Yogurt – Dill Salmon w/Zucchini

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Ingredients:

1.  16 ounces of Salmon filet, its best if you cut it into 4 ounce pieces.

2.  1/2 cup greek yogurt

3.  2 tablespoons of dried dill, divided into 2-1 tablespoons

4.  1 teaspoon salt

5.  1 teaspoon lemon zest (dried or fresh, whatever)

6.  2 Zucchini cut into 1/2″ segments for easy bites

Recipe:

1.  Mix the yogurt, 1 tablespoon of dill and a grind of pepper into a bowl and let sit for a few minutes.

2.  Rinse your salmon under cold water to get the salmony smell off it.

3.  Place on a pan, skin side down, even if there is no skin, and put into an oven at 350 degrees.  This will cook for about 6 minutes.

4.  Saute your zucchini in a pan over medium heat with the lemon zest, salt and the other tablespoon of dill.  Keep this moving to prevent sticking.  You can use non-stick spray if you are into that kind of thing.  But if you keep them moving and your heat is not too hot, you should be able to prevent them from sticking.  They will be done in about 6 minutes for al-dente texture.

5.  Pull the salmon out and liberally spread the yogurt-dill mixture over it.  Do not save any, use it all, trust me its worth it.

6.  Put back in to the oven for 6-12 minutes, or until your zucchini is done.  You want the yogurt to remain whitish, if it starts to get translucent then it is breaking down into something a lot less tasty.

7.  All in all, the ideal time for the dish to be in the oven kind of depends on your oven and how you like your salmon.  Chances are, the salmon was 80% done cooking before you put the yogurt on it.  So if you were to pull it out at 6 minutes (12 total) then it may be slightly underdone for you.  The extra 6 minutes will definitely ensure that it is done.

As usual, this is divided into 4 servings, 2 for now, and 2 for lunches at work or whatever.  Salmon reheats fine, but you want to eat it within a day or two.

Chicken, Sweet Potatoes and Beets

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This recipe is a hearty awesomeness that is sweet, savory and very filling while being light on the calorie load.  Beets help lower cholesterol, reduce inflammation and have been known to increase endurance.  Sweet potatoes are ridiculously high in vitamin A and help reduce inflammation overall all as well.

Ingredients

1.  3 medium beets, cut into 1/2″ squares

2.  2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into 3/4″ squares

3.  3 medium chicken breasts, about 12 ounces total.  Cook these in the oven first to save time (350-375 for about 30 minutes, they will stay fresh in the fridge for aobut 3-4 days).

4.  1 tablespoon garlic powder, roasted garlic powder or some other garlic based powder, but not garlic salt.

5.  1 teaspoon lemon zest, black pepper, salt

6.  4 tablespoons of H2O

Recipe

1.  Combine water, garlic powder, lemon zest, and black pepper in a small bowl and set aside. This is called blooming and works well for any dish that is not a soup to save time and increase the flavor of dry spice before use in a wet sauce.

2.  Saute the sweet potatoes and beets separately with a tablespoon of water each in order to keep the color.  If you don’t care about the color, saute them together, but everything will be red.

3.  The beets give off more liquid than the sweet potatoes.  When they are done, they might have given off as much as 2-4 tablespoons of beet juice.  Keep this, it’s the basis of the sauce.

4.  Add the spice water to the beets and saute for about 10 minutes longer than the sweet potatoes.

5.  When plating it, put the beets in first, then the chicken then the potatoes.  Pour the liquid over all of it.

Per usual, this makes 4 servings, eat 2 now with someone you feel warmly towards, and save the others for work lunch.

Clean Veggie Lasagna

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This one is ridiculous and amazing!!

Ingredients:

1.  5 baby zucchini cu into 1/2″ slices

2.  2 spaghetti squash cooked and scraped (yields about 4 cups, which is what you need for this) and split into 2-2 cup servings.

3.  3 cups THU veggie ragout divided into 3-1 cup servings.

4.  1 teaspoon olive oil or olive oil spray (to coat the pan)

5.  12 ounces mozzarella cheese (either grated in a processor or shredded) split into 4-3 ounce servings.

6.  3 ounces grated parmesan cheese

Recipe:

1.  Evenly spread two cups of spaghetti squash noodles over the base of a well oiled or well sprayed pan.

2.  Evenly spread 3 ounces of mozzarella cheese over that.

3.  Evenly Spoon 1 cup Veggie Ragout over the top.

4.  Evenly spread 3 ounces of mozzarella cheese over that.

5.  This is tedious but worth it, spread all the zucchini flat over the cheese one layer thick, if there are some left over, eat them now.

6.  1 cup of ragout over that.

7.  3 ounces of cheese over that

8.  Spread the remaining 2 cups of spaghetti squash over the top of that.

9.  Spread the remaining 1 cup of ragout over that.

10.  Evenly smooth the remaining cheese over the top.

11.  Now liberally sprinkle all of the parmesan over the top.

12.  Bake in a 400 degree oven until the edges are bubbly and the top has a kind of golden brownish sheen to it.  This is very hard to overcook since there is a lot of water involved in all these vegetables.  The worst thing that can happen is that it is a bit wet when you cut into it.  Trust me, it is not that big of a deal.

IMPORTANT LTL NOTE!!

Look at that ingredients list, there is cheese and no meat.  That puts this into phase II.  Yay, however, you must get at least 6 servings out of this or you will be taking in too much protein.  The way I have structured this is that there should be at least 6 servings of 2.5 ounces of cheese in each serving.  If you have this in 6 servings, each one will be close to 3 cups of vegetables in each serving.  It is hardy and would work well in 9 servings as a lighter snack as well.

Let me know what you think of this recipe or any other recipe either in the comments here or on the FB  page.

Quick and Easy – Squash and Sausage

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Simple, easy, quick!  This recipe is going to start of a new section of quick and easy recipes.

Ingredients:

1.  4 medium (about 16oz, total) sweet italian sausages (we used sweet italian turkey sausages which are nitrate free, but you can use whatever you want, the portion is the important part here, and they should be nitrate free).

2.  2 each zucchini and yellow squash

3.  1 medium onion

4.  1 tablespoon fennel seeds

5.  1 tablespoon cracked black pepper

Recipe:

1.  Put your sausages in a 400 degree oven to brown and shape-set (unless you don’t care about the shape setting and then just take them out of their casing if you want, doesn’t affect the overall taste) for about 15 minutes, turning once.

2.  Cut the onion, squash zucchini into bite size pieces, about 1″-1.5″

3.  Put into a 10″ pan with the fennel and the pepper on medium high heat and toss often, should be done in about 15 minutes.

4.  Pull the sausages and cut into 1″ sections and add to veggies and toss every 30 seconds or so for about 4 minutes or until the sausage is completely cooked through.

5.  Divide up into 4 servings, 2 for now, 2 for work.  Enjoy.

 

Total Time:  19 minutes, depending upon how prepped you are.

Black Beans and “Rice”

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Ingredients:

1.  1 cup yellow, red and orange peppers diced

2.  1 medium onion diced

3.  1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

4.  1 cup vegetable broth

5.  1 tablespoon cumin

6.  2 teaspoons each of salt, pepper, dried basil and coriander.

7.  1 head of cauliflower “riced”.  This refers to taking a head of cauliflower and grating it so that it is the size and consistency of white rice.  Not as small as doing a cauliflower pizza crust, but close.

Recipe:

1.  Saute the onions, peppers with about 2 tablespoons of the vegetable broth.

2.  When soft, add the spices and saute for about 3 minutes, it should smell pretty awesome

3.  Add the vegetable stock and black beans. Bring to a boil.

4.  Cover with a lid and turn the heat to medium low and simmer for the amount of time it takes you to grate your cauliflower.

With the cauliflower, you can do a couple of different things.  If you want a more “al dente” feel, do not cook it, the heat from your bean mixture will make it plenty hot enough.  So just put it on a plate and pour some black bean mixture over it.  If you want a softer feel, then microwave the whole cauliflower for about 4 minutes before you grate/dice it.  Once ti cools, you will notice it is a little softer.  Choice is yours.  Picture above is the more “al dente” version.

Colby-Mushroom-Spinach Fritatta

Posted on by Sam Boyd

I was informed by someone smarter than me that this is a fritatta, so I am going to go with it.

Ingredients:

1.  5 large eggs

2.  1 cup spinach

3.  1 cup mushrooms

4.  1/2 cup (4oz) grated Colby cheese

5.  2 tablespoons of skim milk

6.  2 tablespoons each of salt and pepper

Recipe:

1.  In a small saucepan on medium heat, combine the spinach and mushrooms and stir often.  They will begin to give off some liquide, which is a good thing.  Cook them for about 10 minutes in this way.

2.  Whisk together the eggs, milk, salt and pepper, and Colby cheese in a bowl.   Whisk pretty severely because you want some air in it.

3.  In a sprayed/coconut oil greased glass oven pie pan spread the mush and spinach out evenly.  Then pour the egg-cheese mix over the spinach evenly.

4.  Place into an oven that is somewhere near 325 or 350.  Cook it for about 15 minutes or so.  You will know it is done because it will look like cooked eggs.

5.  Take out, burn hand, put back, curse, take out again and put on counter.

6.  Cut into quarters, it will fridge well for a day.  We took it to work with us and it was fine.

Brussels Sprouts Awesome

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This is the best damn brussels sprouts recipe that I have ever come up with.  It’s awesome.  I look at the picture and really just want to go make it again.

Ingredients:

1.  12oz shredded brussels sprouts

2.  4oz of chopped chicken or chopped turkey

3.  1/4 cup of pine nuts, untoasted is best

4.  2oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese (white is what I used)

5.  1 teaspoon of olive oil

Recipe:

1.  Fry up the lean ham and pull out of pan.

2.  Put pine nuts in pan with olive oil and cover for about 5 minutes, shaking the pan often to keep them moving.  The idea is to toast them so that you can get as much flavor out of them as possible.

3.  Add the brussels sprouts and some salt

4.  Cook the brussels sprouts until just wilty, not too much or they will get sulfurous and gross

5.  Take off heat and add the lean ham and toss

6.  Put onto two plates and top with 1oz of shredded cheddar cheese each serving.

This is designed to be a two serving dish.  Each serving will contain approximately 3 ounces of protein,  1.5 cups of vegetables.  Enjoy.

Clean Cinnamon Apple Soup wit Turnips

Posted on by Sam Boyd

A lot of times we neglect breakfast in this world.  On this site we tend to post recipes that in my opinion work in many different meal times, like pretty much anything with sweet potatoes, so it was nice to actually prepare something totally clean intended solely for breakfast.

Ingredients

1.  3 medium apples of any sort (we used pink lady’s for this one), peeled and cubed

2.  1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

3.  1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

4.  1/2 cup water

5.  1 small turnip peeled and cubed

6.  1 teaspoon dried mint

Recipe

1.  Put the water, cubed apple and spices into a small pot and simmer on medium for about 20 minutes

2.  Take a hand mixer to it or put into a food processor and blend until smooth

3.  It wil be a brownish color.

4.  Add 1/2 of the turnips on top.

This recipe is good either hot or cold, and the turnips have such a mild flavor that they the whole soup should taste like cinnamon apples.  It should keep about a week in the fridge.

Sweet Potato Chili Sweetness

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Ingredients

1.  8 tablespoons of organic tomato paste

2.  2 medium onions, cut into 1″ sections

3.  4 stalks of celery, cut into 1″ sections

4.  1 cup of sweet peppers cut into rings/slices

5.  1/8 cup minced garlic

6.  4 tablespoons of Arizona Dreaming spice mix from Penzey’s (ordinarily I would break it down for you, but its awesome, you should go to their website and buy some just for this recipe.  I get nothing for saying this, but maybe if a ton of people buy it I might, you never know).

7.  2 cups vegetable stock

8.  Enough salt to taste it.  You decide how much you want in there during the last step.  It will vary depending upon how much salt is in your vegetable stock.

9.  2 large, peeled and cubed into 1″ sections sweet potatoes.  Boil these with salt and set aside when finished.

Recipe

1. Put the onions, celery, peppers and garlic into a pan and sweat until soft.

2.  Add the spice, stir well, put heat to medium and lid for 10 minutes.

3.  Position self directly over the pot, remove lid, be in heaven for 8-12 seconds, then add the vegetable stock, relid for 20 minutes.  Here is where you add the salt, after the 20 minutes.  You want it to seem slightly too salty.  If you think it’s too salty, its perfect.  If you are not sure, add more salt.  Keep in mind that most tomato paste is not salted, so you want to have enough to carry over.  If you try to add it afterwards, it will not be as good.

4.  Add the tomato paste, stir well, it will be thick.

5.  Pour this over the sweet potatoes.  You can add cheese, but you won’t need it.  You can add yogurt, but you won’t need it either.

The picture is what my wife and I took to work last night separately.  Questions, email me or comment below.