Lentil Soup

 This recipe comes from Recipe Tin Eats and it's amazing. I didn't make it exactly the same but close.

• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced (1 tsp minced garlic)
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 cups dried lentils, rinsed
• 14 oz can crushed tomatoes (I used fire roasted)
• 6 cups vegetable or chicken broth (I used 6 cups water and 2 Tbs vegetable Better than Bouillon)
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp coriander (I didn't have this so left it out)
• 1 1/2 tsp paprika
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 tsp pepper

Sautee onion, carrot, and celery in oil for ten minutes, adding garlic for last minute

add remaining ingredients

simmer for 40 minutes

use immersion blender to blend part of the soup to thicken (I did this but it was pretty thick and probably would have been fine without this. I also used the whole bag of lentils which was a bit more than 2 cups).

We had it with Pepperidge Farm's whole grain dinner rolls (found in the freezer section) and some apple cider to drink. It was a perfect dinner for our first crisp fall day.

The Best Bean Salad

I go on quests to find "the" recipe that I will always use. Sometimes I will try something different just for fun but will go back to my standard because it's the best. I shared a recipe for Cowboy Caviar which was pretty good but this is the recipe I will repeatedly use. The ingredients are pretty much the same (this one called for just black beans but the ingredients could be whatever I want) but the key is the dressing. Equal parts oil and vinegar and NO SUGAR. This recipe came from the website CookieandKate but I did not make it exactly like she did. I used canned beans and corn and bottled lime juice but it was still absolutely delicious. (I am still seeking THE go to baked bean recipe.)

VEGGIES

3 cans black beans, rinsed and drained (or 4.5 C cooked)

1 can corn, drained, or from 2 ears of corn, or 1 C frozen, thawed

chopped peppers (I used 1 orange, 1 yellow, and 1 red this time)

chopped onion

small tomatoes halved or quartered (she called for 1 cup but use as much as you like)

.5 C chopped parsley (or cilantro)

DRESSING

.25 C olive oil

.25 C white vinegar

2 T lime juice

.5 t chili powder

.5 t ground cumin

.5 t salt

Combine veggies, combine dressing ingredients, and mix the two together.

Broccoli Slaw

I was going to just cook broccoli but why do that when I had the ingredients to make this salad when it's 90 degrees outside? Cold foods for the win!

This is adapted from acouplecooks.com

@ 1.5 pounds broccoli florets, chopped

2 medium carrots or as much as you like, shredded

@ 1/3 C sunflower seeds

Dressing:

.5 C mayo

2 T apple cider vinegar

2 T maple syrup (or sugar)

.5 t celery seed

.5 t salt

Mix veggies and seeds. Mix dressing ingredients, pour into veggies, stir, refrigerate. Done. Quick and easy.

Cowboy Caviar

• .5 C olive oil
• .25 C sugar
• .25 C white wine vinegar
• 1 t chili powder
• 1 t salt
• 1 pound roma tomatoes, chopped
• 1 can black beans
• 1 can black eyed peas
• 1 can sweet corn
• 1 red onion, diced
• .5 C diced green pepper
• .5 C diced red pepper
• parsley

mix dressing, add beans and veggie, toss, and refrigerate

Ginger Glazed Carrots

6 medium carrots, thinly sliced (3 cups)
2 T packed brown sugar
2 T butter
1/2 t ground ginger

cook carrots in water 5 minutes, drain and set carrots aside
cook sugar, butter, and ginger in pan over medium heat, stir until bubbly
stir in carrots
cook 2/4 minutes over low heat until carrots are glazed and hot

Chili Beans

2 C pinto beans uncooked pinto beans, cooked (or 2 cans, rinsed and drained)
1 lb ground beef
2 C uncooked rice, cooked
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped/minced
2 T olive oil
1 T chili powder
1 t dried parsley
1 C salsa
salt
1/2 t sugar

brown onion, garlic, and ground beef in oil, sprinkling with chili powder
add salsa, parsley, salt to taste, and sugar
add beans, heat through
serve over rice

Chunky Vegetable Soup

This recipe comes from the blog Simply Sissom and it is very, very, good and very, very, healthy. I look forward to checking out more recipes from this blog!

• 1 TBS extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 sweet onion, diced
• 3 medium parsnips (or carrots) (I used carrots because that's what I had on hand)
• 1 bell pepper (I prefer red)
• 2 cups of sweet potato, peeled and chopped (I used butternut squash)
• 1 zucchini, chopped into half moons
• 1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
• 4 cups of chicken broth (Vegan- use vegetable broth) (I used vegetable broth)
• 3/4 t paprika
• 1/4 t garlic powder
• 1/2 t oregano
• 1/4 t onion powder
• 1/2 t basil
• 1/4 t thyme
• 1/8 t pepper
• 1/4 t sea salt
• 1/8 t white pepper
• additional Salt and Pepper to taste
• 1 Bay leaf
• 4 cups of baby spinach
• 1 can of black beans, rinsed (optional)
• 
  

Cook onion and garlic in olive oil for about 5 minutes, add all ingredients except beans and spinach. 

Simmer 20 minutes until vegetables are tender.

Add beans and spinach.

Soup Spice Blend

• 2 TBS of smoked paprika
• 1 TBS garlic powder
• 1 TBS dried oregano
• 1 TBS onion powder
• 1 TBS dried basil
• 2 tsp. thyme
• 1 tsp ground pepper
• 1 1/2 tsp fine-grain sea salt
• 1 tsp. white pepper

Kitchen Sink Quesadillas

I cannot believe I have not posted this yet. It is so easy that it is embarrassing. I don't remember where I got this recipe; it is not my own.

1 15.5 oz can black beans, drained
1 11 oz can corn, drained
3/4 C salsa, drained
8 flour tortillas
8 oz shredded cheddar cheese

mix beans, corn, salsa
lay four tortillas on a baking sheet lined with foil
spread 1/2 of the cheese
spread bean mixture
spread remaining cheese
lay remaining tortillas on top
bake @ 400 degrees for about 10 minutes

Yes, that is all. So quick, so easy, perfect for a night when you have about 1/2 hour to eat!

Clean Out the Freezer Recipes

This may be something I will never want to refer back to, ha ha, but if nothing else, maybe it will fuel some future inspiration. We went camping with a bunch of teenagers (most of them boys) and spent a lot of money on food. This week all of my sons are away, which leaves just me, my husband, and my daughter. So, the only thing I will buy this week for groceries will be some fruit, veggies, milk, and ice cream (the staples, lol). The dinner meals will be a collection of concoctions made from stuff around the house. Hoping I might find a gem in the midst.

Day 1: pasta with breakfast sausage and kale. Sound horrible, I know, but once I made it with frozen chopped spinach and it was good enough for me to write down on an index card (my system before this blog came into fruition). I don't have any spinach, fresh or frozen, but I do have a bag of chopped kale. My husband will be on board, he eats a salad with kale every day for lunch. I will be the one that has to choke it down, but hopefully that won't be the case. We have tons of breakfast sausage left over from camping, so we haven't seen the last of it! BTW, my daughter will fend for herself with some other goodies we have in the pantry and freezer.

Day 2: Daughter is having a sleepover birthday party, so we will buy pizza for her and her guests, but my husband and I will be having soup made with sausage, kale, beans, carrots, and celery. And some biscuits. This soup turned out really good, but I forgot about the beans! I added instant mashed potatoes to thicken the broth. I could have thickened it with the beans if I was thinking.

Day 3: We have some collard greens in the freezer too, bacon, and possibly some canned black eyed peas - oh, the possibilities!)

Day 4: By now my daughter may have run away... we have tons of canned soup in our storage pantry, leftover from hurricanes and other storms that took away our electricity. It's probably time to use some of them up, so I will start with those, then throw in some chicken from the freezer.

Day 5: Will have to see what is left, oh, never mind, it is my daughter's birthday, can't do that to her on her birthday. We will see what she wants. I am guessing it will be lasagna.

Pantry Taco Soup

As in eating right, not hurrying, although I do a lot more of the latter.  These days I am lucky if I get dinner on the table. My slow cooker has become my best friend. As a matter of fact, I bought a second, slightly smaller one. So far I have used it to cook potatoes for a side dish and it has worked great.  Here is a recipe that is quick and easy, albeit EVERY INGREDIENT IS A PROCESSED FOOD. So I think I will save this recipe for tax season. Or for the next natural disaster to come our way that causes a power outage. It is modified from Fix It and Forget It. 

Pantry Taco Soup

2 28 oz cans tomatoes (I used crushed tomatoes)

2 15 ox cans corn, undrained

4 cans beans, rinsed and drained (the recipe called for black beans, but I only had one can left so I used a can of black, garbanzo, kidney, and cannellini or white kidney beans)

1 packet taco seasoning mix

1 packet ranch dressing mix

shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips

mix first 5 ingredients in a slow cooker heat for 4 hours on low (or put it on your stove and heat through)

serve with above fixings

Four hours is too short a cooking time while I am at work, but since today was errand day, and I have to drive people around tonight during the time I should be making dinner, four hours in the slow cooker is perfect timing. If we didn't have power I could easily heat this on the side burner of my gas grill.

Good, Good Goulash

I got this recipe from the cookbook One Bite Won't Kill You. (One of the best things I got from this book was the answer to the question What's for dinner?  The answer?  Yuck, I hate it.  I've used this answer several times. Needless to say my kids hate that answer.

1 pound lean ground beef
1 small onion, chopped
1 small green pepper, chopped (does your grocery store EVER have a small green pepper???)
8 oz elbow macaroni, cooked & drained
2 cans condensed tomato soup (you know, Campbells)
salt & pepper to taste

saute beef, onion, & green pepper in large skillet over medium heat abt 10 minutes
stir in other ingredients, mix & heat

ALL DONE!

Now, the disclaimer:  the tomato soup makes a kind of sweet sauce, much like the tomato sauce in a can of Spaghettios.  This is supposed to be kid friendly. To be honest, my two younger kids didn't eat it, but my oldest kid loved it, and the adults are okay with it.

Easy, Delicious, and All For Me

Tried No Bake Energy Bites from Full Bellies Make Happy Kids. I will not repost the recipe here, just click on the link for the original recipe. They are easy, quick, and best of all, contain peanut butter, coconut and rolled oats which insures that they will be all for me because I think I am the only one in my family that likes all of those ingredients!

Ginger Glazed Carrots

The image comes from italicious.wordpress.com, but the recipe comes from Betty Crocker's Good and Easy  Cookbook.

These are super easy and super delicious.

Ginger Glazed Carrots

6 medium carrots, thinly sliced (I use my mandolin slicer so they are even thinner than in the photo above)
2 T packed brown sugar (isn't fun trying to pack brown sugar in a tablespoon?)
2 T butter
1/2 t ground ginger


In saucepan, barely cover carrots with water
Bring water to a boil, cover and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or until crisp-tender
Drain and set carrots aside
In same pot, melt and heat brown sugar, butter, and ginger, stirring constantly, until bubbly
Add carrots back to pot, stir and cook 2-4 minutes on low heat until carrots are glazed and hot.

Honey Grilled Chicken Breasts

photo source

This recipe comes from Spark People and was pretty tasty.

Marinade:

1/4 C orange juice (this called for fresh, I used Florida's Natural that comes in a carton)

3 T honey

2 T fresh lemon juice (I did use fresh this time)

2 T soy sauce (I used low sodium because of my water retention issues)

1 T peeled and minced fresh ginger (I used 1/8 t ground ginger)

1 T minced garlic

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (threw in some ground pepper only)

stir above ingredients together and marinate 6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

Grill until done

What I liked:

I am not going to lie, it is an adjustment to get used to the lack of salt, but this recipe was tasty even without it.  Of course there was some sodium provided by the soy sauce; as I posted earlier, even low sodium soy sauce is loaded with sodium.

Because there is no oil in this marinade, there was no flare up on the grill, and the chicken browned nicely.

Enough juice came off the chicken that it helped flavor the rice that I served with it.

About the rice and getting used to low/no sodium:

I thought I would beat salt at it's own game. I sauteed a mixture of brown and white rice in a teaspoon of olive oil with some very finely chopped onion (to fool my kid). Then I poured in the water and shredded a carrot and threw that in, covered and cooked for 35 minutes.  Blah, it was tasteless.  But then I got used to it, and kind of mixed my zucchini in with it. And it was passable.

See here is the thing. I have two more weeks on my diuretic, and then I have to see if I can control the water retention on my own with diet. Now I do not think that I took in a ridiculous amount of sodium before, at least not compared to everyone I know. So I suspect that my body is a bit inefficient at filtering the sodium. And I suspect that I will have to be pretty strict to be able to stay off medication. So I would rather not add sodium to foods and learn to live without it and let my taste buds adjust.

I am also a simple kind of gal. A very busy simple kind of gal. There is so much swimming around in my head at any given moment that I don't need any more crammed in there kind of gal. I bought one DASH diet cookbook, but I need SIMPLE EASY NO MORE THAN 5 INGREDIENTS kind of recipes. So, if I can learn to enjoy a plain rice, perhaps cooked with a vegetable or two thrown in, I will be very happy.

So I am not dismissing my rice recipe. Perhaps it is me that needs to be adjusted.

London Broil

One of my pet peeves is that there are numerous names for a cut of meat, and in the case of London Broil, well, that is the name of the recipe, not the cut of meat.  It is often referred to as flank steak.  My supermarket calls it top round.  Or maybe they are two different cuts of meat, but if that is the case, both can be used for London Broil.  Ugh.

Anyway, the top round was on sale  this week.  And it is such an inexpensive cut of meat and so good, I have no idea why I do not buy it more often.  My family loves it as much as any other steak.  It is lean, and really tasty.  Well the tastiness comes in part from the marinade, which is what I am sharing here.

This recipe comes from Allrecipes.com.  Here is the link.

Delicious London Broil

(this photo is from google images, although my steak looked like this)

Marinade:

1 clove garlic, minced (I just crush mine)
1 tsp salt (next time I will cut back on this - even with using low sodium soy sauce my son thought it was a little too salty)
3T soy sauce (I recommend low sodium, otherwise omit some of the salt)
1T ketchup (remember when it was called catsup?  when did it change?)
1T vegetable oil (I used canola)
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano

flank/top round/whatever steak  (the recipes calls for 4 pounds, my piece was only abt 2.24 pounds but I still made the same amount of marinade)

Score top and bottom of steak about 1/8 deep with a knife

Mix marinade ingredients, rub into steak

Wrap steak in aluminum foil (or put in a plastic bag, or in a covered dish...however you marinate your meat, I don't think it really matters)

Refrigerate for 5-6 hours  (I never think about dinner until late in the day, so I did not marinate it for that long, maybe two hours, but it was still very good)

Grill for about 15 minutes or until desired doneness, flipping once.

This was a big winner, as everyone loved it.  I served it with baked potatoes, green beans, and mushrooms and onions sauteed in butter and soy sauce.  Yum.

How About Some Tomatoes?

(this photo comes from Google images)

Another attempt to sneak in some healthy goodness to my otherwise high carb diet.

This morning a cut up some tomato and threw it in a pan, added an egg and scrambled.

I do not really like cooked tomatoes, but these were not in the pan very long.

Then I toasted a wheat bagel with one slice of cheese and made an egg sandwich.

Again, my usual choice would be a scrambled egg and a bagel, but throwing in the tomato took nothing away from the overall eating experience, and provided me with a serving of vegetables (well, probably half a serving).

Okay, I'm in Love

(photo courtesy of smittenkitchen.com)

I got this recipe from A Chelsea Morning.  You can find the original post here.

2 boxes cake mix

2 sticks butter (melted, but I left mine out on the counter and in the heat of the summer, it was plenty soft)

2 tablespoons water

2 eggs

2 cups chocolate chips, or peanut butter chips, or raisins, or whatever goody you want

Mix cake mix and butter

Add water and eggs

Add chocolate chips

Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes

The flavor combinations are endless.  I used Dunkin Hines Butter Golden flavor with semi-sweet chocolate chips.  What about Devil's Food with milk chocolate chips?  Spice cake cookies with cream cheese frosting?  Marble with mini chocolate chips?  Oh yum, I cannot wait.

* Now, I am a Toll House snob.  But this is so quick and the cookies come out crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, and I find them a very close second.  Very close.

Hope you like them!

Light the Grill...Meal #1

Our forecast says it will be sunny with occasional thunderstorms (which always happen when it is time to make dinner...), so I have been pulling out my cookbooks for the grilling recipes.  At my warehouse store I bought a large package of boneless chicken breasts which is good for two meals, a salmon filet, and a package of three ham steaks.  We will see how far that gets me.  I am hoping for a leftover night, but we will see.

Yesterday I grilled corn on the cob (without husks) which became our appetizer.  Then I mixed 1/2 C ranch dressing with 2 T french dressing and basted the chicken with it as it grilled.  (This idea came from Betty Crocker's Good and Easy Cookbook).  Everyone loved it and the chicken stayed moist and tender; and I am happy because I have two large bottles of ranch dressing to use up over the summer.  This recipe is a keeper.

Hoppin' John? Delicious

There appears to be many versions of Hoppin' John, black eyed peas being the main ingredient.

The version I tried came from a can of Bush Beans, however, I think it was so delicious because I used this particular brand of canned black eyed peas:

(Purchased from my local IGA)

Anyway, it was easy and very, very good, but not kid friendly. This is what Kraft macaroni and cheese is for, feeding the kids so you can have dishes like Hoppin' John.

Hoppin' John with Sylvia's Black Eyed Peas

1 C chopped onion

1 sweet red pepper, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 C cooked ham

2 T vegetable oil

2 cans Sylvia's Blackeye Peas

1/2 to 1 t hot sauce

3 cups cooked white rice

Salsa

Sour cream

Cook onion, peppers, and ham in oil for 4 minutes.

Drain peas, reserving 1/2 C liquid.

Add peas, reserved liquid and hot sauce to ham mixture; stir to combine.

Spoon over rice and top with salsa and sour cream, if desired.

(I didn't need the salsa and sour cream; it was tasty enough without it.)

Christy's Breakfast Cereal

I have tried to like oatmeal, but I just cannot stand the consistency of it.

(I even tried putting peanut butter and chocolate chips in it once. Yes, it was gross.)

I have also tried dieting many times and own numerous diet books.

Both of these factors lead to the discovery of my breakfast cereal.

One of my diet books (and if I could find it I would give proper credit)

had a recipe for homemade granola cereal, and this cereal stems from that idea:

@ 1/2 C rolled oats (I have quick cooking so that is what I use)

@1/4 cup dried fruit/fruit/nuts combo (I have a bag of trail mix leftover from something else and so that's what I am currently using)

skim milk

1/2 T maple syrup (not pancake syrup, but real maple syrup)

The oats are not cooked and they will soak up the milk so I use almost a whole cup of milk. Compared to other boxed cereals it is mushy. But, compared to cooked oatmeal, it so much better in my opinion. The maple syrup gives me the motivation to eat every last drop.