Spinach and quinoa salad

Leafy green vegetables are so important and yet seem so hard to get sometimes.  This is a quick and easy, very filling, dinner salad that is loaded with greens in the form of baby spinach.  Baby  spinach is very tender, mild tasting and a good way to start getting more greens in your diet.

To a bed of baby spinach add:
1 3/4 Mandarin oranges peeled, separated and sliced in half
1 apple, thinly sliced
1 pear, thinly sliced
1/2 cup grape tomatoes, sliced
5 radishes, quartered
1 cup cooked quinoa, to sprinkle on top

In a blender combine the following:
1/4 Mandarin oranges
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup basil leaves
sea salt
Blend until smooth, pour over the quinoa and spinach salad, toss well and add more dressing if desired.  Serve by itself or with sandwiches for your hungry boys.

What's for Lunch Wednesday

It's that time of the week again! I love Wednesday, I get loads of inspiration from the What's for Lunch blog.  I enjoy perusing other moms and dads' attempts at getting their kids to eat good healthy, whole, REAL food. 

This is Paulo's lunch today, he has a dish of potato gnocchi soup, I am loving the glass containers my mother in law gave me for Christmas, he can warm up his lunch in the classroom microwave and I don't have to cringe at the thought of him eating plastics.  In his divided container he has a Mandarin, some vanilla coconut milk yogurt, blueberries, grape tomatoes, green olives and some new chips we're trying.  They are actually yams and carrots but we'll see if he figures that out and A. loves them or B. hates them or C....somewhere in between. 

For more lunch time inspiration visit What's for Lunch at Our House.

Gnocchi soup

Here's take two and creating some new soup recipes.  I really enjoy soup but hadn't really tried to create any of my own recipes.  In fact I was much more likely to open a tetra box of soup than bring out my soup pot, soup can really take a lot of time to make.  But this soup was so easy there's no excuse not to make it on a weeknight.  I think all in all it took less than 30 minutes to get on the table.  Perfect weeknight hearty soup!


4 cups low sodium vegetable broth
24 oz jar, low sodium, strained tomatoes
1 package frozen, gluten free, Conti's potato gnocchi
1 zucchini, thinly sliced
6 mushrooms, quartered
2/3 head Swiss chard, washed, stems and greens diced separated
1/4 red onion, diced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon dry basil
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
sea salt to taste

Heat olive oil in a large soup pot, add the onion and the chard stems, saute until softened.  Add the garlic, saute one minute more.  Pour in the vegetable broth and the strained tomatoes, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to a simmer, add the potato gnocchi, zucchini and the mushrooms.  Season with basil and pepper.  Cover and simmer for 8 minutes.  When the gnocchi are done add the chard greens and remove from heat to soften the greens.  Season with sea salt if desired.  Serve with warm toasted bread.

Tofu stir fry

We've been making up for our culinary sins this week, eating tons of fruits and veggies and good whole grains-I'm hopeful that will absolve me from the dozens of gingerbread cookies I've eaten.  And the fudge, don't forget the chocolate fudge....how could we forget the fudge?!  I know I won't soon forget it...

To shock our systems back into health I whipped up a veggie and tofu stir fry this week with brown rice.  Served with steamed bok choy I felt very, very healthy and could almost forget about all the dark, festive, beer I've been drinking!

The inspiration for this stir fry sauce was found here on The Food Rules Cooking blog I like to read.  Someday I will try her actual recipe for the Phad Thai, it looks amazing!

1/4 cup wheat free soy sauce
2 limes, juiced
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Sesame oil
Extra firm tofu, drained and cubed
Assorted veggies (stir fry is an outstanding way to empty out the crispers) I used julienned carrots, sugar peas, steamed broccoli and mushrooms
Brown rice, preferably cooked over the weekend to save time
Cilantro
Toasted cashews

Combine the soy sauce with the lemon juice and brown sugar and set aside.

Heat the sesame oil in a pan and saute the tofu, add the veggies and rice, pour in the sauce, stir to heat through, taste, add salt if needed.  Add in the toasted cashews and top with the cilantro.

Serve with steamed bok choy drizzled with rice vinegar.

Sauteed spicy kale

2010, the year I met, and fell in love with, kale.  I really had no idea I would love it as much as I do!  I love it in my green juices, I love it baked, blended and sauteed.  Here we have a spicy kale saute.  I added a little serrano chile for a hint of heat.

One bunch of kale, cleaned, deribbed and sliced thin
1/4 onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 serrano chile, deseeded (or partially deseeded as the taste buds may be)
cilantro
the juice of one lemon
olive oil
sea salt

Heat the olive oil in a pan and add the onion and the serrano, cook until softened and translucent, add the garlic and continue to saute for a minute.  Add the kale to the pan, wet, and stir well, season with sea salt and cover with a lid.  Remove lid and stir after a few minutes, squeeze the lemon juice into the pan and mix well.  Serve hot.

Creamy roasted potato soup

This dish met two of my New Year's resolutions, to make soup and to use what I buy.  I had an assortment of potatoes in my pantry and I didn't want them to go to waste so I decided I would experiment with a creamy roasted potato soup.

• 2 sweet potatoes, scrubbed and diced
• assorted fingerling potatoes, scrubbed and diced
• 1/2 red onion, sliced
• 5 cloves garlic, smashed
• basil
• 2 cups plain rice milk
• 2 cups low sodium vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup coconut cream (chill a can of coconut milk in the refrigerator then open and scoop out the cream that separates to the top)
• sea salt and pepper to taste

Lay the above on a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil and season with sea salt.  Roast at 350 F until soft.  Transfer to a large pot and add the rice milk and 1 cup of the broth.  Bring to a simmer and blend with an immersion blender until smooth.  Add in the remaining cup of broth and the coconut cream and season with salt and pepper. Serve with a spinach salad.

Spinach and butternut squash salad

I've had a big butternut squash staring at me, accusingly, on my counter for a while now.  I bought it on a whim, not sure what I was actually going to do with it.  It sat, forlorn, in my kitchen...until Sunday night.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to use what I buy, seems simple enough, but we waste a lot of food in this country.  Depending on who you ask, it's estimated that we throw out between 14-40% of the food we buy!  That's a lot of money being tossed out in Thursday's garbage pick up, and that's a lot of food wasted when so many are going hungry.  So last night I made good on my promise to myself about using what I buy and cooked the squash.

Spinach and squash salad

• 1 butternut squash, cubed and steamed lightly (I used 1/2 of it and saved the other 1/2 for later)
• 2 big handfuls of baby spinach
• 1 cup grape tomatoes
• 1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 teaspoons sugar

Steam the squash until fork tender and keep warm. 

Mix together the vinegar, oil and sugar. 

Put the spinach in a large serving dish, add the tomatoes and pine nuts, add in the squash and drizzle with the dressing, I used roughly 1/2 of my dressing, I didn't want the greens to drown.  Serve immediately.