Fried couscous

This is another dish inspired by 101 Cookbooks. This time it's a fried couscous bowl, which is a variation of Heidi's Wild Fried Rice.

Jill was over today and she wanted couscous. I had made some stuffed bell peppers the other day with couscous and cannellini beans, which were really good together. We still had a can in the pantry, so we decided to toss those in, along with some garlic, white onion, tomato, spinach, parmesan cheese, fried egg, and lots of red pepper flakes and/or tabasco. I am starting to love spicy food, which is really weird for me.

This is a good dish to get in all your nutrients; it's full of whole grains, protein, and veggies. Use a 1/2 TB of olive oil to fry your egg, then remove it from the pan and add another 1/2 TB to fry your couscous. It's also pretty versatile...just add in whatever you've got laying around: beans, carrots, peas, bell peppers, pretty much anything. Just remember not to add in any beans or tomatoes until the end, or they'll get mushed up.

Low-carb cheesecake

I have had a never-ending chocolate craving this weekend. I can't get enough of it. So far, I've been able to control it to a decent extent, but I did have a few too many Valentine chocolates.

I've been limiting my carb intake recently... I'm not doing the Atkins diet or anything, but I am trying to avoid bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, tortillas, chips, etc. When I started this, I told myself I would boycott desserts...but I quickly realized that I can't do without chocolate for an extended period of time. Actually, I don't think I can go without chocolate for more than a day or two.

Anyway, so I found myself craving chocolate once again tonight. I found a recipe for a low-carb "cheesecake," and I immediately decided to make it into a turtle cheesecake. Here's the recipe..

Low-Carb Turtle Cheesecake
(makes 3 or 4 servings;
267 calories and 14 carbs;
or 202 calories and 10 carbs)

8 oz package cream cheese or neufchatel
1 TB unsweetened cocoa powder
3 TBS splenda*
3 sugar-free pecans-and-caramel chocolates
Can of light whipped cream

Heat neufchatel in microwave for 20-30 seconds. Mix in cocoa powder and sugar, and place in fridge to set. (If you have some time, give it about 30-40 minutes. Or, you can put it in the freezer to speed it up.)
Finely chop the chocolates. When the neufchatel mixture is set, divide up portions, top with a squirt of whipped cream, and sprinkle generously with chocolate.


*We were practically out of splenda, so I used 1 TB splenda, 1 TB stevia, and 1 TB regular sugar.

Surf Club salad

Maranui Surf Club Salad

This is a squash and chickpea salad, with coconut milk, lime, and curry. I estimate this salad has 200 calories per 3/4 c serving.

My fresh acorn squash was too hard to cut, so I meant to soften it a bit in the microwave....but I absentmindedly cooked it for almost 6 minutes. Consequently, my squash was much softer than the recipe calls for. It's supposed to be toasted cubes of squash. Because it was more creamy, the result tasted like a coconut-y, exotic potato salad! It's actually really good, it's just a different texture than the original recipe.

Baked Quince

At Whole Foods yesterday, I came across some odd-looking fruits in the produce section. This quince was the only one I could afford. LOL. I wasn't sure how to eat it....I thought you could eat it like an apple. Apparently not. I looked it up, and I found out that raw quince is hard and tart...and that quince jelly used to be common in the U.S. until canning went out of fashion. Quince can also be baked like pears or apples, used in compotes, cobblers, and pies, or made into a kind of fruit leather.


The quince intrigues me. It looks like a lemon, smells like a pineapple, and tastes like a pear. The word "quince" sounds so medieval and antiquated to me...like an obsolete word. It makes me feel like I'm eating something from the middle ages, maybe along with some Cornish pasties and mutton. I can't wait to buy more, so I can make another of the recipes I found. Apparently when you cook quince for several hours (5), the flesh turns from white to bright, blood red.




I came across a few quince recipes, and I combined a couple of them.

Baked Quince

1 quince, cut in half and cored
1 TB butter
1 TB honey
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp cloves
cinnamon (to taste)
3 c water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the quince flesh side up in a deep baking pan. Place butter on the quince, drizzle with 1/2 TB of honey, save the rest. Sprinkle quince with sugar, cloves, and cinnamon according to your liking. Fill pan with water and heat uncovered for 1 hour. Remove from oven, drizzle quince with remaining honey. Serve by itself or with vanilla ice cream. :)

Chickpea Veggie burgers

Ultimate Veggie Burger

This is the most ingenious idea. Instead of putting a veggie burger on dry bread, you make the veggie patties the bun! I stuffed mine with dijon mustard, red onion, green olives, grape tomatoes, gruyere cheese, and some kale. It was so good! I can't wait to try it with avocado. Mm...

Prepping....

Some lime zest...

Whole-wheat crumbs to thicken it up a little...

Little bit o' olive oil...

It's so pretty too!

Homemade Squash Gnocchi and Baked Peas

Baked Peas with Tarragon, Yogurt, and Pistachios

I found this recipe last night and it sounded intriguing. The yogurt dressing smells SOOOO GOOD. I should've doubled the dressing to make it a little creamier, but it was good anyway. However, I could have done without the pistachios on top...next time I'll probably just use another nut or leave them off all together.




Acorn Squash Gnocchi
I've been trying to make this squash gnocchi for a week. But things kept coming up and I didn't have time to make a complicated dinner. I finally had some time last night, and it took a LOT longer than I thought it would. The squash was really hard to scoop out, and by the time I had the dough made, I didn't even care what the gnocchi looked like - I just cut them as fast as I could, so they're all different shapes. Haha..

I didn't use the sauce listed in the recipe, I just cooked together a couple TBs of butter, a little olive oil, black pepper, sage, and parmesan. The gnocchi was sweet and salty - overall, very good.

Vegetarian Griller Salad

This is a yummy recipe from Morningstar Farms that I altered a bit.

Griller Salad (serves 1)

2 cups baby spinach
1/4 - 1/2 red bell pepper (cut into strips)
3 slices avocado
1/4 c sprouts
1 MF Grillers soy patty (cooked and sliced into strips)
3/4 TB olive oil
black pepper (to taste)

Toss it all together and you're done. :)

Chicken Coconut Stew

This is very tasty. I love it. It's a healthy chicken stew with coconut milk, curry, and vegetables in it. Kind of like an Indian pot roast. I found it here.


I also found a recipe for Lemony Lentils in the newspaper the other day. There's a similar recipe on Recipezaar here. They were good and very lemony, but they're actually too filling to go with the stew. I imagined they would be lighter. They should be served with something light or be used as a main dish. The newspaper article suggested serving them with a falafel wrap, which I'm sure would be good, I love falafel. Since we have a lot left over I might make a lentil soup this week. (Tada: I just found a recipe for lemony lentil soup here.

Dad's Porkchops

Had a bad day yesterday. Well, at least eating-wise.... School was cancelled due to inclement weather, and I took the opportunity to be even more lazy than usual.

Anyway, I didn't make dinner last night, but my mom told me I had to photograph my dad's food. :)


Porkchops simmered with tomatoes, onions, and peppers; with whole-wheat pasta and a vinaigrette salad. This is what I would call one of my dad's signature dishes, the others being red chili, green chili stew, and pot roast.

Couscous soup and Cornmeal Crunch

This was a pleasant surprise. I'm tellin you, it's good.

I just came across this blog - 101 Cookbooks - and she has tons of healthy vegetarian recipes. I bookmarked a bunch of them. Anyway, this recipe for Ten-Minute Couscous Soup sounded fast and simple, so I went for it. I wasn't expecting much from it, honestly. But it is SO GOOD. It's got tons of flavors swirling around in it - red pepper flakes, green onion, couscous, and we added some chopped mushroom. I added some extra broth and couscous to make 8 servings, and based on my calculations on SparkPeople, the total is 187 calories for a whopping bowl of soup.


Also from 101 Cookbooks, I was intrigued by a recipe called Cornmeal Crunch. It's like a very crunchy, very onion-y cornbread. Also very good. The recipe makes 16 pieces, 76 calories each.


MMM!

Cookie dough Brownies made with pumpkin

Ok...let me preface this by saying - this concoction is not health food in any way. This is not a 100-calorie pack. This is not breakfast. This is not what you eat for energy before a workout. However, even though this isn't healthy, this is an example of taking a ludicrously indulgent recipe and making it a little more healthy than it was.

So with that disclaimer, here are the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies. Basically, in the original recipe, you take chocolate chip cookie dough, and you pour it onto brownie batter, and bake it all together as one glorious pan of chocolatey goo.

Now, here's where the slight adjustment comes in. I knew this recipe would have a plethora of calories, so I decided to soften the blow a little bit, by replacing the brownie batter with Hungry Girl's Yum Yum Brownie Muffin mix. Instead of brownie mix, get a box of devil's food cake mix, and stir in a can of pure pumpkin. And there's your batter. Don't add eggs or oil.


After that, I followed the recipe as is. The change of the brownie batter took off about 100 calories, and in the end, I cut each piece in 2 to make smaller portions, bringing the total to about 200 calories per brownie.

I find it laughable that Betty Crocker lists this recipe as having 48 servings. I ended up with about 26 pieces. (The brownie pictured is a double serving...imagine it cut in half.)

Anyway, these are delicious. Fortunately, we were able to pawn them off on some willing bystanders, so there's not many left in the house to tempt us.

Breakfast Burritos & Pineapple-corn salad

Ok, dinner last night....I woke up craving potato breakfast burritos but I didn't have the willpower to make them for breakfast. So I made them for dinner instead.

I based these off of this recipe, however, I made a lot of changes. The original recipe has a whopping 887 calories per serving. I took out the chorizo to make it vegetarian, used only 1 TB of olive oil, used only 3/4 package of neufchatel, and used corn tortillas instead of flour. I cut up the potatoes and baked them to make them softer, and I also added some yellow onion to the mix. After all the changes, we end up with 420 calories for 2 burritos, or 210 a piece. Not too bad.

The corn salad came about because I wanted to use up some crushed pineapple we had in the pantry. So I searched for some recipes and this one was incredibly simple and easy. Ironically, I am infamous for hating corn. But I decided to give it a try. In actuality, I do like cream corn occasionally, fried corn, corn nuggets.....basically whenever corn has sugar and fat added to it - THEN I'll eat it. Haha.
But this corn salad isn't bad at all. It's about 100 calories for a half cup serving. Actually, probably a little less than that, since I used light mayonnaise.


Mm look at that!
Forgot to mention we used a green salsa that has tequila in it!

Homemade Spinach & Mushroom Lean Pockets

Here is one of the "homemade lean pockets" I made the other day. I had a turkey pepperoni one for lunch yesterday, and a spinach one today. Both are very good.

For the spinach pockets, I had a variety of cheeses around, so each one has a different variation of ingredients. I think this one had spinach, sauce, mushrooms, garlic, about a quarter TB of neufchatel, half a slice of muenster cheese, and a little bleu cheese: approx. 250 calories (or less). I made the whole-wheat dough in the bread machine.

You can buy packaged dough to save time. Roll it out and throw in whatever ingredients you want, then bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. You can wrap them up and freeze them, and reheat them in the microwave for 2 minutes.

Zucchini Potato Bake

Here's a recipe I tried last night from Allrecipes - Zucchini Potato Bake.
Potatoes, zucchini, red bell pepper, and I threw in some spinach too: 245 calories.
I also made some "lean pockets" from scratch...spinach and turkey pepperoni. I'll get to postin those soon.

It's so pretty...




Right out of the oven...

Homemade Pizza Bagels

I made these pizza bagels the other day. Yummy. :)

Picnic with Veggie Sandwiches

It was such a pretty day that we decided to pack a picnic. I made a Cobb salad based on the Cheesecake Factory's California Salad, and my sister made a variation of Pioneer Woman's Veggie Bagel.


On the salad: romaine lettuce, hardboiled eggs, craisins, bleu cheese, red onions, soy bac'n bits - 200 calories.
On the sandwich: whitewheat bread, neufchatel with chives, cucumber, red onion, sprouts, cheddar cheese - 310 calories.

This sandwich....is delicious. If you look at PW's recipe...our version has considerably less calories, since we used bread instead of the giant bagel, and we left out the avocado. I also left out the muenster cheese....the reason the picture has two slices of cheese is because I photographed my sisters instead of mine. So there you go.


We didn't want to actually bake anything, so we cheated and bought a berry pie from Tom Thumb. It was pretty good. The only thing I feel bad about (diet-wise) is that I drank a glass of Dr. Pepper (GASP). I never drink Coke (soda). I mean never. But I stupidly forgot my water bottle and there was nothing else to drink. So I regret using up calories for that.

Then I intended to have a light dinner, since we had such a big lunch.....until we up and went to Ikea. We always buy a box of double chocolate crisps when we go, and I couldn't resist....I had FOUR of them while walking through the store! At 94 calories a piece, that's 376 calories on cookies alone. Curse those delicious cookies!

Polenta Lasagna and Oven-fried Squash

Last night I made a polenta lasagna for the first time. I was so excited to make it, because you use polenta slices instead of lasagna sheets. It was from a Pesto Lasagna on Allrecipes that I changed up. Instead of pesto and pinenuts, I put in lots of sauteed onions and red bell pepper, and added some spinach. It was very tasty, lemme tell you. I think next time I'll add some ricotta cheese to make it taste more lasagna-y.

I also found a recipe for Oven-Fried Courgette. Courgette is just the fancy British word for zucchini. (And zucchini is the fancy American word for courgette.) Well, we had a bunch of yellow squash so I used that instead, and I whipped up some honey mustard, and voila: squash fries. We actually used wheat flour and wheat bread crumbs to coat them, and they still turned out really good.

It looks really decadent in the pictures, doesn't it? But it's not....the lasagna has only 270 calories for a big ol' piece, and the zucchini is about 120 calories. The only fattening thing on that plate is the honey mustard, and we barely used any of it.

Polenta lasagna




Oven-fried squash




YUM