Freebie

I don't often use pre-packaged meals. I cook nearly everything from scratch. However, I do have to admit that sometimes I just don't get around to it. Like this morning, there is no food in the house because our weekend was so hectic and I didn't get to the grocery store. So in these instances, I may fall back on a frozen meal for my lunch.

Kashi is sending out coupons for a free frozen entree. Get yours while it lasts. It sure would be nice to have that in my freezer this morning to take to work, instead of getting to play guess the mystery meat in the hospital cafeteria!

Free Kashi Frozen Entree

Green Smoothies

The lack of greens in my diet lately prompted me to try an unusual recipe - green smoothies. If you can get past the odd appearance (or disgusting as my kids so delicately put it), these are actually quite good. You can't taste the spinach at all. The beauty of smoothies is that you can throw in whatever fruit you have, and it will still be tasty.

Green Smoothie

1/2 cup kefir (or yogurt)
1/2 cup orange juice
Roughly 3 cups spinach
1 banana
1 apple, peeled, cored, and sliced
1 cup of frozen fruit of your choice (strawberries or blueberries are good)

Pour the kefir and orange juice into the blender. Fill to the top with baby spinach leaves. Blend on high until spinach is broken down and mixture is smooth. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth. Makes about 3 - 1 cup servings. I found that this freezes well. Just thaw it the night before and stir it up a bit.

Note: If your blender can handle it, leave the apple unpeeled for extra fiber. Just core and slice.

Maple-Glazed Salmon

Let me just start off by saying that I don't like fish. I think it stems from memories of the nasty smell that filled the house the one time my mom made fish sticks when I was growing up. Or it could be that I have some sort of weird mental block because I always had fish as pets when I was little. Whatever the reason, the thought of eating fish totally disgusts me. I always feel like a bit of a hypocrite when I am counseling cardiac patients to eat fish because of the benefits of the omega-3s. I hate counseling them to do something that know I won't do myself. (I could go off on a tangent here about how my preceptor made me try Ensure since I am so fond of recommending it to patients, but I will save that fun experience for another post.) Anyway, for awhile I was subjecting the family to tilapia once a week to get those beneficial omega-3's. That ended though when I read a study in the ADA journal about how farm-raised tilapia really isn't such a great source of omega-3's after all. I was greatly relieved to no longer feel obligated to put it on my menu. I recently found a recipe in a magazine that has convinced me to give fish another try. According to Mr. Organic, salmon has a better flavor than the tilapia we had been eating. Of course this was the same man who somehow convinced me to try calamari in Cancun by telling me it tasted like chicken!

Maple-Glazed Salmon (From the Dec. issue of All You magazine)
2 tbs real maple syrup
2 tbs dijon mustard
1/4 tsp garlic powder
4 - 6 oz salmon fillets
salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or non-stick foil. In a small bowl, stir together the maple syrup, mustard, and garlic powder. Place salmon, skin side down, on baking sheet. Sprinkle lightly with salt and brush with maple syrup mixture. Bake until fish is just cooked through and flakes easily with a fork, about 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

Menu Plan Mondays (2/16)

Here is what the 6 of us are eating this week.

Sunday
Chicken quesadilla wraps made with homemade tortillas and using this recipe for the filling
Butternut squash soup
Leftover quinoa salad

Monday
Chicken asparagus bake
recipe originally from Clean Eating magazine but I mutated it a bit.

Tuesday
Pizza meatloaf
Make ahead potatoes
Steamed carrots

Wednesday
Homemade mac and cheese (from Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook)
edamame
tomato spinach soup

Thursday
Maple grilled salmon (from Woman's Day magazine, I think)
Twice baked potatoes
Steamed broccoli

Friday
Ham and ricotta pizza with a homemade soaked crust (I used half kamut)
Roasted Red Pepper Cauliflower soup
Cantaloupe

Saturday
Cub Scout Blue and Gold banquet

Visit Organizing Junkie for more great meal plan ideas.

So my poor neglected blog is a casualty of my insane school and work schedule this semester. Five classes and what amounts to a full-time job (even if I am not getting paid) means that certain things fall to the wayside. I am going to attempt to update it at least weekly with my weekly menu planning. No promises though.

Freebie!

Earthbound Farms is offering a free recipe pamphlet by mail featuring recipes from their Earthbound farms organic cookbook. (Available US and Canada only.)

Click here to get yours.

I frequently buy Earthbound Farms organic spinach and lettuce mixes. I would love to grow my own inside though. I have an aerogarden, which works really well for lettuce. However the lights do not last more than 2 growing cycles and they are expensive. Lettuce and spinach would grow well in a sunny window. I just need to take the time to get a box started. It's on my to-do list. Maybe after I graduate.

Soaked Whole Wheat Tortillas

I have been searching high and low for a soaked or sprouted tortilla recipe. I love making wraps for quick lunches, but so far I had to resort to store-bought tortillas. In my quest to remove most of the chemicals and preservatives from our diet, these really weren't acceptable, but I didn't have much choice. A few days ago, I found a recipe for sprouted tortillas on a website for a company that sells sprouted flours. I was so excited to try it as I had some dehydrated sprouted spelt that I could grind in to flour. My excitement quickly turned to disappointment. These tortillas were hard as a rock. The problem might have been that I don't have an actual grain grinder and had to resort to a coffee grinder. So my quest for the perfect recipe continued. Last evening I came across this recipe from "Through the Cooking Glass." I decided to give it a try. I am so glad that I did. This recipe makes nutritious tortillas that are soft. My kids ate them plain fresh off the griddle. I ate mine with homemade roasted red pepper hummus, broccoli sprouts, and yogurt cheese. Yummy! It will make a great portable lunch when my internship starts back up next week.

The amount of baking I have been doing over the past week has convinced me that I am going to combine my Christmas and birthday money and buy a grain mill. I read somewhere that flour loses 75% of its nutrients when it sits around, like at the grocery store.

Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs - the easy way

My kitchen has been a flurry of activity lately getting ready for the Christmas meal. All sorts of goodies will grace our table and my mouth waters just thinking about it. One of the things we always serve is deviled eggs. Everyone just loves them. Well except my oddball husband that is. Can you believe he never had deviled eggs before he married me? That's ok, I will forgive him for his dislike of deviled eggs. He did introduce me to several new holiday traditions like lefse and krumkake. Yum. Anyway, I digress.

While I love eating deviled eggs, I dislike making them. I never seem to remember to buy the eggs earlier enough so that they are easy to peel. Eggs that have been in your fridge a couple of weeks are easier to peel because the air pocket expands as the egg ages. However, in typical Miss Organic fashion, the eggs that will be used to make our Christmas deviled eggs were just bought yesterday. By the way, never go grocery shopping with four children two days before Christmas when there are warnings of an ice storm headed your way. It does not make for a pleasant shopping experience. Trust me. Anyway, I am faced with the unpleasant task of getting to peel fresh hard-boiled eggs. I remembered reading somewhere though that steaming is a good method of cooking fresh eggs. So after some research on the internet, I decided to try it. Couldn't be any worse to peel than my usual method. I was shocked to discover how easy they were to peel. No longer will I be messing with a pot of boiling water. Now all my eggs are going to be hard-boiled in my electric steamer. Couldn't have been easier!

Here's how I did it:



I filled my steamer water reservoir to the top line then inserted the steamer basket and eggs. I was able to get a dozen eggs in it with no problem. I set steamer to cook for 35 minutes.



Immediately after the 35 minutes are up, transfer eggs to a bowl of ice water and allow to cool completely.



Just look at the bright yolks! Not a trace of the greyish-green ring like I sometimes get when I over-cook them in boiling water. It works for me!

It couldn't have been easier. As a side note, save the steamer water and feed it to your plants after it has cooled. Your plants love the extra nutrients. Just look at my dwarf orange plant. It gets all my steamer water while it is waiting out the cold of winter in my dining room window. No oranges yet but it is a far cry from the twig it was when I received it in the mail from Guerneys a little over a year ago.