Tag Archives: quick fix meals

Farro Kale Broccoli Bowls

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farro salad

While at the grocery store the other day, I went through the grain aisle and was going to pick up some more quinoa when I saw a bag of farro.  Its actually extremely healthy and packs tons of fiber and protein! I’d never tried it so I thought it might be fun to try to incorporate into dinner some how. Here’s what I came up with:

Ingredients:

  • farro: cook using package directions
  • raw kale (serious super food packed with tons of vitamins and minerals, delicious raw or cooked.)
  • broccoli and cauliflower florets (“steam in a bag” is ideal for this)
  • balsamic vinaigrette (see Nicoise Salad article for instructions on how to make this)

Directions:

  1. cook farro using package directions
  2. steam broccoli and cauliflower florets
  3. in a bowl layer farro, raw kale, florets and drizzle with vinaigrette

Delicious and insanely healthy.  So many vitamins, so much fiber and protein.  Couldn’t get simpler or more delicious 🙂

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 Fast Food?!… Weeknight Necessities

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bowl of black beans

So, in my house we eat pretty healthily. That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t eat really delicious, crave-able food. Most people associate eating “healthily” with eating very small portions of non-fat and tasteless food. We don’t believe in eating stuff we don’t like just ‘cause its healthy and we CERTAINLY don’t believe in starving ourselves ‘cause we LOVE to eat. We just like to eat food that makes our mouths water AND leaves us feeling good afterwards.

This often calls for a little creativity on our parts to alter recipes to fit our lifestyle. Some people may find substituting certain things a sacrifice but, once you make a commitment to eating healthy and delicious, you’ll find that the substitutions will be less of a sacrifice and just your taste buds’ preference. In an egg salad sandwich I made over the weekend, for instance, we substituted the mayo with olive oil and it turned out even more amazing than the Starbuck’s version we were trying to imitate! (mayo makes me want to yack)

Time is also of the essence in this household. Ain’t nobody got time to be making dinners from scratch every night. After coming home from work, going for a quick run and showering, the four of us are usually ravenous and ready to turn to cannibalism…. So, if we don’t put something on the table quick, its gonna to get ugly.

We’ve come up with a few go-to quick-fix meals that we like to make throughout the week. I’ll be sharing these with you, of course, and would love your feedback on other quick, delicious and healthy meals you fix for your families throughout the week.
Being that I’m half Cuban, the first recipe of our weeknight repertoire that I must share with you is my Black Beans and Rice. This very easy recipe is requested of me ALL THE TIME by my boyfriend’s youngest daughter. (She says she likes “Cristy’s Cuban Spices” which totally cracks me up.) Having eaten black beans a million times growing up, I was pretty amazed at how authentic tasting these are. I have discovered that I have a serious talent for doctoring-up canned vegetables. Who knew?!

black bean ingredients

Ingredients:

2 cans of low sodium, canned black beans
2 cups of low sodium chicken broth
1 small white onion (any kind of onion will do)
4-6 small sweet peppers
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. ground cumin (this is key)
1 envelope of Sazon Goya powder with saffron

black beans cooking

Directions:

Pour contents of both cans in a sauce pan or small pot and add the chicken broth. While you wait for that to come to a simmer, finely mince the onions and peppers and add along with the bay leaves and about a teaspoon each of the spices and the envelope of Sazon Goya. Simmer covered on low until the vegetables are soft.

Serve with white rice, of course! I’ll have a tutorial on cooking the perfect white rice soon (its an art)!

bowl of black beans