Category Archives: Food

Mint-Chocolate Tofu Pudding

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Peppermint-Chocolate Pudding

Peppermint-Chocolate Pudding

One of the great things about Tofu, is it’s ability to take on flavors. My recipe for Tofu fried chicken is a prime example of that! If you haven’t tried that yet, then you might want to do so, and pair it with this recipe. I love puddings, and Justice De La Torre our staff Nutritionist has taught me many ways to enjoy them without the guilt of added sugars, or ingredients that aren’t so good for me. Like my recipe for Chocolate Avocado pudding—hey don’t knock it until you try it! I’ve yet to serve it to anyone who didn’t convert! Try it! If tofu or avocado are not your ingredients of choice, my recipe for Chocolate pots de Creme will more than suit your taste buds. They’re super creamy and so delicious, the perfect dessert for Valentines day, or any day! My daughters first experience with peppermint was with peppermint bark candy at Christmas. She fell in love with the flavor of peppermint and chocolate. So much so that for a while she referred to plain peppermint candies as peppermint bark. Since Valentines day is tomorrow, I decided to give my love, what she loves, chocolate mint, but in the form of pudding. She loves it. I almost didn’t get a picture to share with you guys, because she couldn’t wait for me to take pictures she wanted to eat it as soon as it was done.

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 5 minutes
Total time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:
4 ounces of semi sweet dark organic chocolate (60%) melted or 1/3 cup of powdered chocolate
5 tablespoons of maple syrup or agave
1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 14 oz package of silken or soft Non-GMO organic tofu

Directions:
Melt the chocolate over a pot of water with a double boiler. Drain the tofu and place in a blender and blend until smooth, add in both extracts, your choice of sweetener, and the melted chocolate.
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Blend until smooth, place in a glass bowl and chill for at least 30 minutes. Serve with whipped cream or just enjoy sans whipped cream.

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Greek Marinated Lamb Chops

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Greek Marinated Lamb Chops

Greek Marinated Lamb Chops

The FoodSaver that my husband gave me for Christmas this year has turned out to be one of my favorite kitchen gadgets of all time! I absolutely love it. I can place meat into a container and push a button and 10 minutes later I have marinated meat! And not just meat marinated on the surface, the marinade goes throughout the meat. The process of sucking the air out and pulsing the marinade in, produces tender, delicious, and fully marinaded meat. It’s so awesome that I’m smiling just typing this. I love it when a kitchen gadget does what it’s supposed to do, and I love it more when it saves me time in the kitchen. I’ve been using my new gadget a lot lately and testing out some fun marinades. This lamb marinade is just one of the many, many delicious marinades coming up on the blog for you.

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes
Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:
6 lamb chops
1 teaspoon of fresh rosemary chopped finely
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
1 clove of garlic grated or crushed
1/4 cup of organic Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:
In a medium bowl combine ingredients 2-6. Season the lamb chops with sea salt and black pepper then place them in the marinade and toss. Let marinate for 10-20 minutes. Pre-heat the oven 425F, place the lamb chops on a foil lined cookie sheet and bake for 15-18 minutes, remove from the oven and enjoy!

Parmesan Green beans

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Parmesan Green beans

Hello there my fellow foodies! I feel like I’ve been neglecting you guys and my blog. I’ve been so busy with work and raising my daughter that I have barely had enough time to post all the recipes I have in my cue! This last week in particular has been trying, and I didn’t get around to posting a second recipe, so I’ll try to post 3 this week to make it up to you.

My husband is a big fan of green beans, he would eat them every day of the week if I served them. This is a super quick and delicious way to serve green beans, and we all love green beans this way! Serve these with meatloaf and you have a winning dinner!

Ingredients
1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese grated
1/4 cup of Percorino cheese grated
1lb of fresh organic green beans stems removed
Sea salt an black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon of olive oil.

Directions:
Pre-heat your oven to 400F. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Place the green beans in a single layer on the cookie sheet. Drizzle the green beans with olive oil, and season with sea salt and black pepper.
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Bake for 10 minutes or until green beans are fork tender, then remove from oven top with grated cheese and bake for 1-2 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven and enjoy!
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Share your favorite green bean recipe. I could use some new ways to enjoy green beans!

Smashed Potatoes

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Smashed Potaoes

Smashed Potaoes

I love potatoes! Love them!!! Any diet that excludes potatoes isn’t a diet I’d ever be on. When my friends even mention going on a low carb diet, I tell them “good luck with that, I’ll be over here with my potatoes and apples! Not going to happen for me, but I wish you the best of luck!” I subscribe to the eat a little of everything and nothing will become a problem diet. The only thing I restrict from my diet are processed foods. If it’s not a real, whole food, then I don’t eat it. This system has worked for me all of my life, so I think I will stick to it. With that said, I love this particular recipe for potatoes, they’re the perfect combination of a fried potato and a baked potato, just delish! I used an Italian dried spice blend, but you can use any spices that you like. I also used multi-color potatoes. Purple, blue and red potatoes are great for you, they have more antioxidants than white potatoes!

Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
15-20 small organic fingerling potatoes or small Yukon gold potatoes
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of Sea salt and more to taste
1 teaspoon of Italian seasoning

Directions:
Pre heat your oven to 425F. Line a cookie sheet with foil and set aside. To a medium pot add potatoes, sea salt and enough water to cover the potatoes, bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil the potatoes until they are fork tender about 10 minutes. Drain the water from the potatoes then place them on the foil lined cookie sheet. Smash each potato with the back of a spoon, you want to expose the flesh. Season each potato with sea salt, and Italian seasoning, then drizzle olive oil over each potato.

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Place the cookie sheet in the oven, and cook until the potatoes take on a golden brown color, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and serve immediately!

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Ranch Chicken Thighs

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Ranch chicken thighs

Ranch chicken thighs

Another great way to use my ranch seasoning is on chicken. Ranch seasoning was made to go on chicken. Chicken and ranch make a perfect pair. This recipe is a great one for a quick fix week night meal, or served to some friends at a Super Bowl party. Just substitute the thighs for wings and you’ll have a game day food everyone will be talking about for days to come.

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Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients
5-6 skinless boneless chicken thighs
2 tablespoons of my ranch seasoning
Sea salt to taste
1 tablespoon of Olive oil

Directions:
Pre heat your oven to 425F. To a bowl add the chicken thighs, olive oil, ranch seasoning and sea salt, and mix well. Place chicken on a foil lined cookie sheet, and bake for 20 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through. Remove from oven, serve and enjoy! This chicken is great with my ranch dip!

Ranch chicken with ranch dip

Ranch Potatoes

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Ranch Potatoes

Ranch Potatoes

If you’re still on the fence about whether or not to make my Ranch seasoning, this recipe, and the one I plan to post later this week, should get you right off of that fence. There really are so many ways that you can use my ranch seasoning, and every one of them will be delicious!

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Prep time:5 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:
2.5 cups of Yukon gold potatoes cubed
1.5 teaspoons of my Ranch seasoning add more if you’re so inclined
5 tablespoons of olive oil
Sea salt to taste

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet, add in the potatoes and cook until all sides are brown and potatoes are Cooked through. Transfer the potatoes from the skillet to a bowl and toss with ranch seasoning and sea salt. Enjoy like this or dipped in my Ranch dip, either way, you cannot go wrong!

Homemade Ranch Yogurt dip and salad dressing

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Ranch yogurt dressing/dip

Ranch yogurt dressing/dip

So now that you’ve made my Dry Ranch Seasoning mix, it’s time to have some fun with ways to use it. The uses for my ranch seasoning are nearly endless, but this yogurt dip/salad dressing is a really easy way. This single dip is responsible for my daughters newfound love of carrots! She loves dipping carrots in this. Frankly she likes the ranch dip more than the carrots, but as a mom you pick your battles. Luckily this is a win-win for both of us, since this dip has no added oil and is made from yogurt and herbs, there really isn’t any thing wrong with her love for it. Most ranch dressings contain mayonnaise as a base. Organic Greek yogurt is great for this if your main use for it is as a dip for veggies and chicken wings. I prefer Bulgarian yogurt, it’s more tart than Greek and not as thick, it’s the perfect texture for both a salad dressing and a dip, but go with a yogurt that you love. It’s important to pick one that you love, because this is the base of your salad dressing or dip and you want the base to taste good.

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Ingredients:
1/2 cups of Organic Greek or Bulgarian yogurt
3 tablespoons of butter milk (optional)
1/2 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon of my Dry Ranch Seasoning, or the fresh ingredients below:

If you have fresh herbs you can skip my ranch seasoning and use the below:
1 tablespoons organic parsley chopped finely
1/2 teaspoons of organic dill weed chopped finely
1 clove garlic grated
1.5 teaspoons of onion powder
sea salt to taste
pink peppercorns ground ( you can sub black pepper) to taste

Add the ingredients to a mason jar or glass bowl and mix well.
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Cover the bowl and refrigerate to allow the flavors to meld for at least 30 minutes. Serve with veggie sticks, over salad, or with my recipe of Lime and red pepper flake wings. You really can’t go wrong! I have a few upcoming recipes that I’ve made using the dry ranch mix, stay tuned!

Homemade Ranch Dry seasoning

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Homemade ranch dry seasoning mix

Homemade ranch dry seasoning mix

One of my favorite condiments is salad dressing. I love making my own salad dressing from scratch. Most salad dressings are filled with way too many preservatives for my taste, not to mention hidden and not so hidden calories. I love simple vinaigrettes, but every now and again, I crave a creamy salad dressing. I resort to making this recipe for ranch, or my Caesar salad dressing. Both are fantastic in their own separate ways. I’ve come up with a recipe for a dry ranch seasoning. This ranch seasoning is extremely versatile, and can be used in a host of recipes, I’ll post 2 more ways to use it in the coming week. But first let me give you the recipe for the ranch seasoning.

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Ingredients:
2.5 tablespoons of dried organic parsley
1.5 teaspoons of dried organic dill weed
2 teaspoons of garlic powder
2.5 teaspoons of onion powder
2 teaspoons of dried onion flakes
1 teaspoon of sea salt
1 teaspoon of pink peppercorns ground ( you can sub black pepper)

Add the ingredients for the dry ranch mix to a mason jar, or a re-sealable bag, and mix well. 1 tablespoon of this mixture is all you need to make my low calorie Ranch yogurt dip/salad dressing.

Lime and Red Pepper Flake Chicken Wings

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Lime and Red Pepper Flake Chicken Wings

Lime and Red Pepper Flake Chicken Wings

I am not a huge sports fan, and thankfully neither is my husband! I can’t sit through games. In our house politics is what has us yelling at the television and calling the players idiots. That doesn’t mean that we don’t enjoy game day foods like chicken wings. I for one am a huge fan of spicy buffalo wings, but they aren’t huge on my husbands list of favorite things to eat. So if I want them, I have have to invent ways to indulge my craving and make them palatable for him. This recipe does just that. The tang of the lime, matched with the spice of the red pepper flake, make for a tasty and satisfying wing!

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Prep Time: 5 minute
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
1 lb of chicken wings
1/4 of lime juice
3 cloves of garlic crushed or grated
Zest of 2 limes
1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
Sea salt to taste
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Directions: Pre-heat the oven to 425F. Pat dry your wings with a paper towel, In a bowl season the chicken with sea salt, then add the lime zest, olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes and mix well. Place the chicken on a foil lined baking sheet and place in the oven, cook for 20-25 minutes, until the chicken is crisped and cooked through. Remove from the oven, sprinkle evenly with lime juice and enjoy! My ranch dip make these even more awesome than they already are, and while you’re at it try my Ranch Potatoes!