Noodle Bowls

I've been on a bowl kick lately. Maybe it's because it's easy cleanup or it looks great to serve, but I can't stop dreaming up ideas for food bowls. When we moved from our town house in the city to our home in the suburbs, we moved away from one of our favorite Japanese restaurants. They had the best lo mein. Garrett and I would go there once a week to fulfill our craving! 

While we were in Hawaii on our honeymoon, it seemed like everywhere we ate had some type of asian-fusion cuisine on their menu, which I happily ordered. 

While yes, you can go to your neighborhood Chinese restaurant and pick up a large order of lo mein for under ten bucks, I bet you two things. One, the satisfaction you'll feel from making your own will make you feel like a total all-star and two, you'll be saving yourself a TON of sodium intake.

Like most great meals, the ingredients you use are important. What's a good pasta if you don't use great olive oil? The secret to a great lo mein is really good soy sauce. I love liquid aminos by Bragg because it has less sodium that other soy sauces and it also contains 16 amino acids! Did I also mention it has no preservatives, artificial coloring or chemicals? Score!

Noodle Bowls

Preparation: 10 min

                  Cook Time: 20 min  Total Time: 30 min                       

Ingredients

        

          Noodle Topper

          1 crown of broccoli cut into florets

          3 tbsp olive oil

          1/4 cup chopped carrots

          2 tbsp stir fry oil or olive oil

          2 tbsp water

          1 pack of shredded cabbage

          1 tbsp chopped garlic

          1/4 cup chopped yellow onion

          2 chicken breasts - cut into cubes

          Cilantro for garnish

          Sesame seeds for garnish

         

         Lo Mein & Sauce:

         Lo mein noodles

         2 green onions, chopped - just the green part

         3 tbsp soy sauce or liquid aminos

         1 tsp sesame oil

         1 tsp sugar or honey

        

Instructions

        

         Preheat your oven to 350 and place your chicken breast in the oven. Set your timer for 20 minutes. 

         Using a large skillet or wok, begin by heating 2 tbsp of olive oil on medium heat. Add your broccoli 

         and onion. Begin cooking them until the onion is translucent. Add your cabbage and lower the heat to 

         low-medium and add your garlic, carrots, water and stir fry oil. Add additional water if the veggies look 

         dry. The point of this is to continue steaming the veggies so they are juicy and tender.

         Now begin boiling a pot of water for your lo mein noodles. Follow the instructions on their label. 

         Remove your vegetables from the heat once the cabbage is cooked down and soft. 

         Mix together the liquid ingredients and sugar in a separate bowl until well blended. Pour over your 

         noodles and stir until combined. Your chicken should now be ready. Cut into cubes and build your bowl!

         

         I like to lay the foundation with the lo mein, and then place my chicken on one side and the veggies on 

         the other. I then top my bowl with sesame seeds and cilantro. My husband likes to add a kick with some 

         sriracha! There's no wrong way to build your bowl, so have fun with it and enjoy!

          

Cauliflower Casserole

Cauliflower Casserole

We recently had my little nephew in town, who is just the most darling thing! He just turned one and learned to walk two weeks before coming to our house. He has baby blue eyes and blonde hair and smile that melts your heart. I've been feeling baby fever since he left.

Isn't he the cutest?!?

Garrett (my husband) and I are newlyweds and are not quite ready to have a child yet - despite my new day dreams of a sweet baby of our own. We are both entrepreneurs and dedicate a ton of time to our businesses. A baby right now just doesn't seem viable for our life - especially because I'm knee deep in my sommelier studies. 

Having a child in town - I realized how difficult it is for some mothers to get their children to eat healthy food. My other nephew seems to only want chicken nuggets or something sweet. Honestly, I've been burned out on veggies too. I've loved watching other food bloggers come up with fun ideas for various vegetables so that your healthy meal feels indulgent. 

I personally love all vegetables, but I've been serving them up very plain. I have been craving salty foods - macaroni and cheese, twice baked potatoes...all the foods I know I don't need. 

After searching our cabinets and refrigerator, my cauliflower casserole was born! My husband came home and saw the cheesy, decadent, bacon-topped creation and immediately wanted a spoon. 

"What are these? Grits?" 

I agreed until he finished his plate and then broke the news to him that they were not grits, and in fact, they were a veggie he hates - cauliflower! As I paused waiting for him to be disgusted from eating a plate full, he smiled and said "Why haven't you ever cooked cauliflower like this before?".

Trick your kiddos or husband with this awesome recipe! It's a great quick fix for supper.

Cauliflower Casserole

Preparation: 15 min

                  Cook Time: 20 min  Total Time: 35 min                       

Ingredients

        

          1 crown of cauliflower

          8 oz of plain greek yogurt or sour cream

          1-2 tbsp of garlic powder

          1/2 tsp of onion powder

          1/2 tbsp chopped green onion

          1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

          Chopped bacon for garnish

          Salt & Pepper to taste

Instructions

        

          Preheat your oven to 375.

          Begin by removing the florets from the stock of the cauliflower crown. Add the florets to a 

          microwavable bowl and add 3 tbsp of water. Cover with plastic wrap and microwave for 7-10 

          minutes or until tender. Remove from microwave and and drain. Allow to stand for 2 minutes (this 

          makes the cauliflower more fluffy). Pulse the cauliflower in a blender or food processor until it had a   

          smooth, grit-like texture. Place the cauliflower back in the bowl and mix in your spices, 

          greek yogurt/sour cream, and green onions. Bake the mixture in a hollow dish for 30 minutes, adding  

          the cheese for the last 3 minutes. While the cauliflower is baking, cook your bacon on low-medium heat

          until crunchy. Chop your bacon and garnish the top of the dish when finished.

Homemade Ravioli

Homemade Ravioli

Call me extravagant or a girl with too much time on her hands, but I love making homemade pasta! There is something so tranquil and special about creating an entire meal from scratch. 

My dream since I graduated from college was to go to Italy. I was saving up for months to take culinary classes in Tuscany. The program I wanted to use provided housing for their students in an old castle with english-speaking instructors. I still have day dreams of learning from cute elderly women, sharing their age-old techniques on making the best pastas, breads and sauces. 

I told my husband all about my dream of going to Italy to learn authentic Italian cooking and how I had to cancel my plans to take a job in Atlanta. The very next week an Amazon prime box was on our front porch, addressed to me. He surprised me with this amazing cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. (Best husband EVER!!!)

This book is amazing! I've made homemade sauces and pastas in the past, but they have never turned out as well as they did when I started using this book. She does a great job of explaining techniques thoroughly and keeps each recipe so simple.

You can buy your own copy by clicking the link:

Homemade Ravioli Recipe

The dough recipe is from Essentials of Italian Cooking, mentioned above.
Preparation: 40 min

                  Cook Time: 20 min  Total Time: 60 min                       

Ingredients

        

          2 cups flour

          1 egg

          1 container ricotta cheese

          1 can crushed tomatoes

          4 Italian sausages
          1/4 cup chopped red or yellow onion

          1 tbsp chopped garlic
          1 tbsp garlic powder
          1 tbsp thyme

           2 tbsp olive oil

          1/4 cup fresh chopped basil + additional for garnish

           Salt & Pepper to taste 

Instructions

          Begin by removing the meat from the sausage casing and cooking the sausages on medium heat in a
          frying pan with the chopped onion and 1 tbsp of olive oil. Cook until sausage is thoroughly cooked and
          onion is translucent. Remove from heat and set aside.

          We will now begin to make our pasta dough.
          Create a well with your flour on a clean surface and crack your egg in the center. Take a fork and whip
          the egg until the yolk and white are blended. Begin adding flour into the center of the well and mix with
          the egg until a dough begins to form. Cover your fingers with olive oil and begin pushing the dough away
          from you, fold in half, turn clockwise and repeat until the dough begins to feel soft like skin.

         Once your dough is ready, use a pasta machine or a rolling pin and begin thinning the dough.
         I started at the lowest setting of my pasta machine and ran the dough through until it was at a
         thinness of "3", about as thin as an envelope with a card inside.

         In a large bowl, combine ricotta cheese, chopped garlic, half of your fresh basil, and sausage and onion.
         Add salt and pepper to taste - about 1/2 tsp each. Cut your sheet of past in half. Wet one sheet of pasta
         with a small amount of water until it feels tacky. Add 1 tsp of your ricotta mixture to the sheet of wet
         pasta, leaving 2 inches on each side of the sheet. Once the sheet is full, take the other half and lay it on
         top of the ricotta dollops. Press the top sheet into the bottom and try and press out any air bubbles
         around each pocket. Take your ravioli stamp or a knife and begin cutting the sheets into raviolis. Repeat
         this process until you have enough raviolis for your meal.

          For the sauce - add the remaining onion and olive oil to a frying pan. Cook the onion until translucent.
          Pour the crushed tomatoes over the onions and add your remaining basil to the mixture.  Add salt &
          pepper to taste, and your spices. Cook until warm and then reduce heat to simmer.

           Fill  a pot with water and bring it to a boil on the stove. Add your fresh ravioli and cook until the pasta
           is al dente (about 5-8 min). Top your ravioli with the sauce and add fresh parmesan and chopped basil
           to garnish.

Click here to buy the pasta machine and ravioli stamp I used!

               

Black Bean Soup

Ahhh summer. I love days by the pool, nights out on the town and how social everyone seems to become during this time of year. In Atlanta it's been a strange summer this year. Rather than grabbing my bikini and running to the nearest watering hole, I've been land-locked by all of the rain. It seems each day that I think we may just get a full day of sunshine, I step outside with hopes of a pool day and end up having to head home.

During the summer I always try and lighten up my recipes with low carb meals. The only problem is my favorite food is Mexican food and I find myself dying for queso a few days in to the healthy eating regime. With all this rain and my cravings for Mexican food, it suddenly dawned upon me...SOUP! There is something so satisfying about a bowl of hearty soup with a large dollop of greek yogurt (my substitute for sour cream), that helps all those naughty cravings go away.

The best thing about this soup is not the calorie content, but the price tag to make it. I came up with a Meals Under $10 Challenge to see how low I could get our grocery bill for the month. I'm a girl who likes the finer things in life, and our meals out on the town were cutting into that budget significantly. This soup is so simple it's a nice reminder that sometimes, less is more. 

(Rather than cook the beans from dry, I prefer to save time with canned black beans with low sodium.) 

Black Bean Soup Recipe

Preparation: 10 min

                  Cook Time: 35 min  Total Time: 45 min                       

Ingredients

        

          1 can black beans

          1/2 cup chicken stock

          1/2 red bell pepper

          1/2 green bell pepper

          1/4 cup chopped red onion

          1 tbsp cumin

          1 tsp garlic powder

          1/4 tsp chili powder

          Salt & Pepper to taste

          2 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro + extra for garnish

          Optional: top with Cilantro Lime Rice

Instructions

          Pour your beans into a sieve and give them a quick rinse. 

          Chop your onion and bell peppers and add them to a large pot with half of your chicken stock.     

          Cook the ingredients until tender on medium heat (about 5-8 min) stirring occasionally. 

          Once tender, add your black beans, remaining chicken stock, and spices. Cook until warm.

          Transfer 3/4 of the soup to a blender, food processor or use an immersion blender to blend 

          the soup. Add the blended soup back into the pot and mix. 

          Serve with a dollop of sour cream or plain greek yogurt. Garnish with cilantro.

          Enjoy!

Chicken Cacciatore

In keeping with my "Skinny Series", I wanted to include this amazingly simple, decadent meal. We have been doing meal prep at our house for the last eight weeks to lose weight for our wedding. It's been so great being able to reach into the fridge and have a few meal options available when we're both hungry and strapped for time! However, now that we wedding is over, I have more time to work on making new recipes and converting ones I read about in old cookbooks, Cooking Light magazine and from my own imagination.

We recently went on a trip to Naples that was absolutely gorgeous! We went as a pre-wedding vacation to relax and get a nice glow before the big day. Much to my surprise, almost all of the restaurants in Naples were Italian-fare. Carbs weren't exactly my first choice with our upcoming nuptials, so I opted for dishes with fresh herbs, chicken, and mozzarella. 

Since our wedding I've been craving pasta like crazy! I found this recipe in a new Italian cookbook I received as a wedding gift and adapted it to be lighter-fare. 

You will need the following on your shopping list:

1 1/2 cup Multi-color bell peppers 

1 cup Yellow onion

(I prefer paying the extra buck fifty for pre-chopped ingredients!) 

3 Chicken breasts

2 tbsp thyme

1 1/2 tbsp Italian parsley

3 tbsp Basil

1 package whole wheat spaghetti noodles

1 can crushed tomatoes

Shredded mozzerella - for garnish

1/4 cup white wine

Begin by coating your pan with spray olive oil and warm over medium heat. Add 1 1/2 cups of your chopped bell peppers and allow them to cook down for 2-4 minutes.

Next, add 1 cup of chopped yellow onion and 1/8 cups white wine to your dish. For this dish, I prefer a nice buttery chardonnay to round out the flavors. Stay away from ultra fruity wines for this dish. Stir ocaasionally.

Allow the onion, wine and bell peppers to simmer over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes. 

While simmering, coat another pan with spray olive oil and add your chicken. Cook your chicken over medium-high heat (around a 6) for 5 minutes on one side.

Before flipping, spray the raw side of the chicken. Cook for an additional 5 minutes on the raw side. Add 3 tbsp of white wine and 2 tbsp of water to add additional moisture to the chicken. 

Lower the heat of the chicken to medium-low (around a 4).

While the chicken is cooking, add the can of crushed tomatoes to the pepper and onion mix and blend well. Add your chopped herbs and allow to simmer over low heat.

Repeat the process of flipping the chicken every 5 minutes 2 additional times, for a total of 20 minutes pan frying. 

Begin cooking your spaghetti noodles according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Cut into your chicken after 20 minutes to make sure it is cooked thoroughly. Depending on the thickness, it should be done around 20-30 minutes, flipping every 5 minutes.

Once your noodles are finished, drain them and add them back to the pot, removing them from heat.

Serve by adding the noodles to the plate first, top with a chicken breast, and follow with sauce. Garnish your dish with shredded mozzarella cheese and a piece of parsley.

Buon Appetito!

Greek Chicken Meal Prep

Greek Chicken Meal Prep

With our wedding just 50 days away, it's time to get serious about our dieting. I am not obsessive about my calories throughout the day, nor do I keep a meal diary. The main idea of losing weight and eating healthy is making it easy on yourself and having your healthy foods available when you're hungry so you don't become too impatient to cook a healthy meal and end up with ketchup and grease on your lips, wondering how you got in the McDonald's parking lot in the first place. (Maybe that was just me?)

The one thing that I don't like is leftovers. I like variety. The idea of eating the same thing each day sounds like a prison sentence to me...I'm a foodie, what would you expect? So in order to keep myself accountable to sticking to the diet, I needed lots of variety of similar meals.

The first one I came up with was a greek chicken dish with a Mediterranean salad, brussel sprouts and tzatziki sauce. Doesn't sound too bad for a diet, does it?

The one thing to keep in mind as you do this and experiment with your own ideas is to keep it simple. The simpler the ingredients, the lower the calories.

I added lots of dill, some lemon juice, olive oil, water, pepper and dried thyme to the mixture and let the chicken cook over medium heat so that it would cook slowly and absorb moisture.

Next, we want to cook our brussel sprouts while our chicken warms up. Heat the oven to 400 degrees and grab an 8x8 inch pan for your sprouts. Spray it down with olive oil spray or avocado oil spray. Begin to cut your brussels into halves, cutting off the tails as you chop.

For seasoning, crack fresh pepper over the top, dusting all of the brussel sprouts in the pan. Follow by spraying the brussel sprouts with the oil you used in the pan until they are all covered in the oil. I also like to add 1/4 cup of water to help them with moisture so they accomplish that soft-to-crunchy ratio. So that the flavors mixed well, I added dill, 2 tsp of lemon juice and 2 tsp of chopped garlic.

Let your brussel sprouts cook for about 30-45 minutes or until nice and golden like in the picture below. I check on them every 10-15 minutes to toss them and add additional oil so they don't become dry.

Looking good so far.

Once your chicken is cooked, remove the large chunks of dill and discard. Using tongs, grab the chicken out of the skillet and place it on a cutting board. I like my chicken cut into strips, so I cut my chicken diagonally. Once my brussel sprouts were done, I allowed them to cool, and then put them into my containers.

For the salad, I bought a salad kit from Taylor Farms to make things easier on myself. 

Tip: don't put the dressing on the salad or it will wilt.

Click here for my tzatziki sauce recipe:

I hope you enjoy! If you like this recipe or have any recipes you want to share, please let me know in the comments!

Tzatziki Sauce

Tzatziki sauce is like dieting crack for me. I am a sauce person. You can count on me to order extra sauce on the side or three types of dipping sauce at a drive through. The only problem with my sauce obsession is that it can pack on tons of unnecessary calories. One tablespoon of ranch or barbecue sauce can be almost 100 calories! Yikes! In steps, tzatziki sauce. It goes with so many different foods as a delicious accoutrement. The best part? One tablespoon of this sauce is only 10 calories.

Here's how to make it:

You will need a lemon, 8 oz plain non-fat greek yogurt, 2 cloves garlic, dill and a cucumber.

Add your greek yogurt to a bowl and then begin grating your cucumber with a cheese grater. I'm not a huge fan of the skin of the cucumber, so I grate it off with a vegetable grater prior to using the cheese grater.

Next, chop the dill and add 2 tbsp to the mixture.

Follow by finely chopping your cloves of garlic and mix it into the dip. Add 1 tsp of lemon juice and mix. You can also add salt and pepper to taste if you like, but I think it's pretty good on it's own!