Tag Archives: healthy eating

Garbanzo Turkey Chili

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IMG_0352
Here’s a quick-fix meal I prepared a big pot of for myself this past Sunday.  I have been packing myself leftovers of it for lunch this week.  It’s high in protein, low in fat and super delicious and easy to make. Things like this make it easy to continue to eat healthy despite not getting home until past 8:30pm most nights.  🙂
Ingredients:
  • 1 lb of ground turkey. You can use either 94% lean/ 6% fat blend or ground turkey breast which is 99% lean/ 1% fat.  The turkey breast will be good but dryer.
  • ½ onion chopped, 2 cloves of garlic minced
  • ½ cup of diced carrots
  • ½ cup of diced sweet peppers (optional)
  • 1, 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes ( I used a “zesty jalapeno” blend)
  • 1, 15.5 oz can of garbanzos drained and rinsed, 1+ cups of chicken broth
  • 1 bay leaf
  • ¼ tsp. garlic powder
  • ¼ tsp. smoked paprika
  • 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper.
Directions:
  1. In large skillet, heat up 2 tbsps of olive oil.
  2. Saute onions, garlic, carrots and peppers until tender.
  3. Throw in ground turkey and break apart with spoon as it cooks.
  4. Once all the meat is broken apart and cooking, add bay leaf, can of garbanzos and can of diced tomatoes.
  5. Add chicken broth to moisten mixture and to keep ingredients submerged in sauce.
  6. Simmer on low heat for 15-20 minutes to allow seasoning to marry.

Enjoy alone or with some brown rice or tortilla chips! 🙂

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Salad

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pasta salad

Here’s a little something I came up with for my BBQ this past weekend.  Many of my friends are vegetarians and ALL of my friends are healthy eaters.  I thought this would make a great side dish (or main dish for any who preferred it).

This also makes a great picnic or potluck dish as there is no mayonnaise so it can be left out of the fridge for a little bit.  Actually, it tastes better at room temperature.  Bonus is that it is easy, filling and the recipe yields A LOT!

Ingredients:

  • 2, 12-16 oz boxes of tricolor rotelle pasta
  • 1, 16 oz package of fresh broccoli florets
  • 3-4 green zucchini
  • 3-4 yellow squash
  • shredded carrots
  • 1 pint of grape tomatoes, halved
  • 1, 8 oz can of small pitted black olives
  • 1, 12-16 oz container of crumbled feta cheese
  • Italian Dressing of your choice (I used Wishbone Robusto Italian)
  • Cayenne pepper to taste (optional)

Directions: 

Chicken Fajita Salad

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taco salad

Check out what I made from yesterday’s left-overs.  I made chicken fajitas last night and decided that, for lunch, I didn’t want to eat the left-overs wrapped in a tortilla.  Instead, I placed the meat and veggies over lettuce and tomato, used salsa as the dressing and voila!  A healthy, low-fat and super nutritious lunch was served.

Here’s how I made yesterday’s fajitas.

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb chicken tenderloins cut into cubes
  • 1/2 large onion sliced
  • 1 green bell pepper sliced
  • 1 orange, yellow or red bell pepper sliced
  • garlic powder
  • cumin
  • Sazon Goya Complete Latin Seasoning Mix with Saffron
  • cayenne pepper
  • olive oil

Suggested garnish ingredients:

  • 2% milk cheese (Mexican blend)
  • low fat sour cream
  • salsa
  • guacamole
  • shredded lettuce
  • diced tomato
  • whole wheat soft tortillas

Directions:

  1. heat a drizzle of olive oil in large skillet and toss onions and peppers along with desired amount of seasoning until veggies are slightly tender and are a bit charred.
  2. transfer to a plate
  3. using same skillet, heat up another drizzle of oil and cook the cubed chicken tenderloins with desired amount of seasoning
  4. throw both veggies and chicken together in skillet and heat through

Serve family style.  Let everyone fill their whole wheat tortillas as they wish with chicken/veggie mixture and garnishes.

 

March 6th: My Health

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blood pressure

Today I am grateful for my health, despite it not being where I want it to be, because I realize that it could be a lot worse.

I am struggling with my blood pressure once again.

I thought that I had it under control since I discovered it to be EXCEEDINGLY high (170/102) in 2009.  Since then I’ve done the “Dash Diet”, quit drinking coffee, eliminated salt and increased my exercise.  I’ll admit that since then, I’ve gone back to drinking a cup of coffee every morning and, on occasion, get a little too excited with the sea salt grinder but, is that enough to undo all my healthy eating and crazy running schedule?!

I can tell myself its not fair, I can decide to deny that its high and go about my day to day until I suffer the consequences OR… I can face the music and deal with it.

My doctor offered me some natural remedies a couple of months ago but, it appears as though they’re not working as well as I’d hoped.  Time to go back and take the next step.

January 25th: Knowing How to Eat Healthy

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health food medicine

 

As I was making myself another batch of veggie soup this afternoon, I thought about how happy I am that I know how to feed myself well.  It is so nice to be able to eat nutritious food and actually ENJOY it and not see it as being a chore.

Here are a few of my healthy OBSESSIONS:

  1. Chobani Greek Yogurt Passion Fruit on the Bottom (high in calcium and protein)
  2. Dark Chocolate (anti-oxidants)
  3. Red wine (anti-oxidants)
  4. Nature Valley Peanut Butter granola bars (high in fiber and protein)
  5. Arugula (High in Vitamins A, C, K and anti-oxidants)
  6. Tabasco sauce and Cayenne Pepper (high in vitamin A, speeds up metabolism and increases immunity.)
  7. Salmon with lots of lemon juice (Omega 3s and Vitamin C)
  8. Quinoa (high in fiber and protein)
  9. Bananas (high in potassium)
  10. Roasted Asparagus (over 100% of Vitamin K)

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 🙂