Category Archives: Recipe

Baked Eggs with Creamy Spinach

Recipe

Get a head start on your daily intake of nutrient dense leafy greens and good fats by eating a serving first thing in the morning.

This recipe is easier than making quiche. It is an easy one-pan meal that tastes really good when made with frozen spinach.

Freezing food preserves the nutrient content, so frozen spinach is often more nutritious than the “fresh” spinach on grocery stores shelves.

Ingredients for 4 servings:

  • 20 ounces frozen chopped spinach
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 shallots, finely chopped
  • 1 cup whole cream or almond milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
  • 4 eggs

Take the spinach out of the freezer the night before and put it in the refrigerator so it can de-thaw. In the morning, open the bag into a strainer. If when you are ready to cook, it is still a bit frozen, run warm water over it until the ice is gone. In either event, press down on the spinach with your hands and a paper towel to remove moisture. You don’t want watery spinach.

Preheat oven to 450 °F

Instructions:

In a skillet, melt butter over medium-low heat. Cook the shallot until soft, 2 minutes.

Whisk salt into the cream. Pour into the skillet. Add the spinach. Cook for a minute or so, until the spinach absorbs most of the cream.

With a spatula, scrape spinach into an 8×8 pan. Use a spoon to make 4 deep wells that an egg can be dropped into. Crack an egg into each well and bake 7 to 10 minutes, until the whites are set but yokes are still soft. Serve immediately – yum!

Rosemary Chicken Paillards recipe

Recipe,

“Paillards” means that you’ve pounded the chicken breasts to make them tender and thin. They also cook quickly. My husband found the original recipe in Sunset magazine and we tweaked it a tad – it was terrific:

1  tsp each, salt and pepper

2   Tbsp. plus ½ tsp. chopped fresh rosemary

1 ½ Tbsp. avocado oil

4   boneless, skinless chicken breasts

6  strips of cooked bacon, crumbled

½  cup finely chopped shallots

½  cup dried cranberries

½  cup Viognier or other fruity, dry white wine

8   oz arugula, ends trimmed
Preheat broiler with rack set 3 inches from heat. Combine salt and pepper and 2 Tbsp. of rosemary with the oil and rub it over the chicken breast, and some on a baking sheet.

Cook the bacon, save the fat in the pan.

Broil the chicken until just cooked through, turning once, about 8 minutes total. Remove from heat and cover with foil to keep warm.

Meanwhile, cook shallots in the bacon grease, about 6 minutes. Add dried cranberries and wine to pan, stirring occasionally for a couple of minutes until about 3 Tbsp of liquid is left. Stir in remaining ½ tsp. of rosemary, plus a bit more salt and pepper.

Remove from heat and add arugula and bacon. Toss very gently to coat. The arugula will get a bit warm, but you do not want to “cook” it.

Transfer salad to a platter and arrange chicken paillards on top.

Spaghetti Squash

Recipe, , ,

Have you noticed that lots of people are buying spiral slicers that turn veggies like beets, zucchini, and sweet potatoes into “Spaghetti squash from Wikipedianoodles?” It’s a great way to by-pass grains and get more veggies in the diet. Plus kids love ‘em. Veggies are much more nutrient dense than a gluten or gluten free pasta. Squash is filled with fiber, vitamins, and nutrients. If you don’t have that slicer gadget, here’s a recipe for the next best thing: making “spaghetti” out of squash. And tis the season because there is a bounty of squash in the markets now.

The yellow squash are often labeled as spaghetti squash in the produce section so you can easily find them. Bring one home, slice it in half the long way. Take a tablespoon and scrape out the middle part where the seeds are – much like you would scrape out a pumpkin – and discard. Then get a roasting pan big enough to fit both halves of the squash (usually that’s a 9” by 13” baking dish). Put in about ½ cup of water and then set both halves in the pan, inside down. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, uncovered.

Take it out of the oven, let it cool. Get a mixing bowl and a fork. Use the fork to scrape the inside fleshy part of the squash into the bowl. You will see that what you scrape looks like spaghettiSpaghetti_Squash_Prepared from Wikipedia!

At this point, you can use a marinara sauce or whatever you like. My way is to add some butter, some roasted pine nuts, chopped raw red bell pepper, and sage. I’m no green thumb in the garden but even I can grow sage so I have fresh leaves to pick and chop up for this dish. If fresh is not available, then sprinkle some dried sage from your spice rack.

Serve it cool. Squash tends to be generous – we always have leftovers. I put leftovers in the refrigerator and serve them again in a few days.

Creamy Mushroom Soup with Chia Seeds

Recipe, , ,

mushroom-dreamstimefree_60777I recently talked with Dr. Wayne Coates who had a lot to do with reintroducing chia seeds to the modern diet.

Here is one of his recipes for using chia seeds – and look at what a different recipe this is for mushroom soup!

• 1 pound mushrooms, mixed varieties if possible
• 1 ½ Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp safflower oil
• 1 ½ medium yellow or Maui onions, diced
• 1 cup raw cashews, washed in hot water
• 1 ½ Tbsp dry chia seed
• 1 ½ teaspoons dried sweet basil
• 2 cloves garlic, diced
• 2 stalks celery with leaves, diced
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon (scant) tamari
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 medium tomato

Add raw cashews to 5 ½ cups of water and blend until smooth to make 6 ½ cups of cashew nut milk. Add chia seeds and let stand for 15 minutes.

Next, sauté half the mushrooms in safflower oil for 4 minutes. Add nut milk and blend.

Pour mix into saucepan. Sauté onion, celery, and garlic in 1 Tbsp oil with basil and tamari for 4 minutes. Add sautéed vegetables to the liquid mix. Chop remaining mushrooms and add to mix along with cayenne pepper, sesame oil, and salt. Cook for 15 minutes.

Chop tomato and add 1 ½ minutes before serving. Serves 5.

Chicken with Peach Salsa

Recipe

peachesSummertime means fresh peaches! If I were making this dish for 4 people, I would start with 3 chicken breasts or 4 thighs and 2 small peaches. Make sure the peaches are ripe, even a little over-ripe, so they can impart an intense peachy-flavor to the salsa.

In the morning, peel the peaches, cut them open, discard the pit, and dice them. Put the cut up pieces in a glass bowl. To make the marinade, I pull out a 1-cup Pyrex measuring cup and start pouring into it:

  • chicken-peach-022 Tbsp sherry or red wine vinegar
  • 2 Tbsp dark rum
  • 1 Tbsp chopped rosemary (fresh is best, but if dried is what you have, just make sure you cut those long strands into short ones)
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • Enough extra virgin olive oil to come up to the 1/3 cup mark

Pour the marinade over the diced peaches, stir it all together, put a kitchen towel over it, and let it sit out on the counter all day. The enzymes in the mixture will soften the peaches.

When it’s time to fix dinner, grill the chicken, then pour the salsa over the chicken pieces.

chicken-peach-01I like to serve this with either green beans or asparagus. Well, my only option this night was frozen green beans. I like almonds with my green beans, and I browned some in butter. I happened to have a bit of left over quinoa and mixed vegetables, so I added that to the mix too. If asparagus had been in the refrigerator, I would have cooked that in a skillet on the stove for about a minute and a half on medium-high with a little coconut oil and pepper.

This is a simple, simple dinner that turns ordinary chicken into a scrumptious summer de-lish. I had enough left over for lunch the next day. Rumor has it the last of the salsa disappeared a couple days later on my husband’s dish of vanilla ice cream…

Recipe: Tuna Salad

Recipe

Start with “Wild Planet” brand of Albacore Tuna. This tuna is low mercury – good for people, and not caught in nets – good for the oceans. You can buy it at Costco.

  • 1 5-ounce can of tuna
  • 1 celery stalk chopped up in thin slivers
  • 1/3 cup frozen peas, thawed (great for a pop of color and gives you a veggie)
  • 1/3rd of red or orange or yellow bell pepper, diced
  • 1 teaspoon pickle relish (Whole Foods 365 brand “Organic Sweet Relish” has no high fructose corn syrup)
  • 1 generous tablespoon of honey mustard
  • ½ cup of plain whole fat yogurt (Straus brand)
  • 1 5-ounce can of tuna
  • 1 celery stalk chopped up in thin slivers
  • 1/3 cup frozen peas, thawed (great for a pop of color and gives you a veggie)
  • 1/3rd of red or orange or yellow bell pepper, diced
  • 1 teaspoon pickle relish (Whole Foods 365 brand “Organic Sweet Relish” has no high fructose corn syrup)
  • 1 generous tablespoon of honey mustard
  • ½ cup of plain whole fat yogurt (Straus brand)
  • 1 squeeze of lemon, a generous tablespoon
  • 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar (gives great complexity of taste)
  • 1 teaspoon dried dill weed (gives it a pop of taste)
  • 1 handful of slivered almonds – these are cut like long triangles, not sliced thin as you might find served atop fish. Toast them in coconut oil or butter. The addition of toasted almonds makes the difference between “good tuna salad” and “oh, yum!”

Serve in a bowl over lettuce leaves.

If you want leftovers, just use 2 cans of tuna and double the recipe.

Every time I serve this, people ask me for the recipe so it’s a crowd pleaser!