Return of the Jedi

Or gangsta, or whatever. I'm really excited about Outkast's reunion so I've been listening to them alot lately. I also just saw that I haven't touched this blog since October of 2012. Which means that I was even busier than I may have realized last year!

Big things happened in 2013-we had about a million weddings to attend all over the world, I got my 200 hour yoga teacher certification, finally learned how to do a kipping pull up, got a gold iPhone, completed a major offshore project that had me on a boat for a full month, spent Christmas in Paris, got engaged, and now its 2014. OMG ya'll.

Sundays are still my rest day, and lately I've taken to making 3 days worth of meals for the week ahead. This definitely includes my morning green smoothie, which I'll post about later, lunch prep, and dinners. Spending a few hours in the kitchen on Sunday makes for a less frantic Monday and Tuesday, which means I don't have to race home panicking that Tim will be starving and cranky.

Also, its been cold in Texas. And I'm not just saying that as a Texan-we had 3 days in a row of below freezing temperatures last week! Now, I'm not talking ridiculous sub zero Midwest or Canadian temperatures, but we felt the gusts of the polar vortex down south. Its actually been nice to have a little chill in the air and I'm loving making all the soups and stews and pastas and such.

Witness then, the beef and butternut squash tagine I made last night-don't worry, you don't need a tagine, nor do you need to know what one is. This was actually a super simple recipe, and quicker than I had expected, meaning you could whip it out in like 30 minutes on a weeknight. It also made the house smell amazing because of the cinnamon in the rub. I also didn't read the ingredients/instructions too clearly so I had to make a few minor adjustments.

Beef and Butternut Squash Tagine
adapted from Cooking Light 

2tsp paprika 
1tsp ground cinnamon 
3/4tsp salt 
1/2tsp ground ginger 
1/2tsp crushed red pepper
a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper
1-pound beef shoulder roast or petite tender roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes 
1tbsp olive oil  
4 shallots, quartered 
4 garlic cloves, chopped 
1 cup fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth 
1/2 can of fire roasted tomatoes
1tbsp tomato paste 
3c (1-inch) cubed peeled butternut squash (about 1 pound) 
1/4c chopped fresh cilantro

Combine all spices in a bowl and mix well, then add the beef and toss it around until all pieces are coated. 

Heat your olive oil in a dutch oven on medium high heat until shimmering. Add beef and shallots; cook 4 minutes or until browned, stirring occasionally. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in broth, tomatoes, and tomato paste; bring to a boil. Cook 5 minutes. Add squash; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes or until squash is tender. Sprinkle with cilantro.

Sunday Rituals

I have a few Sunday rituals I like to adhere to, which helps me relax after what usually turns out to be a busy weekend and allows me to prepare for the week ahead. Sometimes I get in an extra yoga class or a friendly brunch, but I always do my weekly shop Sunday morning then come home to spend time in the kitchen.

Since I'm not making any fabulous dinners this week, I thought I'd share some tips and tricks I use to help make healthy eating quick, easy, and accessible for everyone. On a side note, I did make a kick ass pot of turkey and fennel chili on Sunday night that kept me in lunches and dinners throughout the week.

During the week, I am constantly on the go. For the past 6 weeks, I've been getting in 6am yoga classes a few times a week, which means getting up extra early and having a post workout breakfast ready in addition to lunch and afternoon snack. In order to accomplish this, I make a protein smoothie the night before and pop it in the freezer, pack my lunch in its bag and leave that in the fridge, and make sure my gym bag is ready to go with my work clothes and a second set of workout gear.

It sounds like alot, I know. But I promise if you have even a spare hour once a week to prep a few things, you can do it too. Here are my Sunday standbys; do it with a mimosa in your hand and you might not even notice.

1. Hard boil 4-5 eggs. Put your eggs in a large pot of water, bring it to a boil then turn it off and let the eggs sit until you're finished with everything else. They are easy to ignore!

2. Cut up / individually bag veggies. I like to buy whole carrots and cut them up for lunch/snacks. I usually put 2 carrots per bag; sometimes I add celery, sometimes I'm real lazy and just get baby carrots. Just pre-portion everything and leave it in the fridge. And make sure to re-use your ziplocks!

3. Buy frozen fruit for smoothies or cut and freeze your own. I buy frozen berries and pineapple and greens, but I prefer to freeze my own bananas; keep extra on hand if you need to make banana ice cream one night.

4. Buy pre-cooked chicken for lunchtime salads. This is my biggest secret and best tip-I always hit up the salad bar at WFM and load up on the all natural pre cooked chicken breast they stock there. It is a bargain at $7.99/lb.
As an alternative! You can buy a whole roasted chicken from most grocery stores and pull all the meat from it and store it in a container to add to salads or whatever. If you do this, I highly recommend using the carcass to make your own chicken stock, which will keep in the freezer for months.

5. Clean your greens. You can buy the pre-washed stuff, and I do, but I always like to give it a rinse. Keep it bagged up and accessible for making salads when you don't have leftovers.

6. Buy easily transportable fruit. Especially now that we're out of berry season, apples, pears, and citrus all travel well and don't require any extra packaging, just toss it in with the rest of your lunch.

7. Buy in bulk and bag the breasts. I buy the boneless, skinless natural chicken breasts from WFM in bulk for $4.99/lb (which is a bargain for clean meat!) then I bag two breasts at a time and keep in the freezer for speedy dinners-think curries, soups, pastas, etc.

So there you have it, my Sunday ritual. I'll probably roast a few beets now that it's fall again, and I might do a few other things here and there. With a little advanced preparation, you can not only always have a healthy meal within minutes, you can travel with food you feel good about eating.

Good Luck and Good Eating!

Seared Albacore and Red Chard

So I haven't posted anything in over a week! Shame on me for being so slack; Tim's been away for almost a week and I've either had too much time on my hands or have overbooked each day since he's been gone. That being said, I haven't been cooking for him this week, just myself, which can sometimes seem like more effort than its worth, especially since he always cleans up the kitchen.

We both tend to travel for work a fair bit, so we end up making some changes to our routine to adapt; Tim eats frozen pizza and I have to do my own laundry. When I'm on my own, I can get pretty lazy and have nights where I am quite content to have an apple with peanut butter for dinner. But I digress.

Last week before he left, I whipped up this seared albacore dish with red chard. My mom makes a delicious red chard and I decided to copy her, mostly cause I was feeling inspired by the beautiful leafy green tops and bright red stalks, and also because sometimes you just need to switch it up.

Bear in mind that you can use any leafy green here you wish-rainbow chard, spinach, baby bok choy, whatever you have on hand or whatever your favorite green is. I also happened to use albacore because not only was it fresh and beautiful, but it was also on sale.

Seared Albacore with Red Chard

1 bunch red chard, leaves ribboned and stems diced

1/2 yellow onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, diced

2 portions albacore, I used a 4oz and 7oz piece

Olive Oil

1 orange, zested

Salt, Pepper

*Grapefruit balsamic vinegar

Prepare the marinade for your fish: rinse fish and pat dry and place in a shallow bowl with 1tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper, and about 1tbsp of orange zest. Let sit while you prep your chard.

Heat a deep skillet over medium high heat. Add a little olive oil to the pan and sautee your onions for 3-4 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and the chard stalks and sautee another 2-3 minutes, then add the leaves and let them wilt. Turn off the heat and let sit until ready to plate.

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium high heat and add a little olive oil. Cut your orange in half and squeeze some juice over the fish just before you place it in your skillet, seasoned side down. Season the top side with salt, pepper and orange zest while the bottom browns. Flip after 3-4 minutes; you should see the fish turn from translucent to opaque as it cooks. Sear for another 3-4 minutes, but don't cook  your tuna all the way through as it tends to get tough.

Add your wilted chard to a plate or bowl, and top with a dash of salt and freshly ground pepper. I drizzled mine with a fabulous grapefruit balsamic vinegar, but you can use the other half of your orange to dress the chard otherwise. Top with the albacore, another squeeze of orange and crack of pepper, and you're ready to eat.

Enjoy!

Roasted Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Turkey and Leeks

Fall has finally come to Texas, and maybe even a bit earlier than usual. Either way, I am very much enjoying a reprieve from the heat and humidity we've endured for the last several months. Maybe that's why I am so excited for fall this year, or it could be my love of gourds, root veggies, and earthy spices. I used to be such a summertime girl, but now the idea of scarves and spices has me totally stoked.

I may have mentioned this before, but I also love soup. Like really love soup. We didn't have a particularly soup friendly winter last year, so I'm hoping for an extended fall and a reasonable winter. Note that a reasonable winter in my mind means nothing below 45 degrees F; nowhere in Texas has coat checks and we tend to use our heat in the winter the same was as we use our AC all other times of year.

I had a little bit of extra time on the weekend, and decided to make a roasted carrot and sweet potato soup, inspired by one of my trips to Scotland earlier in the year.

The soup I ate was served with a healthy drizzle of sage oil and a fried sage leaf, which really complements the flavors of the carrot and sweet potato. I used a sage seasoning in this version, but cannot recommend fresh sage and a sage oil enough here; I was really missing it.

I roasted the carrots and sweet potatoes with onions, garlic, salt, pepper, rosemary and dried sage, and tossed everything in olive oil to roast (aka ignore) while I prepped lunch for the week. You'll want to make sure your veggies are roughly the same size so that they cook at the same rate.

When they were fork tender, I pulled them out and popped them in a dutch oven with some melting leeks and chicken stock to simmer further. You can use vegetable broth here if you'd like to make this soup vegetarian/vegan as well. When everything was good and soupy and soft, I pulled out my immersion blender (one of my favorite Christmas presents...seriously) and pureed until smooth. I topped ours off with some italian turkey sausage from WFM and a few extra caramelized leeks. It was awesome for a cool fall evening, and delicious leftover for lunch the next day!

Roasted Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Turkey and Leeks

2 Italian Turkey sausages, casings removed

1 leek, white parts sliced

1/2 onion, sliced

1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced

4 carrots, cut into rounds

2 cloves garlic, crushed

4c chicken or vegetable stock

1 sprig fresh rosemary

1tsp sage, dried or fresh

Olive oil, salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 400F and peel and chop your veggies. Toss carrots, sweet potato, onion, rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper, and sage with 1tbsp of olive oil, and spread on a foil lined baking sheet. Roast in oven until fork tender, about 35 minutes.

In a dutch oven over medium heat, add 1/2tbsp oilve oil and half your sliced leeks. Let soften for a few minutes, then add your roasted veggies and stock. Let everything simmer and soften together and let the flavor of the veggies infuse the broth. Once soft, use an immersion blender to process until smooth. You can also use a regular blender here if you don't have an immersion blender.

In a skillet over medium heat, sautee the remaining leeks in 1/2tbsp olive oil until starting to caramelize. Push to one side and add the turkey sausage, breaking up large chunks as they form.

Ladle soup into bowls and top with turkey and caramelised leeks and fresh ground pepper.

Breakfast for Me. And You.

I realize I haven't posted many dinners this week; I just completed a 3 day raw food cleanse AND traveled for work which meant Tim got alot of grilled cheese and frozen pizza. Which I think actually made him pretty happy, but it's not anything I really need to put out in the blogosphere. 

The raw food cleanse was good, although I definitely noticed my desire for protein sources and unfortunately raw meat was off the menu. As my friend K says, "Juice is not food." Smoothies, however, are!

I have been having a protein smoothie for breakfast every (work) morning for a few months now, and I have gone through several different iterations and flavor combinations. While I gave up the egg white protein for a few days for my cleanse, I still continued to enjoy a smoothie for breakfast. 

Ah smoothies. They take about 3 minutes to make, are easily transportable, and the flavor combinations are endless. They can be adapted to moods, seasons, or whatever you happen to have in the fridge/freezer. When I go to early morning yoga practices, I make one the night before and put it in the freezer so that it can melt at the same time as me; then I can eat it with a spoon at the office. They're especially great in the summertime when it's a zillion degrees outside, but can basically be enjoyed year round in Texas. 

This week I've been enjoying banana-mocha smoothies, which I'm sharing today for the crossfitters. I find this flavor combination  kindof helps give you your chocolate fix without adding any sugar, as the bananas are plenty sweet. You also get some good fats from the almond butter and a dose of omegas from the flaxseed meal. You can add a scoop of protein powder too if you'd like; I'm using the Vitol brand Vanilla Ice Cream flavor, which is great and not too sweet, it blends really well with everything. 

Banana Mocha Smoothie

1 banana, fresh or frozen

1tbsp almond butter

1tbsp Navitas raw Cacao Powder 

1tbsp flax seed meal

1/2c almond milk, or milk of your choice (homemade pictured)

1 shot espresso (optional)

1 scoop protein powder of your choice (optional)

Ice, as needed

Put all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. When you get the vortex in your blender, you'll know you've got an even consistency. 

Enjoy!

Pan Seared Sword and Curry Roasted Butternut Squash

Even though I generally do something a little special for Sunday dinner, I was really tired this weekend so I was pretty lazy on Sunday. Sure I went to the market and prepped some food for the week, but I also watched like 6 episodes of Arrested Development and made Tim buy me conditioner. It was that kind of Sunday.

Nevertheless! It's almost fall here in Texas! And by almost fall I mean it's 87 degrees outside with a breeze. Actually, we had a really nice week last week and it got me excited for gourds.

I picked up a small butternut squash at the market, I really think it was just over a pound, it was pretty cute. They also had swordfish steaks on sale. Usually I don't favor sword; its a large game fish and can get bruised in the fight to land one, and because of their large size they tend to have higher levels of mercury. However, the steaks looked lovely and fresh and the seafood guys were quite impressed when I asked for 12oz and proceeded to hand-select a steak weighing in at 0.76lbs. You do the math.

Swordfish is a really steak-y fish; it's thick and meaty and holds up really well on the grill as well. I pan seared these steaks as we were having some technical difficulties with our Weber, but they tasted really good.

Curry Roasted Butternut Squash

serves two

1 small butternut squash

1/2 yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

1tbsp olive oil

2tsp curry powder

1tsp garam masala

salt, pepper

Note: You'll want to start this a good 25 minutes before you're ready to start cooking the sword.

Preheat oven to 400F. Peel, seed, and dice your squash into 2" cubes. This is a very rough estimate; mostly just make sure they are all about the same size. Add all ingredients to a bowl and toss to combine.

Spread on a parchment or foil lined baking sheet and cook for 20 minutes or until fork tender.

Note 2: This dish was effing delicious. To the point where not only was I super impressed with my skills at ignoring food in the oven, but was also really happy with the flavors that came through. I will make this again, and probably in several other iterations.

Pan Seared Swordfish

serves two

12oz Swordfish steak, rinsed and patted dry

1/2tsp Garam Masala

1/2tsp Paprika

Salt, Pepper

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat with a dash of olive oil. Season one side of the sword and place seasoned side down in the pan. Season the exposed side while the underside cooks. You should be able to see the fish change in color as it cooks-it will go from opaque to milky white. However, much like a steak, you don't want to overcook the sword. Depending on the thickness, it should take anywhere from 4-6 minutes per side.

Once the sword is cooked, divide between plates and serve with the roasted squash and a green salad. The one pictured is baby spinach, baby arugula, and snow pea sprouts with a drizzle of oilve oil and some white balsamic.

Meatballs!

Paleo Meatballs with Tomato Sauce

Like most sane people, I really like pasta. Being the health conscious nutcase that I am, however, I generally avoid it like the plague, and even more so now with the WLC. Lucky for me, I think the part I love most about pasta is the sauce; I love the warm tomato-ness and the herbs and the fact that its somewhere between soup and solid food.

I've been modifiying my pasta dishes to either use zucchini noodles or cauliflower while Tim still gets the whole wheat spaghetti he loves so much. It works, and it really doesn't take that much extra time to prepare two different bases.

This weekend, I decided to get ambitious and make meatballs. I usually am not much of a red meat eater, but you can really only eat so much poultry and fish before someone (cough cough, Tim) starts balking. So in an effort to compromise, I decided to use half ground chicken breast and half ground beef for these meatballs. You could very easily do a mixture of pork and beef here, as well as ground chicken thigh, really the possibilities are endless. I chose to use chicken breast and 95% lean ground grass fed beef simply because these were some good lean protein options.

To the meat mixture, I added an egg and some grated zucchini to up the veg factor, along with the usual bevvy of herbs and spices-salt, pepper, garlic, oregano. I also really felt like some chopped up mushrooms would have helped give the flavor just an extra oomph, but I'll try that next time.

You can bake these meatballs in the oven, sear them in the pan, or simmer them in a tomato sauce. I chose the latter, knowing that the juices from the sauce would be absorbed into the meatballs which would impart both flavor and moisture.

One more thing to note, I made these on a Sunday and promptly froze them, knowing full well I had an easy dinner waiting at home for one of those hectic days we all tend to have.

Beef and Chicken Meatballs
serves two, plus leftovers

1/2lb ground chicken breast
1/2lb 95% lean ground beef, grass fed if possible
1 egg
1/2c grated zucchini
2 cloves garlic, diced
2tsp oregano
1tsp red pepper flakes
salt, pepper

Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix everything together with your hands. Or a spoon if you're not into that sort of thing.

Roll into equal sized balls and place on parchment-lined baking tray. I ended up with 14 meatballs, meaning that each meatball was a little more than 1oz of meat, if you're watching your calories or macronutrients. Cook as below, or freeze until ready to cook.

Meatballs; just ignore the Tito's in the background

Meatballs with Tomato Sauce

1/2 yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

1tbsp olive oil

1c sliced mushrooms of  your liking, I used baby bella mushrooms

2c Pomi strained tomatoes

2tsp oregano

1tsp red pepper flakes

salt, pepper

Heat oil in a deep skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions and the garlic, and soften for 3-4 minutes. Add the oregano and salt and pepper at this point. Add the mushrooms and let soften a few more minutes, then add the strained tomato (ps you can use any brand you want, I just like Pomi  because it comes in a carton and is just tomato).

Bring the sauce up to a simmer, then add your meatballs and let cook. While your meatballs are cooking, you can boil up your cauliflower and pasta (if someone is eating real pasta).

NOTE: I always cook my cauliflower/zuchhini noodles before I cook the pasta so that the starches from the pasta that end up in the water don't transfer to my veggies.

Turn the meatballs over at about the 4 minute mark, and let simmer for another 4-5 minutes. The longer they cook, the more flavor they will have, but this is also a dinner that is ready pretty quickly, which makes it perfect for a weeknight.

Once your bases are cooked, toss in a bowl and top with the meatballs and sauce. You can garnish with extra red pepper flakes and pepper, and some fresh basil or parsley goes nice here as well. I had some lovely farmers market cherry tomatoes that I used up here too. Tim got parmesan of course.

 Enjoy!