Creamy Coconut Spinach

Creamed spinach is a classic side dish that is one of my favorites. I even find myself craving it at times. So tonight I decided to come up with my own vegan recipe for creamed spinach. 

I've seen quite a few different recipes for creamed spinach but of course I never have all the ingredients for them in hand. So I just pulled whatever I had in my fridge and cabinet that I thought would taste good with spinach and low and behold it was AWESOME!!! It also includes an extra veggie that is easy to find at local grocery stores. The chayote squash add extra flavor, thickness, and texture to the dish.

Creamy Coconut Spinach

Serves 4

Ingredients

Bag of fresh spinach

1 chayote squash

Onion

Garlic

3/4 of a can of coconut milk

1tsp of Italian seasoning

Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Dice onion and garlic and add into a hot skillet. Cook until they soften.

2. While the onion and garlic cook, peel and chop the chayote squash. Add to the skillet. 

3. If desired, add salt and pepper to the veggies. 

4  Once the veggies have cooked for about 10 minutes add 3/4 of a can of coconut milk. Let the mixture come to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for about 5-10 minutes.

5. Add the coconut milk and vegetable mixture to a blender and blend till smooth. 

6. After blending, return the coconut mixture  to the skillet. 

7. Add the bag of spinach to the coconut mixture, simmer for about 5-10 minutes. 

8. And your done! Enjoy!!!

Spiced Carrot and Ginger Soup

When the hubby's away...Mama relaxes by cooking! Just kidding, I cook everyday even when the hubby is home. Cooking has and will always be a form of relaxation for me. So on this quite night at home, I love to take some time out for myself and prepare a comforting meal. Today I choose to make one of my favorite soups. I can't take all the credit for this recipe tho...my sister made a recipe similar to this for me a few months back. I believe when she made this she made it with some sort of milk to make it a bit creamy. I did not add  any milk so this recipe is also VEGAN!

I love simple and tasty vegan recipes and this soup is exactly that.

Spiced Carrot Ginger Soup

Ingredients

1 red onion

2 pounds of organic carrots

Ginger, as much as you desire

1 carton of organic vegetable stock

4 cups of water

2 tablespoons of Earth Balance Butter (or you can just use olive oil spray)

1/2 tablespoon of sweet paprika

1/2 tablespoon of cumin

Directions

1. Dice the onion and ginger and add to a heated stock pot.

2. Peel and cut the carrots into 1/4 inch rounds.

3. Add the carrots to the onion and ginger.

4. Cook the vegetables for about 5- 10 minutes, until the carrots start to get soft.

5. Add in the paprika and cumin. Cook for about a minute.

6. Add in the vegetable stock and water. Bring to a boil.

7. Once the carrots are completely cooked, turn off the heat. 

8. Add the cooked carrots and some of the broth into a blender and blend until smooth. 

9. Add the purée back into the rest of the broth and enjoy!

Recipe: French Onion Soup Burger!

Hey everyone!
I fell like it has been awhile since I have posted a recipe. And what's better than a healthy, juice, tasty burger....maybe a fresh batch of cookies! Yum! But back to the burger. I created this recipe because I love French Onion Soup and I wanted to take those flavors and put it into a burger. I made this burger with ground turkey, but you can used whatever ground meat of your choice, chicken or beef would be great here.

French Onion Soup Burger w/ Roasted Sweet Potatoes

It turned out better than I expected! My boyfriend Travis even called it "A Fan Favorite". LOL He's one of my biggest fans. He even suggested that we start doing burger nights, which sounds like fun to me. Next time tho, I will let the onions cook a little bit longer because I wanted them to be more caramelized.  

The Ingredients

Ingredients:

2- large sweet onions (sliced)

2- garlic cloves (chopped)

1- packet of onion soup mix

1-tbsp of dried thyme

1/2- chicken bouillon cube

1-tbsp of organic tomato paste (optional and not pictured)

1-pound of extra lean ground turkey

Non stick cooking spray

2- slices of reduced fat swiss cheese

*2-slices of reduced fat pepper jack cheese (not pictured)

**1- extra large sweet potato

salt and pepper to taste 

This recipe yields 4 servings

* Travis requested to have his burger with pepper jack cheese. It's his favorite. But you can just stick to the Swiss because it is traditional to onion soups. Well Gruyere cheese is a type of Swiss...right?

** I happened to have an extra large sweet potatoes on hand. Use two regular sized potatoes if that is what you have.

Directions/ Step by step photos:

Step One: slice up your onions. Heat a saute pan and spray with cooking spray. Add the onions, the thyme, and some salt and pepper. 

Step Two: Now cut your sweet potato into cubes.Place in a sprayed pyrex pan, add salt and pepper. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 20- 25 minutes.

I did spray the pan with cooking spray, but I suggest also using foil to line the pan also. It was not easy getting these suckers off of the pan!

Step Three: Now prepare your onion soup mix by adding 1/4 cup of water to your packet.

Step Four: Now add the ground turkey into a large mixing bowl. Also add in your onion soup mixture, and the chopped garlic.

Step Five: Now mix that all together, and form into four patties. Cook the burgers on your indoor grill or outdoor grill if you have one.

Just a tip! Make a dimple in the middle of your burger. So that when it cooks and plumps up in the middle, you won't get a bulgy burger. Learned that one from Rachael Ray =)

Remember we are cooking poultry, so no medium rare here. Make sure your meat is well done!

Step Six: By now your onions should have started to get nice and wilted. Now its time to add in the 1/2 chicken bouillon cubed and 1/4 cup of water.

 Step Seven: Now add your cheese, kill the heat to your grill, and let things melt.

Step Eight: At this point I added some organic tomato paste to my onions to add color. You don't have to do this, but I did because I didn't want to wait for the onions to caramelize. I was really hungry by this point.

It should look something like this.

Step Nine: Add your burger patty to the bun of your choice. Whole wheat is best, but whatever you have on hand is fine. Top your burger with your onions and serve roasted sweet potatoes along side of it.

Voila! Looks De-Lish! (Another Rachael Ray reference)

I hope you give this recipe a try! Enjoy!

To Health, Love, and Happiness,

A Bear & Chocolate Glazed Pumpkin Cookies!!!

Happy Halloween everyone! Today is my daughter Alana's first ever Halloween. YAY! So instead of just sitting at home all day, I decided to get her dressed up in a bear outfit that I had saved just for this occasion. We went to our local Publix Super Market because they were hosting a SAFE Halloween event for children. I absolutely love this idea because even through trick or treating is fun...us mother's must always keep our children's safety as our first and foremost priority.

My little bear had so much fun! Seeing other people and looking around at her surroundings is her favorite thing to do. Here are some shots I took of her before we went out to Publix.

Alana as a Bear

 And since I was already at the grocery store, I thought I'd pick up a few ingredients that I was missing to make these Chocolate Glazed Pumpkin Cookies. But Chelley, I thought the purpose of this blog was to lose weight...not eat cookies??? No need to fret, I am making them for my neighbor Julissa and her daughter. At the time that I moved into my new place with my boyfriend Travis, I was 9 months pregnant.Yikes, moving around while 9 months pregnant, I do not suggest it. Anyway, Julissa and I meet for a brief minute then, but I haven't seen her much since. Well a few weeks ago Julissa and her mother gave me the most gracious gift for my daughter. A huge bag of diapers (who would ever say no to free diapers when you have a new baby), baby wipes, crib sheets, and a keepsake frame. I thought it was so sweet and very small town neighbor of them. So now it is time to return the favor. And what better way to say Thank You than with a fresh batch of cookies.

 
I got the recipe off of the Martha Stewart website. And it was super simple to make. The recipe yielded 3 1/2 dozen, so I halved all of the quantities in order to make a smaller batch.

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

To Health, Love, and Happiness,

Recipe: Very Veggie Meatloaf

Since I have a little more time on my hands, I have been trying to experiment with some of my favorite foods. And meatloaf is one of them! Currently, I am a (sometimes) stay at home mom. I say sometimes because last Sunday was my first day back at my part-time job. Work was exactly how I remembered it, the only thing that was different was ME. I missed my daughter Alana the entire time and couldn't stop thinking and worrying about her too.

How could you not love this face?

                                                        
But during my time at home with my lovely little one, I have found creative ways to pass the time. I have recently become obsessed with watching food network clips online. I've always been obsessed with watching food network, but now I can refine my search and watch whatever recipe I want. Sounds awesome to me!!! So I've been doing some research on how to make meatloaf juicier and more wholesome. Since my previous meatloaves have been on the dried side.
So I have a recipe that I really love and I want to share it with you...

The Ingredients 

(sorry I forgot to get the ketchup and hot sauce before I took the picture)

Ingredients:
2- 1 pound packages of extra lean ground beef
1- large yellow onion
1- 8 ounce package of button mushrooms
1- large zucchini
1-green bell pepper
1-large egg
1/2- can of tomato sauce
1- tbsp of tomato paste
2- tbsp of vegetable oil
1-cup of plain breadcrumbs
1 -tsp of dried thyme
1/2- cube of bouillon
1/4-cup of water
3-tbsp of ketchup (not pictured)
1-tbsp of hot sauce (not pictured)

Directions:
Step one: Chop up your onion and green  pepper. Add the oil to a medium high heated saute pan. Add in your veggies. Saute until heated through and beginning to wilt. 
Step two: Now finely chop up you mushrooms and add them to the pan with the onions and bell pepper.
Step three: Allow your veggies to sweat out. Then add in the tomato paste, thyme, bouillon, and 1/4 cup of water.
Step four: Chop up the zucchini and add them to the pot of veggies. Mix in the zucchini, and remove the pot from the heat so that the veggies will cool down to room temp.
Step five: Now in a mixing bowl, beat one egg. Then add in the bread crumbs and the ground meat.
Step six: Once the veggies have cooled, add them to the mixing bowl. Mix everything together.
Step seven: In a Pyrex baking pan form the meat mixture into a loaf.
Step eight: In a separate bowl mix together the tomato sauce, the ketchup, and hot sauce. Pour half of this mixture on top of the meatloaf. (The other half we used as extra sauce on the side) Bake in a 400 degree oven for 1 hour.

Step by step photos

Add the green bell pepper and onion first. I do this because I like for these veggies to be really wilted

Add the mushrooms. Remember to chop them up finely, because we do not want big chunks of mushrooms in our meatloaf.

Get them nice an sweaty.

Add the thyme, tomato paste, and bouillon. And some water. This is the moisture layer in your meatloaf.

Now add in the zucchini. I add them in last so they keep a firm texture.

In a separate bowl add in a beaten egg and bread crumbs

I snapped this pic because I realized the I pick up two different packages of meat. Opps! Next time I will be sure to only get the extra lean beef. As you can tell in the picture, the regular ground beef is fattier.

Add in the cooled veggies and beef to the egg mixture.

Mix it all together.

Form the mixture into a loaf

Mix together the ketchup, hot sauce, and tomato sauce

Put the tomato mixture on to of your loaf

Bake at 400 degrees for an hour. And Enjoy!!!

 I hope you try this recipe! Sorry I do not have a picture of it plated. By the time it was done this mama was really impatient (hungry) and just wanted to eat! I will be making this again, so I will update the picture. Promise!!!

To Health, Love, and Happiness, 

Recipe: Leftover Chicken Salad

*This receipt was created before going vegan* 

So I promised you all a re-make recipe. And here it is! I used the leftovers from my roasted chicken to make a healthy chicken salad. My boyfriend has been requesting chicken salad for a little while, and this is what I came up with. Its a simple recipe that takes about 10 minutes to prepare...

I usually have it as a healthy snack between meals. I had it with crackers and baby spinach, but you can serve it on top of a salad or as a sandwich.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts (shredded)
1 container of plain non-fat Yoplait Greek yogurt
1/4 of a cup of sliced almonds
1 tbs of cumin
1 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of pepper

Directions:
Placed the almonds on a foil lined baking pan and place in a 350 degree oven for 3-5 mins. In the meantime, shredded your leftover chicken. Put aside. In a separate dish mix together the Greek yogurt, cumin, salt, and pepper. Next add in the almonds and the shredded chicken. Mix together until well combined...and Enjoy!

Here are step by step photos to help guide you!

First, start off by placing the almonds on a foil line baking pan. Make sure the almonds are not piled on top of each other. A thin layer is what we are looking for. This will ensure even toasting of the almonds.

Next shred the two chicken breast and set aside on a separate plate. You could also cube the chicken if you want to go with a more chunky chicken salad. 

Now in a mixing bowl mix together the Greek yogurt, the cumin. salt, and pepper.

Add the shredded chicken and the roasted almonds to the yogurt mixture.

Mix all of the ingredients together! Remember, this is just a recipe suggestion. You can make this your own by adding in dried fruits or different nuts. Whatever you like =)

And Enjoy!!!

To Health, Love, and Happiness, 

Recipe: Roasted Chicken

This week I have been cooking up a storm. And since I haven't posted in awhile, I wanted to share with you my favorite Roasted chicken recipe. It's super simple to put together! So here we go...

 It should come out looking something like this  ^.^  So yummy!

Ingredients:
1 whole fryer chicken
2 lemons (cut into 8 pieces)
2 yellow onions(cut into 8 pieces)
2 garlic cloves (crushed)
1 tbs of Italian seasoning
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 tbs salt
1 tsp pepper

Directions:
First start by preparing the veggies. Cut the lemons, the onions, and the garlic and set aside. Next prepare the seasoning rub. Mix together the Italian seasoning mix, the oil, and the salt and pepper in a separate dish and set aside. Next is the cleaning of the  chicken. Yes, this can get a little messy, but it has to be done. Remove all of the insides from the chicken and remove any excess fat from the body of the chicken. Make sure the outside of the chicken is dry. You can use a paper towel to blot it dry.
Now stuff the inside cavity of the chicken with half of the onions, garlic, and lemons. The other half will go underneath the chicken to serve as a rack. Now take half of the seasoning mix and rub it underneath the skin of the chicken breasts. And rub the other half of the mix all over the outside of the chicken.
Bake at 450 degrees for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow it to rest for 15 minutes...and Enjoy!!!
I hope you all like this recipe and give it a try. The leftovers are perfect for re-make meals. I will be posting a re-make meal using the leftovers of this chicken shortly! 

 This is how my dinner ended up looking. I served it with brown rice and broccoli. You can also make a quick pan sauce out of the drippings from the pan that you roasted the chicken in. Just remove the drippings and place it in a saucepan. Skim the fat from the top, add additional onions (optional) and chicken broth. And voila a quick pan sauce to serve with the chicken!

To Health, Love, and Happiness,