Homemade Nicaraguan Tortillas

My best friend Cassidy just got back from a service trip in Nicaragua, and while she was there some of her friends taught her to make Nicaraguan tortillas. Being a great friend, she taught me how to make Nicaraguan tortillas as soon as she got back to the States. Each country has their own tortilla style, so this is the distinctly Nicaraguan way to make them.
The recipe is simple: mesa (corn flour) and water. I served these as a side with yummy buffalo chili, but you can serve them in any way your taste buds desire.

A's Easy Tofu Potpie

Potpie is one of Adam's favorite meals. Luckily, it can be stinking easy to throw together.
And while some versions can be quite loaded with sodium and super high in calories, with a little tweaking potpie can be quite healthy. This veggie and tofu version is made simple because it uses Pillsbury pizza crust as the topping. It's delicious (and also vegan). Potpie is amazing because it is an entire meal in a single dish, so if it's also healthy, delicious, and easy to make what's not to love?
Feel free to switch up the ingredients as you see fit. Don't like celery? Omit it. Want to throw in some broccoli? Go for it. This is a really flexible and fool-proof recipe. If you don't want tofu, swap in some chicken, tempeh or beef instead. Or go 100% veggie. The world is your playground with this simple recipe.

I drew inspiration from a variety of potpie recipes, including theKitchn's tofu potpie, Meet the Shannons vegan chicken potpie, and the Curvy Carrot's vegetarian potpie.

A's Steak and Mushroom Fajitas

You know what they say: Everything is okay in moderation.

I love steak. Man, oh man, do I ever love steak. So this week I decided to make delicious fajitas and throw in my favorite: steak.

Of course, this is a healthy cooking blog, so I recommend going easy on the steak (that makes it better... right?). We're really not talking about a lot of steak here. I cut the steak into tiny strips and put 3 small strip pieces on each fajita, which I found to be sufficient to give me my steak fix without making the dish overly unhealthy. If you're not into steak you could easily replace the steak with a more lean option like chicken or even tofu. As for me... this week I'm eating steak.

This recipe comes from myrecipes, so pop over to myrecipes for the deets. I followed it exactly, except I used multi-grain tortillas instead of corn tortillas and I topped my tacos with cheddar cheese. 

A's Lima Bean Soup

 

 

I'm sending another slow cooker recipe your way this week. I've been too busy to cook, so I've been throwing ingredients together at night and letting them slow-cook while we're sleeping. Isn't it amazing? The crockpot is doing the work for me while I sleep. So this recipe goes out to all of the stressed people in the world. :)

 

  Most kids hate lima beans (and many adults too). I love them. Always have. Always will. This recipe brings lima beans front and center. They're cooked to a buttery-soft consistency and intermingled with all kinds of other good-for-you veggies.

Alina's Spanakopita Calzones

I'm a big fan of Greek food and spanakopitas are right at the top of my favorite foods list. This week I decided to make a calzone that pulls its influence from spanakopitas. Spanakopitas are Greek phyllo dough pastries stuffed with cheese and spinach. I decided to stuff mine with tofu and spinach and stuff it all in a calzone crust. The result is a delicious, healthy dish that hints of Greek flavors.

Alina's Crab Cakes

I plan my recipes in advance, but I woke up on Saturday craving crab cakes with a cucumber sauce, and so that's what I made. I've never craved crab cakes before, but this recipe has changed that! These were really delicious.

I slightly modified this video recipe that I found on the Food Network website. Traditionally, crab cakes are loaded with mayo and other bad-for-you ingredients. My goal was to make them as healthy as possible, and so I mixed in plenty of veggies, baked them and only used a teeny bit of mayo.
I topped the crab cakes with a delicious cucumber and grapefruit salad.

Alina's Buffalo Chili

My friend Blaire lent me this awesome cookbook (found here on Amazon) called the Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook. It's full of "recipes from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian." Super cool.

Marissa has been taking a class for the last few weeks that goes until 9 pm, and so she's been too busy to make and swap food. As such, I decided to make something spicy this week since Adam and I love spicy food but Marissa and Brad don't. I picked up some ground buffalo meat from the Madison downtown farmer's market. Buffalo meat is prized for its low-fat content and has a really great flavor. The result was this amazing chili.

Adam loved this chili. He initially ate three bowls of it and would have kept going if I wouldn't have reigned him in. All weekend he just wanted to eat the leftovers.
1 pm: "Isn't it time to eat dinner yet?"
2 pm: "Is it time for dinner now?! I want that chili!"
3:30 pm: "Okay, it's dinner time, right?"
5:30: "Yes!! Finally dinner time!!"

Alina's Veggie Loaded Pizza on a Butternut Squash Crust

Now that's what I call veggie loaded!

A few weeks ago I made a walnut pesto and mushroom pizza on a butternut squash crust. I also made a veggie loaded version on the same crust. Adam and I thought this was a flavor packed way to get lots of veggies into our diet. We most definitely would make this again!

Check out this post to learn how to make the delicious butternut squash crust.

Alina's Mashy Beans with Wilty Spinach

If you're like me, the idea of mashing up white beans and serving them like mashed potatoes might be a little foreign.

Really? Like mashed potatoes? Intriguing.

Really. Like mashed potatoes. And it's delicious.

Alina's Creamy Pumpkin Soup with Garlic Rosemary Pumpkin Seeds

This creamy pumpkin soup is a favorite of my dad's and so he encouraged me to try it. I love pumpkin dishes, so I was game. He told me that the more creamy you make this soup the better, but since I was shooting for healthy I tried to moderate the creamy factor. If you make this and aren't as concerned about it being super healthy, my dad strongly recommends adding as much cream as possible. I must admit, that would have been a delicious twist. I changed the recipe based on what I had on hand, but it's pretty close to the original recipe from my dad. This was easy to make and would be especially great as a fall dish.

Alina's Chipotle Caramelized Onions and Guac on a Black Bean Throne

Last week Marissa made black bean veggie burgers, and they were quite yummy. I love making black bean burgers, so I decided to whip up some of my own. To spice it up, I added guacamole (healthy fat=good) and caramelized chipotle onion-- and when I say spice it up, I mean it. On their own, these onions were sizzling, but I didn't think they were unbearable on the burger because the guac helped mellow them out. Marissa told me they thought the burgers were delicious but the onions were too spicy, so if you don't like spice be wary!

The chipotle caramelized onion recipe comes from Kevin over at one of my favorite food blogs, Closet Cooking. Many of his recipes aren't particularly healthy, but they are always very creative. To be honest, this was just an excuse to try one of his delicious looking recipes.

The burger recipe is flexible, so I often just throw in whatever I'm feeling that day. This time I tried to make it in the "typical" way, but that's like telling the wind which way to blow. It just has to happen naturally. So if you try this recipe, don't be afraid to let your belly lead you.

Marissa's Turkey Minestrone Soup

Last Saturday was Thanksgiving in February at our house. In other words, my husband's parents were visiting so we went all out and made a Turkey dinner. So for this week, I needed a creative way to use some leftover Turkey. I searched "Turkey" on Allrecipes.com and found a recipe for minestrone. I used the soup base from this recipe, but I ended up changing the rest of the ingredients around, based on what we had in our fridge/at the store. Did I mention that Alina LOVES minestrone? Win.

Marissa's Black Bean Veggie Burgers

Hello again. For this week, I decided to make homemade black bean veggie burgers to have on my husband's (delicious) homemade sourdough bread. He is both the bread-winner and the bread-maker in our home. What a catch! :)

I started with a recipe from allrecipes.com. Below is a picture of the ingredients that I used. I omitted the hot sauce that the recipe calls for because I felt that with the cumin & chili powder they would be spicy enough for our preference. Instead of breadcrumbs, I followed one reviewer's advice and crumbled Ritz crackers instead. I also added some whole kernels of before forming them into patties to give them some extra color & texture.

Alina's Spaghetti Squash with Roasted Veggies and Lentil Meatballs

I told Adam I'm going to start calling this dish Peter Pan Pasta because it's so good it can't be real. Oh wait. It isn't real. It's pretend pasta. It's pretend meatballs. And it's really unbelievably delicious.

Stringy spaghetti squash is the base of this dish, replacing noodles. I've never cooked with spaghetti squash before, so I found a spaghetti squash for dummies recipe on the Healthy for Two blog. I thought it would be difficult, but all I had to do was nuke the squash for 2-3 minutes per pound of squash and then dig out the insides. Piece of cake... er, forkful of squash!

For the pasta sauce, I just roasted a bunch of veggies (onions, carrots, green pepper, red potato, and mushrooms) and then added them to a can of plain ol' pasta sauce. Simple and delicious. I also added a little minced garlic to finish it off.

I subbed a lentil meatball recipe for meatballs. This recipe comes from Post Punk Kitchen. According to Marissa's Lentil Soup post, lentils were dubbed one of the five healthiest foods by Health magazine. I do like health, so getting more lentils in our diet can't hurt. Adam and I both thought these were tasty, although Adam thought he liked the pasta better without the meatballs. He said the meatballs were a 3 out of 5 ladles, which brought his overall taste rating down.

Approximate cost: $12. Makes 6 servings. 263 calories per serving.

Prep time: 1 hour Total time: 2 hours

• Approximately 5-6 lbs spaghetti squash
• 2 medium red potatoes
• 2 medium onions
• 2 medium carrots
• 1 green pepper
• 8 ounces whole mushrooms, stems removed
• Cooked lentils (1 cup dry)
• About 4 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp whole wheat flour
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp szechuan sauce (the original recipe called for 2 tbsp soy sauce, but I didn't have any)
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• Several cloves of garlic
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 tsp of minced garlic
• 16 ounce can of pasta sauce

Pasta Sauce

 1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Chop the potatoes, onions, carrots, and pepper. Prepare the mushrooms. (For the perfect consistency I like to stick the chopped potatoes in the microwave for about 1 minute before I roast them with the other veggies)
3. Toss the carrots and onions in 1 tbsp olive oil along with a little salt and pepper.
4. Transfer the carrots and onions to a baking sheet and place them in the pre-heated oven.
5. Let them roast for 35 minutes, shaking them occasionally to keep them from sticking.

6. Toss the potatoes, peppers, and mushrooms in 1 tbsp olive oil, add them to the carrots and onions, and roast them for another 15 minutes, shaking the baking sheet halfway to keep them from sticking.
7. When the veggies are done, turn the heat down to 350 degrees (so that it's ready for the lentil meatballs) and set them aside.
8. Heat the can of pasta sauce, and add the veggies to the sauce. Add a tsp of minced garlic. Wasn't that simple?

Lentil "Meatballs"

1. Start by cooking the lentils. When they are done, remove them from the heat and set them aside.

2. Put 1 onion and the garlic cloves in a food processor. Pulse until minced. Remove them from the food processor and set them aside.

3. Add the cooked lentils, 2 tbsp olive oil, water, tomato paste, flour and szechuan sauce to the food processor. Liquefy it!
4. When it's nice and creamy, remove it from the food processor and mix the minced onion and garlic in by hand. Add the breadcrumbs as well. Mixing this takes about two minutes.

(Here's a tip: If you're cold, put on a hat.)

5. Heat a tbsp of olive oil in a skillet. Roll the lentil mix into 1 inch balls and place them in the skillet. Roll them around to get them lightly browned.

6. Place the browned lentil balls on a baking sheet. Bake 20 minutes at 350 degrees, shaking them every 5 minutes to help them bake evenly and to keep them from sticking.

Spaghetti Squash

I followed the directions found here to make the spaghetti squash.

Put it all together, and here's what you get:

Adam’s taste rating: 4 ladles
Brad’s taste rating: 4 ladles
Healthy rating: 4 ladles
Ease of prep rating: 3 ladles
Overall average: 3.75 ladles

Alina's Secret Ingredient Black Bean Soup

Growing up, my Mom made this recipe frequently. It was always my favorite, so I figured I just loved black bean soup. As it turns out, I just love this black bean soup. The secret ingredient that makes it amazing? Green olives. Combined with the fresh dill, this is a real palate pleaser. Mmmm-mmmmm... I love it!

As a side story, I actually had to make this meal twice. I finished the soup and left it to simmer for 30 minutes, according to step seven in the recipe. Our stove can be a little feisty, and the soup started to burn, but I was in the other room so I didn't notice. This wasn't like an "Is there something burning?" kind of cooking accident. This was like a "Hi, we're you're neighbors and we can smell smoke wafting from your unit and it's stinking up our unit" kind of burning (yes, that really happened).

The fire alarm was beeping, the room was filled with smoke, and it smelled awful.

I came into the kitchen gagging... The punchline is that Adam, who was sitting 10 feet away the whole time playing video games was too "in the zone" to notice that our apartment was filling with pungent smoke. We got a good laugh out of this whole fiasco, but I have to admit that I'm slightly concerned for my husband...

Instead of eating charcoal black bean soup, I decided to make it again the next day. The second time around I let it sit in the crock pot overnight on high instead of letting it simmer, and that worked really well. If you let it ruminate in the crock pot long enough and use canned black beans, steps one, two, and seven could be completely replaced with a crock pot.
 
Oh, and if you happen to know how to get the smell of burnt soup out of an apartment, please let me know. It's still lingering.

Approximate cost: $7. Makes 6 servings. 219 calories per serving.

Prep time: 20 minutes   Total time: 3+ hours

•  2 cups uncooked black beans (searched for stones and rinsed)
• 8 cups water
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 2 green peppers, finely chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill (or 1 tsp dried dill weed)
• 1/2 cup chopped green olives
• 1 tsp salt
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon (my Mom advises you "go easy on the juice")

1. Combine the black beans, water, and bay leaves in a soup pot.

2. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Cook about 2 hours, until the beans are soft. Don't let kitty get into it. :)




 
 3. In a separate frying pan, heat the olive oil. Add green peppers, onions, and garlic. Saute until lightly browned and limp. Add cumin, oregano, mustard powder, and dill. Saute for a few minutes.

4. Add the olives and cook 5 minutes.





5. Use a potato masher to mash about 1/4 of the beans into a paste in the soup pot. This gives the soup a nice thick texture.
6. Add the cooked veggies to the beans, along with the lemon juice and salt.
7. Simmer as long as possible
8. Do NOT leave it sitting on the stove until it catches on fire.
9. Taste and add more salt if it's needed.

Adam’s taste rating: 4 ladles

Brad’s taste rating: 3 ladles

Healthy rating: 4 ladles

Ease of prep rating: 4 ladles

Overall average: 3.75 ladles

Marissa's Honey Beans and Spinach

As you might soon notice, I love crock pot cooking. So naturally, I searched Google for "crock pot recipes." Here's one that I found. I followed this one exactly, so I won't write out the recipe and instructions again. The original does a great job.

Here are my ingredients. In the future I'd buy organic spinach & sweet pots)

Here's everything in the crock pot. I scooted the spinach over so you could see the stuff below.

Cooking away. Once the spinach wilted a little I stirred it all up.

Dinner is served over white jasmine rice.

In terms of health, this one is pretty great. The only unhealthy ingredients are honey and cream cheese (optional). Knowing that Alina would be eating this, I couldn't omit the cheese. I thought about not adding the honey (so that my little one could eat it (babies can't have honey), but I wanted to try it according to the way it was written, at the least the first time.


After about 4.5 hours in the crock pot on low, it was plenty done (6 hours was recommended). I'd definitely make it again, but I'd like to try it vegan (without the honey and cream cheese).

Adam’s taste rating: 3 ladles

Brad’s taste rating: 4 ladles

Healthy rating: 4 ladles

Ease of prep rating: 4 ladles

Overall average: 3.75 ladles

Alina’s Colorful Moroccan Vegetables with Couscous

I was lured to this recipe because a dish with the word “Moroccan” in the title has to be good. After all, Morocco is known as being one of the world’s most naturally colorful places, and their food ought to be equally exotic. I modified the recipe to create my Colorful Moroccan Vegetables with Couscous.

Makes 4 servings. 379 calories per serving. Total cost of approximately $11.

Prep time: 20 minutes. Total time: 70 minutes.

Shopping List:

·        Two onions (I used white)

·        3-4 carrots

·        1 medium sized parsnip

·        1 zucchini

·        1 large sweet potato

·        1 butternut squash piece (optional)

·        2 tbsp olive oil

·        1 tbsp minced garlic

·        1 cup chopped parsley

·        ½ tsp paprika

·        ½ tsp cumin

·        1 ½ tsp salt

·        ½ tsp pepper

·        2 cups low sodium veggie broth

·        3 tbsp tomato paste

·        1 15-oz can of chickpeas

·        1 box of plain couscous

·        1 tbsp butter

1. Peel and slice the onions.

2. Peel the carrots, cut them in thirds, and then cut those 

pieces in half the long way.

3. Peel the parsnip, remove the end and the skinny tail, cut it in half, and then cut those pieces in half the long way.

4. Remove the ends of the zucchini, cut it in half, then cut those pieces in half the long way.

5. Peel the potato, cut it in half, and then quarter those pieces.

6. Over medium heat, add 2 tbsp of olive oil and the two onions.

7. Stir for a few minutes, and then add the minced garlic and the parsley.

8. Add ¼ tsp paprika, ¼ tsp cumin, ¾ tsp salt, and ¼ tsp pepper. Add two cups of veggie broth and put the lid on the pan.

9. When it’s boiling, add the potato.

10. Read a book for 10 minutes, and then add the carrots.

11. After 15 minutes, add the zucchini. If the sauce is cooking down too much, add a little   water.

12. After 10 minutes add the tomato paste and the remaining spices (1/4 tsp paprika, ¼ tsp cumin, ¾ tsp salt, and ¼ tsp pepper). Add the squash piece at this time if you are using it.

13. At this time, begin preparing the couscous according to the directions on the box. I cooked the couscous with leftover vegetable stock and fluffed the couscous with a teensy bit of butter.

14. After 10 minutes add the chickpeas.

15. The dish is done if all of the veggies can be easily poked through with a fork.

16. To serve, pile the couscous in a dome shape, and then pour the sauce over the top. Pile the veggies on top.

Adam’s taste rating: 4 ladles

Brad’s taste rating: 4 ladles

Healthy rating: 4 ladles

Ease of prep rating: 3 ladles

Overall average: 3.75 ladles

Alina's closing thoughts: This was yummy, but the texture was a little mushy for my tastes. It would be fun to play around with this recipe to perfect it. I'd like to try swapping some other veggies to mix things up, like brocolli or a different type of potato. The trick is to add the firm veggies early and the soft ones at the end. I can see myself making this again, but the prep time was a little high for my schedule, so this is one I'll only throw into the food schedule on the weekend.