Tag Archives: weeknight meals

Garbanzo Turkey Chili

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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! 🙂

February 4th: Dinner and a Movie

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salmon dinner

Today I am grateful for someone to cook dinner for.  I’m pretty good about preparing myself a big pot of something over the weekend and eating it several nights in a row or fixing myself something quick and healthy on the fly after work.  What I DON’T do, however, is make myself any animal proteins when I eat alone.  (unless it comes out of a can, lol)

I acknowledge that this is silly and stupid.  Buying myself a small steak or my own fillet of fish at the grocery store is completely normal and would be a very beneficial to me but… I just don’t do it.  There is something ceremonial about making and eating a more formal meal like that.  I usually reserve that for times when I cook for someone which I LOVE to do.

In my house growing up, dinner was sacred.  No answering phones, no watching TV and no reading at the table.   We took some time to enjoy the meal my mother had lovingly prepared and talk about our day, laugh and enjoy each other’s company.  Thats what dinner is all about… eating something special and enjoying someone’s company while eating it.  On the menu tonight was salmon, broiled broccoli and white rice.  Here’s how I did it…

Salmon:

Ingredients: 

  • Salmon fillet (not steaks)  I find that salmon steaks are more bone and skin than you bargained for.  Figure 6-10 oz of salmon filet per person you are serving.  Trust me, you’ll eat it.
  • Lime or lemon juice (use fresh!! don’t destroy the awesomeness of the fish by dousing it with that GARBAGE they sell in the little lemon-shaped plastic containers)
  • sea salt
  • fresh ground pepper
  • cayenne
  • Optional additions: Onion powder and garlic powder

Instructions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees
  2. line sheet tray with foil
  3. rinse your filet of fish and pat the skin dry as much as possible and lay it skin side down directly on the foil.  This will assure that the skin will stick to the foil and easily slide off the fish.  (don’t have your fish monger take the skin off before hand.  It makes it juicy while cooking.  You just don’t want to eat it because its extra fishy tasting.)
  4. squeeze lime or lemon juice on flesh of fish
  5. season to taste
  6. Place fish in center rack of oven and check after 10 minutes.  Cook to desired temperature.  I like mine cooked through but some enjoy it a little rare in the center.

Broccoli:

Ingredients:

  • broccoli florets
  • olive oil
  • sea salt
  • fresh cracked pepper
  • cayenne (do you see a pattern here?)

Instructions:

  1. Line sheet tray with foil
  2. wash and trim florets to desired size
  3. drizzle with oil
  4. season
  5. roast at 400 degrees (below the fish i the same oven) and shake the tray frequently to make sure that all sides get crunchy.

Enjoy!!!…  Follow it up with a nice bottle of wine and a movie and you’ve got yourself a nice little evening if you ask me 🙂

Lentil Soup with (or without) Ham

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lentil soup

I love making a big pot of soup at the beginning of the week and having it for dinner a few nights in a row.  This saves me the hassle of having to prepare myself dinner mid-week and deters me from eating pre-packaged or processed foods if I’m too tired to cook something from scratch when I get home from a long day.  Lentil soup is very nutritious and low in fat so it makes a great choice for weeknight meal.

Ingredients:

lentil soup ingredients

  • 16 oz package of lentils (your color of choice)
  • 8 oz package of cubed ham (optional)
  • 1 vegetable or chicken bouillon cube
  • 1 envelop of Sazon Goya seasoning (found in the ethnic aisle of the grocery store.  I use the version that has saffron for both coloring and flavor.)
  • 6-7 cloves of garlic (trust me, once it boils for a while, it mellows out and is not strong at all)
  • 1 small onion or 1/2 a large onion
  • 1 package of baby carrots diced or 2 large carrots
  • 2-3 stalks of celery
  • 1-2 bay leaves
  • 5 small sweet peppers or 1 regular sized sweet pepper (yellow, orange or red)

Directions:

  1. Rinse lentils and pick out any pebbles, etc.  Fill pot with water about 2 inches above lentils.
  2. add bouillon cube, seasoning packet, bay leaves and all diced vegetables
  3. Let come to rolling boil
  4. Add ham cubes if desired.
  5. lower to simmer and cover.  Boil for 40 minutes stirring frequently and adding water if it thickens more than you would like.
  6. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired.

For more info on the health benefits of lentils, check out these links!

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/benefits-eating-lentils-4547.html

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=52

http://www.oprah.com/health/Dr-Oz-The-Best-Anti-Aging-Superfoods-Red-Lentils-Amaranth

Kale Soup for “chilly” Florida winter nights

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soup no spoon

Its cold out again tonight… and when I say “cold”, I mean its below 50 degrees.  I realize that this is by no means cold for the rest of the country but it is for us (me)!

A friend of mine has been bringing in a really yummy-looking cabbage soup to work this week for lunch.  It looked hardy and chock full of veggies and since I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like, I thought I’d give her recipe it a try.  I didn’t have any cabbage in the house but did have half a bag of kale in the freezer so decided to change it up.  I also went kinda nuts emptying out whatever veggies I had in the fridge and bought a few more at the grocery store before getting home from work.  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

  • 2, 14 oz cans of diced tomatoes (I used the “zesty jalapeño” flavor but plain is good too)
  • 1, 28 oz can of tomato puree
  • 1 beef bouillon cube
  • 1 envelope of powdered onion soup
  • 1 onion
  • 6 cloves of garlic
  • 4 stalks of celery
  • 3 carrots
  • 3 zucchini
  • 1 pint of mushrooms
  • quarter of a “calabaza” or yellow squash of choice
  • 1/2 large bag of kale

pot of vegie soup

Directions:

  1. pour contents of all canned tomatoes (both diced and puree) into a large stock pot and fill with about 8 – 10 cups of water.
  2. Add bouillon cube and onion soup envelope
  3. add chopped veggies
  4. Simmer until tender

Done!!  Soooo good and even better for you!!! Kale is a super food full of iron and tomatoes are rich in vitamin C and anti-oxidants.  Enjoy!

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.