Tag Archives: eggs

J’aime Les Oeufs

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The French have an obsession with eggs.  It might not be as high up in the ranks as butter, wine and stinky cheese but, trust me, eggs are up there.  In quiches, omelets, deep yellow brioche breads or served sunny side up with asparagus for dipping, the French love it all.  And in recent years, I too have developed a liaison amoureuse with these suckers.

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Besides the olfactory hallucinations I have of brewed coffee while on my weekend morning long runs, the second thing I begin to crave several miles in are my over-easy eggs and rye toast. I questioned whether this was even a healthy thing for me to indulge myself in every weekend as I’ve heard that eggs can raise your cholesterol.  The good news is that there’s TONS of research that shows that eggs are actually an extremely healthy, whole food and its not an “indulgence” at all.

Here is an article and brief video about the importance of eggs in the diet of athletes and how they actually DON’T raise your cholesterol.  So crack a few and enjoy!

How to Eat Like a US Olympian

Advantages of Eating Eggs- Competitor.com Video

 

Quick-Fix HEALTHY Huevos Rancheros

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As I’ve said before, I’m a creature of habit.  And that could not be more true than in the way I eat.  On a day to day basis I will have a green superfoods/ protein powder shake and a peanut butter granola bar for breakfast.  Its easy, its fast and its portable.

Thats fine while I’m at work and need to sip and eat between putting out fires with kids or co-workers but, sometimes, on days off I just need to eat real food.  Last Tuesday after a long bike ride, I came home with a hankering for some real breakfast but I wanted to still eat healthily.  Here’s what I came up with using 3 simple ingredients I had in my fridge. The results were delicious and totally crave-able.

Ingredients:

2 eggs, fresh salsa and some arugula

2 eggs, fresh salsa and some arugula

Directions:

 

April 29th: Tortilla Espanola!

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tortilla

Today I’m grateful for the opportunity to cook for someone and enjoy a lovely meal…In Spain a “tortilla” is an omelette, not a flat bread you stuff with beans and rice.  😉 A tortilla espanola is the most traditional and basic of these omelettes which are traditionally served as “tapas” or appetizers.  I make tortillas as my main dish on days that I don’t feel like making meat but want a non-soy source of protein.  Its delicious, easy, quick and impressive looking.

Here’s how I made mine!

Ingredients:

 

 

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  • olive oil
  • 8 eggs beaten and seasoned with salt and pepper
  • 1 large red potato or 1 average sized Idaho potato
  • 1/2 medium yellow onion sliced

Directions:

  1. Slice potato into small pieces and boil in water until tender
  2. in a deep frying pan, sautee sliced onions until translucent
  3. toss in cooked potatoes and lower heat to simmer
  4. pour in eggs and cover.
  5. Cook over low heat covered until bottom of omelette is golden.
  6. Flip and cook on other side until just done.
  7. Enjoy!!

I served mine with simple roasted asparagus and whole wheat baguette… and red wine of course!!

 

Nicoise Salad: Dinner in 10 minutes flat

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nicoise salad

After I came home today, I was starving and wanted to put something yummy together quick.  Good thing I recently bought groceries and had fresh produce in the fridge so I was able to whip up this awesome little go-to salad for dinner. Its my version of nicoise salad. This traditional French salad has only a few simple ingredients:

Ingredients:

  • lettuce- I use romaine and sometimes mix it with arugula (roquette lettuce)
  • tomatoes- I prefer grape tomatoes or mini plum tomatos
  • steamed green beans- “steam in the bag” packages are ideal for this
  • black olives
  • boiled eggs
  • tuna- you can use canned or fresh but this can be eliminated all together because you have enough protein with the boiled eggs.
  • boiled potatoes- I always omit this. The salad if filing enough without it.

Directions:

  1. Put 2 eggs in a pot of water and bring to a boil.  The minute the water begins to boil, set your timer for 8 minutes.  In the mean time….
  2. On a plate, put a layer of your lettuce of choice as the base of your salad.  Simply place the remainder of the ingredients in sections on top (think, cobb salad)
  3. Make your dressing.  Here’s how I make my favorite Balsamic Vinaigrette

4.  When the timer goes off, peel the eggs and place on top of the salad.  See how the yolks are super yellow and don’t have that yucky green/ gray ring around them?!  That’s ’cause you didn’t over boil them!  No more than 8 minutes for the perfect boiled egg.

5.  Drizzle dressing and sprinkle some cayenne pepper if you’d like (and I always like.)

Basically, you just made dinner in the time it took to boil those eggs… Enjoy!!

nicoise salad with tuna

This is another nicoise salad I made myself a while back.  With this one, I included fresh tuna.  It tasted amazing but it was kind of protein over-load with the eggs.  Plus, it was very expensive….  food for though 🙂

Healthy and Fast Weeknight Meal #1: Gazpacho

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Yummy and fresh

Yummy and fresh

I used to make the excuse that I was too tired to cook dinner after work waaaayyyyy too frequently. Unless I snuck over to my mom’s house and mooched a home-cooked meal from her, my excuses usually led to either too many calories (half a box of mac and cheese one night, the other half the next) or too few calories (a bag of low-fat microwave popcorn and a can of Coke Zero). Either way, the choices were horrible and the food tasted like crap… which, coincidentally, was how they made me feel.

The truth is, I was always the one that helped my mom prepare meals growing up and am usually her designated sous chef for holidays and family gatherings so, there was really no excuse for me not to have known how to feed myself a little better. Despite whatever culinary skills I may delude myself into believing I possess, however, you actually need very little (if any) skills in the kitchen to prepare some basic and healthy meals during the week. Trust me, your body will thank you and I bet you’ll save a lot of money as well. Take-out and prepared foods at the supermarkets are REALLY expensive and often not that healthy.

Monday afternoon, I received an email from my boyfriend with this link, along with the following message: “I’ve been craving gazpacho for a while. Would you make this for me, please?”

Spanish vegetable soup for dinner on the first day back to school and after a SERIOUSLY SWEATY hot yoga class?… I was up for the challenge!

Now, I may not be a lot of things, but one thing I am certain that I AM is practical. Practicality comes in handy when you need to get a task done quickly and efficiently. Weeknight Cooking Tip #1: The first thing you should always do when making a new recipe for the first time is analyze how you could simplify it without taking away its nutritional value or flavor.

If you open the link to the recipe, you’ll see that it calls for 2 lbs of fresh tomatoes. Can you imagine having to slice and dice 2 lbs of fresh tomatoes and adding water to get them to the right consistency?!… not to mention having to worry if they were sweet, unripe or mealy when you got them from the produce isle? In the words of Sweet Brown, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” Instead, I used whole, canned San Marzano plum tomatoes in their own juice. These can be bought in 1 lb cans and have a sweet flavor and the perfect texture.

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Everything else was easy. I just dumped it into the same bowl and blended it! Notice I said “bowl” and not “blender.” Weeknight Cooking Tip #2: Invest in an emersion blender (hand-held stick blender). It will be the best $45 investment you ever make for your kitchen and you will be eternally grateful to me for having given you the brilliant idea. It will save you so much time and mess that you’ll be more willing to make recipes that used to make your kitchen sink look like a war-zone. I use mine to blend my pumpkin soup right in the soup pot, sauces on the stove, smoothies in plastic cups and even salsas in their serving dishes.

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From prep to finish, I think the whole meal took me about 15 minutes to make. And voila! We had a pretty healthy and delicious dinner on the table.

The recipe suggests adding either basil or cilantro as a topping to the soup. Cilantro is DEFINITELY the way to go here because it pairs better with the chipotle, if you ask me. Some people have a bizarre aversion to cilantro, however, so do what tastes best to you…

How about the protein, you ask? Well, some gazpacho varieties are traditionally garnished with chopped hard boiled eggs. We always have a carton of eggs at home so I boiled a few of these up and served them along side the soup. If you are vegetarian/ vegan, however, it would be just as tasty with some sauteed extra-firm tofu cubes floating on top (maybe dust them with a little onion powder, garlic powder and cumin)!

Weeknight Cooking Tip #3: Make enough for left-overs! Guess what the best thing about this meal is?!… We had it for dinner today too, which meant NEITHER of us had to cook 😉

Do you have any go-to weeknight meals?
Is there a web site you love to go to for to search for recipes?
Any great cooking short-cuts you’d like to share?
Any great gadgets YOU think are must-haves for they kitchen?
Please share! As always, I love hearing from you.