that means the gym is full of new energized "gotta lose weight" gym rats. The streets are full of new runners wearing the latest gear and sparkly new shoes. Everyone is getting ready for bikini season. Exercise is awesome (I do it every day, sometimes two times a day), but what you do in the kitchen is just as important. Therefore, this blog is dedicated to getting bikini ready by getting panini ready! 

You know that George Foreman grill or panini maker growing dust in your cupboard? Bring it back into your kitchen! I have been on a HUGE grilling kick of vegetables lately. Not only do they speed up the cooking process, this has turned into a great husband friendly alternative to salad and filling my plate with delicious roasted vegetables is now a staple dinner once or twice a week.  This post is more of an inspiration for your indoor grill than a recipe.  There are so many things you can do with it and you don't need to use a BBQ. I find the BBQ burns my vegetables and this gives me complete control in the comfort of my cozy, warm kitchen

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Roasted Cherry Tomato Pasta Sauce

I go through major swings in my cooking. Some weeks its all about the fresh vegetables and cooking every night. Other weeks, we are busy and I just want to grab something out of the freezer and defrost the quickest dinner I can. At the end of the summer, I purchased way to many cherry tomatoes and decided to make my own tomato sauce with the goal of having a nice smoky roasted tomato sauce from cherry tomatoes!

Turned out excellent and it has saved us a couple of nights now when we couldn't or didn't want to cook a fancy meal.

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Veggie Balls

This recipe was created out of the pure desire to use up ingredients in my house before I went on vacation. I wasn't intending it to be a full fledged blog post. Luckily, I always take pictures as sometimes you win on the first try. I needed this win after the last 4 recipes that shall remain nameless were a BUST. The concept? Can I create some sort of veggie meatless ball that I can add to my salad? Could I create something that perhaps I could create in batches, freeze and use on my salad lunches for work? So what is it? Spaghetti squash with veggie ground round and egg whites, rolled in cheerio crumbs or crackers or panko or whatever you want, baked and made crispy. SOLD.

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2013 Year In Review

Looking back on 2013 and trying to figure out the best way to write this post was challenging. I had to spend some time refreshing my memory as to why I started blogging in the first place. I love blogging, so how do I celebrate my first year as a blogger? What do I focus a year in review on?

Was the success in the numbers? 

If my goal was all about the numbers, then I would start the post by celebrating in the statistics. I wrote over 121 blog posts in one year, that's around 2-3 posts per week. I passed over 100,000 site visits last week. Phew. I'm not alone out there and someone must be reading the blog!

Was it the recipes? 

But my goal in writing the blog wasn't about the numbers. Of course the more people I can reach the better, but I really wanted to have viewers enjoy my posts - to try the recipes, to enjoy the creativity I put towards my vegetables and to hopefully enjoy my honest, straightforward and what I find to be humorous writing style. Based on this goal, I could celebrate some of the favorite recipes from 2013, hard to choose, but based on numbers and how many positive comments from readers, here are the top 5:

Was it the social media growth? 

I spent a lot of time in 2013 trying to figure out the best way to expand my viewers beyond my friends and immediate family. I tried numerous social media techniques, here are a few my successes from 2013: 

• Started a facebook page and started joining food blogging parties 
• Joined pinterest and had random success with the acorn squash fries! Over 1,000 re-pins!
• Wrote 31 reviews for Urban Spoon 
• Became a contributor to Chefthisup

Was it the personal growth? 

Creating a post for my blog requires a ton of background work (from figuring out the calories, to taking pictures, to perfecting the recipe, to writing the post). When you finally post a new recipe, you are excited and want everyone to read it and make it the next day. Sometimes you post at the wrong time of day or wrong day of the week and your post gets lost in the internet world. Its very disappointing. What helps is when you meet a whole world of food bloggers who share in our ups and downs. Especially the many time zones means that no matter what time I am working on a post, there is always someone out there to chat with! One of my favourite memories was when I met a fellow blogger from New York and Sandie and I created a joint blog post together. It was a ton of fun. Also having never tried chicken picatta before, it was another new recipe for the list! 

This year I had a ton of good recipe successes and also some giant failures. My husband deserves an award for some of the failure meals he had to endure. Speaking of husbands, Brett deserves special mention as he learned to "accept" my blogging and has become a great help in the kitchen. He no longer complains when the food goes cold while I take photos. He understands that the food scale is required while we cook and that a pen and paper is always nearby. With his help, 2013 included

1. The creation of the "husband friendly version" of each recipe
2. Brett became a guest poster with this bashed bbq chicken, pulled pork and miso glazed salmon
3. Brett created from scratch a new recipe with me and the success of the sesame miso cones resulted in a great recipe, a great afternoon making them together and we won a food competition as a result.

The real 2013 Success.....

It really is all about the vegetables. My passion for creating simple, easy to make meals with delicious vegetables is what got me started and what keeps me going. From gourds to cauliflower, cabbage, daikon, okra, jicima, celery root, squash and herbs, it is my love of these that keeps me motivated and will continue to do so into 2014. 

Thank you to all of my fans, friends and family who continue to support me. Stay tuned for an exciting 2014! 

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