Author: Sarah
Herbed Stuffed Zucchini
What would you call these? Zucchini boats? Zucchini blades? Zucchini toboggans? Every time I make this herbed stuffed zucchini, I want to give it some cute, descriptive name that makes my kids more inclined to eat it. Not that my kids are very picky, I just think a dinner with such a unique shape deserves some fun imagery to go along with it. Often, the foods we eat for dinner come to us with no particular shape, kind of blobby. Don’t get me wrong, some of my favorite foods are blobby. Like mac and cheese, or soup, or ice cream. Blob, blob, blob. As a matter of fact,
There, I said it. Don’t tell my husband.
But, that being said,
I guess basically what I’m saying here is
Like you didn’t know that already.
These uniquely shaped zucchini skis combine savory herbs with ground beef on top of the tender-crisp crunch of the squash underneath. A sprinkle of Parmesan completes the taste profile for a delicious homemade dinner any night of the week. Round it out with a side of potatoes (garlic herb potato wedges, perhaps?) and you’re good to go.
Herbed Stuffed Zucchini
A Love Letter to Food Original
Ingredients:
4 zucchini
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic
3/4 lb. ground beef
1 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, chopped fine
1 Tbsp. fresh thyme, chopped fine
salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 c. fresh-grated Parmesan cheese
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and scrape out the inside, leaving about a 1/2 inch of flesh on the zucchini skin. Reserve 1 c. of the inner part of the zucchini you just scraped out and chop into 1/2 inch chunks. Set aside.
3. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and sauté for 1-2 minutes, then add the reserved 1 c. of zucchini chunks and cook another 3-4 minutes. Add ground beef and cook until browned, about 7-10 minutes. Sprinkle in fresh rosemary and thyme and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook and stir 1 additional minute to incorporate. Drain beef mixture if liquid is present.
4. Place zucchini halves on a greased baking sheet and stuff with ground beef mixture. (If you have extra of the beef mixture, you can either cook it alongside the zucchini or save it for another use, like shepherd’s pie.) Bake in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes.
5. Sprinkle with fresh Parmesan.
Serves 4.
Easy as Apple Pie Baked Oatmeal
In the continual effort to eat healthier, I’m always on the hunt for ways to work in more fruits and vegetables into our family’s daily diet. Try as I might, the one meal that seems to elude me in this quest is breakfast. I’m happy to put berries on a waffle or possibly whip up a smoothie, but my imagination for fruit at breakfast seems to end right about there. So when I realized that baked oatmeal with fruit was a thing, I was pretty stoked. For awhile now I’ve been making this baked apple-cinnamon oatmeal with great approval from both my kids and my husband. It’s basically as easy as baked oatmeal can get–mix all the ingredients in a baking dish and pop it in the oven for 45 minutes. You don’t even need a mixing bowl. Fool-proof! Since I don’t generally have 45 minutes to wait for oatmeal to come out of the oven on any given morning (who am I kidding, I barely have an extra 45 seconds on school days) I like to make it the night before and reheat individual portions in the microwave. So let’s review: easy, unprocessed, filling, and full of fruit? I’ll take that any day!
Easy as Apple Pie Baked Oatmeal
(Adapted from Betty Crocker)
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp. butter
2 2/3 c. old-fashioned oats (gluten-free, if necessary)
4 c. milk
1/3 c. brown sugar
generous 1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
Pinch nutmeg
2 apples, peeled and chopped
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a 2-quart baking dish, melt butter in the microwave. Add all remaining ingredients and mix well.
3. Bake uncovered 40-45 minutes.
Serves 6-8.
Coconut Curry Chicken
I freely admit that I kinda feel like a phony making Indian food. I am about the furthest you can get from Indian. In fact, here is a picture of my family of origin:
More or less. My dad’s family is primarily from Switzerland and my mom’s side is primarily from Germany, and the family trees actually converge if you go far enough back. As in, my parents are fourth cousins. Seriously. (No, I don’t have any genetic abnormalities….that I’m willing to divulge publicly.) Once stateside, my forebears settled in central Illinois and I ended up being raised here in the eastern suburbs of Phoenix. So about the closest I’ve ever come to India is half-heartedly watching Ghandi on Netflix while working on a cross-stitch sampler. Even so, I very much enjoy Indian food. A good chicken tikka masala can bring me to a When Harry Met Sally diner scene level of enjoyment. So I should really find a solid recipe for that. But in the meantime, let me share with you this fantastic coconut curry chicken.
As someone with very little experience with Indian cooking, this recipe makes me feel like a pro…or at least like someone who could tell you that the capitol of India is Mumbai not Mumbai, but rather New Delhi. Or maybe like someone who can pronounce the word “ghee” without sounding like a redneck about to make a romantic advance. With relatively few, non-ethnic grocery store ingredients, the chicken in this dish turns out tender and the stewed sauce of tomatoes and coconut milk amalgamates into a velvety spiced tomato gravy. While it takes some time to reach this apex of deliciousness, the recipe really isn’t labor-intensive and the result is worth the wait. I must warn you, though, that it will make your house smell like curry for 24 hours after cooking it, so if you’re, say, throwing a Cinco de Mayo party or something the next day, just be advised. Otherwise, you’re in the clear to enjoy both the taste and the fragrance of this simple-but-terrific Indian meal.
Coconut Curry Chicken
(Adapted from Allrecipes.com)
Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2″ chunks
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 1/2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. curry powder
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
14 oz. light coconut milk
14 oz. petite diced tomatoes
8 oz. tomato sauce
2 1/2 Tbsp. white sugar
Directions:
1. Season chicken pieces with salt and pepper.
2. In a large nonstick skillet, heat vegetable oil and curry powder over medium-low heat. Stir and cook 3 minutes, then increase heat to medium-high and add onion and garlic. Cook 1-2 minutes. Add chicken, tossing to coat with oil and curry, and cook 7-10 minutes or until the pieces are no longer pink in the center.
3. Add coconut milk, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and sugar, stirring to combine. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat 40-45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens to your liking.
Serve over rice.
Serves 4.
Raspberry Almond Overnight French Toast
Well, the Christmas season has come and gone, though you might not know it at our house. At least, not immediately outside our house. It’s not that we haven’t taken down our lights or have left some tacky blowup snowman out front. It’s that our 8-foot tall live Christmas tree is sitting directly outside of our front door because we don’t have a truck and it’s too big to haul away in our Mazda 5. Nothing says class like a Sasquatch-sized withering Christmas tree smack dab in front of your house halfway into January, right? I would almost rather have an 8-foot tall actual Sasquatch out there. At least that would be less cliche. Our kind neighbors have offered to take it to the Christmas tree recycling center (yes, that’s a thing) when they take theirs (which is NOT sitting in front of their house) one of these days soon. Yay for helpful neighbors!
At any rate, our Christmas 2014 was a pleasant and mostly peaceful one and in some ways I wasn’t ready for it to be over. (Just ready for the tree to be gone.) For me, holidays are marked by the foods I cook/our family eats, many of which have become traditions. For several years now I’ve done an overnight French toast for Christmas morning–usually a banana-pecan one–but this year I wanted to try something new. I ended up settling on this scrumptious, colorful cinnamon-spiced raspberry almond French toast. The original recipe calls for a whole cup of brown sugar, which I get, cause yeah, it’s Christmas and all, but as much as I love sugar, I also love cutting it out where it won’t really be missed. So I scaled it way back to just over a half cup and nobody thought it wasn’t sweet enough. (Plus, who are we kidding, it’s gonna get bathed in maple syrup anyway….I mean, it is Christmas after all.)
So while the Christmas season may be over, I think I have found a new favorite overnight French toast–cinnamon-y with bursts of tart raspberries and the crunch of almonds to contrast with the soft texture of the bread. Now I think I may need to start a Valentine’s Day breakfast tradition just so I can make it again…
Raspberry Almond French Toast
(Adapted from Taste of Home)
Ingredients:
12 slices cinnamon bread, cubed
5 eggs, beaten
1 3/4 c. milk
1/2 c. + 2 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
heaping 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 c. slivered almonds
2 c. raspberries, fresh or frozen
Directions:
1. Place bread cubes in a greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish (you will get about two layers of bread). In a bowl, combine eggs, milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Pour over bread. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.
2. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sprinkle almonds over egg mixture. Bake uncovered for 25 minutes. Sprinkle with raspberries and bake another 10 minutes. Slice and serve with your favorite maple syrup.
Serves 6-8.
Turkey Taco Calzones
Well, after that first post of the year declaring how great it is to eat meatless 50% of the time, how about….a recipe with meat? Ha! Albeit a recipe for meat in which one pound of ground turkey stretches to serve eight. Plus, it’s turkey instead of beef, so hey, props for that, right? And really, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with meat in moderation–as I should have mentioned in my half-vegetarian manifesto, in the world of dietetic science, meat is considered a “high biological value” protein. This is a measure of how well our bodies utilize the protein in a food for protein synthesis in our cells. Protein from animal sources gets the highest rating.
I dreamed up this meat-containing recipe as our family was on a road trip last weekend. Sitting in the car with no one asking me to play with them/check their homework/wipe their bottom gave me the chance to ponder what new and interesting dinner I might try in the coming week. I’ve been wanting to make calzones, and got to wondering how they would taste with a little Tex-Mex treatment. The answer, I discovered, is delicious! These came out super hearty, a little spicy, and excellent with a Mexican-style green salad. They also reheat well the next day.
As for our road trip, it took us to Payson, AZ, where we had a near-perfect snow day. The sun was shining and it was nice and warm, but snow still thickly covered the ground, providing plenty of fodder for snow ball fights,
snow forts,
and even a king-sized snowman (which gave my husband a Parkour-style workout hauling the boulders of snow on top of each other).
We are so thankful to live in the great state of Arizona, where we can easily visit the snow (but it doesn’t have to visit us).
Turkey Taco Calzones
A Love Letter to Food Original Recipe
Ingredients:
2 1-lb. packages refrigerated whole wheat pizza dough, like Trader Joe’s
1/2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 c. chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. ground turkey, 93% lean
2 1/2 Tbsp. taco seasoning (I always make my own, recipe here)
1 15 oz. can black beans, drained
1 1/4 c. fresh salsa (or canned, if fresh is unavailable)
8 oz. shredded cheddar or Mexican cheese blend
1/3 c. chopped green onion
Salsa and sour cream for serving
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Remove pizza dough from packaging and follow directions for rising (Trader Joe’s dough rises for 30 minutes, which is just about what you need to prepare the calzone filling).
3. Prepare the filling: heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook onion and garlic in oil for 1 minute, then add ground turkey and cook until browned. Drain any excess liquid from pan. Add taco seasoning and stir until well combined. Add black beans and salsa, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook 5 minutes.
4. Grease 2 rimmed baking sheets with cooking spray. Spread 1 risen pound of dough in the bottom of each baking sheet. Spread turkey mixture crosswise on the lower halves of the dough. Sprinkle with cheese and green onion. Fold the empty upper half of the dough over to cover the filling. Crimp the bottom and sides together.
5. Bake in the preheated oven until the dough is brown and fully cooked, about 18 minutes. Cool 5 minutes, then cut into slices and serve with salsa and sour cream.
Serves 8.