Category Archives: Recipes!

Recipe! Alternative salad.

January 22, 2014 – 9:22 am

We had sliders for dinner the other night. Or, in my case, slider. One is enough for me to feel full anymore, even though the taste is quite satisfying. It’s the carbohydrates in the bun that turn me off. Once in a while, I’ll have a second, without the bun.

Anyway, this isn’t about the sliders. It’s about the salad I made as a go-with for this meal. If you’re looking to make semi-lifestyle changes in the new year, a salad is a great way to replace something like french fries with something that’s more healthy, yet still filling.

My recipe is for a salad that’s a little different. Lettuce is not the main ingredient. I remember seeing Jamie Oliver doing something like this on TV a while back, but I’ve lost track of where and when. It’s a great change of pace when you’re sick of chopping up the lettuce and throwing something familiar on top. It’s actually a really great summer salad, but it works this time of year if you can find ingredients that you like.

I started with a large plate. It helps me to do this on a large plate first, but you can do it in a bowl too. Just give yourself enough space to work with without damaging the delicateness of all of the ingredients.

The recipe begins with a large carrot and a large stalk of celery. Then I got out my peeler. For a recipe like this, it helps to have a sharp peeler. But if you don’t have a sharp one, a little elbow grease will help you get the job done. Just give it a little effort.

I peeled the carrot and celery, then got out a couple of green onions (also known as scallions). I chopped the scallions in half, then sliced each half very thinly lengthwise. Once that was complete, I thinly sliced a medium-sized radish. I also added a little chopped-up red cabbage. Then I chopped some fresh cilantro to help add another layer of flavor. Oh, and I added some tomato too (campari tomatoes, quartered, if you want to know). I love tomatoes, and I almost never go without them on my salad.

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I made a lemon vinagrette to mix in with all of this. The lemon helped to mellow the strong flavors of the radish and cilantro. I’m not including the lemon vinagrette recipe… it’s basically red wine vinegar, some olive oil, and the juice from half a lemon. Add in salt and pepper to taste, if you like. So there. I did give you the recipe.

Okay… where was I? I added the lemon vinagrette, made sure my hands were clean, and gently tossed everything together. Sometimes you just have to get your hands messy. I used a large leaf from a head of romaine lettuce as a bed for the salad, and placed everything on top. What do you think?

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Total estimated carb count: I have no idea, really. I know there’s a little bit in the carrot, a little in the tomato, and a little in the lemon vinagrette. I’m gonna guess it’s 8g per serving, but that’s just a shot in the dark.

Making this salad was a fun experience, it was easy, it was quick. Next time you’re staring in the fridge dreading another salad, or if you’re looking for a super alternative to something more carby, this may be your answer.

Carb counts are estimates only. Check with a registered dietician to find out what a healthy carb count is for you.
 
 
 

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Recipe! Roasted Turkey Thighs.

October 16, 2013 – 9:37 am

This is not my own recipe… But it’s now mine in the respect that I’ll be going back to this one for some time.

Truth be told, there are two recipes not mine that are now mine in this post. Each with my own spin, based on what I had available at the time of preparation.

First, let’s talk about the salad. I saw Nigella Lawson do something like this on TV, then I added my own twist to it:

Begin with a couple of leaves of red leaf lettuce, then use fresh parsley for the rest of your greens. To that, I added little half-moon slices of red oinion, green olives, and thinly sliced peaches. On top I added some feta cheese. I served it with a peppery lemon vinaigrette (it sounds a lot fancier than it is), and it was delicious.

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Now, let’s talk turkey.

There was a sale on turkey thighs at the grocery store. I am not a turkey person, never have been. But The Great Spousal Unit is most definitely a turkey person, and I wanted to do something nice. Since I had never cooked turkey before (true), I went searching on the internet for an easy, but good looking recipe. I found it here. I only deviated slightly in the ingredients. The link has the recipe and some great in-progress photos, but if you don’t want to click over there, here’s the recipe, with the finished product below.

Herb Roasted Turkey Thighs Recipe

2 turkey thighs
A handful of garlic (I used 3 cloves), peeled
A handful of pearl onions, peeled (I didn’t have pearl onions, so I went with about half a red onion)
4 small potatoes, cut into chunks (I used two small-to-medium potatoes)
2 cups unsalted chicken broth
2 sprigs of sage
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 sprigs of parsley
2 bay leaves
a sprinkle of olive oil
salt & pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 400°F. Let turkey thighs sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes before cooking.
Gather a few leaves from each herb sprig and finely chop to make about 2 teaspoons each. Rub chopped herbs onto each side of the turkey thighs along with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Place thighs skin side down in a deep roasting pan. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Turn thighs over, then add potatoes, pearl onions, garlic, bay leaves and herb sprigs. Pour in broth and sprinkle all with a little more salt & pepper, then drizzle some olive oil on top. Roast for another 30-40 minutes, until thighs are done and potatoes are tender. Stir the potatoes once during roasting. Remove pan from oven, let thighs and potatoes sit covered with foil for about 20 minutes before serving. Place turkey and vegetables on a serving platter.

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Estimated carb count: 30 grams (though you might want to account for a little fat, since turkey thighs have a little more than say, breast meat)

Believe me, this tasted as good as it looks. If you luck into a sale like I did, this is a super autumn meal, even if you ditch the potatoes and just go for the salad and turkey.

 
 
 

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Recipe! Grilled Veg.

July 1, 2013 – 10:49 am

Seems simple… And it is.

This is the new summer favorite for The Great Spousal Unit. Go to a farm stand, find the best summer squash, onion, and pepper that we can find. The recipe is simple as can be.

Don’t blink or you’ll miss this.

First wash, then slice your vegetables in big enough widths to be skewered and stay on when everything on the grill gets hot. After that, you have your choice of waiting to skewer them so you can marinade them in your dressing, or just skewer them from the start and brush the dressing on later. As you’ll see in the photo, we did the latter.

The dressing begins with a simple vinaigrette:

3 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

¼ Cup extra virgin olive oil

Whisk the two together to emulsify. Once that’s complete, add salt and pepper to taste.

But wait… we’re not done yet! At this point, you also have the opportunity to get creative and add anything else you think might go well with this dish. We added lots of old bay seasoning. If you wanted to add some carbs, you could take some croutons or a couple of slices of bread and throw them into a food processor for about 15 seconds. Then you could sprinkle it into your mix as desired. If you wanted to brighten up things a bit, you could add the juice of a lemon or lime to add a citrus flavor. Your choice. But the vinaigrette gives you a nice base to start from.

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Then comes the fun part… the grilling. Get your grill super hot and toss on your skewers. Cook them 2 to 3 minutes on each side, and you’re done. The finished product looks like this:

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Estimated carb count per kabob: Are you kidding? Unless you’re adding the crouton or bread crumbs to this, this is a delicious, no carb dish. Hope you like it.
 
 
Do you do anything like this at your place during the summer?
 
 
 

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Recipe! Spring Goodness.

May 28, 2013 – 9:35 am

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Living on (or near) the east coast of the USA, you might get the impression that the environment around here is just a big concrete jungle. So I hope the photos above, from near Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, of the peonies from The Great Spousal Unit’s garden, and the salad made from lettuce out of our vegetable garden, help to prove to you that not everything is paved over here.

In our little neighborhood, Spring is the magical season. When all of the azaleas finally bloom, the oak trees green up, and the homeowners looking to sell put the For Sale signs out on their lawns. I start the vegetable garden sometime in April, depending on when I feel like it won’t freeze anymore. I cheat a little, in that I purchase plants at the nursery rather than start the veg from seed.

The lettuce is always ready first. We’re just about finished with the 10 heads of lettuce we planted this Spring, but we still have some spinach that will keep going for a while. That’s a lot of salad. But when it’s this fresh, you start to feel like you could eat salad for breakfast as well as for lunch and dinner. Once the lettuce is totally finished, I’ll pull up the plants and replace the lettuce with red skin potatoes, which will take longer but can handle the hot Summer sun a lot better.

Eating out of the garden helps you to understand how good, how fresh this whole farm-to-table thing really is. If you’ve got a little space, I can tell you from about 20 years of experience that growing your own fruits, vegetables, and herbs is absolutely worth it. Even before we bought our house, we were growing tomatoes and peppers on the balconies of the apartments we lived in. If you’re interested in trying to garden, my only advice is to pick something that’s easy, give it plenty of sun, and enough water. That’s about all it takes.

So about the recipe… this is just a simple salad that includes all of the stuff that I like to put on a salad. Your Appetite May Vary (YAMV). We paired the salad with a veggie burger on a potato roll, with a little Frisch’s Tartar Sauce and pickles. The juice in the photo was because my BG was low before dinner and the only carbs in the meal were in the salad dressing, tartar sauce, tomato, and the potato roll.

So we started the salad with romaine and red leaf lettuce from the garden. We also threw in some of our fresh spinach, and a little fresh basil from the garden… unconventional, but who cares? Then I chopped up a spring onion that I got from a farmer’s stand nearby and threw that in. We added some sunflower seeds (which I’m completely addicted to), and chopped up some olives and added them too. After adding a fat slice of tomato on top of my burger, I chopped up the rest (it was a small tomato). Finally, we sprinkled some shredded cheddar on top. We enjoyed it with about 2 tablespoons of Ken’s Lite Caesar dressing.

Total Carb Count: 68 grams
2 grams from the dressing, 3 grams from the tartar sauce, 3 grams from the tomato, 31 grams from the potato roll, and 29 grams from the orange juice.

The best part about this delicious meal is that it’s only one of several like it that we’ll enjoy all summer long, with different ingredients as they ripen throughout the growing season. I hope you’ve got a good garden of your own, and if not, I hope you find a local farmer that can help you bring the bounty of locally grown produce to your table this summer.
 
 
 

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Recipe… From whatever’s left.

March 18, 2013 – 10:09 am

I was away for a couple of days, and when I got back, I realized that it had been a while since I’d been to the grocery store. Since it was Sunday afternoon already, I found it difficult to get motivated to do it yesterday.

So I pulled together a salad for dinner that consisted of pretty much anything that was left that I could put on a salad. This isn’t so much a recipe as it is an exercise in emptying the fridge.

This salad consisted of:

– Lettuce, of course. You can tell from the photo that it’s the last of the head of romaine too. Not the nice, dark, green stuff from when you first bring it home. Oh well… someone has to eat this.

– Shredded carrots

– The last few olives left in the jar

– My last chopped green onion

– Some sunflower seeds

– Last of the turkey lunch meat

– And the last half of a tomato

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It doesn’t look like much, but it tasted really good with a little blue cheese dressing. I’m not even going to guess at a carb count for this, but it ain’t much, I can tell you that. Mostly from the tomato and the dressing, I suspect.

What’s the laziest, craziest thing you’ve ever made from whatever was left in the house?

More about my days away when I can figure out exactly what I want to say about them.

Happy Monday!
 
 
 

By StephenS | Tagged , | Comments (3)