Tag Archives: easy

Breakfast, Vegetarian

Hearty Fruit & Nut Toast

Leave a comment

 

Breakfast is reportedly the most important meal of the day. I know I function best with a full stomach right off the bat. But we rarely have time to cook a well-rounded, 30 minute breakfast, enjoy it and clean up, and still get to work on time, right? So I came up with some better alternatives. You only need a few minutes to throw these together, and they are even portable (as long as you bring a napkin as well and maybe don’t mind peanut butter on your car seat…)

#1: Strawberry almond delight
Toast a piece of wheat/whole grain bread to your liking. Spread with 1 tbsp strawberry jam. Sprinkle a handful of slivered almonds on top.

#2: Elvis toast
Toast 1 piece of bread. Spread with 1 tbsp peanut butter. Top with sliced banana. (This one’s my favorite!)

#3: Mediterranean breakfast on-the-go
Toast 1 piece bread. Spread with 1 tbsp Greek yogurt. Top with thin slices of pear or grapes. Drizzle a little honey on top.

#4: Sweet treat
Toast a slice of bread. Spread with 1 tbsp Nutella. Top with sliced pear or other fruit.

These are just the ones I’ve tried, of course the possibilities are endless. Try blueberries and crushed walnuts with almond butter, or applesauce and raisins with some flax sprinkled on top.

The point is to try to use spreads which are low in fat and pair with at least 1 fruit and 1 type of nut if you can. Start every day this way and I’ll bet your mood and productivity increase, and your weight will likely decrease because you will be less hungry later on in the day!

Crock pot, Dessert

Crock Pot miracles – Stuffed Peppers & Strawberry Apple Crisp

Leave a comment
.
Crock Pots are miracle workers for students, busy moms, professionals, anyone who is pressed for time but still wants a healthy, home-cooked meal at the end of the day. As a full-time graduate student writing her thesis, with 2 other jobs and several PhD interviews to prepare for, I have been running a pretty hectic schedule lately.
It goes something like this:
7am – wake up, go to lab, begin an experiment.
8 am – rec, run or elliptical.
9 am – home, shower, breakfast, maybe an hour of free time.
10/11 – meetings.
12-2 find time for lunch.
Afternoon – classes and more experiments.
4 – 9: work or write, depending on the day.
So, in the one hour of free time I had the other morning, I realized I had 3 red bell peppers, minute rice, and ground beef. Plus two old apples and baking supplies I hadn’t used in ages. Therefore…

Crock pot stuffed peppers:
3 red bell peppers
1 pound ground beef
1 cup rice
1 can tomato sauce
Spices to taste (garlic, italian, black pepper)
Step 1: Brown the ground beef and cook the rice.Step 2: Cut tops off peppers and remove seeds. In a large bowl, mix the cooked rice and beef and 1 can tomato sauce, plus any spices. Stuff each pepper with mixture.
Step 3: Put in Crock Pot on LOW for 2-4 hours.
Dinner and dessert, will be ready and waiting when I get home.
The pepper, exploded on my plate. =)

 

Dessert went from plain apple crisp to strawberry apple crisp because I couldn’t find any plain oatmeal. So I made do with what I had. And I’m glad I did!

Crock Pot Strawberry Apple Crisp:
2 apples, 1 red & 1 green
1 packet strawberries & cream oatmeal
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup butter/margerine
Cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract

Step 1: Dice the apples and mix in a bowl with a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg. Put apples into a sprayed slow cooker.

Step 2: Mix the sugars, oatmeal, flour, butter, 1 tbsp. vanilla and another sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg in a separate bowl.

Step 3: Sprinkle a tbsp sugar over the spiced apples in the crock pot, and cover with crumble mixture. Cook on LOW for 2-4 hours. The sugars carmelize, the apples are soft and tangy, it tastes like heaven warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!!!

This is so completely fabulous I can’t even describe it!
Healthy, Salads, Vegan, Vegetarian

Spinach fruit & nut salad

Leave a comment
.
Well as you may remember, I am eating healthier this year. Working out has been kind of off and on due to sickness, school visits, and I admit, laziness. I have been pretty good about eating better overall though. So today I decided to make a super healthy salad.
.
Spinach is one of the best greens out there, with tons of vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber. Then I added some fruit for natural sweetness, and nuts & seeds for healthy fats. The only thing that could make this better is some grilled chicken breast to top it off!
.
Ingredients:

2 cups fresh, washed spinach
1/2 kiwi
4-6 strawberries
1 roma tomato
1/4 cup walnuts
1 tbsp. sunflower seeds
Balsamic vinegar & olive oil

Step 1: Cut the peel off the kiwi and cut into slices. Slice the strawberries as well.

Step 2: Put a big pile of spinach leaves on a plate, cover with diced fruits & nuts. Add dressing, enjoy!
Here’s to eating healthy and enjoying it for life!
Slow cooker

Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff

Leave a comment

 

I got the basic idea for this creamy delight from Sparkpeople.com and tweaked it to what I had in my house. It’s like beef stroganoff, just healthier because you use boneless skinless chicken breast. And it’s made in a slow cooker, which is frankly the greatest kitchen invention ever, because you just add all the ingredients, leave it go all day, and come home to a hot-and-ready meal.

Ingredients:
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/2 bag frozen veggies
1/2 pack of cream cheese

Step 1: Dice the chicken into cubes. Mix the soups and cream cheese in a crock pot, add the chicken. Cook on high 2 hours or low for 4.

Step 2: Add the vegetables and cook another half hour. It really is that simple! Served it over tri-color pasta for myself, and poured over some leftover biscuits from KFC. Both great options.

Chicken stroganoff over pasta.

Chicken stroganoff over biscuits.

Fish

Tilapia with rice & mixed veggies

Leave a comment
Since I have resolved to eat healthier and exercise regularly this year, I will be adding many healthier recipes (I hope). I have been doing well so far, working out 5 days every week. By working out I mean go to our rec center and do 20-30 minutes on the elliptical, or run a mile on the track. Plus weight training 3-4 days a week.
So, as fish and vegetables happen to be two of the best foods for you, I decided to whip up one of my favorites, tilapia. As a side dish, a mixture of every vegetable I had in the house. It turned out delicious, and made enough of the rice & veggie mix to last 2 more lunches.
Ingredients:
1 tilapia fillet
Juice of 1 lemon or 4 tbsp lemon juice
Salt & pepper
Nature’s seasoning
1 large carrot
2 celery sticks
1 spear broccoli
1/2 onion
1 pint mushrooms
1 can black beans
1/2 cup brown rice
To cook the tilapia, I took it straight out of the freezer and put it in a frying pan with about 2 tbsp. olive oil and the lemon juice. Cover with a lid, and simmer on low heat for about 15 minutes. While cooking, I diced all the vegetables into small bite-sized pieces and boiled 1 cup of water.
Once boiling, I added the 1/2 cup rice and let simmer 20 minutes. In a second frying pan I added the carrots first to cook in about 1/2 cup water for 3 minutes. Then in order of hardness: the celery, broccoli, onion and mushroom. Covered that with a lid and let steam.
By this time I was ready to flip the tilapia to cook the other side. I sprinkled on some pepper and seasonings and a bit more lemon juice. Let cook for 5 minutes or so until done. Then flipped it back over for a minute and moved to serving dish.
In the pot which I was steaming the rice, I added all the cooked veggies and let steam another 3 minutes, then served 1 portion of it with the fish.

The fish was lemony and peppery, white and flaky. The vegetables were a good mixture of tastes and textures, and the beans add extra fiber and protein. Little to no fat overall.

Nutritional Info – Rice & veggie mix
  • Servings Per Recipe: 4
  • Amount Per Serving
  • Calories: 125.6
  • Total Fat: 0.8 g
  • Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
  • Sodium: 63.6 mg
  • Total Carbs: 24.3 g
  • Dietary Fiber: 7.4 g
  • Protein: 7.3 g
Soups

Wedding Soup

Leave a comment

 

As I was browsing some old cooking magazines one slow day at work, I came across a recipe for wedding soup that sounded absolutely wonderful. Seeing as I had most of the ingredients (though the list is super short anyways) I decided to try it out. Here is my version of it.

Ingredients:

  • 3 carrots
  • 1 head of escarole
  • 1 package frozen spinach
  • 8 chicken bouillon cubes
  • 1 can cooked chicken
  • 1/2 bag frozen Italian style meatballs (ok, so I took a bit of a shortcut here)
  • black pepper to taste
Here’s the ingredients laid out on a cutting board.
.
Step 1: Put a half pot of water on to boil and open up the bouillon cubes and drop them in.
Step 2: Cut the end off the head of escarole and chop into thin strips, maybe 1/2 inch. No real science to it. I diced up the carrots into small pieces, put that in, and added the spinach and the escarole to the pot. I opened the chicken and added in about 1 tbsp black pepper.
.
Step 3: Put that on medium-high and let it come to a boil. Then put it on to simmer while I made the noodles. (Yes, I made up for frozen meatballs by making my own noodles!)
 .
To make the noodles, I mixed about 1 cup flour and 2 eggs in a bowl until dough-like. I then pinched off tablespoon-sized balls of dough one at a time and rolled them with my hands into logs. Then I sliced those into tiny dumplings and boiled them for about 5 minutes.
.
Seriously, making your own noodles tastes a million times better than the store! Although it is quite a bit of work. I got maybe a pound out of 2 hours’ work.
The final step is to add the meatballs, put it all together in a bowl and enjoy! It is super healthy (besides the probably astronomical sodium…) and pretty cheap overall to make quite a bit. You should definitely sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top! Next time though, I will add 2 or 3 times as much chicken, because 1 can into a gallon or so of soup gets lost easily.
Slow cooker

Slow cooker enchiladas

Leave a comment
Since I have no oven in my current apartment, I have been looking for new and creative recipes to try in the slow cooker. I found one for enchiladas on Allrecipes.com and decided to use that as the basis for dinner tonight. Of course, I am terrible about measurements, so maybe you’ll want to look up their recipe if you want exact amounts.
Ingredients:
~1.5 lbs ground beef
1/2 cup taco seasoning
1/4 cup water
1 can cream of chicken
1 cup salsa
handful of fresh cilantro (because it was on sale 0.74 a bunch!)
Corn tortillas
Shredded cheese
Step 1: Brown the ground beef in a skillet. Drain off as much of the grease as you can. Add the taco seasoning and water, and cook the seasoning into the beef until most is absorbed. This is the second layer over the tortillas.
Step 2: Mix the chicken soup, salsa and diced cilantro in a bowl. This will be your third layer.


Step 3: Spray the inside of the crock pot so hopefully there will be no burnt-on mess later. Put down a layer or 2 of tortillas. Then a layer of meat. Then the cheese mixture. Over the topmost layer of beef, I added some slices of pepper jack to give it an extra little kick.

Keep layering until you use all the beef and soup mixture. Put a top layer of tortillas on and sprinkle with more cheese. 
Put on High for 45 minutes to 1 hour. We will see in an hour how well I did!
Main Dishes

Stuffed peppers

Leave a comment
.
Stuffed peppers have become known as my signature dish among certain people. I made them once, my friend fell in love and shared them with his family, who also loved them. Through trial and error, I have perfected the recipe and learned that shortcuts are usually not worth sacrificing taste!
.
The typical stuffed pepper is made with a green bell pepper and stuffed with a combination of meat, rice, and spices. I like using the red ones so much better because they are sweeter. As always, there is plenty of room for experimentation, and they can easily be made vegetarian. I made some yellow ones stuffed with a combination of quinoa, carrots, brown sugar, celery and raisins that were quite delicious.
.
However, this is “the” recipe for my famous peppers. Perhaps I shouldn’t share, but they are so good I feel everyone should have a chance to make and try them!
.
The most recent batch I made was a dozen for myself and my friend’s family. If you are only making 2 or 4, the recipe can easily be pared down, just cut amounts by 1/4 or whatever you need.
.
Ingredients:

12 red bell peppers (ok, 2 were yellow)
~1.5 pounds ground beef
~2 cups rice
2 cups chicken broth or 2 bouillon cubes
1 packet onion soup mix
1 large can (24 oz?) tomato sauce or 3-4 smaller ones
Nature’s Seasons

Step 1: Boil the rice in the chicken broth. This gives the rice extra flavor and saltiness.
.
Step 2: Brown the ground beef. Put it in a pan and cook over medium heat until there is no more pink. Drain the excess grease.
.
Step 3: In a large bowl, mix the cooked meat, the cooked rice, the seasonings and the sauce. (Honestly, I could just eat this mixture itself with a spoon!)
.
Step 4: Cut the tops off the peppers and pull out the white rinds and seeds.
.
Step 5: Stuff the mixture into the peppers.
.
Step 6: Bake at 350 for at least 1 hour. Be sure to add some water to the pan so they don’t dry out or burn. You can rinse the tomato sauce can and use that for extra flavor. Depending on how tender you want your peppers to be, you can leave them in a little longer or shorter. You can also add some shredded cheese on top during the last 5-10 minutes of baking.
.
You will know they are ready when the skin is soft to the touch and wrinkled, and the tops are nicely browned. You can also cook these on high in a crock pot for 1-2 hours, they will just not develop the crispy brown top. Enjoy!
They also reheat great for lunch or dinner the next day!

 

Comfort food, Main Dishes, Soups

Hungarian Chicken Paprikush

1 Comment

 

This is in my top 5 favorite meals of all time!

A Hungarian (or maybe Slovak?) recipe handed down from my grandmother and mother. It is simple to make, just a few ingredients. It does take a bit of time and some labor-intensive steps, however the end product is so worth it!

Finished Chicken Paprikush

The noodles can of course be bought, but making your own noodles is well worth the effort. They taste so much better than any store bought noodles ever could.

Ingredients:

  • Chicken
  • Water
  • Sour cream
  • Flour
  • Paprika
  • Salt & pepper
For this I used 4 chicken leg quarters, because dark meat gives the soup a richer flavor. You can use white, dark, or a mixture of both. Put the chicken in a pot and cover it with water plus a little bit extra. Maybe a gallon and a half of water.
.
Boil for at least 2 hours or until chicken is no longer pink at all. Take the chicken out and pull all the meat off the bone. Throw the bones, skin, fat, and any other non-edible parts away and return the meat to the pot. I did this step the night before and refrigerated it until the next day but you can also just continue right into the next step.
.
The second step is creating what I think is called a “zapraska”.
This is how you mix in the sour cream without it curdling. The sour cream should be left out at room temperature. Mix about 1 cup sour cream with 2 tbsp. flour (omit the flour if you want watery soup) in a separate bowl. Then slowly add soup to it while mixing continuously.
.
The soup will slowly warm up the sour cream. Continue adding and mixing well until it is warm. Then you add the zapraska to the main soup bowl and mix it all together. Add paprika, salt and pepper to taste.
And now for the fun part! You get to make your own noodles. Trust me, it is super duper easy. Honestly, cleaning up afterwards probably takes longer than making them.
Noodles:
  • Eggs
  • Flour
The ratio will depend on how many noodles you need to make. I only needed a small amount, so I used 6 eggs and approximately 1 cup of flour.  You will also need a noodle maker, we call it a “shusher’. I don’t know what it actually is called. If you don’t have one of those, you can always drop the dough with a spoon into the water; this will create larger dumpling like noodles.
Scramble the eggs in a large bowl. Mix the eggs and flour together a little bit at a time. Keep adding flour until it has a doughy consistency. A spoon left in it should basically be able to stand upright.
Get a big pot of water to a rolling boil. Then pour the dough into the top basket of the shusher. Push it back and forth so the dough drips through into the boiling water.
Make sure to stir a few times throughout so that the noodles don’t all stick together. Keep going until all the batter is used up. Drain the noodles completely.
These will be the sweetest, saltiest, most eggy and delicious noodles you may ever have had! Put some into a bowl, and pour the soup and chicken on top. You can add some extra paprika or salt to taste.

 

Save

Slow cooker

Slow cooker BBQ pulled pork

Leave a comment

 

Slow cookers are a godsend to any busy cook, I myself often throw ingredients in it early in the day in order to come home after a long day of teaching, research, attending classes and work. But they can also add joy and flavor to a lazy Sunday. As the weather cools, warm and filling foods fill my imagination. This led to inspiration for some slow cooked BBQ pork.

Ingredients:
1 pork loin
5-6 garlic cloves
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 medium onion
1/2 cup vinegar
2-4 cups BBQ sauce of your choice

Step 1: Cut shallow grooves in the loin and insert garlic cloves. Place in the slow cooker with the vinegar, and the onion cut into chunks. Rub the top of it with the brown sugar, and put on high for 4-6 hours.

This is what it looks like after about 4 hours on high. I cut it into 4 chunks to shred it easier. Drain off the excess liquid and throw out the onion and garlic. Using two forks, shred the pork and return it to the slow cooker. Cover the meat with BBQ sauce and mix well.

Then leave it in the slow cooker on low for another 1 – 5 hours, to let it stew and the BBQ to cook into the meat. 

This is the first way to eat the pork, on a bun with some extra BBQ sauce. I had steamed broccoli and baked beans as side dishes.

However, you usually have plenty of meat left over. Therefore, this post includes a special bonus dish. With the leftovers, a great snack or even full meal is BBQ pork over tortilla chips. Just sprinkle on the pork, add cheese and heat in the microwave. Then add sour cream and enjoy!