Asian Veggie Salad

I've got another summer salad for you! It will sadly feel like summer for a while longer in Texas I think. Too hot to cook. (So much so that I bought some paleo English muffins from the store rather than bake.) 

A few nights ago I drizzled a few things over some cabbage to go with my gluten free frozen General Tso's Chicken. I got way more excited about my red cabbage salad dressing than my Chinese food. It was so delicious. I loved it and thought you would too. 

So yesterday I measured. And added some more veggies that I've been eating a lot of this summer. I always loved red bell pepper and it's sweet flavor. I've been making a lot of cucumber noodle salad recipes all summer--now I finally made my own. Buying red cabbage already shredded from the grocery stores just seems to make life easier. I've been eating a lot of red cabbage doused in ranch dressing and calling that a veggie. 

Today I brought the salad for lunch. Held up perfectly!

The salad dressing is nice and light. The taste and smell of sesame oil always reminds me of (fairly authentic) Chinese food. (No, you can't sub again oil if you want this dressing to taste the same.) I love the tang the lime juice imparts here (always one of my favorite flavors.) I've used coconut aminos here for a soy sauce flavor--but you could use tamari or soy sauce. 

Asian Veggie Salad

Prepare the veggies as follows and place in a large bowl: 

Combine in a smaller bowl:

Whisk the dressing ingredients and then pour over the veggies. Mix thoroughly.

Serves 3-4

This salad tastes great the next day as these veggies hold up well. I always like having one part of my lunch made and then I can decide what goes with it later. I’ve eaten this salad with cooked chicken thighs. I think it would also go well with pork. I will try it with white rice or rice noodles. 

Enjoy! Let me know what you think.

Green Bean Salami Rolls

Hello! It’s been far too long! I’ve missed you!

I got a new job at the end of March, quit old jobs, traveled for work for a week in San Francisco, adjusted to new schedule, was not cooking as much as usual, etc. etc. etc. Excuses, excuses! 

Thankfully, I love the new job! I have lots of wonderful coworkers and get to work on an interesting project. Lots of editing, formatting, emailing, and working with other people. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about leaving academia but it was for the best. God knew that and prepared me in lots of way. Like moving to a house 15 minutes away from this new job last August. It had seemed so strange to be moving further away from church, family and friends. Now it makes perfect sense and for a great commute! (Plus I love my roommates.) Managing multiple freelance clients and teaching college at the same time was good prep for a lot of my responsibilities at the new job too. Feeling very thankful.

In March, I actually had two recipes ready for you, complete with pictures taken, but the last few months have truly been crazy. (I’ve even had this drafted written for 2 weeks sitting here!) I’ve finally gotten into the new routine, I’m cooking and meal prepping again. So I’m ready to share with you a delicious recipe!

These Green Bean Salami rolls are great for appetizers or for lunches. They are delicious cold, which is great in this Texas heat. They stand up wonderfully for a day later lunch. The lemon in the green beans actually tastes clearer the next day so it’s wonderful for lunches after the flavors have all melded overnight.

My new favorite vegan cheese is from Treeline. Their cheese actually has a complex flavor like cheese and a nice texture. Plus I feel good about the ingredients (mainly cashews). It's a little pricy at $7 a container but it's a treat that's worth buying. We've all had some bad vegan/dairy free cheese in our day. I've found it at Central Market and sometimes make a trip there just for their cheese. It has a great texture and flavor on crackers, with olives, and on salami! This recipe doesn't use the whole container so you'll have some extra to enjoy. I wanted to make an appetizer or lunch that included vegetables, had no complicated "bread" element, and was easy to hold. 

For those of you who like simpler ingredients, cream cheese would work fine here, especially is you throw some herbs or ground pepper in it. Soft goat cheese (chevre) would also be wonderful. (Aldi has some good chevre!)

Green Bean Salami Rolls 

Heat in a cast iron skillet: 

 Add: 

Cook until beans are cooked through and beginning to brown but still crisp. 

Add: 

Cook until the lemon juice evaporates and set aside the beans to cool. 

Spread cheese on the salami, about a teaspoon on each piece of salami. (If your salami is sliced thin, use two pieces.)  

Add 6 pieces of cooked green beans on each salami slice and roll them up. 

Chill until ready to eat. 

Optional: Serve with 1/3 c. warm pizza or spaghetti sauce.

I've been loving frozen green beans with lemon juice on them and thought that would be perfect inside some meat and a nice cheese. Let me know what you think! 

P.S. I love salami! So delicious!

Butternut Squash Mash (with Five Possible Meals from the Leftovers)

A lot of the meals I cook for myself are easy like this recipe—cook some vegetables, cook some ground turkey, throw them together in some way with some unique flavor that’s easy to add and ta dah! I’m not usually a complicated chef. I also really like to cook meals that easily morph into a different type of meal later on in the week and below are some tips on how to be a rockstar meal prepper like I occasionally am.

You’re really going to want to try this mash because the flavors and textures are so perfect together with ground turkey. The leftovers of this taste great the next day for lunch! The unique flavor comes from the nuanced combination of the nutritional yeast, balsamic vinegar and coconut oil. The vinegar plus the nutritional yeast creates a depth of flavor that’s hard to describe. For a while I was flavoring e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. I ate with these three things! Since I’ve been told that I use “strange” ingredients: The flavor would change but you could easily substitute parmesan cheese, another kind of vinegar, and/or olive oil. 

The most complicated part of this recipe is the butternut squash. If you don’t feel like cutting open a butternut squash, scooping out the seeds, cutting it into much tinier pieces than pictured here (it took forever to roast to optimum mash-ability), and roasting it forever—you have options. Trader Joe’s (and most grocery stores) sell butternut squash already chopped up and ready for you (if you’re willing to pay the price). If you do want to go the whole mile and cut up that squash yourself, notice that I’m using a grapefruit spoon above to scoop out the seeds. I am convinced grapefruit spoons make life easier.

If your grocery store doesn’t have butternut squash, I think you could easily roast half carrots and half sweet potatoes for this recipe and it would still be super delicious. I’m guessing 2-3 sweet potatoes and 4-6 carrots would be about the same.

This recipe is a great meal preparation recipe. You can use the other ½ of the squash for soup: Throw some chicken broth, canned carrots, some lemon juice and salt in the Vitamix for a few minutes and ta dah! You have healthy soup! (Resist the urge to measure anything.)

I only use ½ pound of the ground turkey here to serve with the mash. I start off nearly every week by cooking 1-2 pounds of ground turkey with an onion and coconut oil. This feeds me throughout the week in enough different ways that I don’t feel like I’m eating boring turkey all the time. You can utilize the rest of the cooked ground turkey from this recipe as:

And now that you know what to do with the leftovers, the recipe you’ve all been waiting for!

Look at that beautiful pastry blender cutter (whose name I found after Googling “pie crust masher;” Google knew what I meant)! 

Butternut Squash Mash

Heat the oven to 450˚F. Prepare:

Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds, then cut into 2” squares. Prepare a baking sheet with:

Roast the squash for 45 minutes or until it is browned and falls apart when pricked with a fork.

While baking, mix the flavoring for the mash in a separate bowl:

Heat your cast iron skillet and then add:

Cook, stirring occasionally, until the turkey is pink in only a few places. Then add:

Cook until the onion is soft. Add:

Set aside half of the ground turkey, if desired, for other meals.

When the squash is cooked, set aside half for another recipe if desired. Add the squash to your flavorings. Mash until soft and well-mixed with a large fork, potatoe masher, or pastry blender cutter.

Place half of the squash mash on a plate and top with half of the ground turkey mixture. Enjoy!

If the 80 degree Texas weather in February is faking you out and making you think you don’t want a nice warm recipe like this one, try my Kalamata olive-filled summer salad from last year.

“The Taco Cleanse” Cookbook Review and Sauerkraut Egg Breakfast Tacos

It’s nearing the end of January so your motivation to fulfill all your New Year’s resolutions is probably waning. Now is the perfect time to start a Taco Cleanse, the easiest, healthiest and most beautiful way to have your body feeling stellar in as little as one day.

I’d like to review for you The Taco Cleanse: The Tortilla-Based Diet Proven to Change Your Life. It’s my new favorite, snarky, visually well designed cookbook. (Also, funny and snarky cookbooks are my new favorite genre. I may limit cookbook reviews on here to snarky cookbooks only.)

The four authors are from Austin, which is the heart and soul of many of the best things Tex Mex. This cookbook has a ton of awesome recipes. Also, taco yoga poses (including the full taco pose), “quotes” from famous people and proverbs about tacos, supplements (margaritas, ya’ll! but sadly no mojitos), a crossword puzzle, gardening advice, and encouragement for when everyone is down on you for doing the taco cleanse (it’s so difficult to incorporate into your lifestyle!). Every page is so hilarious that my father stole the cookbook from me after I got it on Christmas. And proceeded to read most of it out loud. So really I’ve really read this book twice.

Know what this book doesn’t have? A discussion of how it’s vegan. I was waiting for it and it never came. However, I teach Rhetoric, so I know that everything is an argument. If you publish an entire cookbook that’s vegan, you are making an argument implicitly. But they only get explicit on page 214, in the “Resources” section, where they come clean about how they hate other cleanses and also have a kind three paragraph section on “Going Vegan.” I respect that. I think we could all eat a little less meat because, you know, the planet earth and ethically killing things even if you believe God gave us the authority to eat meat and rising meat prices. So I’m glad they’re not hitting you over the heat with the vegan-inity, just with the cleanse-ness.

Back to the recipes, usually the main goal of a cookbook. They’re all easy, simple to follow, ingredients that most vegans / mildly healthy people / people who like to cook would probably have on hand. I would (shhh, don’t tell the vegans) probably substitute ground turkey for a lot of their recipes that include things such as tempeh and fake meat. A few of the recipes include gluten but you can just skip those. The possibility of corn tortillas opens up a whole world of gluten free tacos. If you’re advanced in eating gluten free, you’re likely to know how to sub for it easily by now anyway.

Look how pretty the layout is! They even picked a nice font.

Some of the recipes I can’t wait to try include “Deeply Roasted Chipotle Butternut Squash” (with chickpeas), the plantain tortilla recipe, “Cashew Crema” (with 2 Tablespoons of kombucha, so obviously it’s a cleansing diet), and “Regenerative Red Onions” that are pickled. From the picture above, you can see the two rows of sticky notes—my way of documenting which recipes I want to make out of a cookbook when I read it the first time. I want to make a lot from this cookbook. (No, I never actually get through all the recipes I want to.)

All of the recipes seem straight-forward and easy to follow for anyone who has done some cooking. None of it is baking where proportions are really important; it’s a lot more sautéing or heating some things together until they get more delicious. I’ve made the “Affirmation Cumin-Onion Rice” (almost all eaten up at Bible study) and the “‘Living’ Chipotle Sauce.” This sauce recipe involves chipotle and lime, two of my favorite things, so it’s been pretty much life changing. It’s possible I may be eating it straight out of the refrigerator by dipping chips in it with the fridge door still open. Often. I am so cleansed.

This review doesn’t do the cookbook justice. It is. So. Funny. Ya’ll. Buy it and read it now—or come borrow my copy because I still have enough “Living” Chipotle Sauce to last me a few more days of eating out of the fridge. (Also putting it on tacos! Check out my Instagram!)

To do homage to The Taco Cleanse, I wanted to share with you the taco recipe I’ve been eating almost every other day since New Year’s. It’s not vegan. (I’m sorry, taco scientists.) It is, however, vegetarian. Which some people are okay with as I begged the chickens who are my friends to give me the eggs. (Important: I want chickens someday but only if we can be best friends and have nice chats and I can pet them.) If you are vegan, you could incorporate my recipe with The Taco Cleanse’s page 95’s recipe for “Mighty Megas” that uses firm tofu as eggs. (But my version is easier.)

My recipe includes sauerkraut. Ironically, I learned about making your own when I did my own Whole 30 14 that made me tired and grouchy with none of the promised fire dragon of energy at all. (I’m totally on board with cleanses being dumb.) You can learn to massage sauerkraut here and then proceed to wait three weeks to make my recipe below. Or you can buy fresh sauerkraut at the store in the deli section--which involves way less of your roommates being weirded out that you’re massaging cabbage for 10 minutes and leaving it in the garage for three weeks and warning them that the garage might smell like rotting cabbage because you sure hope it is rotting in all the best ways possible. Real sauerkraut involves probiotics, the same you get from yogurt. But if dairy bothers you like it does me, sauerkraut is awesome. Probiotic sauerkraut is amazing, making this recipe is not only a taco recipe but also a cleansing recipe.

I believe the sauerkraut makes it a German-Mexican fusion dish. Mostly because this makes me laugh and because my ancestors were German.

Sauerkraut Egg Breakfast Tacos (Or, German-Mexican Fusion Cleanse Tacos)

Place a skillet over the stove on medium heat. Heat the following on both sides until warmed and slightly browned:

Remove the tortillas; place under a towel to keep them warm.

Turn the heat down to low and add to the skillet:

When melted, add:

Scramble them in the pan as they cook. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper to taste.

When the eggs are halfway cooked, add:

Serve the egg mixture in the corn tortillas for tacos. Add mustard, ketchup or your favorite hot sauce.

Start your taco cleanse off right early tomorrow morning with this breakfast taco recipe! After only one day of tacos every meal, “the mild level,” according to The Taco Cleanse, “your mood will improve,” as promised on page 3. Go forth and eat tacos, ya’ll!

P.S. I love this purple spatula my mom gave me for Christmas!

Restful, Spicy Peach Smoothie (Gluten-free, Dairy-free and Vegan)

Smoothies: A healthy and fast meal for busy times just like these! I feel like the last few weeks have been crazy with grading finals, getting ready for Christmas with gifts and cooking. Nothing really slowed down until after Christmas, when I stayed at my parents’ house for a few days. My brother (the professional barista) made coffee for me every morning and even cooked breakfast for me one day.

While holidays are about family and friends and traditions and good food, they’re also about rest. Rest is so important that God instituted a day a week off. While having lunch with a friend today, I realized I haven’t really had two days off of work together since August (when I moved) or July when I was on a family vacation, so really since last Christmas. The flexibility my jobs afford are also terrible in ways like this. Not to blame it on my jobs, but my own inability to rest when there is time for it. I get antsy and can’t sit still or bored with things that are supposed to be relaxing. I overthink things and don’t know how to rest from that either.

My church does something that’s a non-church building gathering the last Sunday of the month. I’ve felt self-conscious about trying to explain to other people why I’m not going to church on a certain day. I’ve enjoyed the Sundays of serving people with my church family or having brunch with a smaller group. But on rest Sundays, break Sundays, I’m like, “what do I do? Can I take a walk? Should I go shopping? can I be seen by others out and about on a Sunday? Should I watch TV?”

These rest days have helped me realize how bad I am at resting (in God) and how badly I need to be able to rest. Part of the problem is being happy with myself based on how much of my to do list I’ve finished. And so not having church to do on the last Sunday means I can’t check it off my list and can’t feel good about myself. I don’t remember that God isn’t happy with me based on the fact that I cleaned the bathroom/unloaded the dishwasher/answered those emails/dropped letters off at the Post Office. God’s happy with me because He’s happy with Himself and I have His merit all credited to me. So God is no happier with me at the end of a productive day than on a Sunday where I try to relax. So I need to chill, to not be happier with myself based on what I do and not even be frustrated with myself that it’s so hard for me to rest.

A perfect application for all of those deep thoughts are drinking a smoothie for lunch instead of cooking something complicated. Less dishes to make yourself feel better about having washed. There’s enough appetizers to make for New Year’s Eve, have a smoothie for lunch!

I usually throw whatever into my smoothies without any measurements, so smoothie recipes seem odd to me. But I’ve been making this exact smoothie for about three months now. The ingredients are so delicious and perfect together and they are ones I tend to have on hand. I measured the recipe—just for you!—a few weeks ago and it’s perfect.

Let’s talk protein powder for a minute. You don’t want to drink a smoothie and be hungry soon after. Some delicious and/or cheap options for protein in your smoothies are:

This smoothie recipe has two kinds of protein—peanut butter and chia seeds— for extra oomph that is enough to keep you full for a while.

 Spicy Peach Smoothie

Add all ingredients to your Vitamix. Blend on high for 2 minutes or until smooth.

This smoothie is spicy—which is why I like it! But if you want to use no or less fresh ginger, we could maybe still be friends. You can always leave out the spinach.  The lemon juice is also optional. You could use a vegan milk as the liquid and for some extra calories.

Don’t you love this mug? I bought it at the Asian art museum (Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art) when I interned in DC, so it has a lot of fond memories for me.

Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup (Six Ingredients, Gluten Free and Dairy Free with a Vegan Option!)

It’s Christmas in two days! So many of us will be making traditional recipes that call for creamed soups. Homemade things are always more delicious! So I have a cream of mushroom soup recipe you’ll love. The canned cream of mushroom soup is full of allergens and kind of disturbing once you read the label. If you’re avoiding wheat and dairy like me, cans are usually a bad choice.

There are a lot of homemade dairy and wheat free recipes for cream of mushroom soup online. A lot. I looked through all of them for you the night before Thanksgiving, trying to find a good choice for the green bean casserole I had to make. (Side note: Aldi and Sprouts both have gluten free French onions now! Delicious! The French onions really prompted all of this.) 

All of the thousands of online cream of mushroom soup recipes I found had problems: Problem 1, Searching “gluten free” gave me many recipes with dairy. Nope! Problem 2, Many recipes had nuts (my mom is allergic to nuts and I often don’t have any in the house anyway). Problem 3, They included coconut cream as a main ingredient, which we didn’t have in the house and another guest was allergic to. And coconut cream is midly expensive, so c’mon, really?

Problem 4 was the biggest problem: The recipes often involved stirring things over a hot stove to thicken them. I. don’t. stir. over. hot. stoves. Not worth it. I use my wrist to grade, text and freelance—no need to tire my wrists stirring and stirring and stirring and being bored. (Partially I blame this abhorrence of stirring on not properly heated homemade caramel liquid that my grandmother and I stirred for over an hour while I was in high school. The caramels were cooked and delicious--eventually. Then I cut them apparently too large for my grandmother, who said I should cut them “the size of my conscience.” I said I was cutting them the size of my conscience. Grandma replied, “Your conscience is too big.” Haha, that’s always been my problem.) Also, stirring with gluten free flours is even likely to cause weird clumps in thin soup, so definitely not worth the stirring. So all of these recipes were a no go for my holiday meal.

So I decided to use something to thicken the soup that wasn’t nuts, wasn’t stirring with weird flours, wasn’t coconut cream, and is totally cheap. I decided to thicken it with brown rice, which I almost always have on hand, often already cooked and in the fridge. The brown rice and using the Vitamix allows for easy adjustment to how thick you want the soup. You’ll have to run it for a while to make sure it’s smooth but Vitamixes are good at running forever.

My recipe, made in the Vitamix, has absolutely no long stints of stirring involved. No allergens. Delicious. Six ingredients including salt and pepper. What are you waiting for? Make this recipe today! Your Christmas will be delicious-er, easier and better for it! Doesn’t it look so tasty?

Cream of Mushroom Soup (Gluten Free and Dairy Free with a Vegan Option!)

Heat in a cast iron skillet:

Then add:

Cook until softened and aromatic, then place half the onions and mushrooms in a large bowl.

Place the remaining half of the onions and mushrooms in the Vitamix and add:

Blend on high for 2-3 minutes or until smooth. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

Mix in the pureed soup with the remaining onions and mushrooms.

Eat, use in recipes or store in the fridge for 2-3 days.

This recipe even got me an A grade in a calorie counter. Wow. Doesn’t it look so yummy?

If you want to have a fully pureed soup without clumps, just add all of the vegetables into the Vitamix. If you want this recipe to be vegetarian, just use vegetable stock. Use any oil you want to cook the vegetables—coconut oil is delicious but a guest was allergic. 3 Tablespoons seems like a lot of oil but you can use a little less if you’re not using a cast iron skillet (though why aren’t you?!) and remember the oil is really the main flavor here.

I hope you enjoy using my easy, allergen friendly recipe for cream of mushroom soup! It’s delicious straight up or in green bean casserole. 

Pro tip: Don’t use still frozen green beans for green bean casserole. At least not and expect dinner to be soon. I and my delicious green bean casserole delayed Thanksgiving dinner. But my brother’s homemade pumpkin rolls weren’t done until after dinner, so I won!

I’m super excited to go to my mom and dad’s to celebrate Christmas once my brother flies in tonight. Planning on making some Christmas cookies, cooking other things, finishing decorating the tree, Christmas Eve service at church for some encouragement, and lots of family hang out time. I need a mental rest after the end of this crazy semester and I’m hoping I’ll get that at home. If nothing else, it won’t be all about me, and I won’t be able to focus on my own problems. Selflessness can be mentally helpful. I brought along my journal (for some more Christmas scripture journaling), a book to zone out to, and my walking shoes as well. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

‘Bello Broccoli Cheese Soup (always gluten free, dairy free, and this recipe has a vegan option!)

I’ve made this soup every other week since fall weather started here in Texas so I know the recipe is good enough to share with you! I keep craving its deliciousness and straight up vegetable superpower.

The original recipe was inspired by Elana’s Pantry’s 5 ingredient broccoli soup, which is very tasty! I had been wanting a broccoli cheddar soup, so I added some Daiya cheddar the first time I made it and ever since. Knowing me, it shouldn’t be surprising that I kept adding other ingredients too! (I never added poblanos, surprisingly.) I do like this soup more with chicken broth than Elana’s original water for a nice flavor (homemade broth from a whole chicken was especially good!). But feel free to use vegetable broth to make it vegan. Even though I don’t usually like sweet with savory, a little bit of apple made the flavor of the soup so much more complex. Lemon with broccoli is always good and some lemon juice really livens up this soup. The spinach adds more veggies and makes the green color brighter and more intense. (These pictures are from a non-spinach iteration, so they look a little pale! I was surprised how much the other ingredients took over the broccoli’s green color.) Though the recipe changes a little bit each time I make it, based on what I have on hand and what sounds good, it is delicious in every single one of its iterations.

The nice thing about a Vitamix soup is that measurements don’t really matter! Which is always my favorite kind of cooking, and always the cooking I do if I’m not writing for you! The only advice on this soup I would give is not to add too much liquid as it will get very thin.

As for the Portobello mushroom topping, it’s a new ingredient I’ve started using. Until recently, I had never cooked portobello mushrooms. My grandmother and mom were big into carefully washing mushrooms and cooking them in a certain way, which they didn’t do very often, and so I hadn’t really seen anyone cook portobellos. I went to a friend and fellow food blogger’s house for a dinner a few weeks ago and Amber cooked whole portobellos in her cast iron skillet (yes!) with some coconut oil and they were delicious! She was able to handle talking to me, prepping other things and talking to her kids while cooking them, so I figured I could handle cooking portobellos! A while later, Kroger had some already sliced portobellos on sale and so it was the perfect time to try them. I sliced the mushrooms up and cooked them with coconut oil and a dash of red wine vinegar at the end. They cooked fast and were so delicious with this soup, adding another texture. I also like keeping part of the sautéed onions out from the soup for some texture as well.

‘Bello Broccoli Cheese Soup

Sautee in a cast iron skillet:

Cook in the microwave:

When the onions are browned, add half of them to a Vitamix or food processor with the cooked broccoli and the following:

Blend on high until pureed and steam is coming out the top. Add 2 Tablespoons water if you desire a thinner consistency.

As the soup is heating up, begin to sauté in the cast iron skillet:

When the mushrooms are just softened, add the following and cook for one more minute:

Serve the soup in bowls, topping it with the remaining onion and the mushrooms. Sprinkle with more red and black pepper as desired. 

Serves 3.

This soup heats up really well for the rest of the week. The portobellos heat up fine the next day, though the texture changes some, so I’ve also waited to cook the rest of the sliced mushrooms until the next day but my soup is already made so it’s still a quick lunch hack. The soup is also nice topped with bacon or some chopped meat, and also with fried potoates. This makes for something different which is especially nice if you eat leftovers for lunch all week like I usually do!

Oddly enough, this soup is a super delicious great cold dip for crackers (not that I’ve ever gotten desperate for a snack RIGHT NOW or anything).

I hope you enjoy this hot, satisfying soup with the cold weather we’re having now! There are leaves falling outside my window as I type this, which seems very appropriate for a fall soup.

Chipotle Pecan Salad, Summer(ish) Salad II

I promised you another salad this summer because I titled the last one “Summer Salad 1.” Well it’s still 90 during the day here in Texas, so we’re calling it summer. And the first time I made this yummy salad, it was still summer! Also, I’m going to the State Fair of Texas next weekend, which was traditionally during summertime when I was growing up in the midwest.

The inspiration for a salad topper came from the past: I once toasted some pecans with chipotle tabasco sauce--which I love--and a little oil. And those pecans were delicious! I was thinking that they would be good on their own as a side dish and even more amazing as a topping for a delicious Tex-Mex salad. Have I mentioned how much I love the flavor of chipotle powder? In everything? I didn’t have any tabasco sauce and was attempting a Whole30 (haha) so I added oil, chipotle, cumin and coconut oil to the pecans in my cast iron skillet and a little apple cider vinegar for the tanginess of tobacso. It turned out amazing and did a good job replicating chipotle tobasco! The flavors coated the skillet and therefore the meat when I cooked it next. Take a look at those tasty beauties below!

This salad has so many complementary flavors and textures—the coolness of the guacamole (mango, avocado, jicama and cilantro—all the things good in life!) and the crunchy spiciness of the pecans, the softness of the meat, olives and lettuce. This recipe is very forgiving and anything could be left out—the meat, for instance, if it needed to be vegetarian, or the guacamole could have some different ingredients. The guacamole lasted for me overnight in the fridge fine but you may want to eat it all and make more for your leftovers.

 These are really just a series of pictures to show off my cast iron skillet:

Chipotle Pecan Salad

Heat in a cast iron skillet:

Add:

Stir and cook until lightly toasted. Remove pecans and add to the skillet:

Cook until the meat is browned, stirring occasionally.

While the meat is cooking, make the guacamole. Combine in a bowl:

When the meat is cooked, split between four plates:

Add the meat, pecans and guacamole. Enjoy this amazingly high-in-protein salad today and again tomorrow as a lunch hack!

Spicy Meatballs for Easy Lunches (Gluten-free and Dairy-free)

Another gluten-free, dairy-free meatball recipe for your lunchbox! These Spicy Meatballs have some bite to them and include my absolute favorite pepper in them, poblanos! My friend Marla cooked them with me and was dubious about some of the ingredients but was won over by the finished product (though we did eat them for dinner). Meatballs would make a great school lunch, since it is September and I myself am eating lunch at university . . . when I’m done teaching.

I tried to make a recipe for these meatballs a few months ago with some lactose free pepper jack cheese cubes in the middle. I loved the cheese on its own but somehow the flavor didn’t transfer very well into the meatballs and most of the cheese oozed out (plus putting a cube in each meatball was more work!). Vegan Daiya cheese’s inability to melt exactly like milk cheese is actually a boon here, preventing it all from ending up in the pan and not deliciously oozing throughout the meatballs.

Meatballs are great with pasta (zucchini noodles if you’re paleo or doing a Whole30 like I am starting soon). Also good with crackers, raw veggies, roasted veggies—anything! These are such great lunches cold or hot and really easy to substitute ingredients and still be successful. 

Substitutions: You could use beef, pork, chicken or—as I did—turkey “mince” here (ground meat, for the Americans). Pork rinds work fantastically in gluten free meatballs, as discussed here, because they’re cheap and easy to crush! My friend Marla was dubious about the pork rinds. Let’s be honest, pork rinds smell terrible and taste awful. She wanted to try one—bad idea because then she was convinced our meatballs would be terrible. But you cannot taste the pork rinds in the meatballs at all! Marla even liked them. But if you have gluten free bread crumbs or crackers you want to crush, those would work well too. Don’t be scared by the pork rinds though!

You could use apple cider vinegar or lemon juice or another vinegar. You can use mayo or plain yogurt. You could even play around with the spices or substitute another kind of pepper, but I wouldn’t recommend that as these are just about perfect!

Dice the vegetables very finely so they cook nicely in the oven.

Spicy Meatballs

Preheat oven to 400˚F.

Combine in a large mixing bowl:

Using a metal scoop, form and place individual meatballs on a parchment-lined pan or in your cast iron skillet. (Should make 18-20 meatballs.)

Cook for 35 minutes or until browned.

I hope you enjoy these! Let me know what you add to make a complete meal!

Pineapple Poblano Bean Bowl (Gluten free, dairy free, and vegan!)

This recipe happened as the synergy of some really delicious leftovers turning into an even more delicious dish. It has my favorite in it-- poblanos! And the best black beans you’ll ever make (liked by people at my home group from church!). And pineapple. Mmmm, pineapple.

Cumin and chipotle powder are really delicious in the beans, bringing out the Mexican/bean flavors in the best way possible. Chipotle powder is also good on eggs, taco meat, roasted nuts, or anything savory. I got this chipotle powder from my friend Laura a few months ago. We went to a spice shop in Austin before lunch during our trip home from San Antonio and BSF HQ. At the spice shop, I saw the chipotle powder but didn’t want to buy a whole jar, so Laura and I shared the jar. I’m loving the flavor on lots of different dishes! Chipotle feels like a very Texan flavor. These chipotle cumin beans are good on chips or with tacos as well.

You can use any kind of pineapple for this dish: Cubed, canned pineapple works, frozen then thawed pineapple slices work, or fresh if you’re feeling fancy.

The raw cashews roasted with the poblano is especially tasty. I like to have my cast iron skillet on fairly high heat to sear the poblano and it also creates some lovely brown marks on the cashews. Because they’re just barely cooked, the cashews add a chewier texture and a gentle flavor counterpoint to the other, stronger flavors in this dish.  

It’s definitely a great dish to make for your vegan friends. Meat lovers won’t feel like they are missing anything and the cashews and beans add a lot of protein! 36 grams of protein in each of the 3 servings. (This got an A rating on a calorie counter website, which is rare for my recipes because they’re usually high in fat/deliciousness! Which usually makes me laugh but I keep checking the recipe counter. Usually for protein and vitamins)

There are quite a few ingredients and steps, but if you make the rice ahead for another meal, that’s done. Then make a double batch of the black beans to eat with chips the day before. Then all you have to cook is the yummy poblano/cashew combo and combine everything into one fantastic dish. I’m really excited to share this dish with you, as its unique, easy and tasty! The leftovers are great for colorful lunches.

Pineapple Poblano Bean Bowl

Serves 3.

If you don’t have cooked brown rice, cook ¾ cup brown rice first (you’ll want 1 ½ cups cooked).

In a small pot on the stove, simmer the following while you prepare the rest of the ingredients:

Heat in a cast iron skillet:

Sauté in the skillet:

When the poblanos are just softened, add:

Cook until the cashews are slightly browned and the poblanos are done.

Combine on top of 1/2 cup cooked brown rice per serving:

Enjoy!

I’m really excited to share this dish with you, as its unique, easy and tasty! Let me know what you think after you make it!

PB&J Smoothie

I love the flavors of peanut butter and jelly. I used to eat a lot of PB&Js as dessert. Now, I enjoy Trader Joe’s PB&J candy bar (no bread just chocolate!). Growing up, we always had grape jelly on our PB&Js because grape was dad’s favorite kind of jelly. Despite the nostalgia of grape jelly, I went away from the grape flavor to strawberry for this recipe. A bag of frozen strawberries inspired me to make a PB&J smoothie in the morning a while ago. And then I made it again, and again, and again. Amazing flavorful to get you going in the morning! I finally measured it when I made it a few days ago so I could share it with you all.

Occasionally I do have a smoothie for a lunch or dinner.  It’s usually when I’m tired and have been busy. Or when my stomach is off (and I’m not craving red pepper flakes and poblanos for once!). Or when I need to go grocery shopping for lunch stuff but still have smoothies ingredients around.

I eat protein powder in my shakes so they keep me full longer. I like Jay Robb’s egg white protein but it’s expensive. I’ve been buying Plant Fusion recently—not too grainy, gluten free, dairy free, and pretty cheap. It’s a fairly unobtrusive flavor, unlike some protein powders. Because this smoothie has high protein peanut butter in it, you only need a little bit of protein powder or could omit it completely. You could also substitute almond, cashew or sunflower seed butter for the peanut butter. I also put yogurt in my shakes for protein and healthy bacteria, and it gives a little bit of tang in this recipe.

SweetLeaf makes an English Toffee flavored stevia liquid that I love in my coffee in the morning as well as in certain flavors of smoothies. An unflavored packet of stevia would also be fine here.

If you want some extra greens, add in the ¼ cup spinach. I obviously didn’t do that this time because of the pretty, light pink color you see in the pictures.

You’ll want something in this smoothie to be frozen to keep it cold as it blends--the spinach, the strawberries, or use 1/2 cup of ice instead of water.

PB&J Smoothie

Place the following in your blender or Vitamix and blend on high for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until smooth.

Enjoy!

Try this smoothie ASAP as an easy lunch, snack or breakfast! Fastest lunch ever and no need to worry about gluten free because no bread!

Summer Salad 1: Summer Pea Kalamata Salad

It’ summertime in Texas, after all our crazy rain and humidity and unusually low temps. We finally hit our first 100 degree day yesterday, which is surprisingly late in Texas. But as always, summertime in Texas means it’s too hot to turn on the oven. Or even eat hot food, really. So it’s time for some salads!

I’ve been eating a lot of my grandma’s recipe for Copper Penny Salad—canned, sliced carrots and homemade French/Russian/red sweet and sour dressing. I made a huge batch for Bible study a few weeks ago and still have some of the even batch of homemade dressing leftover.

I decided it was time for a new salad recipe! Peas are high in protein, I’ve been loving Kalamata olives’ sourness and tomatoes just taste like summer. The sunflower seeds add a nice crunch and some protein. I used raw, but you could also use roasted.

I used the juice from the Kalamata olives because the ones I bought from Trader Joe’s had balsamic vinegar as the main ingredient and nothing weird. But you could just use balsamic vinegar or white vinegar instead.

I made the dressing by putting the ingredients in my whisk cup and then shaking. A wire whisk works quickly too!

Summer Pea Kalamata Salad

Mix in a bowl:

Whisk together the following for the dressing:

Add the dressing to the salad; stir to combine. 

Will stay fresh in the fridge for 3-4 days. Makes 4 servings.

Everything in the salad is hardy enough to knock around some in a container on a hot day on the way to work.

This salad it is easy and it is great for lunch because it’s high in protein with the sunflower seeds and peas but can be even more filling with some pasta.  I made this salad for a friend and added diced pepperoni and some gluten free pasta. It was a big hit. I’ve been eating it often with pasta myself. This salad is also good with hardboiled eggs added. Tuna could be another good addition. It’s very versatile!

This recipe even got an A- for calories (my tendency to not see fat as bad usually wrecks my recipes’ “grade” from www.caloriecounter.com! But this one says it’s high in vitamin A and C and fiber. 

Poblano Bean Dip (gluten and dairy free!)

As you know by now if you follow me on Instagram, I love poblano peppers. Love them so much. They’re in a lot of my meals—cooked with onions in ground turkey, sautéed as a side,  sliced for ranch dip, cooked in the crockpot on whatever meat, sautéed for my egg tacos, etc.  They’re also less than $0.50 at Aldi for two to three peppers, way cheaper than those nasty green bell peppers people like! (I’ll eat them, or rather the red/yellow/orange bell peppers, but not at $1 each. Ridiculous.) When I cook poblanos in coconut oil and throw some salt and lime juice on them, it’s heaven. (Not heaven technically, but I believe I will definitely be eating some poblano peppers in heaven to the glory of God. And no awful pepper juice will ever get in my eyes there, “no more crying”! Am I right?)

So when I decided to make some bean dip for a friend’s going away party, it was logical that after looking at half a dozen bean dip recipes on Tastespotting, I asked myself, “Why jalapeños? Why not poblanos? Let’s make a dip dedicated to my love of poblanos.” I mean, really, people, jalapeños? 

This bean dip--like any good bean dip--is easy to make: Throw some beans and other ingredients into the blender and ta da! Feel no pressure to follow my ingredients closely—bean dip is always good, the texture will still work out. You could use just garbanzo or just white beans but I felt like using both.

This makes a lot of bean dip. It’s for party. So throw a party!

Poblano Bean Dip

Heat your cast iron skillet to cook the following until softened:

While cooking, add the following to your blender to wait on the veggies to be ready:

When your veggies are softened, add the following to the cast iron skillet and cook one more minute:

When the poblano mix is ready, reserve a few tablespoons for garnish and then dump the rest in the blender. Puree until smooth (or as smooth as you want it, about 1 minute for me). Serve with the remaining onion and poblano garnish.

Serve with gluten free crackers, chips, carrots, pepper strips, etc.

Serves 8-10.

The dip didn’t all get eaten at the party because there was a ton of food but it lasted in my fridge just fine for about a week. It’s a hardy dip with over 6 grams of protein in a serving (if it serves 8). Great for lunches because of the high protein content; great for snacks because I love chips.

In the pictures, I sprinkled a little bit of cumin on top for an extra flourishing garnish! Tasty! Hope you enjoy the dip and your party (and your subsequent lunches!).

Blueberry Sausage Bake (Gluten-Free, of course!)

My mom used to make a glutenous and sweeter version of Blueberry Sausage Bake for special breakfasts when I was growing up. Despite my hatred of sweet and meat,  Blueberry Sausage Bake was one of my favorites. It had won a recipe contest for Better Homes and Gardens (the source of many good recipes in the 1980s) and came with a blueberry syrup sauce that was delicious.

I remade the recipe gluten free around Christmastime. And promptly lost the sticky note (which, of course, I put in my recipe box and did not write the recipe name on it, so as to make it super easy to find again). I found it this week! And realized I had few of the ingredients required, despite going to both Kroger for sausage and Aldi for blueberries in one day. (Note that telling you the long and complicated story of each thing I’ve cooked is my way of saying we’re friends, this may be delicious but, boy, was the journey long to get here. I made this mistake during a dinnder party last night but everyone still ate Thug Kitchen’s recipe for baked beans. I think they liked the chocolate-covered cinnamon gluten-free graham crackers best though.)

So new recipe! Based off the original Blueberry Sausage Bake recipe that my mom clipped, based partially off my gluten-free redo, with inspirations of ingredients I had on hand, and some ideas from the cake recipes in Urban Poser’s Paleo Patisserie. Whipping the egg white separately does seem to make a difference! I have a ton of coconut flour right now, thanks to winning some at the Paleo Patisserie release party and a friend bought me some. So coconut flour is part of the mix.

The original recipe in Better Homes and Gardens had a sauce, but that makes it difficult to eat for lunch, plus it’s another step. Feel free to cook down some blueberries, water and maple syrup or coconut water to put on top if you wish. Leftover cranberry relish is also surprisingly delicious. I made my version much sweeter, which tastes better with the sausage to me. (You could add in a few packets of stevia if you want it sweeter.) 

I’ve been eating this for nearly every meal since I made it! (You can see why, right?!)

Gluten-Free Blueberry Sausage Bake

Set out two eggs to bring to room temperature. 

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Place parchment paper in a 6″ by 9″ baking pan.

Cook in a heated skillet, then drain and set aside when browned:

While the sausage is cooking, melt in the microwave for 20 seconds or so:

Whisk together the following flours in a large bowl:

Separate the two eggs, putting the whites in a mixing bowl and the yolks in a small bowl. Then add to the yolks:

Add the liquids to the flour mixture.  

Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks begin to form, about 3 minutes. 

Add to the batter:

Then softly fold in 1/2 of the egg white mixture, then the other half. Then gently mix in half of the following:

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle the remaining sausage and blueberries on top of the batter and lightly pat them down with a spatula.

Bake at  350˚F for 25 to 30 minutes or until browned on the edges and set in the center.

Serves 8+ with 330 calories a serving and 12 grams of protein. 

You could do turkey sausage if you want lower fat. But the pork sausage is tasty!

Yo Soy Ranchero

Who would have guessed that soy sauce and ranch are an amazing combination? (Probably someone like me who wanted a fast dinner.) I’ve been eating this combination with pasta (as in the recipe below) but also pairing the Asian-flavored ground turkey on corn tortillas and ranch dressing. You really need to try this combo!

For the ranch dressing, I use an unofficially gluten-free ranch dressing mix that I often through straight into plain yogurt for ranch. The more fat in the yogurt, the thicker the ranch dressing (though thickness doesn't really matter for the sauce on this recipe). Since I crave ranch on carrots every time I eat a Papa Murphy’s gluten free pizza--which is far too often as there is one behind my apartment complex--it’s important to have ranch dressing around. And one without lactose. Penzy’s ranch dressing base is delicious so I stop by the Penzy’s Spices shop whenever I’m in Austin--the shop smells so flavorful!

As for the pasta in the recipe, my two favorite brands of gluten free pasta are Tinkyada and Trader Joe’s. They both have a full-bodied texture that’s not mushy or flavorless like a lot of gluten free pastas. Trader Joe’s quinoa and brown rice pasta is really delicious. (Though I still haven’t found a gluten free pasta that tastes good cold in pasta salad. Hmmm.) The quinoa adds some protein, which is nice too. Tinkyada would also be nice in this recipe. I like using the fusilli as the sauce and flavor is be crammed into all those lovely spirals.

There are a lot of things going on at once while you cook this recipe, but as long as you pay attention to when things are boiling/cooked, you should be fine. Mostly since it was a mess the first time I cooked it all up together so I ordered it carefully for you!

(Per usual, I use a lot of red pepper flakes in this recipe--feel free to omit the flakes in the meat or the ranch or both.)

Yo Soy Ranchero

Step 1: Begin to cook the pasta.

Heat a medium-sized pot of water to boiling. When the water boils, lightly salt the water and add:

Step 2: Make the ranch.

Mix up the following ingredients to make the ranch dressing:

Let sit while you prepare the rest of the recipe so the flavors can mix.

Step 3: Cook the turkey.

Cook in a lightly oiled skillet:

When the meat is almost fully cooked, add in:

After the turkey meat is fully cooked and no longer pink and the onion is translucent, stir in the seasoning and cook for another minute:

Let the turkey meat cool a little while you drain your pasta when it’s fully cooked to the package’s directions.

4. Combine!

Add the ranch and the pasta to the ground turkey. Serve warm.

Makes 4-5 servings (depending on if you count calories!).

Sausage Apple Muffins

More muffins! Easy to make, easy to carry, delicious to eat hot or cold, and great for breakfast or lunch. (Or a snack after teaching 3 college classes in a day!)

Although I don’t like sweet things with my meat very much, the sweetness of the apples are balanced by the light mustard taste, the sausage, and the red pepper flakes. The apples add some vitamins and fiber. Another important flavor is the red pepper flakes: I don’t feel like the red pepper flakes make this spicy but I also put red pepper flakes in e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. and absolutely love the flavor. So you may want to leave it out. 

Almond flour for some protein and fiber and lower carbs! I won some almond flour at the release party in Dallas for Jenni Hulet’s My Paleo Patisserie (a beautiful, amazing book that I will be posting about on Instagram soon!). So I’ve been using almond flour again. The almond combined with brown rice flour (made in the Vitamix!) makes texture of the batter a little like a pie crust, which is delicious. (If the batter comes out really dry, you may want to add 1 more Tbls. of milk).

Sausage Apple Muffins

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Set 12 muffin liners into a muffin tin.

Melt together in the microwave for 30 seconds, then set aside to cool:

 Mix together in a large bowl:

Whisk into the coconut oil/milk:

Mix the liquids into the flour mix until just combined. Stir in:

Drop the batter by tablespoons into muffin liners.

Bake the muffins for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Makes 12 muffins / 4 servings. 

(Notice the beautiful fluffy cloud reflected in my favorite blue bowl in the bottom right! Picture taken on a nice, sunny but cool Sunday in Texas.)

You should probably use some fancy sausage in the this recipe that doesn’t have any nitrates, etc. But confession: I use Aldi turkey sausage with random stuff in it that costs $1.06 for a box of 10. They’re delicious nonetheless.

Enjoy your muffins and your muffin-worthy outings!

Green Olive Meatballs (Gluten Free and Paleo!)

I love meatballs for lunches. (As evidenced by this post: http://lunchhacker.com/post/59589736991/meatballs-the-best-lunch-hack and probably a dozen pictures on my Instagram.)

I also love sour flavors. Like lemon and green olives! I’ve really been digging green olives recently. So I decided to make a green olive meatball recipe and it came out amazing on the first try, which is always fun! I’ve made them again and they are delicious on some pasta or by themselves.

These meatballs are wonderfully salty and sour like green olives. You could cut down the lemon juice to 1 tsp. if you don’t like sour. You could cut the salt down to 1/8 tsp. or completely cut it out or rinse the olives before dicing. I like it just the way it is. :)

This recipe is gluten free, and it’s Paleo since the “breadcrumbs” are crushed up pork rinds. I’ve used pork rinds before in meatballs and it adds a sausage flavor. Plus pork rinds, at $1 a bag being enough for about three recipes, are way cheaper than almost any other gluten free (or grain free!) “breadcrumbs.” 

I’ve finally got my cast iron skillet to this beautiful place where it’s non-stick (mostly). I’ve been experimenting with using it for most of my cooking--toasting bread, boiling pasta, cooking meatballs in the oven. All has turned out great. My 10″ skillet is the perfect size for this meatball recipe to fit in. I think the meatballs get a little extra crispy and browned when cooked in the cast iron skillet, which makes them delicious. I highly recommend trying it.

Green Olive Meatballs

Preheat oven to 400˚F.

Combine in a large mixing bowl:

Using a metal scoop, form and place individual meatballs on a parchment-lined pan or in your cast iron skillet. (Should make 18-20 meatballs.)

Cook for 35 minutes or until browned.

Look at those beautiful olive chunks and browned meat!

These are really fast to make. They also include easy ingredients after you buy some pork rinds! Some notes: 

I quartered the olives and this seemed to be a good size.

I have a super complicated and television-worthy process for perfectly crushing my pork rinds:

Ziplock baggie, pork rinds, apply a glass because I don’t have a rolling pin. Shake the bag a little and repeat! Easy peasy. 

P.S. 

It’s been a while. A long while. I could give you a boring explanation of how real life takes up lots of time, even post-grad school life, but suffice it to say I’m back. I think I’m back. I have a mental queue of recipes so that will help. Don’t worry, I’ve been eating good lunches all these months and posting some pictures on Instagram.