Ginger and Cilantro Baked Tilapia

Between 4 year old birthday parties (can't believe my baby is 4!), volunteering for elementary school fall festivals, going to said festivals, and stomach flus, not much cookin' happened around here last week.  But we are all healthy for the moment and life is back to it's only slightly hectic pace, instead of the insane pace of last week.  I've got a lot of new recipes to try out this week!

Tonight was Ginger and Cilantro Baked Tilapia.  This recipe is most certainly a keeper! Very fresh tasting, and really quick.  I actually used about a 1/4 of the marinade (before it went on the fish) and blended it up with a little olive oil for a quick salad dressing. 

Ginger and Cilantro Baked Tilapia
serves 2
2 tilapia fillets
1 jalapeno pepper, seeds removed
3 garlic cloves
1 inch grated ginger (grate with a microplane)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
Scallions, chopped for garnish
Extra cilantro, to garnish
Heat the oven to 475ºF. Pat the fish dry and season lightly with salt and pepper. Place in a glass baking dish.
In a blender, chop jalapeno and garlic.  Grate the ginger and add it.  Next, add the soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, and cilantro. Whir until blended. Pour the sauce over the fish, rubbing it in a little. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until the fish flakes easily and is cooked through.
Serve immediately over brown rice, garnished with scallions and cilantro.

Crock Pot Pinto Beans

These beans cook for 20 hours:  overnight and through the day until dinnertime.   It's a long time, but the prep time is less than 5 minutes.  Can't beat that, right?  They are so good this way; the beans are creamy but not mushy, and you can really taste the smokiness of the ham. 

Crock Pot Pintos

1 pound of dried pinto beans
1 ham hock/bone (from leftover ham from Tuesday)
1/2 onion, as a chunk so you can remove it later
2 whole cloves of garlic
8 cups of water
8 beef bouillon cubes (you could also use beef broth if you have a thing against bouillon)

Rinse the dry beans (check for rocks) in the morning the day before you want to eat them, cover with water, and let them soak throughout the day.  That night, rinse them again and put them in the crock pot with the remaining ingredients.  Make sure the water covers the beans by a couple of inches.  Cook on low all night and through the next day (about 20 hours).  Remove and discard the ham hock, onion and garlic.  Serve with shredded cheese, avocado, and a little fresh lime juice (sour cream, tomatoes, and green onions are all good on top, too).

Ham and Cheese Frittata

This post should be subtitled: I was too exhausted to cook dinner because I spent the day at the pumpkin patch with 100 kindergarteners.  Wow, I don't know how teachers do it every day.  They certainly don't make enough for what they do!  

Ham and Cheese Frittata (serves 2)

1/2 Vidalia onion, chopped
1/2 cup-1 cup chopped leftover ham
6 eggs (I use 3 whites and 3 whole eggs)
splash of skim milk
2 slices cheddar cheese
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Preheat broiler to high.  Saute onion in a drizzle of olive oil in a non stick pan until lightly browned.  Add ham and stir until ham is heated through, less than a minute.  Add eggs beaten with skim milk and stir for about a minute.  Let the frittata cook for about 3-4 minutes, or until eggs begin to set.  Add the cheddar cheese to the top, then put the entire pan under the broiler until browned and fluffy.   Add the chopped basil and Parmesan cheese and cut into wedges to serve. 

Mesclun Salad with Honeycrisp Apple Vinaigrette

Sandwiches made with leftover ham from last night and a big salad. That was dinner for us tonight.  By the way, mesclun is just a fancy word for the baby lettuce mix that is in every grocery store these days.

Mesclun Salad with Honeycrisp Apple Vinaigrette


1 bag mesclun salad mix
1 honeycrisp apple, chopped
1/3 cup goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup chopped pecans

2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons apple cider
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 tablespoons honey (to taste)
salt and pepper

Combine the vinaigrette ingredients in a jar and shake.  Pour over salad greens and toss.  Top with apples, goat cheese, and pecans.

Old Fashioned Fried Potatoes

Tonight's dinner was Baked Ham and Old Fashioned Fried Potatoes.  I had never cooked fried potatoes before tonight, but growing up in Arkansas, I've of course eaten them many times.  Mine did not come out perfectly, but boy, they were good! I think the key is not to mess with them too much and a heavy pan (I don't have a cast iron skillet, but that's what I imagine would be best). 

Old Fashioned Fried Potatoes

4-5 large potatoes
canola or vegetable oil to coat the bottom of the pan
1/2 large vidalia onion, choppped
salt and pepper

Peel the potatoes (if you like to do that, go for it, if not, skip it) and slice into 1/2 inch slices.   Cut the big slices in half.  Heat heavy skillet to medium high and add oil.  Add the potatoes and toss them around in the oil.  Add salt and pepper and then the onion on top, but don't stir.  Put the lid on halfway, and then leave it alone for a few minutes until the potatoes are brown on the bottom.  Take the lid off, stir, and then continue cooking and stirring occasionally until the potatoes are as brown as you like. 

Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal

Something about a rainy, fall day makes me want something pumpkin.  Since I was still SWEATING profusely from hot yoga this morning, a pumpkin spice coffee sounded pretty awful.  This baked pumpkin oatmeal was perfect.

Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal

1/2 cup oats
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
sweetener to taste... I used 1 tsp splenda.  You can use truvia, sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, whatever.
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup skim milk
1/8 tsp salt
raisins, walnuts, brown sugar for the top


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine raw oats, spices, pumpkin, and milk. Pour into a ramekin. Cook for 20 minutes.  Turn up the oven to broil, and cook for 2-3 minutes or until the top is browned and crusty.  Top with brown sugar, walnuts, raisins, craisins...
Serves one.

My Healthy Eating Soapbox and Spicy Garlic Spinach

 

For me, the key to staying healthy, is a combination of not eating too much and daily exercise.  If you struggle with healthy eating or weight loss I would suggest reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.  That book completely changed the way I see food and eating.  He says you should eat real food, not processed food-like substances (I always think of Veleveeta) and not too much of it.   Nothing is really off limits and he neither condones nor condemns being a vegetarian or vegan.  He says you should eat chocolate cake if you want it, but don't eat Little Debbies.  Get up off the couch and make a cake from flour, sugar, cocoa, and eggs.  Having to make from scratch chocolate chip cookies will make you think about how badly you want cookies!  And for exercise, I say do the best you can.  I don't always exercise every day.  I do what I can when I can; some weeks I do great, and sometimes I don't...It's about moderation in everything...

Enough of my soapbox, right?  We had tenderloin steaks for dinner (the same recipe from a few weeks ago minus the butter).  The Baby and Beta split a steak and I spit one with Alpha (John had his own).  When you cut any meat and fan it out like this, it tricks your eye into thinking you're eating more than you are.   So really, I only ate a couple of ounces of steak and most of my plate was spinach and sweet potatoes.

Spicy Garlic Spinach

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 big bag of baby spinach, more or less is fine

1 tablespoon olive oil

big pinch of red pepper flakes (I knew my kids wouldn't touch it, so I went heavy on the pepper)

salt

Heat olive oil in a skillet until hot.  Add the garlic and saute for about a minute, but don't let it brown.  Add the red pepper flakes and then the spinach.  Toss spinach until it wilts and then add salt. 

Garlic Lemon Roasted Cauliflower

We try to eat locally as much as we can, but you know how expensive (not to mention time consuming) it is to buy fruits and veggies from local farmers. So in reality, we eat regionally with produce mostly from Walmart, and I buy in season as much as possible.  

Since fall is finally upon us, crunchy apples, cranberries, and pumpkins have replaced juicy red tomatoes, watermelon, and basil.  Yellow squash is over for the summer, as are strawberries and fresh white corn.  Kale, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and butternut squash are in the store this time of year, so that's what we eat!  And we've always got carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower....

Tonight John and I had Lemon Pepper Tilapia, Garlic Lemon Roasted Cauliflower, and Spinach Salad with Red Peppers.  The kids ate fast food for a school fundraiser (good parenting, huh?). I'll tell you about the fish and salad later this week.  Here's how I did the cauliflower:

Garlic Lemon Cauliflower

1 large head cauliflower
olive oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
zest and juice of one lemon

After washing and drying the cauliflower, cut it into small pieces.  You can spend time separating each floret to make it beautiful, or you can just chop it up into similar sized pieces (like I did).

Add 2-3 cloves of minced garlic, the zest of a lemon, juice of half the lemon, then drizzle with olive oil to coat, and toss it all together.

Cook at 450 for 20-25 minutes.  When it comes out of the oven, squeeze the other half of the lemon over the cauliflower.

Autumn Apple Salad with Maple Vinaigrette

So I was starting dinner and when I looked in the fridge for the chicken, it wasn't there.  Guess where I found it? Yep, in the car.  In the 90 degree car where it had been for about 6 hours.  Um, not eatin' that. I also found the skirt steak for tomorrow night in the same bag I forgot to bring in...So I called an audible (like that football reference? I'm trying hard this year to like football) and we had ham and cheese sandwiches instead of chicken, along with this delicious Apple Autumn Salad with Maple Vinaigrette. 

Autumn Apple Salad with Maple Vinaigrette

For 2 large salads; adjust the amounts to your taste 

4 cups arugula/spinach blend
1 Honeycrisp apple, cut into slices (Have you tried the Honeycrisp apples? They are the best!)
1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons champagne vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
big pinch of salt
freshly ground black pepper

In a glass jar with a lid, combine the maple syrup, vinegar, salt and pepper.  Put on the lid and shake well to combine.  Add the olive oil and shake well again.  Drizzle over salad greens tossed with apples, walnuts, dried cranberries, and goat cheese.

Bacon and Egg Sandwich

This sandwich is kind of like breakfast for dinner, so it was excellent.  And John made it, which made it even better.  We left off the cheese and used egg whites to make it a little healthier. Bacon tastes gooood. Name that movie.