My version of Cold-Eeze

So, I used to take Cold-Eeze when I got sick or felt a cold coming on.  The other day, I just decided to make one of these:

Nope, I haven't turned into a vampire.  It's beet juice!  I was feeling a little under the weather a couple of days ago and thought I would juice a bunch of produce I had in my fridge in hopes that it would recharge my body.  Success!  I have been feeling pretty good since I drank this beet juice and took a couple of zinc.  I am going to try this combo every time I get sick.  :)

Here is some nutritional information on my beet juice:

Beets are high in vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, and C.  They are also a good source of choline, folic acid, iodine, manganese, organic sodium, potassium, fiber and carbohydrates. Beets have been shown to help fight acidosis, gastric ulcers, cancer, toxicity in the liver, among many other things (source).  Who wouldn't want to eat (or juice) them?

Carrots are high in thiamin, niacin, vitamins A, B6, C, K, potassium, folate, and manganese (source).  They also contain falcarinol, which may help to prevent cancer (source).  Carrots have been shown to be effective in ridding the ears, nose and throat of mucous (source), which is especially helpful when feeling a cold coming on.  Carrots can also help to boost the immune system and decrease inflammation.  Excellent!

I also threw in a couple large handfuls of mustard greens and arugula.  Greens help to decrease inflammation, speed up healing, and relieve respiratory issues.  They have large amounts of live enzymes, as well as iron, magnesium, potassium and phosphorous.

If you're interested in this lovely, tasty, immunity-boosting, drink, here's the recipe:

Beet Juice
3 small and 1 medium beet
2 large carrots
2 large handfuls of greens
approximately 1/4 cup fresh apple juice (my husband had just juiced apples that morning)

Juice all your produce and enjoy!  This yields about 12 ounces of juice.  You could split it or keep it all for yourself.  :)  Happy juicing!

Mexican Inspired Lentil Scramble

The last couple of days, I have been indulging in a plate of this:

 

It probably doesn't look like much, but I assure you, it's delicious.  It probably took me ten minutes to prepare (including chopping the veggies) and it is FULL of stuff that's good for you.  :)  Here is the recipe:

Mexican Inspired Lentil Scramble

2 tsp olive oil

2 tbsp chopped onion

1 clove garlic

3 egg whites 

4 medium fresh kale leaves, stalk removed and leaves chopped

1/4 cup cooked lentils

1/4 cup salsa

1/2 tsp cumin

Couple dashes of cayenne pepper (optional)

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat olive oil in a medium skillet over medium low heat.  

2. Add onions and garlic.  Saute until onions become soft and translucent.

3. Pour egg whites into the skillet and cook thoroughly.

4. When the eggs are fully cooked (approximately 3-4 minutes), add the rest of the ingredients.

5. Incorporate all the ingredients into the egg. Cook until lentils are warmed through and kale has wilted (approximately another three minutes).

6. Devour!  :)

You could surely make this recipe using a combination of egg whites and yolks.  I didn't use any yolks because, frankly, I don't like them.  :)  This recipe is fast, easy and delicious!  Let me know if you decide to try it!

Lentil sloppy joes

Okay, I've been promising this recipe for over a week now. Yikes! I know I've said this before, but I really don't know where the time goes. Anyway, these were extremely successful. My meat-loving husband thought they were a great substitute for ground beef sloppy joes and they were SO much cheaper. I don't have a picture of the final product, but here is the recipe I started with (taken from vegweb):

1 cup lentils
2 cup water
2 tablespoons minced onion
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
2 teaspoon green pepper flakes*
2 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon dry minced garlic (the kind in the spice section)
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1 - 6 ounce can tomato paste
1 1/4 cups water

Directions:

1) Rinse and pick through lentils. Add two cups water to pan with lentils and bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer about 55 minutes until tender, but not mushy.

2) For the sauce, combine the minced onion, salt, sugar, dry mustard, chili powder, green pepper flakes, cornstarch, minced garlic, celery seeds. Combine well and set aside.

3) When lentils are done, add the tomato paste and water. Stir in the sauce seasoning. Combine well and heat through.

Serve on whole wheat buns or over brown rice.

My lentils did not take 55 minutes, but more like a half hour. If you check them periodically, just cook them to the desired tenderness. I dumped the extra water from boiling the lentils and the lentils in the pan with my onion and garlic. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to use the dried minced onion, but I ended up dicing half of a fresh onion. I sauteed it with some fresh garlic in a little bit of olive oil (which also means I didn't use the dried garlic called for). I subbed Sucanat in place of the sugar and probably used half the amount. I used about 3/4 tsp chili powder, chopped up half of a green pepper for the green pepper flakes, and maybe a 1/2 tsp of celery salt for the celery seeds. I didn't add any cornstarch. I only used enough water to create the thickness of sauce that I desired.

I found that I needed to play with the flavors a bit because it was too tomato paste-y flavored for me. I added some Italian seasoning, some cayenne pepper, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. I still wasn't 100% happy with the finished product, but once we put the mixture on the buns and sprinkled a little reduced fat cheese on the top they were very tasty. They were also better the next day!

I like to let you know approximately how much these recipes will cost per serving. I have to approximate the cost of spices and such, which gets a little sticky, but I figure that a safe estimate would be that this recipe (the entire thing, including homemade rolls) cost around $6. We got between 6 and 8 servings out of it, so that is $1/serving or less! I love yummy, cheap, and healthy recipes. Try this one out and see what you think! If you find any super tasty additions to the recipe, let me know that too! ;) Happy cooking!

Super frugal dinner

As I mentioned, we didn't get to the Farmer's Market last week, which meant our meat supply was almost non-existent. This made for a very light-on-the-meat kind of week for dinners. Surprisingly, I didn't hear one complaint about it from my hubby, who is a huge meat lover and used to feel that dinner was not complete without meat. I decided to attempt falafel for dinner, which I had done once before a couple of years ago and neither one of us liked it. This time, I made the pitas, falafel and tzatziki sauce from scratch. It came out delicious...even my hubby liked it (but told me not to tell him what the ingredients were so he would actually eat it). The links above lead to the recipes that I used.

Now, don't let me fool you into thinking that this dinner took me a half an hour to prepare. It probably was more like 1 1/2 hours, but much of that time was waiting for pita bread to mix, rise or bake or for the falafel to cook in the pan. It cost me very little money (I estimated it to be around $6 for all three components) and while it was slightly time intensive, it gave us enough food for three dinners.

I used all whole wheat flour for the pita bread, along with 1 tsp gluten added for each cup of flour. The pitas came out great! Just made sure you don't roll the dough too thin, otherwise the pockets won't form and you'll end up with a dud like this one.
I had a couple of those, but most looked like these.
I had a happy customer, who liked hers with almond butter.
I actually used the falafel recipe above, but cooked it more like this recipe. I dumped the first seven ingredients, up to the baking powder, in my food processor and blended them until the chickpeas were well chopped. Then I dumped the mixture into a bowl and added the breadcrumbs (whole wheat) along with the rest of the ingredients. I ended up adding an egg white and a little bit of water so the mixture would stick together into patties. Then I placed the patties in a large skillet with a little bit of olive oil (probably 1 tbsp or so) and cooked them until they were brown on each side and warmed through, about 8-10 minutes total.

For the tzatziki sauce, I just dumped all the ingredients in the food processor and blended until smooth. I used Greek yogurt (low fat), so I didn't have to strain the yogurt through cheesecloth. I failed to squeeze the excess liquid out of the cucumber, so I ended up with a little bit thinner sauce than I would have liked. For the next night, I strained the sauce through a strainer lined with coffee filters. This resulted in more of a spread. Probably somewhere in the middle of the two would have been best, but it was still tasty.

So, there you go! Frugal, healthy, and easy (but not necessarily fast). About $1/serving...much cheaper than you can get falafel for if you were to go to The Pita Spot. Hope you'll try it!

The wonderful world of lentils

So, this is the way my kitchen looked today:


In the front left pot, there was lentil soup; in the front right, rice to make J some rice milk (another post for another day); back left were sweet potatoes for J's lunch, and in the oven I was roasting a chicken. All in a day's work. ;) I'll just focus on the soup for this post.

In order to cut down my grocery bill for the month, I have decided (much to my husband's dismay) that we will have at least one vegetarian dish each week. I don't know about the rest of your significant others, but my husband is all about meat at every meal, preferably red. He doesn't realize that there can be too much of a good thing. Anyway, I digress...

In came the lentils. I had never tried lentils before. I bought a 16 oz bag of Goya lentils that were in my local Stop & Shop for about $1. I searched for a recipe using lentils because, as many of us do, I originally bought these for another recipe that I never made. I found a recipe for lentil soup...this time of year is great for soup, right? I found a good one on allrecipes.com (if you haven't been to this website, you need to check it out). With the ingredients listed, it would cost between $.80 and $1 per serving (best I could figure). Not bad!

Here's the original recipe:

• 1 tablespoon peanut oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 pinch fenugreek seeds
• 1 cup dry red lentils
• 1 cup butternut squash - peeled, seeded, and cubed
• 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 (14 ounce) can coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 pinch cayenne pepper
• 1 pinch ground nutmeg
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat, and cook the onion, ginger, garlic, and fenugreek until onion is tender.
2. Mix the lentils, squash, and cilantro into the pot. Stir in the water, coconut milk, and tomato paste. Season with curry powder, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 30 minutes, or until lentils and squash are tender.

I used sweet potato instead of squash, powdered ginger, extra garlic, no fenugreek, no cilantro (didn't have any and knew it would go bad before I used the rest), chicken broth in place of the water and probably used more like 3 cups, 3/4 can of lite coconut milk, extra curry powder and cayenne, and added probably 10 shredded baby carrots (I only use recipes as guidelines. ;)). I simmered it for more like an hour because I kept messing with the spices and the liquid until it tasted just right. Once it was done, it was delicious!!!!


Okay, it may not look delicious, but it really was. I still feel like it might be missing a little something. One of the reviews on allrecipes recommended adding portabella mushrooms. That might help, but the flavor was great. I definitely recommend this recipe...I'll let you know if my husband would. :)

Do you have a favorite lentil recipe? Please share! :)