Comunidad Health Foods

Apparently it’s been just about a month since I posted a recipe with meat in it.  For all of you meat lovers out there, I apologize. I am weaning myself off of meat to some extent – L is terrified that I’m on my way to becoming a bona fide vegetarian and he’ll never eat homecooked meat again in his life – but I really don’t have any plans to cross over into official veggie-dom. I don’t really like labeling myself by how I eat, particularly since I’ve struggled in the past with overly stringent “rules” about “good” versus “bad” foods. When I feel like eating meat, I eat meat. When I feel like I’ve maybe had enough meat for the time being, I stop for a little bit until I get a hankering again. It’s working for me so far.

My developing flexibility (I’m working on it!) is also making my family’s life a little easier. It was easy during college to cook my own food and eliminate meat as I see fit, but my family isn’t like that. If they have a meatless dinner meal, it pretty much is guaranteed to be lasagna or something like soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. They haven’t really, truly embraced beans and they certainly aren’t up to tofu yet, so my moving back home for my internship is definitely going to involve adjusting on everyone’s parts.

My compromise is that when I cook for them, the majority of the time it will involve meat in some way (not always! We’re going to stretch their comfort zones with food, just gently). One benefit of this is that most of the Rachael Ray meals left in her cookbook involve meat, so it helps to have other people around me to help go through those remaining meals. It’s a good thing too, because a lot of them wind up tasting hands-down delicious, and it’d be a shame if I missed out on them simply because I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to cook a big hunk of meat for little ole’ me.

This recipe today is not-so-loosely based on one of the meat-centric recipes in her book. Originally titled Honey Mustard BBQ Chicken, I’ve tweaked it to use turkey tenderloins and a few other more convenient ingredients in the context of what my kitchen was stocked with, and I think a more appropriate new title would be Grilled Honey Mustard Turkey. I know, I know, I just turned the world upside down with that change, right?

This is a solid recipe. It claims that it serves 4, but I’d argue that it largely depends on the type of eater you are. My mom and I split half of a tenderloin, so if you’re more like us, this recipe will serve 8; my dad and L on the other hand each had their own tenderloin half, so a family more like that would only get 4 servings out of it. But this meal, it’s not really about the meat. The sauce, which makes enough to very, very generously douse each and every piece – and I mean douse – is where all of the magic happens. The sweetness from the brown sugar comes through, but it’s cut and kept in check by the cider vinegar. It worked surprisingly well in the warmth of these Spring months, but because of the ingredients used I can see it fitting just as well into an autumn menu. 

I paired the turkey with a corn and tomato scramble (pictured above) from Epicurious, making that according to the original only substituting olive oil for the butter and dill for the scallions. It was flavorful and simple, a truly classy dish. I also made a side of roasted green beans, which were equally simple and a great “guideline” recipe that I found at Mother Rimmy’s Cooking Light Done Right – a good how-to to keep in your back pocket. Plus, the beans only roast for 5-8 minutes, so it doesn’t make your kitchen a furnace – a great compromise for all of you roasted veggie lovers who don’t want to absolutely melt in your kitchens this summer. 

 

Alright class, did you do your homework? You know what I mean – did you make your chipotle sweet potato dip like I told you to on Monday?

…No?

Well then how are you supposed to make your chipotle sweet potato oats for tomorrow morning?!

As promised, I have for you a recipe that clearly, I am very excited about. I’ve been a fan of overnight oats for about a year now. When I first started making them, I was toying with the idea of adopting a partially raw diet, which is why I gave them a shot in the first place. What I discovered, though, was that by soaking the oats and eating them chilled, you get a natural sweetness that is lacking from conventionally prepared hot oatmeal. Plus, it’s a ridiculously easy grab-and-go breakfast option that can usually be prepped in full the night before. Even though I haven’t started “eating raw,” I’ve still kept this dish as a staple in my diet. In fact, I’m such a fan of overnight oats that the sad emotions I might otherwise feel when I reach the bottom of a peanut butter jar are completely overpowered by the excitement I now associate with empty peanut butter containers –they make delicious vessels for overnight oats. I’ve heard that if you heat the oats and then pour them into the container, it releases the peanut butter from the sides of the container, but I do just fine with my spoon and will-power, scraping down those container walls like I’m getting paid to do it.

 

Because there is peanut butter in the dip, I thought empty-peanut-butter-container-overnight-oats would be fabulous. It turns out, I was very right this time. My first attempt was a little bit bland – it was enjoyable in that clean, barely-spiced kind of way, but it was certainly not worthy of the name “ChipotleSweet Potato Overnight Oats. For my next attempt, I amped up the chipotle, used my updated (and, I think, perfected) dip recipe, and crossed my fingers for the best. The next morning, I woke up, bounced out of bed, and happily tried out my recipe – perfection! It was hot in a smoky, back-of-your-throat kind of way, cool and refreshing. The consistency was spot on, thick and substantial but not gloppy or unappealing. It was exactly what I was going for. I’m smiling now just thinking about it. Seriously, this recipe is a game changer, a winner, a keeper, a slam dunk straight out of the park home run touch down goal hole in one gold medalist in the breakfast food Olympics.

If you think I’m kidding, you haven’t tried the recipe out yet for yourself. My friends, I assure you, this is no laughing matter.

It may be the end of May, over 80 degrees outside with a humidity percent well into the 70’s, and the kind of weather for cold potato salads and chips, but for the past month and a half I have had just one food on my mind: piping hot sweet potatoes. My brain must secretly reside on the other side of the equator where this kind of craving is more seasonally appropriate. So you’ll have to forgive me and my weird-o brain, because I need to talk to you about sweet potatoes, and I need to do it not once, but twice this week. I think by the end of the week you’ll understand, and perhaps I’ll scandalously get you to buy out-of-season for these recipes, too.

What I’m really dying to tell you about is the chipotle sweet potato overnight oats that I made, because that breakfast was just about the most fantastic combination of flavors to ever grace my humble little taste buds. But I can’t tell you about that right now, because that would be getting ahead of myself. You see, the overnight oats uses a chipotle sweet potato dip, so first things first, we have to talk about this dip.

The first time I made it, I followed the recipe darn close to a T. I used unsweetened and unflavored almond milk instead of vanilla coconut milk, because I’m really not into the whole coconut craze and the store was plum out of vanilla almond milk. I meant to add a little drop of vanilla extract, but as things tend to go in my kitchen, that just didn’t happen. I also used two small sweet potatoes (I’m talking just about the tiniest little yams – oh, that’s another thing, sweet potatoes apparently don’t exist where I’m from – I’ve ever seen) instead of 1 sweet potato. In the end, the dip was good. The chipotle powder was a little demure and the honey gave it a sweetness that I didn’t think it needed when you’re already dealing with a sweetpotatoyam. I also wasn’t satisfied with the “1 sweet potato” measurement in the original recipe. I don’t know about you, but at my grocery stores, sweet potatoes can range in size from modest potato length to absolute colossal monstrosities. I genuinely cannot tell you what an “average” sweet potato would look like. So, because I like you guys and want you to have consistent and out-of-this-world results, I forcedmyself to make this recipe again, only this time, I put the Floptimism spin on things.

Below is the recipe that I came up with, and I have to tell you, it’s truly wonderful. It’s sweet and creamy with a nice kick that will make you blink twice but won’t knock you flat off your feet. It’s easy and fast to make once you take care of cooking the sweet potato, which I baked while something else was in the oven about 2 days before I made the dip itself. This batch stretched for about 3 healthy servings for me, though you may be able to eek out a few more at a party. I’ve used it as a regular dip with apple slices and homemade cinnamon tortilla chips (brush a tortilla with oil, sprinkle with cinnamon, cut into wedges and toast until crisp; if you use a generous serving of oil they’re to die for but shh!); you could use it as a sandwich/wrap spread, mix it with yogurt or almond milk and top with oats or your favorite cereal, you name it. You could also swap out the milk for some yogurt for a thicker, potentially more condiment-like product. You guys, this is so much more than a dip. 

 

So now that you know how to make this dip, I expect each and every one of you to have a batch of it ready by Wednesday, when I’ll be back with the best overnight oats recipe ever – using a healthy dose of this dip as its base! Oh, and please also find time between now and then to enjoy a wonderful, sunny Memorial Day!

 

There are few foods that I actively dislike, but of the flavors that rub me the wrong way, a great deal of them involve “fake” flavors – chemicals added to candies and other processed foods to mimic a real, natural fruit or ingredient. Banana runts and laffy taffies do not taste like banana; cherry water ice turns out to be such a poor substitute for the fresh fruit that it deterred me from even trying a real cherry for the first 21 years of my life; and then there’s grape. I know there are people out there who like grape-flavored things – I know this because L is one of them. I, however, am definitely not one of them. The idea of a synthetically flavored grape treat completely turns me off, and I blame it mostly on the grape-flavored cough syrup I had to take as a kid. All grape-flavored foods (aside from fresh grapes, of course) remind me of that horrible, horrible medicine, and I’m immediately transported back to my childhood, having to choose between an obnoxious, persistent cough and the taste of that medicine.

Naturally, then, when I saw that tomorrow is National Grape Popsicle Day, I was none too enthused. If ever grape popsicles came in a variety pack as a kid, they were always, always, always left over in the end, shunned and untouched. Now, I’m even less inclined to choose that flavor than I was back then. Still, I enjoy being festive, and it just so happens that although I do not have a grape popsicle to share with you, I have something even better but still pretty similar: frozen grapes.

I know, I know – this isn’t really a recipe or even a new idea. People have been freezing grapes for a long time now. But what if I told you these were peanut butter covered frozen grapes?

Imagine your favorite childhood peanut butter and jelly sandwich – I’m sure it was grape, right? As we get older we tend to branch out to more exotic jams and even fresh fruits – strawberry preserves, sliced banana, triple berry jam. But at least for me, the traditional, quintessential PB&J involves globs of Welch’s grape jelly, gelatinous and not a speck of real fruit in sight. Now take that sugar and calorie bomb sandwich and strip it of its bread (a distracter from the real flavor combination beauty at work, anyway), replace that dark purple jelly with a real grape, and turn the temperature down several notches. What are you left with? A chilly, peanut-butter encased grape that’s perfect for the warmer weather and absolutely reminiscent of your inner-child’s favorite sandwich.

It’s still not really a recipe, but it is delicious and I thought it deserved more than a link to Flickr from my Twitter account. And it’s so easy to make that you, too, can have a frozen grape-flavored treat to snack on tomorrow, even if you, like me, shun those artificial grape products. 

  

I crave vegetables. Yes, I also crave chocolate and macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (not all together) like other normal people, but I really do get cravings for large servings of vegetables. Everyone around me thinks I’m totally nuts. There are some nights for dinner when I’m perfectly content with a mountain of lightly sautéed mixed veggies. It usually comes after a prolonged period of eating meat more frequently than I usually prefer.

When I crave vegetables, I don’t crave casseroles where cheese and noodles drown out the glory of the various plant foods I also add in. When I crave vegetables, I crave vegetables. I want spinach that tastes like spinach, mushrooms that taste like mushrooms, and sweet potatoes that haven’t been deep fried into oblivion. I do get separate cravings for that last food, but that’s a different story altogether.

The recipe that I have for you today delivers on the vegetables. In fact, it’s so purely vegetable-y that it almost doesn’t feel like a recipe at all. Could something so simple possibly be worthy of its own post? In this case, absolutely. Its simplicity is what makes it work. There’s no sugar-coating this one, no beating around the bush – this recipe produces a side dish that tastes like broccoli and red peppers, straight up. No fancy sauces, no crazy spices that you’ve never heard of before, and no gosh-darn cheese to make you forget the vegetables are there. If you like broccoli and red peppers, you will like this dish. If you’re dying for a simple, refreshing recipe as the days seem to get hotter and hotter, you will like this dish.

If the only way you like your vegetables is pureed into tomato sauce or cut into matchsticks and deep fried so you can pretend they don’t exist, you will not like this dish. I’m sorry. I’ll be sure to write about something for you folks later on. But for now, I’m all about veggie love, and I hope you are, too.

  

Last week was quite an experience for me. For L’s senior week – the week between finals and graduation where most people go to the beach and drink themselves silly – we chose to return to campus for a relaxing few days. The first half of the week, we holed ourselves up in his room and did a whole lot of nothing much. The second half, one of his suitemates and his girlfriend came up, and we did a few touristy things, took walks, played Frisbee golf, and got more sunburnt than I care to admit. It was a nice week, but there’s one part of it that posed a bit of a challenge: no dining hall options. All food venues on campus closed down and L’s meal plan expired along with his last final, so we were left to fend for ourselves in the jungle of unwashed pots and pans and stained countertops that is the communal kitchen in his dorm. He has a full-size refrigerator, a sink, and a microwave in his suite, but there’s only one central oven for the full dorm building and let me tell you – it’s skeevy. Majorly skeevy. But it was either brave the communal kitchen or starve/live off of PB&J for 3 square meals a day for a full week (or I guess order take out constantly, but this goes back to all 4 of us being poor college students). Skeevy kitchen it was.

A few good meals did come out of these less-than-ideal circumstances, though tweaking the end result was necessary on most occasions and I learned the absolute importance of tasting meals as you go, particularly when the only measuring utensil you have is a plastic 1.5C liquid measuring cup. When I made the dressing for this particular chickpea & asparagus quinoa salad (originally a brown rice salad), I was very heavy-handed with the peanut butter (very surprising, I’m sure) and a little shy with the lemon.  I added more lemon to the leftovers for lunch the next day and was significantly more satisfied with that, as the original attempt was a little heavy from the imbalanced ingredients. I also think this would be better with tahini (what the original called for) or even almond butter (to complement the almonds in the dish), but the peanut butter was successful enough that I can assure you it will work with whatever nut butter you have on hand. You could even forgo the nut butter altogether and make it more of a vinaigrette by substituting sesame oil. I found the original to be a little on the bland side, so I added salt, pepper, and a little cinnamon, which really perked the dish right up. I also added a handful of spinach the next day to bulk up the veggie content, and I really liked it that way. L really liked it the first night (he didn’t have any of the leftovers), but found it so filling (without meat! Crazy!) that he couldn’t even finish his portion of it.

 

Comfort food. You think of lots of butter and heavy cream, right? Biscuits and gravy, chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese – meals you guilt yourself about eating but that make you feel warm and safe when you do. I’m convinced that it doesn’t have to be that way. I love comfort food, yet I really hate heavy foods that feel like a ton of bricks settled in the pit of your stomach by the time you reach the bottom of the bowl. Lighter foods can still be comforting, can still evoke that warm and safe feeling so traditionally associated with those heavier meals. No guilt required (not that I think you should guilt yourself about anyfood decision – make your food choice mindfully, and enjoy whatever that choice may be; if you can’t eat it shamelessly, it isn’t worth it, if you ask me).

This dish – baked spinach with eggs – was loosely adapted from the Smitten Kitchen, and by loosely, I mean I changed very little about it aside from cracking an egg into the dish during the last few minutes of cooking. I also swapped all of the butter for olive oil and used whole wheat, homemade bread crumbs, not that there’s really anything wrong with a little bit of butter here or there; I just didn’t have any on hand, and was curious to see if the olive oil would be successful. I do, however, have serious issues with store-bought bread crumbs, when homemade are so much healthier and ridiculously easy to make. But I’m no doppelganger hanging out on your shoulder while you cook, so don’t let that guilt settle in if you like and happen o keep store bought crumbs in stock – remember what I just said about guilt? Yeah, it’s lame. If you like shake-n-bake, use it as proudly as I use my food-processed whole grain bread butts. (But if you haven’t tried making your own, I highly recommend it.)

 

But alas, I digress. This dish is so much more than olive oil and bread crumbs. The spinach is light and not soggy or greasy or slimy the way that some cooked spinach dishes can become – it tastes about as fresh as cooked spinach can possibly taste. The smoked cheddar cheese gives off this poser-bacon flavor and the eggs really come in with a protein/nutrition 1-2 punch. And did I mention it’s low-carb? Well, low-carb unless you choose to pair it with a warm, fresh loaf of bread – which is absolutely a fantastic decision, though I didn’t do that. Even without any herbs and spices, this is seriously one of the best recipes I’ve made in a long time, and I’ll be the first to admit that I use my seasonings (except salt) with a heavy hand. And comfort food? Folks, you have not tasted comfort food until you’ve tasted this baked spinach and egg dish. Forget your Aunt’s famous pot pie or your husband’s great-grandma’s secret recipe for biscuits. This is the new face of comfort food: healthy instead of heavy, without sacrificing any of the warmth and happiness that comes with taking that first bite. And then the second. And then the third. And then…

By the way, do not be intimidated by this recipe. It looks long, but it goes very smoothly and is very intuitive. If you need to, take a deep breath (I know I did!), and give it a shot, because it’s not a difficult recipe and the pay-off is absolutely incredible in the end.

One Year Ago: Savory Baked Eggs with Veggies, Sophisticated Stuffed Mushroom Caps

Today’s Thirty Minute Thursday might be an interesting one. Not only am I camped out on L’s campus for his senior week, but my trusty, battered-and-stained Rachael Ray cookbook is hiding in one of the many boxes taking up residence in my living room, waiting to be unpacked from the move back home. I managed to find one archived recipe – this quesadilla pizza – that I tweaked so significantly that I luckily can write about it without Rachael’s original recipe in front of me. Mostly. I hope. However, I don’t have my notes on how, exactly, this meal tasted. We’re going to have to go off of memory and so I warn you now – you may be getting a lot of adjectives like “good,” “delicious,” and “tasty.” I know they mean nothing. I’ll try my best. But believe me when I tell you, no matter what I write next, this recipe was definitely good, delicious, and tasty.

The original recipe is intriguing in that it actually takes a traditional cheese quesadilla and tops it with pizza-like toppings. I try to use cheese as an accent more than a main component of a meal, plus I wasn’t interested in eating two full, large tortillas in addition to all of the cheese and toppings I had in mind, so I ditched this technique. Nonetheless, it conjured up images of a Mexican-inspired, still-infinitely-healthier-than-your-typical stuffed crust pizza, and I thought that was pretty cool. So if you want, instead of using one flat tortilla as the crust, you can make a full-on cheese quesadilla – melted cheese between two grilled tortillas – and then plop the toppings over that. You could also do all of that and then slice the pizza in half to yield 2 servings, and make the entire meal a little more substantial by pairing it with a light salad.

I would encourage you, whether you make it as a “stuffed crust” quesadilla pizza or just a regular tortilla pizza (or “tortizza” as I like to call it), to think of this recipe as a suggestion. Take your very favorite taco or quesadilla ingredients and incorporate them into this meal. Use what you have, what you like. Add beans, grilled chicken, or steak; use guacamole as a pizza “sauce” instead of the salsa; dollop it with plain greek yogurt to garnish. I want to show you the method behind making a really good “tortizza,” so don’t get bogged down by the ingredients that I happened to have on hand that week. This is all about personalization. Enjoy!

Lately, I’ve been shying away from actual recipes and increasingly drawn to taking inventory of my kitchen and figuring out what combinations of foods could produce something edible. Before moving out on Saturday, I had been getting a lot of satisfaction out of taking the odds and ends ingredients and foods from my apartment that I was trying to use up, and turning them into something interesting. Some of my attempts were admittedly better than others, but one of my favorites was this peanut butter spread/dip. I tend to pair my peanut butter with sweeter foods – fruit, yogurt, and chocolate more than anything else – but every once in a while I like throwing my taste buds a curveball and tying in some more savory flavors to a peanut butter meal, which is exactly what I did for this spread. I made it two ways – first as an actual spread and the second time bulked up with some yogurt to make more of a dip, and both were equally delicious. The spread is perfect for sandwiches, pancakes, or vegetables; the dip is much creamier – vaguely reminiscent of a sour cream & onion dip – and would be fantastic with some fresh vegetables like broccoli or carrots. You may even want to toss it in some pasta with vegetables if you’re feeling particularly wacky. I’ve included both alternatives below, but only have a photograph of the dip. 

 

One Year Ago: Ridiculously Easy, Ridiculously Decadent Chocolate Peanut Fudge

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. For such a cliché moment, it doesn’t feel all that dramatic. I even feel pretty silly just typing that phrase. Yesterday’s graduation was a whirlwind of chaos, dehydration, disappointment, sunburn, and (despite it all) delicious food. Maybe how it all played out should have only been expected, given that they were asking a group of 3,000 22-year-olds to sit in the middle of a football field in 80 degree weather in black gowns and heavy hoods as they read each of those 3,000 names and honors aloud – in addition to many drawn-out speeches. Admittedly, it was a poorly executed ceremony. It took 2 solid hours just to award the degrees. Still, I can’t muster up pride in association with my fellow graduates, and I don’t think the poorly run ceremony is any excuse for their behavior – out of 3,000, a scant 100 of us remained by the very end (yes, they just got up and walked out as soon as they were handed their diploma holders), and I can’t even begin to estimate how few were still fully clothed in their graduate regalia as they recessed out of the stadium. Yes, it was hot and long and miserable, but this is your graduation for pete’s sake! For all of the “Pomp and Circumstance” surrounding what was supposed to be The Big Day…I felt oddly like I was back in kindergarten. I guess things don’t really change, huh?

Regardless, today still feels somewhat special. I’m not a college student anymore. I have a diploma (well, I have a diploma cover – the diploma will be mailed in a few months). To commemorate this special new path unfolding in my proverbial and cheesy journey, I thought it appropriate to tell you about this absolutely delicious Sunrise Daiquiri Smoothie (you know, like the Sunrise Smoothie, the sun is also rising in a new chapter of my life! I know, I know, I’m beyond corny. I can’t help it). It’s non-alcoholic, but I tried to mimic the flavors of a fruity cocktail in it to add an edge to the otherwise sweet flavors.

And let me tell you, this is one seriously tasty smoothie! It’s citrusy, the perfect temperature and consistency, and all around a great choice for the morning to perk you up and get you ready for the day. There are only 2 things that would make this smoothie even more-out-of-this-world: first, a VitaMix to totally pulverize the coconut flakes, which in my blender remained a little chunkier than I would have liked; second, a layered effect making first an orange and then a strawberry smoothie in the finished glass to produce a gorgeously marbled effect that would really remind you of a true sunrise. Another example of how the Martha Stewart gene is somewhat lacking in my DNA. I do have a goal this summer to work on my presentation/plating/photography skills, though, so maybe you’ll start seeing cutesy things like swirled smoothies in the near future. For now, the smoothie is just plain old pink, and it’s in just a plain old glass, photographed against a plain old wooden desk backdrop, but I like it. A lot. And I hope you do, too.

I also want to wish everyone who is celebrating a very happy Mother’s Day! I hope you have some wonderful food-filled plans set for the rest of the day. I won’t be cooking (probably a good call – after the hectic events of the past week between moving out and graduation, I’m pooped!), but I will be going out to eat with L’s family and then hopefully stopping by my grandparent’s house tonight to see them and other family members who couldn’t make it to graduation yesterday. It should be a good day!