Lentil Salad

I've been craving lentils lately. Don't ask why, because I have NO idea. Lo-and-behold, this recipe plopped itself in my lap today! I only had to buy a couple ingredients, so I was sold!

Ingredients

1 pound (about 3 cups) dried lentils. This recipe works best with whole light brown lentils. (I went to Whole Foods so that I could get these in the bulk section. They only had green lentils. Meh, worked out ok)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 1/2 teaspoons salt

4 scallions, sliced in fine rounded pieces. This means little circles, my little geniuses.

4 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon black pepper… freshly ground for overachievers

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup well packed minced parsley

Directions:

1. Put the lentils and about 5 1/2 cups of water in a 4 quart pot with the cumin and about half the salt.
2. Bring everything to a boil, then cover and simmer gently for about 25 minutes (mine took a little longer, probably because I used the wrong kind of lentils). Remove the cover, make sure that most of the water has boiled off (eh...also a lot of water left over. Also probably due to the wrong lentils), and that the lentils are softened (key!). Remove them from heat and set aside.
3. In a small bowl, combine the remaining salt, lemon juice, black pepper, olive oil, parsley and scallions.
4. One the lentils are lukewarm, pour the mixture in #3 over them and SLOWLY combine everything. If you stir to vigorously, you risk end up with a delicious, yet unappetizing mushy mess.
5. Feel free to improvise by adding split cherry tomatoes, finely diced celery, or shredded carrot.
6. You can serve immediately OR refrigerate for for several hours before serving. It really depends on whether you want to use it as a salad or a side dish. If you serve it as a salad, you can serve it over a bed of California greens or baby spinach.

I opted for the spinach salad version. LEGIT. I freaking LOVE the cumin/lemon combo. Love. It. I did put carrots in mine, but didn't have any celery or tomatoes. This seems like one of those recipes that you could just load the veggies into. I've got some experimenting to do...

Smoothies!

I just got a new blender, y'all!!! Yes, it's pink. No, that was not my preferred color. But we all know that I'm a huge giant sucker for a good sale.

Due to a lovely spout with reeeeeally bad TMJ lately, it came at a great time. Soups and smoothies are about to rule my life! I made a smoothie for dinner tonight, out of pure excitement. Might whip up some carrot soup a little later.

My take on smoothies:

-Fruit+fruit juice=a TON of sugar.

-Smoothies need not be huge Jamba Juiced sized. Seriously. Yes, fruit has a ton of vitamins and even though it's "natural" sugar, it also has a ton of sugar and SUGAR IS SUGAR. Your smoothie really shouldn't be more than about a cup. Edit: not more than a cup of fruit, I should say. I just added a bunch of extra almond milk and a hand full of spinach to my regular small smoothie and it got HUGE!

-instead of juice, try kefir, almond/soy milk, milk, or sub half the juice with yogurt. Really try to cut the sugar out by not using juice. If you're going to use juice at all (like, at all IN YOUR LIFE), try to get it as close to it's natural state as possible. Apple juice from concentrate? Pretty much just straight sugar.

-Add stuff!! I like adding almonds. Little protein and makes it more filling. Maybe add some dry oatmeal for fiber, or protein powder, or "green" powder, tofu for protein. You can disguise the taste of all kinds of good-for-you crap in smoothies.

-My trick I picked up working at a cafe place that had smoothies: take a cup the size of the smoothie you want. Fill it with the frozen fruit. THEN fill it with whatever liquid you're using until it just tops the fruit. The fruit/liquid ratio is pretty spot on that way. Not too thick, not too runny.

I'm considering playing with veggie drinks at some point next...sounds like it has the potential of being gross, though...we'll see.

Edit: I came across this last night. Almond butter! Of COURSE!! I love almond butter. It's a little pricey but SO good and totally better for you than peanut butter. I made that recipe with almond milk (super low calorie and nice nutty flavor) and mixed berries (on sale for $7 for a giant bag at Target). KEEPER. I could totally taste the almond butter. I usually just put whole almond in it. I like the crunchiness of that, but the almond butter flavor is a lot stronger. I'm sure my neighbors love hearing my blender scream at 6am every day now. Sorry for partying.

Edit pt2: Added a big handfull of fresh spinach to the smoothie just above. Can't even taste it! At all! Killer way to sneak in greens. For big people AND little people!

Edit pt 3: To mix things up (I love trying to fix things that aren't broken, apparently), I bought a carton of the SoDelicious non-sweetened coconut milk (like a milk carton, got it at Target). It's low calorie and I thought maybe it would add a naturally sweet coconut-y flair. IT DOESN'T. It's gross. It's almost...bitter. And yucks up the taste of the whole smoothie. Stick to almond milk, people. Trust.

Quinoa with Green Olives and Red Onions

This is from, shocking, the Isabel's Cantina cookbook (link to the right). I gave that cookbook to 4 different people for Christmas. Should have given it to everyone! Love it.

Ingredients
(Serves 4 to 6)
1 cup quinoa
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
5 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 med red onion
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper (omg never go grocery shopping on Sunday night. Bare shelves! Couldnt find red, so I used yellow. Seems to have worked out pretty well).
3/4 cup green olives, halved and pitted (blech. Do not like, so I left them out)
3 tablespoons lemon juice (1 to 2 lemons, I used 1)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Place the quinoa in a medium sauce pan and cover with 2 cups cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat so that the mixture simmers. Cover and cook until the water has been absorbed and the quinoa is tender, 10 to 15 mins. Remove from the heat, stir in the salt and pepper, and set aside.

Heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until soft and translucent, about 4 mins, then add the bell pepper. Continue cooking until the bell pepper has softened, about 3 mins. Add the aolives, stirring well to combine, and cook for 1 more min.

Stir the sauteed vegetables into the quinoa. Add the lemon juice, the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil, the cumin, and cilantro. Toss well to combine. Serve the quinoa warm, at room temperature, or cold. The quinoa can be stored, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Pretty simple! I love the cumin and lemon flavors. Quinoa is uber healthy, so dish up!

Easy Pesto

There once was a boy named LeGreg. Soon after he started dating his girlfriend, he met her mom and they discovered their mutual love of cooking and gardening. "I have to buy her this special basil plant! She'll love it!" he said. His girlfriend thought it charming that he wanted to buy her mother a gift, so she went along with it. The two of them raided every nursery in Chico to find this one variety of basil. Pesto basil, he says it's called. "It doesn't have that weird licorice taste that regular basil has and it makes really good...PESTO!". His girlfriend wasn't convinced that it was worth all the effort to find, but he insisted. And find, he did.

He gave my mom the little basil plant. It has light green leaves, with a creamy white trim. He certainly didn't need any additional points with her, but she loved the gift and planted it not in the herb garden, but right smack dab in the middle of the yard for all to see.

The plant likes her yard about as much as she likes him and grew to be a huge shrub (at the bottom of it in the pic, you can see a brick for size)! I couldn't let ALL that basil go to waste, so yesterday was the day that I was to make pesto for the first time everrrrrr. DUN DUN DUN!! I dug around and settled on this recipe.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup almonds
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 1/2 cups fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 pinch ground nutmeg
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Place almonds on a cookie sheet, and bake for 10 minutes, or until lightly toasted.
2. In a food processor, combine toasted almonds, garlic, basil, olive oil, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Process until a coarse paste is formed.

I doubled the recipe and it made about 1-1/2c of sauce, and I used a blender. My mom made her own version, the typical garlic/pine nuts/Parmesan cheese. MINE WAS TOTALLY BETTER!! Super good. The almonds gave it a nice nutty flavor (bonus: they're good for you!!). I haven't actually eaten it on anything yet, but the taste test was delish and I'm super stoked about it. Since I used a total of about 1/100th of that basil bush, I'll probably be making a ton more soon. Success!

Sweet Potato Fries

People call yams sweet potatoes all the time and I find it annoying. Yams=orange. Sweet potatoes=yellow. Sweet potatoes=a super food packed with TONS of nutrients and good stuff. Yams=good, but not AS good.

I decided to make sweet potato fries with actual sweet potatoes.

I didn't really use a recipe sooo....yeah.

-Cut up 3 sweet potatoes

-Place on a foil covered cookie sheet (clean up is so much easier)

-Drizzle with olive oil

-sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, and ground cayenne pepper. I used approximately 1 Tbl brown sugar, 1/8 teas cinnamon, even less pepper.

Bake for 30-35 mins at 350 degrees.

I probably should have turned them halfway through. They were half really soft and half nice and crispy and carmalized-y.

Overall, though? Success!! And totally good for you.

Baked Pears

The land on my boyfriends (aka his parents) property has TONS of fruit trees on it. In season right now? Pears. His mom seems to think that I eat nothing but, so I'm always sent home with a big plastic bag FULL of them. His dad mentioned, this last weekend, that I should try baking them. Hmmm...I'M GAME!! Sounds SO good, right?

Ingredients

• 2 medium ripe pears, peeled and halved (I didn't peel them. I don't peel anything, pretty much. Peels usually have a lot of fiber)
  
• 4 teaspoons butter or margarine
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 4 teaspoons orange marmalade (meh. skipped it. The comments said that other jams were good, but I only have grape right now, and that didn't sound great)
  

Directions

1. Place pear halves, cut side up, in a shallow 1-qt. baking dish (I put little foil place holder things under the skinny half of the pear, so that it wouldnt tip down. We cant be surrendering any butter by having it drip off the end, now can we?!). Place butter in the center of each; drizzle with lemon juice. Combine sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over pears. Top with marmalade. Cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes or until heated through (eh...I cooked mine for almost an hour).

Omg the SMELL. It smelled SO good!!I ate these with vanilla ice cream on top. Pre-ice cream, it's actually a pretty healthy dessert. I'll totally be making it again. Like, tomorrow.

Baked Lemon Chicken

I love lemon things!! So lemon chicken sounded pretty legit. And easy. LIKE ME!!! Just kidding.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs (I used panko bread crumbs which, after tonight, I realize are probably actually huge bread crumbs. It would probably be better with a more finely ground bread crumb)
  
• 4 (4 ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

Directions

1. In a shallow dish, combine the butter, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper. Place bread crumbs in another dish. Dip chicken in butter mixture, then coat with crumbs.
2. Place in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish. Drizzle with remaining butter mixture. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until juices run clear.(I went 30-35 mins, which was a bit too much)

Omg SO lemony!! Besides the bread crumbs being a bit too big, it was reeeeeally good. I ate it with cooked broccoli, asparagus (both from the frozen foods section of Trader Joe's), and cous cous. The advantage to cous cous is that, compared to the 30+ mins it takes to make rice or quinoa, it only takes like 5 mins to make. Win.

Lemon for life.

No pics. It just looked like breaded chicken. Pale breaded chicken, thanks to the huge white bread crumbs.