Shells Stuffed with Creamy Ricotta, Mushroom & Spinach

Boil 1/2 package of large pasta shells and drain.  Meanwhile...

Mix together 1 container ricotta cheese + 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella + 1 egg + 10 oz defrosted and well-drained spinach.

 Saute 1/2 package sliced mushrooms + 1/2 chopped small onion + 2 minced cloves garlic.

 Add mushrooms to spinach mixture and mix thoroughly.

 Lightly spray a 13" x 9" pan and spoon in a thin layer of spaghetti sauce.

 Stuff each shell with a heaping tablespoon (or 2) of ricotta mixture and place in pan on top of sauce.

 Top with spaghetti sauce + 1/4 cup water. Cover with foil and bake 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

 Remove cover. Top with 1/2 cup mozzarella and bake 5 minutes more.

Serve with a mixed green salad.

Smile because you made a delicious, nutritious, vegetarian meal and everyone will love it!  Be healthy!

Kitchen Technique: Roasting

One of the reasons people often give me for not cooking and eating more vegetables is that they don't know how to prepare them - or that they take a long time.  I'm a busy girl these days and need meals to be simple, but always delicious.  Roasting is my go-to preparation for dinner many nights of the week.  As simple as scrub or scrape, chop, toss and into the oven.  Here's an example from this week...

Roasted Winter Veggies
3 medium carrots, scraped and chopped
3 parsnips, scraped and chopped
1 fennel bulb, trimmed and chopped
1 medium onion, cut into 8 wedges
2-4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1 tsp thyme
3 Tbs olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  While the oven heats, prep the vegetables.  Toss everything together in a bowl and then onto a lined or sprayed sheet pan.  Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes (until nicely caramelized and cooked through), tossing about every 15-20 minutes for even roasting.

A few tips:

1. Chop everything about the same size to ensure even cooking - but no need to get fancy.
2. Add additional spices, herbs and/or vary the veg to make an endless combination of roasted deliciousness.  Some of my favorite combos include sweet potato wedges tossed with olive oil, cinnamon and red pepper; yellow squash, zucchini, and onion tossed with olive oil, thyme and pepper; apples and potatoes tossed with a little olive oil, cinnamon and maple syrup; cauliflower tossed with a bit of olive oil, curry powder, salt and pepper; and colorful bell peppers and onions tossed with olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper.
3. Start this dish first.  Then, while the vegetables roast you can prep and cook everything else for dinner or just spend a little more time playing with your baby, dog, or internet.  

Leftover roasted vegetables are so versatile too.  They are fantastic added to scrambled eggs, folded into a tortilla for a vegetarian lunch, or even cold right out of the fridge.  What? Just me?  In addition to the fact that they are super easy and yummy, roasting instead of boiling helps retain nutrients since there's no water for the vitamins to leach out in.  So...what are you going to roast next?  Be adventurous.  Be healthy!

Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Treats

Are you watching the Olympics?  Even thought its delayed, I'm watching.  It's so much fun to see the athletes perform at their best, hear the back stories, and to cheer on USA.  What's your favorite winter sport?  Snowboarding has been cool to watch.  I love figure skating - it's so beautiful to watch the skaters dance on ice.  Hockey is exciting too - oh, and downhill skiing and slalom.  Even curling is fun to watch in the Olympics. 

We wanted a treat to enjoy while we watched.  Enter the peanut butter rice crispy treat. Yum, yum, yum.  These aren't healthy, per se.  But if you're eating super nutritiously 80-90% of the time, there's room for the occasional indulgence.  Here's mine.  Hope you enjoy it! 

Ingredients
3 Tbs butter
1 1/2 packages marshmallows (10oz packages)
1/2 cup natural peanut butter
7 cups rice crispy cereal

Start by preparing your 13 x 9" pan with butter or spray with oil.  Heat a large heavy bottomed pot over medium heat.  Melt butter, then add marshmallows.  Stir as they melt to incorporate butter and to gently press the fluffy marshmallows down.  Once mostly melted, add the peanut butter and turn off the heat.  Stir until completely smooth, then add rice crispies.  Stir until everything is incorporated, then pour into the pan.  Using a piece of parchment paper, press the mixture into the pan.  Once cooled, cut into 24 pieces and enjoy!

Braised Kale and Apples

Kale is such a delicious leafy green vegetable.  I'm a huge fan.  Not everyone, however, loves kale.  In particular my green-vegetable-averse husband isn't a lover.  Kale tends to be bitter and it's tougher than some other greens, requiring either a little more cooking or the desire to eat rougher roughage.  He is a trooper though and is willing to try almost everything I make. This one seems to have been a winner.  Give it a try and let me know what you think!  I served it with lemony Parmesan wheat berries and baked salmon.

Braised Kale and Apples
Serves 2 large servings

Mise en plas for the kale and the wheat berries.

2 Tbs olive oil
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 medium apple, cored and thinly sliced
6 cups chopped kale (sounds like a lot, but wilts down a ton)
2 Tbs water
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan over medium high heat.  Add onion and saute for 3-5 minutes, until translucent.  Add the apple slices and cook 2 more minutes.  Toss in the kale and mix thoroughly, then add water and cover for 5 minutes.  Uncover and stir, season with salt and pepper and cook until kale is done to your liking (just a couple of more minutes for me. 

This would also be great with dried cranberries tossed in, or with some chopped turkey bacon.  Kale is high in fiber, vitamins K, A and C.  Plus it's just plain yummy!  Enjoy.  Be healthy!

No-Added-Sugar Banana Pumpkin Muffins

I'm finding that feeding my little guy leaves me with bits and pieces of this and that.  You see, I want him to have lots of variety.  Yet, he eats only tiny bites.  So...leftover this and that in the fridge and freezer!  I don't want to throw it away, so I'm finding things to do with the leftovers.  In this case, I had leftover pumpkin...and happened to have some very ripe bananas.  Hhhhmmm...I wondered if G will like muffins.  He does! 

These are delicious and perfectly nutritious muffins with no added sugar or salt.  I feel great about feeding them to my little guy and my big guy too.  I modified them from here (a very cute blog too!).





Set your oven for 350 degrees.  Then, mix these wet ingredients together in medium bowl.




3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 egg
1/3 cup olive oil
splash of vanilla

Mix these dry ingredients together in a large bowl. 
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
Then, add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.  Divide evenly (ish) into 12 muffin tins and bake about 20 minutes or until done.

These are delicious.  Just a tiny bit sweet.  Super nutrient rich!  Perfect for slathering with peanut butter and eating for breakfast or serving warm alongside dinner.  Yum!  Be healthy!

Crockpot Cauliflower Soup

It was cold here - freezing cold.  Then it got warm.  Now it's rainy, but still warm.  Like 70 degrees warm.  It's December in Atlanta and this is what you have to expect!  Even with the warm up, I still love soup.  Winter and soup just go together.  I make soup in the crockpot about once a week in the colder months and we eat on it all week.  I think cauliflower is an underrated vegetable.  It's deliciously versatile.  You can mash it like potatoes, roast it like a root vegetable, grill it like steaks, and steam it.  It also makes great soup, like this one.

Ingredients:
1 head cauliflower, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 medium or 1 large carrot, chopped
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped or sliced
32 oz chicken broth
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp garham masala
2 tsp turmeric
salt and pepper to taste

Add everything to the crockpot and cook on low about 6 hours. 

Using an immersion blender, puree the soup.  I like to leave it slightly chunky, so I only puree partially.

Serve with fresh crusty rosemary bread and salad.  It's better the second day!  Be healthy.

Meatless Monday Recap

Often we enjoy a vegetarian dinner on Monday nights - sometimes we have meatless Tuesday or Wednesday instead.  My husband, in spite of being green-vegetable-averse, is very tolerant.  Last night's meal was a winner!  Roasted butternut squash and soysage pasta.  Yum!  Here's the deal:

Take one butternut squash, peal and chop into about 1" cubes.  Toss with some extra virgin olive oil (BTW, this is the only olive oil I ever use), salt and pepper and some fresh thyme and roast at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes, stirring once about half way. 

Meanwhile, get your pasta water boiling.  Chop 1/2 an onion and saute over medium low heat in a little olive oil.  Crumble the soysage into the pan and brown. 

When the butternut squash is almost finished, toss your pasta into the water and cook for about 6-8 minutes or as directed.  In this case, I used egg noodles.  When the pasta is ready, add it directly to your soysage and onion mixture with about 1/2 cup of pasta water and stir, scraping up the bits off the bottom of the pan.

Add the roasted butternut squash to your pasta mixture, along with 1/4 cup of chopped fresh parsley and stir gently.  Voila!  A delicious and beautiful dinner in about a half hour. 

I served with fresh green salad.  Delish!  You could certainly choose a more nutritious pasta - like whole wheat or a blend, but I used what I had on hand.  This would also be fantastic with a spicy Italian chicken sausage (dh's request for next time).  Fall and winter are ripe with delicious produce.  Be creative and enjoy the abundance, even when the weather's too stinkin' cold!  Be healthy!!

From Decor to Dinner

Using fruits and vegetables can be a fun and unique way to decorate.  And when you're tired of the decorating part, they can sometimes become more than just fodder for the landfill.  Remember reduce, reuse, recycle...yeah, I'm learning to be a pro.

Pumpkins are a natural choice for this time of the year.  We put out four pumpkins at Halloween - two were carved and the other two were smaller pie pumpkins.  Pumpkin is a deliciously nutritious winter squash that's a yummy source of fiber, vitamin A, potassium and vitamin C. 

Today, one of the smaller pumpkins met his demise...and turned into a delicious dinner!

Don't be intimidated by winter squash.  All you need to do is cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, peel the flesh, and chop it up.  Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. 

This fragrant soup is simply delicious and the garam masala gives it a spicy, warm flavor.  It should be topped with a bit of Greek yogurt (it's in there, but sunk!) and pumpkin seeds.  We enjoyed it with a fresh green salad topped with Bosc pears and blush vinagrette and whole wheat dinner rolls.  Even the hubs ate it up.  Perfect cool weather meal. 

Pumpkin Soup

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium onion, finely diced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 Tbs garam masala
2 medium carrots, chopped
4 cups pumpkin
6 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste

In a large heavy bottomed pot, add olive oil and onion and saute over medium heat until transleuscent.  Add spices and stir fry about 1 minute until fragrant.  Add carrots and cook 2 minutes more.  Stir in pumpkin and cook another minute.  Finally, add stock and bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer.  Cook 25 minutes and then taste.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Finally, puree using an immersion blender or in batches in a blender.

This soup is really good for you.  Plus it tastes really good.  You've got an extra pumpkin out there, right?  Make it. Be healthy!

My 5 Favorite Cookbooks - #1

I have a huge collection of cookbooks.  Probably well over a hundred.  That may not be many to a crazy foodie, but it's a few too many to me.  Yet, I don't have any interest in getting rid of even one.  I know, it makes no sense.  At any rate, I thought it would be fun to share my five favorite cookbooks with you over the next 5 weeks.  It was really HARD to choose just five and I have a lot of other cookbooks that I reeealy like.  If you like this series, maybe I'll share more later.

Disclaimer: This is my philosophy on cookbooks - they are meant to be guides.  Suggestions and inspirations, if you will.  Recipes are ideas and concepts, but don't have to be strictly adhered to.  Baked goods are more of a science and usually a little less flexible, but even then can be "dolled up" and tailored to your taste - or your raisin-hating-husband's taste (P.S. I love raisins).  If you like something a lot, add more.  Don't like something, leave it out.  Most of the time, you can interchange things and the recipe will be more to your liking, not less.  Experiment.  If something doesn't work, do it differently next time.  I almost never follow a recipe exactly and almost never make anything exactly the same way twice.  It's a character defect.

Today I'm sharing one of my favorite go-to books for inspiration - Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special.  Truth be told, I love all of the Moosewood books.  I think I have them all in my collection.  Molly Katzen and the others involved in the development of these recipes have done such a great job of making them simple and approachable, but delicious and exotic at the same time. The recipes in this particular book are the kind that I can go back to over and over.  Almost all (maybe all?) recipes are vegetarian, but don't let that scare you.  Let it inspire you!  This book is full of ideas for soups, salads, sides, and various accompaniments that will transform simple vegetables into mouth-watering meals that your family will ask you to make again.

In the spirit of Moosewood, I wanted to share a big pot of simply yummy vegetarian Autumn Soup.  Hope you like it!

• 2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 stalks of celery, sliced
• 1 extra-large sweet potato (or 2 medium), peeled and chopped into ~1" pieces
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups chopped kale (or spinach)
• 1-15oz can low-sodium diced tomato
• 6 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable stock
• 1/2 cup barley, farro, or brown rice
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
•  2 bay leaves
• salt and pepper to taste

 In a large, heavy pot (I use my enamel coated cast iron Le Crueset) heat the oil over medium heat.  Add onion and saute until beginning to turn translucent, about 4 minutes.  Add sweet potato, carrots, and celery and cook about 2 minutes.  Add garlic and kale, stir-frying for about 2 more minutes.  Then, add all other ingredients and bring to a boil.  Turn down to a simmer and cook until grains are fully cooked and the flavors are melded - about 30-40 minutes.  Enjoy with freshly baked bread, a simple green salad and some fresh fruit.

Like it hot?  You could add a teaspoon of crushed red pepper.  Don't like sweet potato (what is wrong with you)? Substitute butternut squash or even fresh pumpkin.  Add a scant cup of 1/2 and 1/2 for a cream soup.  It's your soup, make it the way you like it.

Be healthy!