Sardine Thursdays!

I actually eat sardines a lot...on Thursdays.  

That's something I never would have dreamed I would eat, because--ewww!--but they taste very good and are super nutritious and sustainable too!

Sometimes on triscuits, today on toast with Sriracha.  

You see, on Thursdays the husband has band practice and we just cross paths as I'm getting home and he is leaving so he has to fend for himself dinner-wise.  

Over time this has begun to mean that he eats a can of sardines and therefore so do I.

I don't bother cooking just for myself--because I do it for the glory first and foremost, so it's not as much fun if no one is there to eat food with me. 

Woo Hoo Sardines!  Yum!

Hey, Look at My Food.

Oh how I love to post about food!

Dinner!

Tonight I made hash browns with a lovely salmon (patty) sandwich with an egg, arugula, and provolone.  I have heard on various (usually competitive) cooking programs that you're not really supposed to serve fish with cheese, but I do what I want and what do I know?  

Here's how I like to make the hash browns (which is completely different from the way my husband makes them.)  I started tonight with slices of purple onion and mushrooms.  

When the onions were soft, I took out a few and put them on a sandwich I started for tomorrow's lunch.  Basically just some arugula, spinach, and provolone.  

for tomorrow's lunch

Then I added the hash browns on top of the remaining onions & mushrooms.  These are just boring old frozen bagged hash browns.  Although I sometimes go that whole absolutely homemade route, I usually do have these on hand most of the time.

The cool thing I like about using the sliced (rings) of the onions is for the flip.  They just look pretty.  The most difficult part of this for me is that I have to wait and let them cook and just not mess with them for at least 10 minutes!

Yum.  

Meanwhile, I started frying some again pre-made frozen salmon burgers.  Placed on the (homemade) whole wheat bread--that's my husband's baby--with cheese and arugula (why not put some on everything?).  After I looked at my creation, I wasn't visually satisfied, so I fried an egg and put it on top.  So Yummy!  A tomato slice would have been nice here.

While the burgers cooked, I made a smoothie for tomorrow's lunch.  I eat a lot.  Into the Vita-mix went a couple of handfuls of spinach, an apple, an orange, and a banana.  Here's the before and after:

Smoothie to be.

This goes in the lunch.

So, tomorrow I'll have the green smoothie, grilled cheese w/mushrooms, onions, arugula and spinach, a little bag o' salt & pepper kettle chips, and a container of plain greek yogurt topped with strawberries picked today from the garden.

I love making my own lunch.  It's delicious, nutritious, AND it's pretty.

What's For Dinner?

Don't hate me because I can cook.  

It's no big deal. 

Sometimes people ask me for a recipe or what something is called, but recipes and names of dishes don't really exist in our house.  I use things we have on hand, very rarely do I follow any instructions or do the same thing twice, and even MORE rarely do I have what I would call a "well-stocked" fridge to begin with.  

Tonight was basically a dinner made from leftovers.  I had a partial brick of extra firm tofu that I cubed and marinated in Tamari soy sauce (extra firm is the only style I prepare this way) and a container of sticky risotto that I made the other night.  

I also had 2 jalapenos that really needed to be eaten.  I'd rather throw something unusual into a dish than end up throwing it away because I couldn't think of a way to use it.  If something is colorful and nutritious, I don't see how you can go wrong!

Ok,  I started by coating balls of the risotto in some flour/cornmeal mixture.  I would have preferred to use bread crumbs, but for the reasons explained earlier, that's what I had.  I was hoping for a little bit of crunch there.  I browned those little buggers in some oil while I fried the tofu in a similar fashion.

Risotto Cakes

Fried Tofu

Ah, everything is brown.  Not good.  

I want to eat a rainbow.  

I did a little prep work.  A couple of slices of purple onion, those 2 jalapenos, garlic, the last 2 carrots in the fridge, 2 celery stalks, about 6 mushrooms and a handful of baby spinach.

Sauteing veggies

Add the mushrooms.

Add the tofu back in.

Spinach at the very end.

Served with a small bed of arugula under the risotto cakes.

I had enough left over for lunches tomorrow!  Yippee.  That was delicious.

I can't wait to eat it tomorrow!  

Awesome Pizza

The backstory:  We made a "normal" pizza over the weekend.  

By normal, I mean your basic mushroom and black olive 

except with a homemade crust 

made by my Master-of-the-Dough husband 

and homemade sauce blended into a velvety blanket 

thanks to the Vitamix.  

So, it was a pretty special  pie.

This particular dough recipe makes enough for 2 crusts, 

so we put the extra one in the fridge after par-baking it.

Tonight, I decided I better use it or freeze it, 

so here's what happened when I didn't plan for a pizza.  

I just used what I had on hand...

( Luckily I had a lot of awesome stuff! )

Step 1.  Sauce it up.

Look closely and you may be able to spot the layer of cream cheese below the sauce.  The sauce was left over from the other night...just carmelized onions and garlic, mushrooms, and italian herbs, salt, pepper, a little brown sugar and a can of tomatoes.  Blended in the amazing Vitamix after it simmered for awhile.  

I still have some left if you need any.  It's amazeballs. 

Step 2.  Top it.

I had about 5 mushrooms that were near their end.  

AND a 1/2 can of the olives we used on the weekend's pizza.  

A perfect amount.

Step 3.  Top it some more.

Step 4.  Keep toppin.

These red onion slices (and some other stuff that comes later) Billy will be less excited about, 

but whatever...It's pretty. 

Step 5.  Cheese it.

We're totally out of shredded pizza cheese, but 4 slices of lovely provolone?  

Awesome.  (Told you.)

Then, see below----->Oh yes I did--jalapeno slices.  

The thing about that is, I had this craving for nachos a week or so ago, and I bought this entire tray of jalapenos.  I am actually trying to use them up, but even after this pizza adventure I still have a couple left. 

Also, the ever presence lately of the jalapenos is the other part that Billy is less enthused about.  

Very hot.  Plus I left all of the seeds in.  

But, it's pretty.  Shouldn't that be nearly enough?  

Step 6.  Back to toppin.

Step 7.  More cheese.  And oil.  and sprinky stuff.

A little bit of shredded Parmesan?  

Don't mind if I do.  

Guess what else?  

Salt, 

pepper, 

italian herbs, 

and drizzle of garlic-infused olive oil.  

Holy crap.

Step 8.  Bake it (till it's done.)

I baked the whole mess until the top cheese was brown and bubbly.  

Step 9.  Eat it.

The finished product.  HOT!  Delicious.  Awesome.

just cleaning out the fridge...

Rice to Meet You!

This weekend I did one of those things I've always been meaning to get around to.  I just knew that if I could follow this helpful tip I've read about in umpteen magazines and helpful blogs, my life would become so much more manageable.  And I believe it has.

What the heck did I do that makes me feel THIS accomplished?  I cooked a bunch of brown rice, wild rice, and barley and froze them in packets using my food sealer.

You expected something more monumental, right?  Sorry.  However, I am planning to go home tonight and make a healthy dinner of beans & rice (probably with an egg on it) and it will take mere minutes to put together.  The fact that it takes upwards of 45 minutes to cook brown rice usually means that it rarely makes an appearance on our dinner table on a weeknight.  Now, thanks to our handy-dandy food sealer I've got many little packs in there that I can boil in the bag or steam in the microwave.  How awesome is that?

Pretty freaking awesome.

(P.S.  Does anyone else even eat barley?)

Ch-Ch-Ch-CHIA!

Yes, they are the very same chia seeds that you soak and smear on a clay head.  Since I have just finished reading 'Born to Run' about the Tarahumara tribe and some great ultra-marathoners I felt I had to try their secret weapon for energy and magnificent endurance.  

Chia seeds have been used for centuries and are SUPER healthy, albeit a little bit gross-looking, and extremely gelatinous when mixed with liquid.  The less liquid, the more gel-like it becomes.

I like to make a sluice by adding about 3/4 c. water to about a tablespoon of seeds.   Looks good, eh?

Mmmm, drink it down!

It tastes pretty much like it looks--crunchy and goobery, so I add a little squeeze of lime.  What does that do?  Well, it makes it slightly lime-y.  I don't like a lot of sweetness in my beverages, but if you wanted, you could add some simple syrup or honey to yours. 

Really the seeds by themselves (dry) do taste a little bit like walnuts.

Health benefits of Chia:

• ENERGY
• AIDS DIGESTION
• HELPS YOU STAY HYDRATED
• PROTEIN
• ANTI-OXIDANTS
• OMEGA 3 AND OMEGA 6 ESSENTIAL FATTY ACIDS
• CALCIUM
• MAGNESIUM, BORON
• FIBER
• PHOSPHORUS
• MANGANESE
• COPPER
• IRON
• ZINC
• NIACIN

I'm not going to pretend that I know what the purpose of all of those trace minerals and such are for, but I probably need them.  Sometimes I have this drink in the morning, sometimes before or after a workout.  I try to get some in at least once a day.  I don't think I can go wrong here.  

The benefits have been compared to flax seeds, but flax is so demanding--you have to grind it fresh each time you want to use it, you can't cook with it, and it can spoil/go rancid really quickly.  Annoying.  The chia seeds last forever and don't require any special treatment.   Besides that, they have MORE essential fatty acids than flax seeds.  I don't know why flax gets all the attention.   

You can eat the chia seeds raw or add to ANYTHING.  They absorb the flavors of whatever they are mixed with, so you could add them to soups, desserts, yogurt.  Literally whatever you want.   

nom nom.  crunch crunch. slurp.

Homemade Facial Mask

I have kind of terrible skin.  

I'm in my 40s and my skin acts like a hormonal teenager's sometimes.  

Along with my desire to limit the chemicals in my life, I thought I'd check into homemade skin care.

I googled 'recipes for face masks' and got a lot of great ideas,  

and noticed several recurring ingredients such as:

Anything milky.

Lemon juice.

Honey.

Oatmeal.

Sugar.

Many other things I can't remember.  

You get the gist--"tasty things" are good on your face.

For my concoction tonight, 

I mixed a spoonful each of greek yogurt (plain of course), 

lemon juice and honey.

No need to take a photo.  It didn't look like much.

I smeared it on my face and waited for the magic.  

Hmmm.  Nothing happened except the dogs thought I was delicious.

After a few minutes I scrubbed it off with a palmful of sugar and warm water.  

Once I rinsed everything off my face, it felt really really soft!

And I'm totally prettier.