Noshtopia

Simple 4-Ingredients: Creamy Dairy-Free Harvest Medley Soup With a Twist

 

I got creative with the soup action this week. I wanted to make a simple butternut squash soup, and headed over to Trader Joe's to buy a bag of pre-cut butternut squash. I love how TJ's will cube and package in a handy bag those hard to cut veggies like squash. The hardest part of cutting up a whole squash for me is skinning it. I lose patience and end up driving to Trader Joe's. On this day though, I found something new...

Protein Packed: Pumpkin Yogurt Parfait with Bananas and Gingersnap Granola

 

Sometimes I'm amazed at how much my laziness enables me to come up with creative ways to get multiple benefits in one dish. Rather than eat multiple foods, I'd much rather eat just one dish that is power packed in one shot.

Feast your eyes on my latest concoction, a protein packed pumpkin yogurt parfait with bananas and gingersnap granola.You can make this parfait vegan friendly as well and I've included that option in the recipe below.

A nice bonus, this parfait recipe requires no cooking. It's easy and simple yet looks complex.

 

What's packed in this parfait yumminess:

• Skyr is the traditional yogurt of Iceland, and with its unique production you get 2-3 times the amount of protein as regular yogurt, as well as a yogurt that is so thick and custard-like a spoon can stick straight up in it. One Siggi's yogurt container has 16g protein. If you want to up the protein count even more, you can mix in one of these 9 protein powder options.
• Live Active cultures giving you good bacteria
• 0g Fat in the yogurt, pumpkin pie mix, and banana
• Potassium from the bananas
• Fiber from bananas and granola
• Sweet holiday tastiness from the pumpkin pie mix

 

Ingredients (for single serving):

• 1 170g Container of Siggi's Vanilla Yogurt or Greek Honey Yogurt. Use something thick - *Note to make vegan option

• 2 tbsp Farmer's Market Organic Pumpkin Pie Mix (can)

• 1/2 medium banana sliced into thin pieces (I use a half a banana vs. a whole to help cut down on overall sugar content of the parfait.)

• 1/2 c. Gingersnap Granola (which I got at the bulk foods section at Whole Foods. Use whatever granola sounds good to you.)

• Pumpkin pie spice (or you could use nutmeg or cinnamon)

• Small juice glasses

* Vegan option: To make vegan, in small food processor blend silken tofu, agave nectar with the pumpkin pie mix.You can also use a coconut, rice, or soy milk based yogurt, but these yogurts are on the watery side and won't hold layers as well.

Let's get mixin':

 

• Mix the 2 tbsp of Pumpkin Pie Mix in with the yogurt. I used 2-1/2 tbsp because I really like the pumpkin pie flavor and wanted the flavor to be more prominent.

I just mix in the yogurt container because it's one less bowl to wash. You'll have to mix well and really get the spoon to the bottom of the container because pockets of yogurt can hide. You want to end up with a nice smooth pumpkiny looking color when done mixing.

• Start layering your glass starting with a scoop of pumpkin yogurt. Next put the granola, and then the bananas.

• Repeat layer starting with a scoop of pumpkin yogurt.

• Top with a third layer of pumpkin yogurt, and sprinkle on some granola. Insert a banana slice for looks, and then sprinkle a few dashes of pumpkin pie spice on the top for a festive flair.

You can eat this pumpkin parfait for breakfast, brunch, or even as a dessert. I certainly enjoyed chowing on this holiday-ish treat.

 

Holiday Twist on Spinach: Wilted Spinach with Garlic and Nutmeg

 

It never would have occurred to me to sprinkle Nutmeg on spinach, but I thought that could be interesting, so why not try it. Plus, we're diving into holiday eating season, and nutmeg always reminds me of the holidays. And then I got goofy and thought, Spinach (strong) + Nutmeg (sweet) = Popeye + Olive Oyl (his sweetie). Ok, that's my vivid imagination making corny associations.

I found this Spinach With Nutmeg and Lemon recipe on Martha Stewart and tweaked it some because I can never make a recipe exactly as stated. It's the rule breaker in me :) I opted out of the lemon because I don't care for tart on Spinach, and I put sauteed garlic in everything so I was curious what garlic and nutmeg would taste like together. Could be awesome or incredibly yuck.

 

What I like about this recipe too is that it's easy and super fast. In fact, it's almost Superman fast because wilting spinach takes like seconds.

Ingredients (for 2 servings):

• 1 6oz. pre-packaged bag of fresh Spinach. I get the equivalent amount of fresh spinach from the bulk bin at Whole Foods.
• 3 garlic cloves cut into slivers
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg, ground or grated
• Sea salt & Black pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil (versus Olive Oyl, Popeye's sweetie. Ok, goofy me :)

 

Let's Get Cookin':

• Heat the olive oil in a pan on medium. If the pan is too hot, like on high, the spinach will disintegrate immediately. It's not pretty. We want to wilt the spinach not singe it.

• Saute the garlic until it looks soft.

• Toss in the fresh spinach and add the nutmeg and salt & pepper.

• Mix around the spinach with the garlic until the Spinach looks almost wilty. Now, this step literally will take seconds because spinach starts wilting the second it hits heat on a pan. In fact, you want to take the pan off the burner when the spinach looks almost done because even just sitting in the hot pan, the spinach will continue to wilt. If you keep the spinach in too long, you'll get a mush of spinach, again not so pretty.

• Throw spinach in a serving bowl, and voila, you're ready to nosh!

A couple notes:

• The salt part is important because nutmeg alone doesn't taste so lovely. The salt definitely perks up the dish.
• Next time, I'd try cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice.
• The garlic + nutmeg combo is definitely different. I'm not sure if it will be a hit with all, but I liked it. If you pair the nutmeg spinach with turkey or ham, it should compliment well.

 

Things I Eat Post Run: Mixed Green Salad With Salmon, Avocado, & Fixin's

  
This morning I went on awesome 5-mile run through my parents neighborhood. The great thing about their 'hood is that you can get a variety in training from steep hills, long sloping hills, flat & twisty, and flat & straight.

After my long run, and still reveling in my endorphin high, I made this simple salad with mixed greens which included arugula, my favorite green of all time, avocado (mmm MUFAs), chunks of juicy tomato from the farmer's market, some candied walnuts from Whole Foods, and bits of julienned squash, zucchini, and red beets which I also got from the Whole Foods salad bar.

Mom made some salmon for dinner the other day, so I ripped some pieces apart and threw on top of the salad for protein and some oh-so-good Omegas. I dress the salad with a drizzle of Brianna's Poppyseed dressing.

This salmon green salad is one of my favorite things to eat post-run because you get:

• Greens
• Protein
• MUFAs (monounsaturated fats)
• Omegas
• Nutrients & vitamins
• Something all natural that makes the bod feel good

What's some of your favorite post meal eats?

Health-upped Classic Grilled Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich

Charlie at Back to the Fridge brought back some great memories from high school for me when he showed us how he makes Grilled PB&J sandwiches. My favorite part is the buttery grilled bread. Yum-ee! I used to eat those puppies all the time back in the day when I played on the school tennis team and had a metabolism like a furnace.

On occasion, I still enjoy the grilled PB&Js but I make a much healthier version today because the ones I ate back then had Wonder Bread, PB&J with high fructose corn syrup, and margarine. So nowadays, here's how I make a health-upped Grilled PB&J.

Ingredients

• Food For Life Ezekiel bread. The Ezekiel breads contain both soluble and insoluble fiber, and are made of organic sprouted grains, wheat, soybeans, lentils, and seeds which provides the fiber. See, now you can impress people and say you know how to get fiber with a PB&J.

• Crunchy Whole Foods 365 brand Peanut Butter. I like crunchy PB because I feel like I'm actually eating a food instead of feeling like I'm eating a candy like caramel. The ideal is to use organic fresh ground peanut butter that is nothing but peanuts and maybe salt. Basically anything without added sugars, and artificial ingredients or preservatives is better. It doesn't have to be organic. Nice alternatives to the PB are almond and cashew butter.

• Fruit spread or if you feel like making a holiday like version use Pumpkin Butter. Now I like the fruit spread over jelly or jam because the spreads are pretty much just ground up fruit. Jellies and Jams can have lots of additives, extra sugars, and preservatives added into them. I like the Whole Foods 365 fruit spreads because they just use fruit and some grape juice for a sweetening boost plus it's really cheap.Check your local store.

• When it comes to butter, I admittedly have a bit of a snobbery. If I'm gonna eat fat, then I'm going to eat some good high quality stuff. I have the Type II cow milk allergy but I find that if I eat organic or high quality butters in small amounts, then I'm okay. My favorite butter is this Plugra European Style Salted Butter. I love it because it's creamy with this amazing flavor, and you really don't need to use much. The creamy is due to some extra butter fat, but I don't care, this stuff is awesome!

Let's start cookin'

• Heat up a pan to medium high
• While you're waiting for the pan to heat up, slather butter on one side of each piece of Ezekiel bread for your sandwich.

• Grill the buttered side first until it's a nice golden crispy brown
• When the buttered side is done, flip bread over and toast up the dry side a little bit.

• Spread PB on one piece, and the fruit spread on the other slice, and slap together. Sometimes, if I don't want a whole sandwich, I'll just grill up one piece of bread and put the PB & fruit spread on top and eat like regular toast.

Doesn't that look divine? Well get noshing!

Simple tacos: Garlic scallops with tomato, spinach and arugula

I found the best food deal of the day, one pack of 12 Whole Foods 365 brand organic corn tortillas for 99 cents. And best, three tortillas are only 140 calories. Nice! So, I've been on this taco eating arc. The other day, I made green salad tacos, and for dinner last night I made garlic scallops with tomato, spinach and arugula tacos which were so easy and fast to make. Here's what I used:

Ingredients

• Medium size scallops (found some frozen ones on sale)
• Some crushed garlic
• Garlic salt
• Trader Joe's 21Seasoning Salute (I love this stuff. So multi-purpose)
• Fresh spinach
• Fresh arugula
• Chopped up vine tomatoes
• Corn tortillas
• evoo

Let's start cookin'

• Heat up a pan with some evoo and saute the garlic for about a minute.
• Toss in the scallops and then season with a pinch of garlic salt and the Trader Joe's 21Seasoning Salute. Cook the scallops until they are golden which shouldn't take too long.
• I like to use the TJ's seasoning because it adds speckles to the scallops. What can I say, the designer in me just likes things to look dimensional. You can use any multi-ingredient seasoning if you don't have the TJ's stuff.

• While scallops are cooking, heat the corn tortillas in another pan. I just slightly wet the tacos and dry cook them in the pan to heat them up.
• Throw onto the tortilla first your spinach and arugula, then the tomatoes, and the scallops last. Be sure to scoop in some of the toasty garlic bits because that will give you some nice flavor.

I eat my tacos plain with just these ingredients because there's enough flavors for me to enjoy but you can add some hot sauce or a salad dressing like honey mustard or Brianna's has this new Ginger Mandarin dressing which sounds really delicious.

Cheap & Easy Healthy Meal: Salad Tacos

Here's one of my cheap & easy healthy meal eats, salad tacos. No cooking required unless you want to heat the tortillas in a pan which I like to do.

All you do is go to the salad bar and get your favorite fixings, and then pile some of the stuff on top of a corn tortilla, then fold. At my nearby Whole Foods, you can get a packet of 12 organic corn tortillas for 99 cents. Oh yeah! It's the best deal in town and it's only 140 calories for 3 tortillas. That's some good eatin'!

In my salad taco above, I used mixed salad greens that include arugula as I am an arugula fiend. There's also some red and green beets, edamame, garbanzos, cherry tomatoes which I cut up, avocado, and pieces of roasted turkey. For dressing I used my favorite non-dairy, no mayo, Brianna's Poppy Seed dressing.

Salad tacos my friends. Easy, cheap, and healthy!

10 minute recipe: Stir-fry brown rice, veggies, and chicken or tofu

I like home cooked meals but sometimes I just don't have the time or patience to prep food for cooking. Here's one of my favorite under 10 minute recipes that literally requires almost no prep because you can get everything from the salad bar and hot food section of your local grocery store. It's also very easy to cater to meat eaters or vegetarians. For this recipe, I'm going to use Whole Foods because that's where I shop.

This is what you'll need (serves 2-3):

• One small box of your favorite pre-cut veggies (at Whole Foods, it's the smallest of the hot food boxes)
• 2 cups of pre-cooked brown rice or white rice (at Whole Foods, the small containers are 2 cups)
• 3/4 cup of cubed roasted chicken or tofu. In the salad bar, there is usually cut up chicken chunks and tofu chunks.
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• Garlic Salt & Pepper to taste

I like to look at the salad bar as also the "Pre-cut vegetables" bar. That's right! Almost everything you need for stir-frys or any other dishes that require your basic chopped up veggie can be found at the salad bar. For this stir-fry dish, I got a small box of mushrooms, edamame, shredded carrots, shredded squash, corn, and red onions.

In my salad bar, the pre-cooked chicken comes in strips, so I just cut them up into cubes for easier cooking. This is all the prep I did in this entire recipe. Nice!

Let's start cookin'

• A wok pan is best for cooking but a regular skillet will do
• Heat the pan to about medium high, then put the olive oil in
• Dump into the wok, the box of veggies and your chicken or tofu
• Season the veggies with garlic salt and a wee bit of pepper to your taste
• Continue to sautee for about 2 minutes
• Dump in your brown rice and mix in well with the veggies, and chicken or tofu
• Stir for about 2 minutes, and your done!

Pour onto a platter or into serving bowl. Don't you just love easy recipes like this? I sure do!

Quick bean salad: Butter beans with cherry tomatoes, red onion, and red wine vinegar

If you need a quick bean salad dish or a non-meat protein dish to make, this one is fast, simple and requires no stove cooking.

Serves 2-3
Ingredients:

• 1 can Butter Beans (I like Eden Organic Butter Beans)
• 1/4 cup sliced red onion
• 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes (or more if you like tomatoes)
• 1-1/2 tbsp garlic infused olive oil
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
• Salt to taste (or garlic salt if you don't have garlic infused olive oil)

Let's start creating:

• Butter Beans are also known as Petite Lima Beans, so if you like Lima Beans you can use those too. I think this bean salad is best served chilled, so I put the can of butter beans in the fridge the day before making the dish.

• Open the can and give the beans a quick rinse. In the can, some beans can get mushed up and then create a "gooiness" on the other beans, so I like to give the beans a quick rinse just so they can be shiny as possible.

• Slice the red onion pretty thin, and cut the cherry tomatoes in half.

• Pour onto the butter beans the garlic infused olive oil, red wine vinegar, and salt and toss everything around with a spoon. I have this garlic infused olive oil that I like to use in all my salads, but if you don't have any, you can use plain evoo and add in some garlic salt or powder. Also, I like to use olive oil and vinegar on the low side. If you like more vinegary punch or oil, add more to your taste. Instead of regular salt, sometimes I'll use seasoning salt just to do something different.

• Throw in the cherry tomatoes, and give the beans another good mix. It's good to stir in the tomatoes last just so that they don't get beat up too much in the stirring process.

Voila! The butter bean salad is now ready to serve.

Quick pasta: Napa Style Spicy Parmesan on Brown Rice Spirals with Cherry Tomatoes

The other day, after shopping at the Crate & Barrel Outlet in Berkeley, I discovered across the street this fabulous food and lifestyle store called Napa Style which is owned by famed Napa Valley chef Michael Chiarello who also hosts the show Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello on the Food Network. The man even blogs. Here's a post he did that has a recent picture of him with Oprah. Cool!

I'll be honest in that I had never heard of Michael before, but now that I know of him, he has a new fan, and I have to share my enthusiasm with all of you.

A simple tasty gluten-free pasta dish in a flash

While at the store, I tried the Spicy Marinated Parmesan Dip, and I fell in love. The flavor of this dip is so versatile that you could put it on almost anything. Of course, I bought a jar, and for dinner that night I made the dish you see above. It's one cup of brown rice pasta spirals with 1-1/2 tbsp of the Parmesan dip and some cherry tomatoes thrown in for some lycopene goodness. This dish is now one of my favorite gluten-free meals, and it took more time to boil the pasta than it did to whip up the whole dish. How fab is that!

Just off the top of my head, you could use this dip in a sandwich instead of mayo. You could throw it on a baked sweet potato, use it in a vegetarian tortilla wrap, or dip it in some rice crackers. There are endless possibilities.

More Parmesan Flavors to Enjoy

Besides the Spicy Marinated Parmesan Dip, there are two other flavors; Marinated Parmesan Dip and Prosciutto Marinated Parmesan Dip. The dips are just fabulous folks, and they contain no artificial food additives, preservatives, or thickeners. The ingredients are simple and all recognizable, and we healthy noshers love that!

There are 5 Napa Style retail stores, and their products are also available for purchase at the Napa Style online store. If you go to the Berkeley store, do be sure to say hello to store manager Lorenzo. He's a very cool guy!