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Tag: dairy free

Roasted Chicken, Chickpea Spirals, Broccoli and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

So simple. So yummy. I find that the key really is to season my food properly, but I am a veggie lover all the way, so they don’t need much for me. The chicken adds even more fantastically filling protein and tasty fat. I had a skinless chicken breast already roasted in the fridge, but this would be a great meal for a rotisserie chicken or really any leftovers. If you are starting from scratch, I roast chicken breasts, that I usually season the night before with salt and pepper, in the Ninja at Bake/400 degrees for about 15 minutes. Cooking time will, obviously, depend on the thickness, but I take the internal temp to 165 degrees and then let them rest for at least 10 minutes before I slice them…or whatever it is I might be doing with them.

Before
After

As always, substitute in your favorite products, but I have taken gluten, dairy, and added sugar out of my diet for a month. Even when I am not restricting gluten, it turns out that I enjoy a lot of the “pasta” products that have come out recently. It’s not because I think that pasta is “bad” or I shouldn’t eat it, but because I love the extra bang for my buck that I get in the protein department with some of them. A word of caution for any beginners…I have given many a lecture about pasta replacements that go something like this, “Please, accept this food for what it is. You will be disappointed if you think that what you are about to eat is comparable to semolina pasta, but you may decide you really like it if you let it stand alone.” Now that I have gotten that noodley bit caveat out of the way….
My favorite of the bunch on the market these days are the Chickapea brand products. I love all of their shapes and the noodles cook really fast, which means that I can still reap all the time saving benefits of a box of pasta. You also get all the other benefits. They are reasonably priced, shelf stable, and they have a little selection of shapes to keep it interesting. They are a huge part of my rotation these days. 🙂

Chicken, Beet, and Grapefruit Salad #8.10

I eat so many versions of this salad that I decided I would add the date to the title. Do you have a salad that you can eat every week…sometimes twice a week…and not get tired of it? This is mine.
Anyway, I get all of the chicken that I eat these days from Lola Farms and it never disappoints. Again, you could use any chicken that you like or not…This one has the yummy dark thigh meat. I batch cook a few pieces at the beginning of the week and then take the meat off the bone and jar it in 4oz portions. Some weeks, it’s breast and thighs, sometimes it’s quarters…It’s all delicious and, for every day meals, it all gets the same preparation. I thaw it in the fridge and then remove it from the package and put it on a normal dinner plate. I season it liberally…I mean, would I do it any other way…with sea salt and black pepper on both sides. I cover it with another plate and put it back in the fridge until the next day. I roast it in the Ninja at Bake/400 until it hits 165 degrees. The dark meat likes to go just a bit longer so that more of that collagen breaks down, but I don’t get too crazy because a lot of the time I reheat it. Her product is so great, though, that I have never one time been disappointed…even when I KNOW I overcooked it.

Before
After

The beets roast in the Ninja, so while it is a bit time consuming on that side, it’s all inactive and it doesn’t even heat up your house. You can, of cook them in the oven, buy them already cooked, or use your slow cooker. Come to think of it, you could probably steam them…hmmm… As with most things, I usually cook two or three at a time and keep them in the fridge or freezer. This go around a decided to use my vegetable peeler to shave pieces off the whole, peeled beet. There are many days when it all gets mixed together and turns into an entirely pink dish, but I kept them fairly segregated today. I splashed a bit of champagne vinegar and sea salt on the shaved pieces in a small bowl so that they were seasoned, but I dressed the rest of the components together.


The greens came from the my balcony garden Guitar Case Greens collection. 🙂 I can’t get enough of growing lettuce. I get the perfect amount of sunlight for it and there is nothing better than picking greens right before you eat them. This plate was made mostly from the arugula growing in the neck of the case, though there were a few mixed lettuces thrown in for texture. Also, my arugula is INTENSE in flavor, so it really does well as part of a mixed green plate and standing up to a pretty full bodied dressing.


For the dressing today, I used about a tablespoon of the grapefruit juice, a splash of champagne vinegar, a teaspoon of Dijon, a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper. I had a half of a sliced and sautéed white onion in a small jar in the fridge, so I added the ingredients to that jar, re-lidded it, and shook it up. I popped it in the fridge for awhile to meld those flavors. Because I am taking a break from dairy this month, I omitted my usual goat cheese and tried to get just a little twang with the Dijon. I feel like that, plus the umami from the onions, and the juicy chicken made me not miss the goat cheese at all. You will have extra dressing, so go lightly and dress it immediately before you plate it. Though, here’s the truth about how I ate it…

Eat the rainbow, y’all!

“Cheesy” Chickpea Linguine with Cauliflower, Arugula, and Mushrooms

Endless variations, tons of plant based protein…I’m a big fan of the Chickapea brand of alternative pasta. The ingredients are chickpea flour, red lentil flour, and yellow lentil flour. Flours in general are highly processed but these pay the tax with extra protein. 23g and 220 calories per 2 ounce serving. The “pasta” cooks in 7 minutes and I heat up whatever veggies I want to cook in the very salted cooking water for the last couple of minutes. Sometimes, it’s green beans or peas, but tonight, it was just the cauliflower. I don’t put the greens or mushrooms in at the same time because they would get slimy, so they go in at the end. I put a small bowl underneath the strainer to catch some of the cooking water when I drain the pot, but everything in the strainer goes immediately back into the pan. I don’t rinse or shake the excess water out because I am going to use that as well.

From there, I added whatever ingredients didn’t want a bath. In this case, it was the mushrooms, arugula, nutritional yeast, and EVOO. They all went into the pan with the noodles and the cauliflower. I turned the burner to low and returned the pan to the heat. After I mixed everything together, I added as much of the reserved cooking water as I needed, probably 1/4 cup, to loosen everything up and make it kind of saucy. Mac and cheese it is not, but it is not trying to be that. It is, however, in my opinion, a yummy and filling meal that I am recently obsessed with.

Butcher Box Ranch Steak, Caramelized Carrots, Steamed Asparagus, Lemon Vinaigrette

This is what happens when you make your Misen carbon steel pan ripping hot. There was enough rendered fat left in the pan from the steak that I didn’t have to use any oil for the carrots. I just tossed the spears in the pan while the steak rested. It’s one of my favorite cuts from Butcher Box and all it needs is some salt and pepper. I definitely try to take the lesson from my cooking queen, Samin Nosrat, to season the steak the night before I cook it. It definitely makes a difference, but their products are so great, it’s delicious even if I forget. The asparagus was leftover, but I added a little drizzle of a vinaigrette to punch up the flavor and healthy fats.

Coconut Curry Shrimp over Arugula and Coconut Buckwheat

Ingredients: Shrimp, Yellow Onion, Green Beans, Carrot, Mushrooms, Red Bell Pepper, Serrano Pepper, Coconut Curry Sauce (coconut milk, cashews, garlic, curry powder, ground ginger, red pepper flakes, sea salt)
For Serving: Arugula, Coconut Buckwheat

I made a recipe that I found on Dr. Mark Hyman’s blog, https://drhyman.com/blog/2016/10/25/coconut-curry-shrimp/, but I used the veggies that I had on hand in my fridge. Apparently, the recipe is actually from a book titled, Always Hungry written by Dr. David Ludwig. I love how recipes do that, don’t you? Travel from person to person and everyone has a chance to make it there own. I didn’t have any cabbage, snow peas, or spinach, so I threw in some mushrooms, green beans, and arugula. Not because I think that mushrooms are a good substitution for cabbage, but because, in this recipe, they aren’t a BAD substitution. Besides, they were on there way to becoming fridge dried mushrooms, so they went in the pot.

It sounds like a lot of coconut, but it’s really not a crazy, over powering flavor, I promise. It does make this dish super creamy and delicious, though. It’s fat on top of fat because you get a lot of healthy fat from the cashews that help make the sauce, as well.

Besides being a ranking contender as a “veggie drawer clean out” dish, I also had some pretty good success freezing two portions of this dish. Meal prepping seafood can be tricky for a single lady because I don’t really like to keep it in the fridge for longer then a day. Next time I make it, I might try prepping the sauce as a separate component. Shrimp is so awesome because you can keep a bag in the freezer and just pull out what you like. Living in Atlantic Beach, FL, I have the luxury of very easy access to amazing locally caught, reasonably priced shrimp. Don’t like shrimp or it’s out of budget right now? Sub chicken, tofu, or just double down on the veggies. You can serve it over quinoa for a plant based protein boost.

Neither one of these doctors are into grains so much, but right or wrong, I love my carbs. I served it with a some buckwheat that I had soaked overnight. Then, after rinsing, I cook it in coconut milk. Never one to miss out on greens, I mixed everything in with my favorite spicy arugula and let the sauce become like a dressing for the greens. This was so delicious!!