Noshtopia

10 Ideas for Non-Bread Goodies to Eat with Hummus or Spinach Dip

No doubt that Hummus and Spinach Dip will be appetizers available on Thanksgiving day because everyone loves it, it's easy to make, and every grocery store carries pre-made dips for those of us who like fast & convenient. I really dig the Whole Foods pre-packaged spinach dip as seen above.

Typically, bread or pita is served to eat with the dip as are chips and crackers, as well as the typical baby carrots which I'm personally tired of seeing because it reminds me too much of "diet" food. {No offense baby carrot}

To mix it up and offer something to those who are carb conscious, gluten-free or conscious, or just want to try something new, here are 10 non-bread ideas to use with the hummus or spinach dip.

• Sugar snap peas. This is my personal favorite
• Zucchini or cucumber cut into slices
• Sliced pears like Bartlett and Anjou, or for something more global Asian Pear
• Jicama
• Daikon radish. The Daikon is long, thick, and tubular so you can cut it like cucumber slices or like fries. It has a mild flavor and high water content.
• Spelt pretzels. Spelt is not gluten free but it is a wheat alternative. Whole Foods 365 brand and Newman's have tasty spelt pretzels. Ener-G brand has a nice selection of gluten-free pretzels.
• Mini rice cakes
• Brazil nuts. The Brazils are big nuts so you can scoop a decent amount of dip plus you get beneficial MUFA's.
• These are fried but Terra Chips brand makes some pretty cool non-potato chips like taro, yucca, kambucha squash, parsnip, and beets.
• These are fried too, but Plantain chips. Plantains are not as sweet as your regular Chiquita and there are flavored Plantain chips like Chili Garlic, Jalapeno, and Cajun so with the spinach dip it is something definitely different.

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.

Appetizer idea: Prosciutto Wrapped Scallops on top of Cucumber Slices with Thai Sesame Lime Drizzle

This Prosciutto Wrapped Scallops on top of Cucumber Slices with Thai Sesame Lime Drizzle appetizer is pretty simple to make and would go nicely with some Cosmos or red wine.

Ingredients

• Medium to large scallops. I used medium ones because I found some on sale
• Your favorite prosciutto cut thinly
• Cucumber
• Garlic salt & black pepper
• evoo
• Drew's All Natural Thai Sesame Lime Dressing (I like to go semi-homemade and use the bottled dressing)

Let's start cookin'

• Cut the cucumber into slices like shown above and lay out on a serving platter. There's a notch in my cucumbers only because I got crazy playing with my new kitchen gadget toy, the Microplane Combination Zester, Scoring Blade and Garnish Cutter. This thing is so fun! I attempted to make curly cucumber garnish but failed. Couldn't get the cucumber to curl. I just ended up with spaghetti like strips. However, I did "zest" the cucumber skin and ended up with these shreds that looked like seaweed which would be awesome in Raw dishes. It looked really cool to me so I used it as a seaweed looking garnish you see in the background of the picture to play along with the seafood theme.
• Cut the prosciutto into strips as wide as the scallops and long enough to wrap around them.
• Season the scallops with some garlic salt and pepper prior to rolling them up in the prosciutto.
• I roll up the scallops kind of like pigs in a blanket. See all nice and cozy.

• Heat up a pan to medium high with evoo and fry up the prosciutto wrapped scallops.
• Cook them nice and evenly on all sides until they look a crispy brown which should go pretty quick.
• Place the scallops on a cucumber slice
• Drizzle some of the Thai Sesame Lime dressing on top of each piece

Enjoy!

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!

Dr. Weil Organic Goji Moji Fruit & Nut Bar

Earlier, I tried Dr. Weil's Pistachi-Oh food bar, and I thought it was okay, not great but not bad. I gave it a 7 out of 10. My biggest deal was that it was not as moist as the claim they made. In the food bar collection also is Goji Moji.

Goji is packed with all kinds of nutritiousness and antioxidants, and has been used in Chinese medicine for eons for its healing qualities. I like that Goji has properties that can boost the immune system and help liver function. It's kind of a Super Hero food. I've been looking for foods with Goji in them because plain Goji by itself is kinda bleh for me but I figured mixed up in something else, the fruit would be good.

So far, unless someone else can point else where, Dr. Weil's Goji Moji is the only food bar I've been able to find that has Goji in it (See the red bits in the picture). This bar was delicious and it was way more moist than the Pistachi-Oh. I enjoyed the Goji Moji and would buy it again.

And like the other bar, Goji Moji is organic, has nothing artificial and has No GMOs. They also say it's vegan friendly but if you're picky there is a note that the bar is made in a facility that uses dairy as well as peanuts, tree nuts, wheat and soy for those who have those sensitivities. All the ingredients though are vegan friendly. Here's the nutritional information for Goji Moji. I'd give this bar a 9 out of 10.

Sipping New Naked Juices: Peach Mangosteen, Watermelon, and Banana Chocolate Protein

Over the weekend, I tried some of Naked Juices "New" drinks. What's funny to me is that the bottles are labeled New yet these drinks have been out since the Spring, but they are new to me, so I'll share what I thought.

In the picture above, from left to right is Peach Mangosteen Bliss, Watermelon Chill, and Banana Chocolate Protein Zone. There is a 4th newbie, Very Berry Probiotic, but the store didn't have it so I'll have to try next time.

So here's what I thought:

Peach Mangosteen Bliss

I find it exciting to see Mangosteen now used in a mainstream brand drink. First, mangosteen is grown primarily in southeast Asia and is not related at all to the mango. Mangosteen is considered a super fruit because it's packed with antioxidants and is used in Asia for medicinal purposes.

This drink was delicious and I would also use the Peach Mangosteen Bliss as a nice mixer in a smoothie or even in a cocktail. Peach Mangosteen-itini anyone? The primary fruits used in the Peach Mangosteen Bliss are Peach, Mangosteen, White Grapes, Apples, and some Lemon. What's nice is that they added some B12 which is cool for vegans who often run low on B12. There are also no added sugars which I'm happy about. Here's all the nutritional information for this drink.

Watermelon Chill

I love watermelon so I'll drink or eat anything with the stuff in it. This drink however, I did not care for very much which was a bummer because I really wanted to like it. I didn't hate it, but I wouldn't buy it again. The primary fruits in this Chill are Watermelon, White Grapes, Strawberry, Apple, and a hint of Lime and Aronia. I think the Lime and Aronia are the ingredients that throw this drink off because they don't fit well with watermelon in my opinion.

Again, no sugars were added which is good because the drink is sweet enough just from the fruit sugars, and like the Peach Mangosteen, B12 was added. Here is nutritional information for this drink.

Banana Chocolate Protein Zone

This smoothie was really tasty, and I very much enjoyed the flavors. The primary ingredients are Bananas, Cocoa Beans, White Grapes, and a hint of Coconut which you almost can't taste at all, at least I couldn't. There is also a good amount of protein (a Soy & Whey mix) in the drink at 16g for an 8oz serving. Like the juices, this drink contains no added sugars, however, compared to the other two it does have a high sugar content at 35g per 8oz serving.

The only downside for me is that there is Potassium Hydroxide in the drink which is used as a thickener, and my tummy tends to not be happy with the thickeners like Guar and Xanthan Gum. If you have no issues with the thickeners, then this smoothie is definitely a must try. Here is the nutritional information for this smoothie.

Have you tried any of the new Naked drinks? What did you think?

Cooking music: Something Good This Way Comes

Music is a very important element to cooking for me. It's kinda like how you see surgeons on TV turn on the tunes for their surgeries.

Here is a great tune "Something Good This Way Comes" by Jakon Dylan which is a cool Sunday brunch or afternoon barbecue cooking type of song. He even mentions the warmth of sweet Apple pie on the stove in the song. Enjoy!

Got to meet the fabulous Stephanie Izard, Top Chef 4 winner

Quaker Oatmeal held a private "Living Proof" blogger event at their HQ in Chicago and we got the special treat of meeting Stephanie Izzard the winner of Top Chef 4. See here I am with her. Yay! I'm a huge fan of Stephanie's and was so happy when she won. In person, Stephanie is very warm, kind, and has a great inviting vibe. I have a bigger girl crush than ever before! In fact, lucky me, got Stephanie to say something special for you my lovely noshers:

And not only did we get to schmooze with the Top Chef, she made us some awesome oatmeal pancakes with a pomegranate sauce. Here is the recipe, and it is soooo easy to make. Quaker is also very cool and has offered up some coupons for your next oatmeal purchase. Please enjoy!

Ingredients for pancakes

• 3 bananas
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 cup oats
• 1/2 cup ground oats (take regular oats and grind them in a food processor into a flour)
  
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 egg whites, whipped to soft peaks
• sliced banana for garnish

Let's start cookin'

• Blend bananas and milk together in blender.
• Transfer to bowl and stir in vanilla, oats, flour, baking powder and salt.
• Fold in egg whites. 
• Spray nonstick griddle with pan spray and heat over medium heat.
• Add in a few spoonfuls of batter, leaving room for when they expand.
• Cook on each side until lightly browned. 
• To serve, top with banana slices and drizzle with pomegranate syrup.

Ingredients for syrup

• 1 cup pomegranate juice
• 2 Tbsp honey

Let's start cookin'

• Pour juice and honey together in non reactive sauce pot.
• Heat to medium.
• Reduce until thickened.