healthy recipes

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Grand plans I have in this kitchen of mine. Stuffing pepper boats with a wheat berry salad popped into my mind sometime last week, and on our adventure in Market Basket, I picked up all of the necessary ingredients.

Wheat berries were soaked overnight. I feel no need to even cook them; I like them just chewy enough. No, I love them. I am becoming obsessed with wheat berries.

wheat berries

When I started prepping the poblano peppers for roasting, I started to think they were a little small for stuffing, but figured I would just top them with the salad.

poblano peppers

Until they came out of the oven. I should have taken an after photo, because it was quite pathetic. They shrunk and flattened, losing about 1/4 of their already paltry size. There would be no stuffing, so I decided on a simple salad using the planned ingredients.

After chopping and sautéing butternut squash until soft,  I tossed it with the room temperature wheat berries.

butternut squash

I also used my trusty veggie scissors to cut the shrunken peppers.

wheat berry salad

I tossed the salad with goat cheese and added a few scoops to a bed of Olivia’s Organics herb salad blend, my favorite boxed salad ever.

Olivia's Organics herb salad

Wouldn’t that have been a great stuffing for roasted pepper boats? I thought so.

The roasted peppers were intensely flavorful with a nice spice to them, and it worked so well with the goat cheese, sweet squash, and herbaceous salad. I have seen lots of people tweeting about looking for healthy recipes, and I would highly recommend this one. I topped it with a few spoonfuls of jarred salsa verde to add even more of a kick, then devoured two whole plates.

I have seriously been adding wheat berries to everything, oatmeal, yogurt, salads, and soups. They are delightfully nutty and chewy and a great whole grain.

Have you developed any new favorite healthy recipes in the New Year as we all detox from the holidays?

Tags: cooking, Food, healthy eating, healthy recipes, recipe, salad, wheat berries

Simple

When I left my full time job at the end of October, I thought that I would want to cook a gourmet meal every night of the week. While I have spent my fair share of time experimenting in the kitchen, there are definitely those nights where spending hours cooking is the last thing I want to do. Not to mention, eating a big meal every night added to all of the holiday festivities isn’t the healthiest thing for us!

Sunday night, after spending the day volunteering out in the freezing cold and then organizing closets, I was not in the mood to think about food. The result? I made a meal of a bunch of veggie sides. It ended up being fun because of all of the different flavors in one meal, and it was a nice break from eating meat and fish.

The first course: Cherry, Honey Goat Cheese, and Italian Greens

Morello Cherries

I started with jarred Morello Cherries from Trader Joe’s, draining them and rinsing them off before serving. I hate fruit in syrup!

I added several scoops of cherries to some bitter lettuces and a generous portion of Trader Joe’s Chevre with Honey which is a-m-a-z-i-n-g! Laughing out loud

Goat Cheese with Honey

cherry and goat cheese salad

The second course: Sweet Potato “Fries” with Sriracha Aioli

sweet potatoes

I simply cut a few sweet potatoes into fries, coated them in olive oil, and roasted them at 425 for about half an hour. Served with a blend of Sriracha and mayo, these truly satisfied my recent fry craving.

sweet potato fries

The third course: Garlicky Green Beans

This is a holiday dish in my sister’s house, and it is a perfect way to get in some green veggies with a kick. Fresh green beans dressed with olive oil, LOTS of ground black pepper, and garlic powder, yep powder, sautéed until they are cooked to your liking. I could eat, and have eaten, a huge bowl of these all by myself. Embarrassed smile I am hoping to see them at Christmas dinner!

garlicky green beans

A dinner of sides was the perfect, simple way to use up some of the food in our fridge, get some much-needed veggie nutrition, and to have some good food on the table without much effort and without ordering takeout! I love eating tapas-style, so I could eat like this everyday.

I am really excited for the blogger event at Whole Foods tonight. See some of you there?

Do you have a favorite side dish? Do you enjoy eating lots of appetizers/small plates, or are you more of a main course with all of the fixings type of eater?

Tags: dinner, easy meals, Food, healthy eating, healthy recipes, sriracha, sweet potatoes, vegetables, Vegetarian

I may be a little obsessed with the sriracha and corn combo that I discovered at Myers + Chang and posted about yesterday. There is something about the sweetness of the corn, the spice of the sriracha, and the yummy, melty butter that scream summer in a hot, gourmet kinda way. Since I can’t eat just corn for dinner, I brainstormed with some of the fresh ingredients that we had in the house to come up with a healthy, filling, and easy to cook meal.

shrimp, corn, arugula, heirloom tomatoes

I shucked and boiled the corn on the cob until it was about 3/4 the way cooked. In the meantime, I was cleaning a bunch of medium sized shrimp and getting them into a pan with a few drops of olive oil on low heat.

shrimp, corn, arugula, heirloom tomatoes

Once the shrimp were pink on one side, I cut the corn off of the cob and tossed it into the pan of shrimp. Then the magic began. I added 3 small pats of butter and a bunch of sriracha and stirred the shrimp and corn until fully coated. Two minutes later, everything was cooked, and I added the shrimp and corn to a bed of fresh arugula and heirloom tomatoes.

shrimp, arugula, heirloom tomatoes, corn

Simple and delicious! This was another home run meal, if I do say so myself. I have been really enjoying the intense heat and the fresh, local food that summer has brought upon us. I really feel like I FINALLY feel thawed out after the winter! As everyone else is complaining about the heat, I reflect back on those Boston Marathon training days. . . and look ahead to this year, knowing that I will crave the summer heat then!

While cooking, I had a tiny glass of a great wine that I picked up at The Urban Grape last week. The 2007 Aramis is deep purple in color, as you can see in the photo on the right. I loved swirling it around in my glass and looking at it’s lovely color in the summer sunlight 🙂

Interestingly, the first night that I tried this wine, I got lots of dark berry flavors, but after I poured a glass from the day old bottle, I got an intense whiff of cocoa before the fruit came through. This wine feels round and luscious in the mouth and has a long, smooth finish. It is really an exceptional wine and was among many great choices that were open for the tasting.

Aramis Vineyards Shiraz Cabernet Aramis Shiraz Cabernet

This is not necessarily what most people would consider an ideal wine for a 100 degree evening, but for some reason I often want to drink red wine over white, even when it is hot out.

I can’t believe we are leaving for California so soon, after such a great long weekend! I am a little stressed. . . I always get stressed when we travel even though we do it pretty often. Often I just worry about my cats, but this time my cousin will be housesitting which is nice. I don’t know, I feel like leaving home takes away from of the control from this control freak 😉 Does that make sense? I am of course really excited and have some great restaurants, winery visits, and boating on Lake Sonoma planned.

Do you get stressed when traveling?

Tags: Aramis Vineyards, arugula, corn, healthy recipes, heirloom tomatoes, recipes, salad, Shiraz Cabernet, shrimp, sriracha, summer, Urban Grape, wine

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