We are trying our hand at low-carb, and so far so good. As far as main dishes go for us, it’s not too bad – we don’t eat much pasta. But rice, starchy veg, and my beloved pretzels and beer…well, there’s no substitute for the latter, but it’s surprisingly easy to do without the former. This is a stuffed pepper that we concocted using vegetables instead of rice mixed in with the turkey and our homemade roasted red pepper tomato sauce. It was quite good, and the leftovers make for easy lunches.
Rosie the Corgi was a big fan of making sure that she gave Shawn a grilling cookbook for Father’s Day. She loves grilling, since it means occasional morsels for her. 😉 Since Rosie lacks in opposable thumbs, I picked out “Weber’s Real Grilling” on her behalf, and this was the first recipe we tried. All I can say is wow! Total winner. The only change we made from the as-printed version is that we cut back on the peppers a bit
We got a big, lovely bunch of kale in our CSA this week that needed a job. I was contemplating something to do with it besides a soup, and found this casserole on Serious Eats (originally Martha Stewart, I think). It’s nice for a summer casserole – lighter and very bright. It made a ton of course, which was my intent…lots of lunches! This was pretty easy to make a bit healthier with whole wheat pasta, part-skim cheeses, and Smart Balance instead of butter.
I saw this on a website, and I truly can’t remember where now. Either way, it seemed like a great, low cal idea – throw some chicken breasts in a slow cooker, dump a jar of salsa in, cook for a few hours and then shred the chicken. I went ahead and made some salsa verde for this, and it was a really easy, really tasty meal. It would be great in some tortillas, but we’re back on the eating lighter bandwagon, and it was actually delicious as is. We had this with black bean and corn salad on the side, and really loved it.
So when you make a ton of pesto, you’re eating it for a while. Not that I’m complaining. We decided not to freeze this batch of pesto, so it’s been uhm…around a lot the past few days. This was a soup that we really liked – great way to use up some nice buffalo sausage we’d gotten a few weeks ago at the farmer’s market. Very filling soup, and great for lunches. Plus it’s the color of Ecto Cooler from 5th grade, so that’s pretty cool.
This is another recipe from the great magazine cleanup of 2013, and we liked it a lot…would definitely make it again. It came from Bon Apetit in 2011. I used a whole chicken already cut up, marinated overnight as the recipe suggested, and it was awesome. The only difficult part was grilling the breasts – they were *huge* and thus difficult to cook all the way through. I might do only thighs next time. We had this with an orzo/feta pilaf and an heirloom tomato salad. Great summer meal.
Another baked chicken recipe; I wish I could say I remember where I first saw this…Pinterest, maybe? Regardless, it’s on a lot of blogs now. We really liked it. The hummus coating kept the chicken very moist while it baked, and formed a nice crust. I think it will be even better with different types of hummus, but it was definitely worth repeating, and can’t beat the relatively low cal. I served this with roasted brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and yellow pepper, and a wild rice mix.
This was a quick and tasty meal that tasted a lot more caloric than it was. 🙂 I used Skinnytaste’s method of making basil pesto, leaving out the pine nuts and cutting out a lot of the oil. It was very good; you’d hardly notice it. I also used part-skim mozzarella, which also worked well. This made enough for leftovers, and it reheated for a nice lunch. We had this with asparagus tossed with a leftover pepper I had lying around. Definitely a make-again, but worth waiting until summer when the tomatoes and basil are very fresh.
This was awesome. I always have really good luck with Serious Eats, but I think this might be my new favorite recipe that I’ve gotten there. The flavor was great, and I was pretty excited to find a new use for the huge bag of star anise I have (besides pickling). It took quite a bit longer to cook than the recipe suggested, but I think that is because the pan I used was a bit too deep, so the cooking liquid didn’t cover as much of the chicken as it should have. I served this with a Soba noodle salad and bok choy.
I loooove stuffed peppers, any variety, including my friend Missy’s Inside Out Stuffed Peppers. I found this recipe for chicken and white bean stuffed peppers on Skinnytaste and it looked like a winner. I used yellow peppers for this, but any color will do. Also, I had no cooked chicken hanging around, just chicken breasts, so I boiled one and a half chicken breasts in some stock and shredded it – worked out well, and was a good amount for a two-person size dinner. The only thing I changed about this recipe was proportions – there are only two of us, so 5 peppers was a bit too many. All in all, a bright, filling, and tasty take on stuffed peppers!
Om nom nom! 