Chicken Thighs and Veggies

I love a one pot dinner and this fits the bill. I used my large 15-inch cast iron skillet for this dish. The only other thing you need to do is throw together some rice or quinoa or you can do what I did and use a short cut:  Seeds of Change Rice and Quinoa--done in the microwave in 90 seconds-Kaboom!

pkf of six bone-in chicken thighs
salt and pepper
olive oil

pkg of whole green beans, trimmed
4 carrots, peeled and cut in match sticks
1 medium onion in wedges
3 medium tomatoes in wedges
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 T of fresh rosemary

apple cider vinegar
water
Dijon mustard

preheat oven 350

Rub thighs with olive oil then salt and pepper heavily. Brown the thighs in the skillet--five minutes skin side down then a few minutes after you flip them. Remove from skillet-spoon out accumulated fat. Throw in the green beans, carrots, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and rosemary and  cook for a few minutes. Place the thighs back into skillet on top. Make a mixture of the water, vinegar and mustard--1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup vinegar and a T of mustard-Pour this over the chicken thighs.

Bake (uncovered) for 1 hour.

Serve over rice or quinoa or whatever.

Zucchini Bread

I've never been much of a baker and I'm still not! However, I have been trying my hand at making a few low sugar muffins lately. I had some zucchini in the fridge and decided to sort of make up a bread. I looked at another recipe and then did a whole lot of substituting and omitting and came up with this and it's not bad at all. It's low sugar and gluten free if that interests you. 

Zucchini Bread

INGREDIENTS:

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup coconut oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 mashed banana
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup shredded zucchini
3/4 cup almond meal
3/4 cup coconut flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, syrup and banana. Fold in the zucchini. Stir in the flours, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Transfer mixture to the prepared loaf pan.

3. Bake 55 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted in the center of a loaf comes out clean. Cool 20 minutes in pan, then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Spicy Chili-Coconut Tomato Salad with Pork Tenderloin

I had a leftover pork tenderloin in the fridge and wanted to do something "different" with it. Well, I found just the thing. When I first looked at this recipe from the Food Network online it sounded rather weird to me. I was intrigued and even somewhat perplexed by the suggested flavors. It is Thai-inspired so you have that whole hot and sweet thing going on, but tomatoes and coconut? I made a few tweaks to meet our needs and it worked out just great.

First make the sauce and then get the ingredients ready for the salad. I served the salad over brown rice so we got the full flavor from the sauce (which is a little thin).

1 cooked pork tenderloin, sliced and cut in half moons (you could sub chicken or tofu here)

Ingredients for Chili-Coconut Sauce:
olive oil
1 (1-inch) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeno, cut into rounds
1 t coconut sugar
1 lime, juiced
14 oz. unsweetened coconut milk
1 T fish sauce
salt and pepper
Stems from 1/4 bunch of cilantro (odd, but true)

Ingredients for Tomato Salad:
3/4 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
1 pound tomatoes-I used firm medium brown/red heirlooms
1/4 red onion, cut in slivers
1/2 a jalapeno, seeded and cut in slivers
leaves from 1/4 bunch of cilantro
Handful of fresh mint leaves
salt and pepper
2 scallions, trimmed and chopped

Directions

Sauce:

Heat olive oil in deep saucepan and over medium heat cook, garlic, ginger and jalapeno pepper for 3 minutes. Add the coconut milk, sugar and simmer until thickened about 5 minutes. Stir in the lime juice and fish sauce and season with salt and pepper. Cool to room temperature. Add cilantro stems and puree with immersion blender. Set aside

Tomato Salad:

Preheat oven 375
Spread coconut out in thin layer on parchment lined cookie sheet and bake shaking now and then for about 8 minutes--check at 4 and shake or stir.

Cut the tomatoes into bite size chunks--drain a bit if they are really watery. Put the tomatoes in large shallow bowl. When ready to serve, to the tomatoes add the red onion, the jalapeno, the mint, the cilantro leaves and salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil. Fold in the coconut and the scallions and the pork tenderloin.

Serve over rice and ladle the sauce over all.

Crockpot Tenderloin

Even though it's summer, I still pull out the good old crockpot at least one night a week. My weekly yoga class meets over the dinner hour and I like to use the crockpot on these nights so that dinner is already made when I get home. I only have a few quick things to do and dinner is served. I'm also exhausted from the work out and love having dinner basically ready and waiting. This week I made a new recipe. I served it over spaghetti squash to keep it lower carb. However, the gravy is really good and would be wonderful over pasta bow ties or wide noodles. The tenderloins always come in a pair so now we have a cooked tenderloin for leftovers. I adore leftovers--cook once-eat twice :-)

pkg of pork tenderloins
1 packet of Lipton onion soup mix
3/4 cup red wine
3 T soy sauce
1 cup water
3 cloves of garlic, minced

2T cornstarch
1/4  cold water

Put tenderloins in slow cooker, add all the other ingredients and turn the tenderloins around to get them seasoned all over. Cook for 5 hours on LOW. When ready to serve, take tenderloins out and put on platter, cover with foil. Pour sauce into saucepan and bring to low boil, add 2 T cornstarch that has been mixed with 1/4 cup cold water. Whisk around and bring up to boil--it should be thickening but not too much. Turn heat to low.

Breakfast for Lunch!

We often like to have breakfast for dinner and sometimes for lunch! I had leftover cooked collard greens in the fridge so a fritatta was in order.

1 cup cooked collards
1 red pepper chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
6 eggs
dash of milk
sprinkle of Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
dried red pepper
dried thyme

Preheat 400

In ten-inch oven proof skillet, heat a bit of olive oil and sauté the red pepper and onion. Sprinkle on some salt and pepper, some thyme and some dried red pepper while cooking. Stir in the collard greens. Whisk the six eggs up, add a dash of milk and a sprinkle of parmesan and then pour all that over the vegetable mixture. Cook until the edges of the fritatta are setting up and then pop the skillet into the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool a bit before cutting--will cut easier and the flavor is better when not piping hot.