Comunidad Health Foods

Monday night, the clouds opened up and released a down pouring of rain that must have been collecting during the weeks of intense humidity we had been experiencing. Tree limbs came down, drains overflowed, roads flooded, and I watched with bated breath as the time drew nearer and nearer to when I would have to get in my car and brave Mother Nature for a visit to L’s that I had promised. In the end, though, despite all of the trouble the rain caused, it was welcomed with open arms by everyone I spoke to. The humidity evaporated, the cracked ground perked up just a little bit, and everyone was relieved.

It also provided the perfect night for a little comfort food amidst all of the salads and cold cuts we had all been craving during the heat wave. My mom made a delicious batch of turkey chili, but I think this lazy chicken skillet that I made a few weeks ago as part of my Thirty Minute Thursday challenge would have also been perfect. It’s a one-pot dish, and completely delicious and comforting. I served it with a simple side salad, just to add a few more veggies and round out the more filling main course.

Rachael Ray calls this her Sister Ria’s Lazy Chicken, or her Lazy Sister Ria’s Chicken, but because I don’t know Ria I thought I'd keep it simple and call it a Lazy Chicken Skillet. If you’re trying to impress a slightly more mature crowd, though, you could call it a balsamic chicken potato casserole, or an Italian Chicken Skillet, or something even catchier that you think up.

I’m actually writing this post on Wednesday night to post Thursday morning, because come 9am on Thursday I will be off to the beach! If I remember correctly, the house L and I will be staying at won’t have internet access, so I wanted to make sure I got my Thirty Minute Thursday and one last post in before I left. We have some pretty fantastic meals planned out (including the unsurpassed Jersey Shore staple, Mack-n-Manco’s for lunch), so I’m sure you’ll be hearing about those once I return. I also have a whole lot of baking up my sleeve over the next few weeks, including my first cookie cake, a batch of white chocolate sorbet with blueberry swirl, and a chocolate cake made with quinoa – so exciting! What foods are you looking forward to over this next week?


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After my last plans to bake sugar cookies fell through, I charged forth with zeal in my plans for baking Harry Potter themed cookies for a pre-viewing party that L and I had yesterday. I baked and froze the cookies last weekend so that I could focus on the main course (pizza, I’ll get to that soon!) and decorating the cookies this weekend. I bought the ingredients, drew out my sketches, and got all ready for The Big Day. And then, the heat rolled in. Suddenly, the heat made me break a sweat for more reasons than one: I started to wonder if I even could decorate sugar cookies with royal icing on a day like that. My house is not air conditioned, and the humidity was unbelievable. I almost threw the towel in for the second time in a row, when a light bulb went off – L’s kitchen has a window a/c unit! I called him up, packed up my tools, and headed on over, determined to do justice to these cookies.

I was adamant about this cookie justice because these cookies…they deserve the best. They’re too good for sloppy decorating or careless presentations. These sugar cookies are what make up the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow, you see. The dough is soft and a joy to work with, turning my usual full-day roll-out cookie battle into a short, 2-hour rendez-vous with a handsome mound of dough. They freeze and thaw flawlessly. And when you eat them? Oh, when you eat them! They are everything that a delicious, fresh store-bought sugar cookie is, without all of the preservatives and frightening ingredients that accompany them (unless 2 sticks of butter is scary to you, which, for some, it could be) – they are pillowy soft, buttery but still sweet enough to be a sugar cookie, with just the faintest hint of almond from a strategic use of extract. They’re heavenly, and I can tell you that my search for The One is over. I took one bite of these and knew that I couldn’t even mess with them to make them healthier; my usual reaction to a delicious dessert is, “how can I keep this level of quality without so much fat, sugar, etc.?” but not with these. I don’t know how big of a calorie bomb these babies are, but whatever it is, they are 100% worth it. 200% worth it! I’m still on a blissful cookie high from what I ate last night. I feel like a school girl with a crush. Cut the cookies into smaller shapes, only make them when you have other people to pawn the extras off onto – do what you must, but do make them, and don’t even think of changing a thing. They will rock your world, guaranteed.

To keep tabs on my progress with decorating, I’m still struggling with the details and getting the right consistency. At first, the icing was too thick, both in outlining and flooding. The next day when I went in to add the detail, I over-thinned that batch and had some major cookie bleeding going on. I chose difficult designs, such as free-hand lightning bolts and the deathly hallows symbol (how in the world you make a pretty, even, free-form circle within a triangle with royal icing is beyond me!), so the results are more amateur than even I had anticipated, but I do think I’m improving. I certainly won’t be anywhere along the lines of the cookies on Annie’s Eats or Bake at 350 by the end of the year, but that’s ok. There’s always something to work towards, and now that I have a cookie recipe that I enjoy working with, I have a feeling that I’ll have even more motivation to practice.

 The Holy Grail of Sugar Cookies, courtesy of Bake at 350

Notes:

For the main course, I made another two batches of no-knead whole wheat pizza dough, this time adding in 1T garlic powder, 2 ½ teaspoons onion powder, 2-3 teaspoons dried oregano, and 1 teaspoon dried thyme to try to make it more flavorful. It did turn out much better, though I think I’ll try my hand at a more traditional dough at some point, too. It’s not as crisp as I’d ideally like it to be – it tastes absolutely incredible and everyone loved it (one person even called it better than crack, so I’m really being nit-picky when I say I’m not satisfied with it); it’s just not the same as the kind of dough you get from a local parlor. It’s a good recipe to have in your arsenal, but maybe not The One, or at the very least not The Only One.


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There’s something about Greek food that feels so natural in the summer. Maybe it’s my own subconscious connection with Greece to warmer weather to begin with, or maybe it’s just that the food always tastes so light and fresh. I’m not one of those people who finds that my appetite is diminished in the heat, but I’m also not so crazy that I don’t still crave lighter fare most of the time. So, although it requires striking up your stove top (or, perhaps, your grill, though I recently explained how that is not at all my area of expertise), this Greek Cucumber-Feta Grain Salad with Light Turkey Meatballs is worth it.

I say “grain salad” because I used quinoa, but imagine that something like couscous or farro might be a more ethnically appropriate grain to use. The original doesn’t even call for a grain, but I found the addition of the quinoa to be excellent in soaking up some of the intense dressing flavor while making for a slightly more filling dinner than just meatballs and cucumber on their own. All in all, I will definitely be making this again, and encourage you to try it out sometime this summer, too.

I am, perhaps, the world champion of sucking the fun out of things. I’ve mentioned this before, and recently at that: my brain just functions best when I take an activity and turn it into a challenge. Everything is goal-oriented and checklist-driven in my world, and often I have to remind myself that, yes, I do enjoy the task at hand – once all of the pressure of deadlines and silly, self-imposed guidelines are removed. Of course, Thirty Minute Thursdays have already turned into a compulsion to churn out recipes each week from Rachael Ray’s cookbook, come hell or high water, and I’ve only done 2 posts on the topic. It really is incredible that I learn anything, based on how stubbornly I cling to habits like this one.

Last night I planned to make one of these recipes for this week’s 30 Minute post. Being indecisive, I opened the cookbook at random last week and chose the first meal that sounded enjoyable for myself as well as my meat-and-potatoes family. However, I chose a baked turkey cutlet with stuffing…a decidedly inappropriate dish for a heat wave dinner, considering it would require broiling, baking, and 2 stovetops heated more or less simultaneously. Plus, all day I had been in a funk where I essentially pouted about having too much to do. I don’t know about you, but I seriously value my veg-out time. I like to feel productive but every so often, the idea of sprawling out on the couch, eating easy-to-assemble or even freezer meals all day, and turning on a Seinfeld or Say Yes to the Dress marathon sounds like pure heaven. Lately, I haven’t had the opportunity to do anything remotely close to that, which has added to my unnecessarily high stress levels.

I almost caved and let my parents take me out to dinner that night instead of cooking. In all honesty, I would see no shame in it if I had; sometimes you just need a time out, and if the worst case scenario is that I need to skip one week of Thirty Minute Thursdays, I’d like to think that you would all forgive me. Besides, I even have a meal from last week that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about yet. However, I do like to cook and I have been looking forward to this meal, so I’ve made some concessions – I switched the turkey prep method to grilling and asked Mama Floptimism to handle that while I stayed inside with the now-only-mildly-heat-producing stuffing. This way, I’d have to juggle fewer things and wouldn’t turn my kitchen into Dante’s third circle of hell in the process.  

The dinner turned out surprisingly well. The stuffing tasted like authentic Thanksigiving stuffing, with some extra veggies and a little bit less bread to make it healthier and even more flavorful. Grilling the turkey was a perfect idea, though if you don’t have a gracious helper like my mom, you might find juggling the outdoor turkey grilling and indoor stuffing sautéing to be a bit much. I also paired it with a simple Snap Pea dish consisting of a pinch of sugar, a tiny pat of butter, and some fresh chives sprinkled over top. All in all, it tasted fantastic, and was even good today reheated for lunch. It’s certainly not the most weather- or even season-appropriate dish I’ve made and shared with you, but it is tasty, so I definitely recommend either enjoying it now (if the temperatures don’t have you too bogged down) or dog-earing it for a cooler day.

This post is going to be short and sweet. With my 30 Minute Thursday post coming up tomorrow, I didn’t want to overload anyone (including myself) with excess wordiness; plus, there isn’t much to say about this wrap except that you should make it immediately, and then once you eat it, make it again. I think I fell in love all over again the moment I bit into this wrap, full of creamy and flavorful avocado and white beans (sorry L!). It’s a true testament to how unbelievable the recipes from Eating Well are – seriously, one more recipe this fantastic and I’ll be begging them to be their spokesgirl. It held up all day, since I made it the night before and toted it along with me to my summer course, so it’s easy and hassle-free, to boot. I’m actually craving it right now, thinking back on how enjoyable it was.

I love the heat. I wear heavy sweatshirts in air conditioning, and I’m never truly comfortable in shorts and t-shirts until the temperature climbs up into the 80s. However, even I have my limits, and the rolling series of heat waves hitting us right now is testing me. When left to my own devices, I’ve been making meals that require little to no cooking (except the amazing sugar cookies that I just had to bake yesterday – those were worth the extra heat in the kitchen for a few hours!).

This Peanut-Ginger Tofu Salad is a good option for days like this. It’s light and healthy, easy to make, and tastes just as good cooler as it does warm. It’s not no-cook, but it doesn’t require much and can even be made in advance during a cooler time of day if necessary. The original recipe is for a sandwich, but I forewent the bread and put it over greens instead – something I highly recommend, especially in this weather. It’s definitely a refreshing meal, and if you’re new to tofu, don’t be afraid! I’ve only worked with it a handful of times, and have never run into any trouble. Still, if you or someone in your family is really against the idea of tofu (I’m certainly the only “weirdo” in mine who likes the stuff), feel free to substitute some or all of it with chicken, turkey, or even if a mild white fish – just be sure to adjust the cooking times and methods if you switch up the main protein. If you’re feeling a little adventurous, though, give it a try – you may be pleasantly surprised! Not to mention that tofu topped a recent list of healthiest/most eco-friendly proteins.

Tofu au passé: Mustard-Crusted Tofu with Kale & Sweet Potatoes, Light Tofu Stir-Fry with Yogurt Sauce

This past week, I had follow up lab work for my pitifully low Vitamin D levels and high cholesterol levels. A few months back, during routine lab work I found out that I had slightly elevated total and LDL cholesterol, as well as triglycerides, which can often come as a result of either excess carbohydrate in the diet or excess calories in general. I decided that I would make a few small changes to my diet, and see if it had any effect when I went in for my follow up. So, for 6 months I focused on eating at least 4 low- or no-carb meals per week,* and either not eating dessert or choosing a healthful option (ie fruit, cinnamon whole grain toast, yogurt, etc.) at least 3 times a week. I kept up my regular exercise routine and otherwise, my lifestyle stayed the same. I guess it was enough, because my cholesterol levels are officially well within the normal ranges!

Moving forward, I plan to continue with sporadic low-carb meals and smart dessert choices, though I’m going to be much less strict about tallying every single meal each week that I eat under these categories.  After 6 months, it’s safe to say that these behaviors have been pretty well incorporated into my lifestyle, and I feel as though I can confidently continue with these goals without paying such close attention. I’ll also continue to stick to no more than 1 alcoholic drink per week (not exactly a hardship for me) and 2 full eggs. These aren’t steadfast rules for anyone with elevated triglycerides or cholesterol levels – you have to find what works for you, and until I pass my RD exam 2 years down the road, I can’t offer official dietary advice – but the changes I made were all evidence-based, reputable dietary factors that have been shown to lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels in the past. So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, definitely speak to your doctor, but feel free to try incorporating some of these tactics into your everyday life.

Although the 5 Spice Turkey Lettuce Wrap recipe I’m sharing with you today isn’t officially low-carb because it incorporates rice, making lettuce wraps in general is a fantastic way to by-pass carbohydrates in a meal now and then. I haven’t mastered the art of eating them yet, though, and wind up making a huge mess, but I have a feeling that mishap is on my end and to no fault of the recipe. Plus, these are so good that I don’t mind making a mess eating them! I did change the recipe, using cinnamon instead of 5 spice because I couldn’t find it and a green pepper instead of a red one, which made it less vibrant but no less delicious. It was also a perfect amount of food, which is always a good thing.

One Year Ago: Raspberry-Banana & Nutella Sandwich

Lettuce Wraps au passé: Buffalo Turkey Lettuce Wraps

5-Or-More-Like-1 Spice Turkey Lettuce Wraps, adapted from Eating Well

It’s Thursday, and you know what that means – it’s time for another 30 Minute Thursday! For those of you who missed last week’s 30 Minute Thursday (the first one on this blog), I’ll fill you in: each Thursday (ideally), I will be telling you about a recipe I made from one of the cookbooks I own, Rachael Ray’s Classic 30 Minute Meals. It’s a way for me to crack into my cookbooks that too often are forgotten about with all of the tantalizing recipes I find online, plus you get to hear about some pretty fantastic dishes – because so far, the majority of what I’ve made has been excellent.

This week, I have a Mexican-inspired meal that’s easy and really, really good. I mean, really good. I tend to make a lot of burrito/fajita type meals, so in the end this meal comprised of a Chicken & Bean Burrito Bowl and Mexican Chunked Vegetable Salad wasn’t all that spectacular simply because I’ve made variations of it so many times in the past, but I don’t want that to deter anyone from trying the recipes out. The combination is one of the more subtler ones I’ve come across in my Mexican-themed forays, but the colors are phenomenal and, true to the cookbook’s title, the meal is easy to throw together. Just be warned that there is a lot of chopping with the salad, and if you have a moment earlier in the day to get it out of the way, that’d be even better. As the title of the dish suggests, I ate mine as a “Burrito Bowl” rather than a burrito, but it’s meant to be served in some sort of bread and I’d imagine it would taste very good that way, too. The next day for lunch I added some grilled corn to the salad, which was also pretty great. Lastly, don’t tie this salad down to this meal alone, because it would be so great in so many other ways – as a dip with chips, served over grilled chicken like a pseudo-salsa…anything, really. The sky’s the limit!

Mexican-Inspired Meals au passe: Black Bean Tortizzas, Black Bean Burritos, Black Bean Burgers, Black Bean & Quinoa Stir Fry, Easy Chicken Fajitas, Mexican Fiesta Omelet

Just 5 minutes ago, I relented and agreed to put my window ac unit into my room for the night. It seems incongruous that I’m now sitting down to tell you about a delicious stew – something much more typical of a cooler month. For the most part, I do tend to gravitate towards lighter, tapas-style meals in the summer and heartier, piping-hot one-dish meals in the winter; however, every once in a while, to put it bluntly, sweating it out over a hot bowl of food can actually be refreshing, cathartic even.

It helps that the stew I want to tell you about isn’t a heavy beef stew, weighed down by lots of braised meat or otherwise heavy ingredients. It’s an Egyptian Edamame Stew, making it slightly lighter by nature and infinitely more appealing to even the staunchest seasonal food traditionalists during these hot months. I ate it on its own, which left me feeling just shy of perceptibly full, but adding a nice piece of naan or pita would be pretty perfect on the side, too. This is hearty without being overwhelming, savory with a touch of sweetness from the tomatoes, and – if you don’t forget to add it at the last minute like I did – I can imagine that the lemon juice heightens all of the other flavors and gives it that extra something that I felt was missing in my own version.

This Egyptian Edamame Stew comes from Eating Well, and since I’m shockingly not blabbering on and on about the dish itself, I think it’s a good time to stop and gush about how much I love this site instead. I stumbled upon it early on in my cooking adventures, and I don’t think I’ve made a bad meal from it yet. The recipes are always at least moderately healthy and are made with relatively common ingredients, and I’ve never had a problem following the instructions. The food is consistently good, too, which is really the most important thing. So if you’re not already hooked like I am, definitely head on over to their site and browse around a little bit. It’s one of my favorite go-to sites for recipes, for sure.

A few months ago, I posted about a Chicken Florentine recipe that I had made. It was merely so-so, enjoyable but not out of this world. Recently I tried my hand at a similar chicken roulade recipe, this one incorporating pesto, and I have to conclude that, once again, the recipe was…good. Not great. In fact, a hybrid of these two similar dishes would likely produce a really rave-worthy meal, which I’ll get to in a minute. As it is, this recipe for Chicken Pesto Rolls has understated parmesan and pesto flavors (whereas the Chicken Florentine was a little too intense with its filling), and I learned that cutting it and maintaining a pretty presentation is difficult. Next time, I might add a little more pesto and use real parmesan cheese (how many times do I need to say that before I really do it? Oh well, my Kraft container is getting empty, so maybe soon…) to try to give it a more intense flavor without being as overpowering as the Florentine recipe was. 

I made the chicken rolls earlier in the day so that the prep time didn’t feel as laborious as last time, and that worked well. I paired it with a simple spinach and tomato salad, which is how the original recipe suggested serving it, and I liked the combination. These Pesto Chicken Rolls (and the salad!) are definitely worth a debut in your kitchen, with just a few small adjustments

The only changes I made were to eliminate the olives (can’t stand ‘em!) and replace balsamic with red wine vinegar in the salad, and used a full breast of chicken for myself rather than for 2 people (my diet that day was a little devoid of protein). So, I’ll simply direct you over to Aggie’s Kitchen for the original recipe. Enjoy!

At the risk of completely contradicting all that I wrote yesterday, I’d like to introduce a new feature here at Floptimism: Thirty Minute Thursdays, the day of the week where I will feature one (or several) dishes that I’ve made recently from my Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals cookbook.

Most of the recipes I post here are either my own creations or pulled from internet sites, and as I collect more and more bookmarked recipes to try, my rather large collection of real, tangible cookbooks has been tragically neglected. I decided that starting this summer, I would choose a cookbook and cook my way through it, perhaps in a vaguely Julie & Julia manner, but a little more relaxed. I won’t cook absolutely everything and I don’t have a deadline for when I want to “finish” – I just want to start clearing out my cookbooks, testing the waters, finding gems, and donating ones that don’t really live up to expectations.

 There’s only one dilemma: do I post the recipes? I have posted recipes from cookbooks – in fact, from this Rachael Ray cookbook specifically – and in general don’t find it to be ethically troublesome, especially when I alter the recipe here or there. However, if I’m turning this into a blog feature and planning to post a vast majority of a single cookbook’s recipes, is that copyright infringement? Is it threatening Rachael Ray’s profit margins if I just hand you the book, each week a different page, free of charge? How thin is the ice on which I’m skating? I’d love to know your opinions, because I’m really not sure where the line is drawn.

For now, I’ll share with you 2 photos and post one of the recipes. I made a vinegar cole slaw and a three-bean salad as side dishes for 4^th of July, and paired them with delicious grass-fed burgers, spiced according to what Annie at Annie’s Eats calls The Perfect Hamburger Recipe. I have to say, the burgers were pretty tasty, though not intensely flavored enough for me to deem them quite perfect. Delicious? Absolutely! Easy? Sure thing! Next time I might add a few more onions and a dash more spice, personally, but definitely check out her post for that recipe.

 Now back to these salads. The cole slaw recipe was good, enjoyable, but nothing memorable. In fact, at its worst it could be described as bland, though I think that’s being a little too harsh. At its best, it is a simple, very subtle slaw that improves after a little time out in the fridge – I’m talking overnight, not the 20 minutes Rachael calls for. I enjoyed it more when I added some paprika, and even more when I mixed some leftovers with roasted veggies and grilled chicken pieces. My mom said it reminded her a little bit of a vinegar cole slaw she makes sometimes, though she insinuated that hers was better and, well, mighty flavorful. If I make that any time soon (or just taste it!) I’ll have to let you know.

The three-bean salad was much, much better. If you don’t like beans, you can sit this one out (my dad’s not a big bean guy – can’t get him past it), but if you do…please try this salad. It’s extremely flavorful, tangy with a bite from a wasabi-infused mustard I used, and the texture of the cool beans is very pleasant. L said he doesn’t really like cool, non-traditional salads so he warmed his up and gave me a thumbs up for it, so I can now tell you with confidence that it’s delicious at any temperature. I also ate the last of it over fresh spinach this afternoon, and it was wonderful. My only complaint with the recipe is that it makes an obscene amount of dressing – you could easily quarter the dressing and still have enough to generously coat the salad. I served it with a slotted spoon and it was still a little drenched, so I’ve indicated that change below.

 One Year Ago: Indian-Spiced Lentil Pasta