RoseBerry Mahi Skewers

So this weekend in my house we decided that the chore....I mean joy, of cooking should be shared a little more evenly. Don't get me wrong, I adore cooking! You know this. I love my job, but given the opportunity to build an amazing professional kitchen and join the cast of Travel or Food Network, I'd be done and done! Of course I'd still volunteer for my beloved American Cancer Society. But all this said, I'm still waiting on that call from Anthony Bourdain and Bobby Flay so for now, I work. And when I say work, I mean things are ramping the heck up and my hours are nutso! So again, as much as I love cooking, doing it every night is getting to be much too taxing!

So Josh and I sat down to make a menu for the week knowing we were sharing the cooking and I got a chance to really think up something I've not made or eaten. And with the added bonus of only having to come up with 3 meals for the week instead of 6, I was really able to think! What I came up with was creative, colorful and just plain delish albeit a little labor intensive....a little. Don't be skurred!

Here's the breakdown:

2 mahi mahi fillets
3/4 pint raspberry
1 Tbsp fig balsamic vinegar
*regular balsamic would be just fine, I didn't have any
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp honey
2 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
bamboo skewers

Put the raspberries in a bowl with the vinegar. Let it sit overnight. Then either in a food processor or with an immersion blender (hand blender) blend that up. Add the oil and blend again. Then stir in the rosemary and honey. You may want to quickly warm the honey in the microwave to loosen it up. Cut the mahi into chunks and put in the mixture in a gallon size Ziploc bag. Leave for a few hours. In meantime soak the skewers in water to keep them from burning. Skewer the fish and grill on each side for 3 minutes a side. Put the excess marinade in a sauce pan and heat until it thickens up. Serve poured on or beside the fish.

I served this with a similarly flavored and colored veggie that I was myself pretty skeptical about, but it was bomb!

Here's the breakdown:

4 small red beets, cooked and diced moderately small
2 zucchini, diced
1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1/2 cup almonds, chopped fine
*I used the food processor for this
1 1/2 Tbsp coconut oil
Radicchio cups

Melt the coconut oil over medium low heat and add rosemary. Infuse the oil slowly. When it gets fragrant (2 min or so) add the zucchini and crank up the heat. Toss it around initially then leave it alone for a few minutes to brown slightly. Then toss it again and repeat. In a separate pan, sauté the beets slightly to get them hot, but not to brown. Put all of this in a bowl with the almonds and toss gently so as not to dye the zucchini red! I served it in a radicchio cup for looks! But it's great either way. The almonds really really change the consistency and the flavors marry well!

We loved both and Josh hates beets....or that's what he keeps telling me anyway even though he mowed them down this week!

Enjoy and salud!

All the Veggies to the Pool!!!

I am getting old. Or busy. Or tired. Or all of the above. My conversation with Josh post dinner went like this:
Me "I feel like my blog posts used to be witty and funny. Now they're not"
Josh "Why, blogging too much?"
Me "No I think it's too much of everything else! What did you say about dinner tonight?"
Josh "That the onions were really good?"
Me "No, I think it had something to do with the number 12. I remember thinking I wanted to quote you"
Josh Looking Puzzled

Holy shish kebab! Can someone follow me around with a voice recorder?

AAAAANNNYYYY WAAAAAAY!

Some time ago we had a small group discussion at the gym about veggie lasagna. Some use whole wheat noodles some not, some meat, some not. It wasn't until this week that I realized I've never blogged my veggie lasagna. It's always a little bit different, but this one pretty much killed it. I think it's because I decided to use less, but more complex cheese. In the past I've used shredded mozzarella. But I'm trying to use grass fed dairy and less of it. Because why cut up and cook so many veggies if you're going to drown it in boring cheese? I say no!

Here's the breakdown:

2 summer squash, sliced and grilled
1-5oz container baby kale, sautéed
1 red onion, sliced and grilled
3 roasted yellow peppers, jarred
2 zucchini, sliced and grilled
3 portobello mushroom caps, sliced and sautéed
1 container crimini mushrooms, sliced and sautéed
1 container shitake mushrooms, sliced and sautéed
1 lb ground turkey breast, browned
Spaghetti sauce
*I use my own recipe, stored in lunch meat containers and it took almost 2 containers
5 oz goat cheese, crumbled
1/2 container shredded parmesan
*The good stuff, naaaaht Kraft shredded in a bag
dried basil, oregano, red pepper flakes, garlic powder
chopped fresh basil

Cook all the vegetation as prescribed above. After you brown the ground turkey breast, mix it in with the spaghetti sauce and simmer until warm. Then start layering it all up. I went in this order: summer squash, kale, onion, 1/2 the parmesan, roasted yellow pepper, zucchini, mushrooms, 1/2 goat cheese, meat marinara sauce, rest of the parmesan and goat cheeses, dried herbs. Then bake uncovered in a 350 degrees oven for 35 minutes. Turn the heat up to 450 degrees and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Top off with chopped fresh basil and serve.

I had hoped to have tons of leftovers to take to the gym and share with some of my posse, but Josh and I destroyed most of it at dinner and I'll be eating it for lunch and that'll be all she wrote! Hope you enjoy it too!

Salud!

What's In Your Lunchbox?

If you've been reading the blog over the last few weeks or noticed my blogging, or lack thereof, in April and May last year you know that my job keeps me insanely busy. The nature of my job regularly has me on the road or at events where eating a healthy lunch is a real challenge. This is especially true since I don't eat sandwiches much, not because I don't eat wheat, but mostly because I just don't really like them. The other lunch problem I suffer from is that I am so finicky about wanting to eat exactly what I want, which regularly changes from the time I pack my lunch to the time I eat it! Don't call me high maintenance haha Knowing all this about myself, I decided to take control of the situation and over the summer I picked up a HUGE lunch box so that I could always have food with me and a variety of it no matter where I was or what I was doing. 

Just about a year ago, I filled you guys in on my childhood nostalgia and love for open face tuna salad on toast. I always have cans of tuna in the house just in case of a pinch, but I hardly ever eat them. Since they were piling up, I decided to use them for lunch. However, I wanted to try to cut down the sugar from traditional tuna salad and also maybe transform my childhood favorite into a more adult flavor with a few healthier things in it.

Here's What I Came Up With:

1 can white tuna in water, drained
1/4 - 1/2 apple chopped small
1 celery stalk, diced small
1.5 Tbsp raisins
1/2 Tbsp finely diced nuts
*I used a mix of some I had left over from cooking
1/4 tsp hot madras curry powder
1 Tbsp mayo, paleo mayo or 1/2 avocado, mashed up
*Simply, you need fat, you decide which you use

Mix everything except the fat in a bowl. Its important to mix all the curry powder around before mixing in the fat. You don't want clumps of curry powder. 

Picture's not great, but it taste great, swear!

I eat this with a green salad and that's it. Done and done! It's simple, interesting and healthy! What more can a finicky girl ask for? 

Salud!