Soba with Green Onions And Edamame

I am a cookbook hoarder. I admit it. *shuffles feet* Recently I posted a picture on FB of a whole stack of cookbooks that needed homes. A number of them are already with their new people. So what do I do? Go out and buy two more. In all fairness, I am trying to eat more vegetables (me, mind you, The Aussie wouldn't touch this stuff), and they are vegetarian cookbooks. They're also gorgeous!

Costco is a dangerous place for me when they have lovely cookbooks on display. I should blame them for my cookbook habit since I get so many of them there.

I've spent several evenings, before it gets too dark and before the bugs come out, browsing through these books. The pictures alone make me want to make these recipes. I joked that they make me want to cook eggplant, and I really don't like eggplant.  One picture that I thought looked so gorgeous was this one. I know the lighting wasn't great, but trust me, it is a beautiful picture.

The picture goes with the recipe for rice noodles with green onions and edamame. Strangely enough, considering I didn't care for edamame the first time I ever had them (mushy, like lima beans), I had a bag of edamame in the freezer. In fact, I had a lot of the ingredients from this recipe, so I made it during lunch today. Since I am absolutely INCAPABLE of actually following a recipe, mine looks nothing like this. In fact, I made a whole bunch of substitutions because I used what I had. It was delicious.

Soba Noodles With Green Onions, Edamame and Green Beans (inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe from Plenty More)

1 bundle of soba noodles
2 tsp oil
1 bunch green onions cut in to bite sized pieces
1/2 half Hatch chili pepper, diced (I had it, never had them before, didn't know if it was hot...)
2 "peppadew-style" peppers, diced (addictive little things, aren't they?)
1 cup edamame
1/2 cup cut green beans
1 tsp garlic paste *
1 tsp ginger paste *
2+ Tbsp cilantro paste *
1 tsp sesame oil
1 small drizzle of chili oil
2 Tbsp ponzu sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp True Lime powder

* I adore the squeeze tubes from Gourmet Garden. I don't care what food snobs say, these are great.

Bring water to a boil in a medium sized sauce pan and cook the soba noodles for 5 minutes, or as directed on the package.

In a saute pan, over medium high heat, drizzle the oil in to the pan.  When it is hot, toss in the onions, edamame and green beans cook for a minute. (I used this time to dice the peppers) Stir in the chilies, garlic paste, ginger paste and the big squeeze of cilantro paste. (The original recipe calls for 1 cup of chopped cilantro. My little AeroGarden doesn't grow that much so I used my trusty squeeze tubes.) Stir to combine. You can either mix the "sauce" ingredients in a small bowl or just add them directly to the pan, like I did.

Drain the soba noodles and rinse quickly with cold water. Add them to the pan of vegetables to coat them in the sauce. Serve and enjoy!

Easy Vegetable and Seafood Paella

It's no secret that my husband is a picky eater. I cook a lot of dishes that he has no interest in eating. Luckily, I have the opportunity to cook dishes that I'm interested in eating during my lunch hour.  I have also been trying to cook from my pantry and freezer so that I use things up before shopping for more. Yesterday I spied a bag of mixed seafood in the freezer. Usually I make bouillabaisse, but I didn't want to make that for lunch. I rummaged through the pantry and decided that I would try to make paella. Since I'm trying to cut back on eating meat, I wanted to make it a vegetable and seafood paella. I also wanted to use up a bunch of veggies I had in the not-so-crisper drawer. I know that I totally did things out of order, but hey, it worked. :) Some will say it isn't a true paella if it isn't made with chicken, or with sausage. Oh well. I will go with my version of paella today and enjoy it.

Vegetable and Mixed Seafood "Paella"

2 T olive oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms (4 really large baby bellas)
1 cup arborio rice
1/4 c white wine
1 orange bell pepper cut in thin strips (use what ever color you have on hand)
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
1 can artichoke heart quarters, drained
2 cups frozen mixed seafood (shrimp, calamari, mussels, scallops)
2 cups broth
1 small pinch saffron
1 t smoked paprika
1 T garlic powder
1/2 t salt

Heat a large, heavy bottomed pan over medium high heat. When pan is hot, drizzle in the olive oil. After a minute the oil should shimmer. Add your diced onion and stir around. Cook until softened, about 2 minutes, then add in the garlic. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to make sure the garlic doesn't burn. At this point, I should probably have added the rice, but I didn't, I added the mushrooms. Feel free to do it in reverse order. I added the mushrooms and then the rice. Stir the rice to make sure it gets a light coating of the olive oil, and cook for about 5 minutes. Next, I de-glazed the pan with the white wine, stirring to scrape up any bits on the bottom of the pan. Stir in the bell pepper, diced tomatoes, artichoke hearts and the seafood. Pour in the broth and the spices, mixing everything together so that the broth is distributed evenly.

Turn down the heat to low and cover. I set the timer for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes, I stirred the mixture to make sure the seafood was cooking evenly, covered it up and set for another 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I removed the lid, stirred again, raised the heat to medium to cook off excess liquid for a few minutes.  Before serving, check your seasoning and remove any mussels that didn't open.

I have a confession to make. For lunch, hot, it was delicious. For leftovers cold, it was even more delicious. When I was packaging the leftovers later I was eating more. Then I spied the muffaletta olive salad in my fridge. This is a mixture of marinated olive pieces, carrot, small bits of cauliflower that I get at the antipasto bar at Kroger. I've made "Spanish" dishes that had olives in it, why not this. So I spooned some in to my bowl with the cold paella. It was absolutely delicious. It added just the right briny kick to the dish.  Perfect. My second confession. I just had cold paella for breakfast. I'm a happy girl.

Paleo Shepherd's Pie - Yes, I'm doing Whole 30 again

Happy June. It's hard to believe that it's already June. We've had so much rain and so many stormy days this spring, I thought we'd never have sunshine and heat. Not that I'm looking forward to 100+ degree weather, but cold and rainy is strange for May in Texas.

So, I have gotten a bit off track with my eating recently. Yeah, right. I totally have derailed. My hip is better, thank goodness, so I'm not in pain all of the time anymore. The Airrosti doctor did a fantastic job on my hip and hamstrings. Not a painless treatment method, by any stretch of the imagination, and I was left with some interesting bruises after my sessions, but I'm not in chronic pain anymore. Yay!  The pain did a number on me mentally. I couldn't work out, I couldn't run, even sitting became painful after a while. Did I watch what I ate? No. Unless you counted watching it disappear in to my mouth. I have no excuses for what was available to eat. I do the grocery shopping and the cooking, after all. If there are Doritos in the house, I let them in. When The Sisterhood mentioned that they were starting a Whole 30 on June 1st, I took it as a sign to get back on track. This thought was reinforced by seeing how round I look in pictures. (We got our picture taken with two of the guys from Firefly at a recent fan con.) That's life. Time to move on.

Back to the Whole 30. When I tried this a couple of years ago, I went a bit crazy on the coconut oil wagon. Bad mistake. It does not agree with me in the slightest. I had so many strange reactions that I quit halfway through the 30. I am committed to following this at least through Fitbloggin. Hopefully I'll be back on track enough by then that I don't get too crazy.

Part of following this plan is thinking about what I'm eating. I can't rely on having some cheese when I get hungry or having a sandwich for lunch. I can't even rely on sauces or salad dressings to spruce things up because so many commercial foods have sugars and starches in them. That leaves me with a bunch of whole food ingredients, standing in my kitchen, trying to figure out what to make to eat that will make me happy. Today, it's shepherd's pie.  I was going to call this post "everything but the kitchen sink..." shepherd's pie, but then I thought, no, if the kitchen sink is paleo, it's going in there, too. It was more of a clean out the fridge shepherd's pie. I had half of a large box of mushrooms that needed to be used, a head of cauliflower, a partial bag of green beans, part of an onion... you get the picture. I think the only vegetables I didn't use were the beets, zucchini and the clam shell box of "power greens."

Paleo Shepherd's Pie (serves 6 generously)

1 T olive oil

8 oz mushrooms, sliced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

4 celery ribs, sliced

¼ cup diced onion

1 cup fresh green beans, chopped

1 20 oz package lean ground turkey

1 T garlic powder

1 t ground thyme

3 T tomato paste

1/2 c chicken stock

1/4 t cayenne pepper

1 T no-salt seasoning mix

1 T parsley

1 t marjoram

salt/pepper to taste

Thickener: 

1 T kudzu (you can use cornstarch if you aren't making this paleo)

1/4 c chicken stock

Topping:

1 head of cauliflower, chopped and steamed

1 sweet potato, chopped and steamed

1 T ghee

salt/pepper to taste

drizzle of olive oil

parsley flakes

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Heat a medium sized skillet over medium high heat. When pan is hot, drizzle in the olive oil. Saute the mushrooms until soft. Add in the ground turkey, using a spoon to break it in to small pieces. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until meat is no longer translucent. Add in the carrots, celery, onion, green beans, tomato paste, spices and chicken stock, stirring well to combine. 

In a small bowl, combine the kudzu and chicken stock, stirring until there are no lumps. Add this to the mixture in the skillet and stir. 

Let mixture simmer for 15 minutes to let the vegetables soften. While this is happening, chop your cauliflower in to florets and peel and dice the sweet potato. I use Ziploc steamer bags to cook my veggies in the microwave. Follow cooking times on the bags. When these are cooked, place the cauliflower and sweet potato in bowl, add the ghee and salt and pepper. Mash with fork or use a stick blender until fairly smooth.

Spoon turkey mixture in to an 8x8 baking dish, making sure the vegetables are evenly distributed and that the ground turkey doesn't have any large chunks.

Spread the mashed cauliflower/sweet potato mixture on top, smoothing the surface with the back of a spoon. Top with parsley, black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. 

When it's piping hot and lightly browned on top, it's done! This really hit the spot today. I wanted something creamy, but I couldn't rely on dairy. It's meaty, but not too meaty, and it's full of really tasty vegetables.  This is so good, I'm kind of glad The Aussie isn't a turkey or veggie eater! More for me!

A Ninja, A Sweet Potato and A Waffle Iron Walked In To A Kitchen ...

Welcome to Trash The Kitchen Tuesday! Actually, I trash the kitchen most days, if I'm cooking. I like to cook. Cleaning up, not so much. And may I say, having a microwave oven that also works as an Advantium speed oven lets me trash the kitchen so much quicker!

Yesterday, for my #30DaysOfThankful I posted a picture of my kitchen. After reading Carla's post, Meet My Friend Melvin, I realized that I let way too much food spoil. Not everyone can, after paying their rent, their bills, their child support, etc, afford to feed themselves. This morning, pondering what to have for breakfast, I decide to use up some things that I had in the pantry and the fridge: two partial onions (one red, one white), half a poblano pepper that was on its last legs, two sweet potatoes that were growing alien tentacles, err, sprouting, and one regular baking potato. The first thing that came to mind was trying to make waffle iron hash brown/latkes, but I didn't want to do a lot of shredding. So, I washed off all of the sweet potatoes and threw them in the Advantium to bake. In the meantime, I chopped up the onions and minced the poblano. When I got the potatoes out, they were only partially cooked, so I scooped out what was soft and put the rest back in to cook more. I took the cooked potato and put it in to my new Ninja. Ninjas rock, by the way. I added most of the onion and half of the poblano, along with a splash of milk. I blended that until it was fairly smooth, then I cracked in two eggs and blended again until it was smooth, like a batter. (Oh, yes, that is savory jerky from Rachel Ray, another awesome Fitbloggin sponsor, in the background. I picked it up yesterday at the grocery store. The dogs love it.)

By this time, the rest of the potatoes were cooked well enough, so I scooped them out and put them in to a bowl, along with the rest of the chopped onion and poblano pepper. Using a fork, I mashed the mixture until there were only small lumps.

 In went the Ninja batter, along with a pinch of salt, and I mixed everything together.

Next, I added a cup of Bob's Red Mill GF Flour Mixture (feel free to use regular flour), half a cup at a time, mixing to incorporate the flour and leave no lumps. I looked at it and thought, this would be really  nice with a side of bacon. I don't have bacon. :(  Oh, wait. YES, I HAVE BACON!! Thank you, Costco. I had a bag of bacon crumbles in the freezer. Forget having bacon on the side. I'm having bacon IN my sweet potato waffles.

I let the batter rest while the waffle iron heated up. My finger can attest that it heats up very quickly, thank you very much. I drizzle a little olive oil on the waffle iron and spoon in the batter, spreading it out fairly evenly. Pressing down, I anxiously await the light to go from red to green. Yay! It worked!

Breakfast dilemma solved, and I didn't let foods go to waste. Savory sweet potato waffles, topped with a little butter. To make it even more sweet/savory, after I took this picture, I spread a little bit of my maple butter from Raymond Sugarhouse in Hartland, VT.  If you love all things maple, and like to support small businesses, please consider ordering from them. Everything I have tried of theirs (maple syrup, maple candy, maple butter, maple cream, maple crunch peanut butter and maple crunch peanuts) are amazing.

Back To Basics - Starting With A Healthy Breakfast

Yesterday I shared my limerick about a patio swing breaking because Sparkie and I have gotten fat. Her for the first time, me for, um, not the first time. Granted, the swing has been out in the Texas elements for 8 years, so it's a bit worse for wear, but it's not entirely to blame for the incident. So this morning I dusted off some of my healthy living books in anticipation of getting back to basics. (Side note: when someone tells you it's harder to lose weight when you're in your 40s, believe them.) To start my journey back to healthy living, I made breakfast. Not any breakfast. A healthy breakfast.

Baked Swiss Chard and Kale Eggs (serves 2-4, depending on how hungry you are)

4 slices bacon, cut in to bite sized pieces
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 10 ounce bag of chopped swiss chard, big stems removed
1 container baby kale 

1/2 can diced tomatoes
1 T hot sauce
Splash of red wine (optional)
1/8 t grated nutmeg
1 cup plain yogurt
1 t black pepper
4 eggs
Sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350

Note: I partially cooked my bacon in the microwave because I got it out of the freezer. I transferred the bacon to the pan with just a little of the drippings.

In a large pan, cook the bacon over medium high heat until crispy. (I like really crispy) Add in the sliced onion and cook until the onion has softened. Add in the chopped swiss chard and the kale, stirring well, and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the greens have wilted down. Next, stir in the diced tomatoes, hot sauce, the splash of wine if using, black pepper, nutmeg and yogurt. Mix well, so that the yogurt is blended in. Simmer for about 5 minutes, or until most of the liquid has evaporated.

Spoon mixture in to a baking dish. Make in "indentation" in the vegetables and crack an egg in to each. Sprinkle with the cheese and back for 20-25 minutes.

Messy Meatballs

The other day, I saw a picture of some breakfast meatballs on the ever changing Book Of Face. I frequently eat leftovers for breakfast, so the idea of breakfast meatballs appealed to me. If you think about it, meatballs have the potential to be the perfect eat at your desk finger food. Since I already had breakfast, I set about to make these lunch meatballs. During my lunch hour, too. Perfect. The original recipe called for shredding and then re-shredding the sweet potato in your food processor, followed by the onion, followed by the mushrooms... Ain't nobody got time for that. I'd be starving until next week. I remembered what the demo guy at Costco said about using a Vitamix to finely chop veggies (You add a lot of water, blend them, then drain), so I tried it. It worked really well. To a point. I really should have drained the veggies longer. The mixture was really moist (I hate that word) so I added in two whisked eggs as binder. Hmm. Still to wet. What absorbs liquids. Ding ding ding. Chia seeds. So I have extra goodness in the form of chia. And they tasted really good, too. Win-win-win.

Messy Yummy Meatballs

1 sweet potato, finely grated
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup mushrooms, finely chopped
2 cups baby spinach, blended
3 Italian sausage links (mine were mild), removed from casings
1/2 pound lean ground pork
6 slices of bacon, cooked very crisp, crumbled
2 eggs, whisked
1/4 cup of chia seeds
1 T garlic powder
1 T Worcestershire Sauce

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cook the bacon strips until they're super crisp. Crumble and set aside.

Next, shred-chop-blend the peeled sweet potato, onion, mushrooms and spinach. I blend-chopped and drained the peeled sweet potato, the onion, the mushrooms and the spinach, then combined them in a large bowl.

Next, add in the sausage and the ground pork, mixing well. Whisk the eggs and work in to the sausage and veggie mixture. Mix in the chia seeds, garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce and the bacon crumbles.  

Form in to 1 1/2 inch meatballs and place on a foil covered baking sheet. You may like to spray with non-stick cooking spray to make removal easier.  Bake the little yummies for 30 minutes. 

I didn't bake up the entire mixture, but I plugged the recipe in to my My Fitness Pal account so that I could track lunch. Estimating that the entire batch would make 8 servings, the per-serving nutrition comes out to 261 calories, 12 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of fat, 16 grams of protein, 390 grams of sodium, and 4 grams of fiber.


Enjoy!

Auld Lang Syne

'Tis the season to reflect on the year that is coming to its close. For the last couple of years, the reflecting hasn't been easy or comfortable. I never really got back on track with my working out and tracking my eating in 2013 after going off the rails in late 2012, after we lost my mother-in-law. I'm still somewhat active, with walking dogs and doing stuff at our ranch, but it isn't goal driven activity.  I feel like I was a different person that year, and truthfully, I kind of miss her.  So, to borrow the words of the great poet Robert Burns, she's an old acquaintance who shouldn't have been forgotten.

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne ?


A friend recently posted about the pendulum swing of the Gemini psyche. It made me think about how my own pendulum has swung too far away from "health" mode and I've gotten off balance. I'm not happy about it, either. Emotional eating doesn't make the stress go away, it just adds something else to make me unhappy and stressed out about.

It's time to dust off my running shoes, charge up my Garmin, and take back control of my whirlwind life. Extra motivation comes from the fact that I registered for a half marathon in April, so I don't want to waste the money by not training. I've also contributed to a yoga Kickstarter program that debuts this spring. I've meant, time and time again, to start practicing yoga, so this will also be motivation. Hopefully nagging from another friend will help, too. Another area I need to focus on is healthy eating, cutting back on the grains and junk foods that I know aren't healthy for me. I used to eat so much better, but I really have let things slide this year. And no more GF goodies, either. Just because it's gluten free doesn't mean I should be eating it.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend !
And give me a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.

May you have a blessed 2014.

We're gonna need a bigger boat

Okay, maybe not a bigger boat, but certainly a bigger fridge. I was stalking Sisterhood of The Shrinking Jeans' Christy and Melissa over at Real Oilfield Wives recently, and came across a post mentioning a food co-op called Bountiful Baskets. Curious to see if they had a location near me, I hopped on over to their website. Not only did they have one near me, the had one in my town! Unable to resist, I signed up and made a contribution for the weekly basket. Unsure of what to expect, I also contributed for an "Italian Pack" add-in and two "Juice Pack" add-ins. Remind me, next time I contribute, not to get so much. My fridge is jam packed, I've re-tasked my salad bowls to be fruit bowls, and I spent half of yesterday cooking vegetables. Part of that time was spent just staring at the counter, wondering what on earth to do with all of the stuff! 

This isn't even everything. Not pictured are the bags of carrots, all the fruit, including two pineapples. In no particular order (all packs mixed together), I got:

1 bunch of spinach
4 ears of corn
4 Asian pears
6 peaches
10 limes
4 lemons
6 apples
1 bunch of bananas
1 head of romaine
2 bags of carrots
2 bags of baby carrots
2 heads of celery
3 bunches of parsley
1 container of mushrooms
1 eggplant (donated)
3 avocadoes (donated)
2 bunches of beets, with greens
2 pineapples
2 bunches of kale
4 zucchini
2 yellow squash
1 leek
1 head of garlic
several springs of fresh rosemary
several springs of fresh oregano
several springs of fresh basil
6 Roma tomatoes
2 yellow onions
1 red onion
1 hatch chilies
3 green peppers
2 chunks of ginger

So far, I've made an eggplant-less ratatouille, bacon braised kale, and kale with pine nuts, raisins and capers. The Aussie asked what I was going to do with all of it. My reply? Eat a !*&$% load of veggies this week.

Whole30 Day 1 Wrap Up - Well that sucked.

So, yesterday was day 1 of #Whole30. I ate well. I had my egg foo yung for breakfast, black coffee. For lunch I had two Applegate Farms organic (no nitrites, uncured, grass fed, etc) hot dogs and kale sautéed in coconut oil w/garlic. For dinner I had steamed chicken and broccoli, with coconut aminos and cayenne pepper. I had a peach as a morning snack and a handful of raw pistachios in the afternoon. Aside from the black coffee, I just drank water yesterday. When I plugged everything in to my eTools on Weight Watchers, I found out that I underestimated the points value for the hot dogs and was actually under my daily points. Well, that never happens. Since I couldn't make a meeting last night I went and weighed in during my lunch hour. Up from 167.7 in the a.m. to 171. This morning I was 169.9. (Yes, I know we aren't supposed to be weighing ourselves all the time, I just wanted some positive feedback after one day of clean eating and a crappy sleepless night. Didn't get any.)

I went to bed early (for me if I'm not falling asleep on the sofa, only to wake up at 2am and head to bed) so that I could get up early and take the dogs for walks before the sun came up. Didn't happen. That was one of the WORST nights sleep I can recall having in a long time. It was one of those "I'm lying here, in the dark, with my eyes closed, but I know I'm not asleep" kind of nights. When I did get some sleep, or what passed as sleep, I had these really weird dreams.

Needless to say, I'm really dragging today. Since it will be over 100 again today, I won't take dogs out until the sun sets. I just might be napping during lunch today. Or menu planning.

Whole 30 Day 1 - Dear Diary, I said I'd do what??

Dear Diary:

Today is my first day of doing #Whole30. This might not be pretty. I warned The Aussie that I was cutting a bunch of stuff out and that the first few days might be a bit rough. He's been warned. Today I'm having my coffee black. It's not too bad. I haven't used Splenda in my coffee for a month or so, so I have a head start.  I made a big egg foo yung type frittata for breakfast. Mushrooms, celery, bean sprouts (canned, because Kroger didn't have fresh), carrots, bell pepper, scallions and onion, 5 eggs, cooked in a little coconut oil.

It was humongous. I ate half of it, kind of wishing there was cheese in there, and it tasted pretty good. The Aussie even came sniffing towards my plate. "I thought I smelled omelet." The other half is being saved for breakfast tomorrow. 

I weighed myself first thing this morning. 167.7. Meh. Could be worse. I can't make it to my WW meeting tonight, but I'll go during lunch to weigh in. We'll see how this goes. I have a snapper filet in the fridge that needs to be used up. Might be good grilled. That could be lunch today. Not sure about dinner yet. Maybe baked chicken. I'll have sweet potato and The Aussie can have regular potato. I bought a bunch of broccoli the other day, planning on using it for a beef and broccoli stir fry, but maybe I'll use that for dinner tonight instead.  I'll keep you posted.  Bye for now.

Kyra