Edamame “Hummus”

I know, I know.  I’ve all but disappeared.  Two jobs will do that to a blog.

It’s all I can do even remember eat breakfast, let alone remember to take a photo.  Don’t worry, you probably don’t need to see the same photos of yogurt and granola over and over again.  Although, come to think of it…I do have a granola recipe to re-try and share.

But for now I want to share this super easy dip I made last weekend.  I had a bag of frozen edamame needing to vacate my messy freezer so I decided it was high time I tried my hand at Edamame Hummus.

I’ve seen this concoction mentioned many times on the internet and in various magazines but I’ve never managed to save any of those recipes.  A quick internet search led me to realize I didn’t need a recipe.  Just a food processor and a few shakes of this and that did the job!

Edamame “Hummus”

yields one heaping cup

Ingredients:

• 1 cup thawed shelled edamame
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• pinch of sea salt and black pepper
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp chopped green or red onion, or chives

Directions:

1. Add edamame, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper to food processor.  Process until coarsely chopped. 
2. Scrape sides and add olive oil.  Process until combined.  Add a little water if mixture seems dry.
3. Add onion and process just to combine.
4. Serve with an additional drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle of salt.

We ate ours up with lime tortilla chips and a side of salty olives.  This would also be deeeeelish on rice crackers, bagel chips, or with veggie sticks.  Or how about an Asian-fusion thing involving grilled chicken and a soft wheat tortilla?  Oh yes.

Try it.  You’ll love it.  Promise.

Easy Olive Tapenade

A few months ago Michael and I had dinner at a local restaurant that brought us fresh bread with a simple olive tapenade as an amuse bouche.  It was so good!  I remember the tapenade but I don’t remember what I had for dinner.

That tapenade inspired me to look around for recipes to make at home.  Michael even bought a giant Costco-sized jar of olives to help encourage me along in my search.  Oddly enough, that jar of olives is empty but I still hadn’t presented him with any tapenade.

So before he headed out to buy another of those huge jars I decided I’d go the easy route and ask my friend Rhyanon for her olive tapenade recipe to speed up the process.  You know, because Googling a recipe is so incredibly difficult these days!

How good is this particular tapenade?  Well, Rhyanon doesn’t even like olives yet she makes this for her hubby and family guests on a regular basis. 

Now that I’ve seen how easy it was to make, I’ve told Michael to go get another one of those bigass jars of olives so I can make more whenever the mood strikes me.  Now if only he had a food processor at his house.

Easy Olive Tapenade

courtesy of my friend Rhyanon

Ingredients:

• 1  375ml jar olives (I used Kalamata)
• 1 tbsp capers
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tbsp raisins or figs

Directions:

1. Process all ingredients together until finely minced.
2. Add more olive oil if too dry.
3. Serve with fresh bread (sourdough is perfect!), fresh veggies, or good crackers.
4. Refrigerate for up to two weeks.

We sat down with this plate and demolished all but a few tablespoons as our light dinner that night.  If that’s not a testament to our enjoyment of the recipe, I don’t know what is.

Sunshine on a Rainy Day

So my boyfriend has been gone for 12 days and I think we’ve had 12 days of rain, snow, wind or some such other crap weather.  He returned from Costa Rica last night and he had better have brought me some sunshine!

On the off chance that he didn’t pack beach sand and surf in his suitcase for me I looked to the bag of clementine oranges in my fridge to help me create my own sunshine.  Clearly eating them straight up wasn’t doing the trick.

Guacamole seemed like another hot weather, fun in the sun food to work on so it only seemed to reason that these things should go together.  And thus Clementine Guacamole was born.

Clementine Guacamole

yields 4 x 1/4 cup servings

Ingredients:

• 1 large avocado, peeled and diced
• 4-6 clementines, peeled and segmented (depending on size, looking for equal parts oranges and avocado)
• 1 lime, juice and zest
• 1/4 cup red onion, finely diced
• 1/2 small red chili pepper, seeded and minced
• 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
• coarse salt, pepper, and cumin – to taste

Directions:

1. It’s real rocket science.  Mix everything together without mashing the avocado or oranges, taste, and adjust seasonings if desired.
2. Refrigerate in an airtight container for at least an hour so the flavours have time to mingle.
3. Serve with tortilla chips, rice crackers, fish tacos, or on a spoon.  Enjoy.

Note:  Just like any other guacamole this recipe is open to interpretation and the ingredient quantities listed are just a guideline.  Go ahead and sprinkle, taste, sprinkle, taste until you love what you’ve got.  :)

According to MyFitnessPal a 1/4 cup is around 140 calories…give or take.

Didn’t I tell you…sunshine in a bowl.  If anything, the absolutely delicious aroma of the juicy clementines being segmented got the job done.  But obviously powering through a couple of servings of the guacamole felt pretty good too.

Try this: a whole wheat flour tortilla spread with plain Greek yogurt, a sprinkle of Mexican seasoning, greens, grilled halibut with cumin & lime, and a bigass scoop of this guacamole.  Your welcome.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a suitcase to inspect for sunshine.

Roasted Garlic White Bean Dip

How much do you spend on store bought hummus and other easy-to-grab dips?  When I’m looking for simple, healthy snack ideas I can easily spend $5 every time I walk past that deli cooler.

What is ridiculous is that for less than $2 and about 15 minutes I can make a triple size container of my own at home!

Since I didn’t have tahini in my cupboard and didn’t want to put out the cash for it I decided against hummus and opted for something equally as delicious and creamy…White Bean Dip.  The nice thing about white beans is they generally have a creamier consistency and they don’t have those silly skins that need removing like chick peas do (not that I ever remove them because I’m lazy…but I’m also always disappointed in the smoothness of my hummus).

And since the beans lend themselves to pretty much any added flavour it was a simple decision to forego the plain version and opt for something much more exciting.  We all know I’m recently obsessed with roasted garlic!

Tip: Since this recipe calls for olive oil I decided to use a little extra while roasting my garlic and added some fresh rosemary to the dish too.  When the garlic was ready I simply strained the olive oil and let it cool for use in the dip.

Roasted Garlic White Bean Dip

inspired by Giada De Laurentiis

yields about 2.5 cups

Ingredients:

• 1 can (540ml) white beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 head roasted garlic, cloves squeezed from skins 
• juice and zest of 1 lemon
• 1/8 cup olive oil (use extra to roast garlic, strain and use)
• 2 tbsp parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley
• salt and pepper
• water for thinning
• (optional: Greek yogurt)

Directions:

1. In a food processor or good blender puree together beans, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and parmesan. If mixture is too thick for blending add water one tablespoon at a time to loosen it up.
2. When desired consistency is reached add salt, pepper, lemon zest and parsley and pulse a few times just to chop parsley and incorporate. Taste and re-season if desired.
3. If adding Greek yogurt, move dip to a mixing bowl and fold in yogurt using a spatula.

According to MyFitnessPal 8 servings (about 1/3 cup) work out to approximately 115 calories per serving.  yay!

Serve with your favourite crackers, pita crisps, veggie sticks or bread chunks.  I found these hearty sea salt & sesame rice crackers that worked perfectly for scooping and shovelling the dip directly into my face.  Or how genius I am to make yam chips and use those?! 

For something fun and extra tasty try adding additional ingredients.  I oven roasted a tomato to stir into half my batch…

Other Optional Add-ins: wilted spinach, red pepper, caramelized onions, chopped black olives, pesto, chili flakes...and on and on and on.  :)

See how cheap and easy this is?  Now get to it!

Seasonal Loves

Right now I’m probably eating French Toast or Eggs Benedict and wishing I didn’t drink so many cocktails last night. Today is a busy day so please forgive me while I send this pre-written post your way.  Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it with a story about how I’m making my first ham dinner and serving it to Michael’s family.  That’s definitely worth waiting for!

One beautiful large pomegranate produced almost two cups of arils.  My Greek yogurt with Kashi Honey Almond cereal had never been so happy.

Hershey finally answered my dreams.  Chocolate Mint Kisses.

Who doesn’t love a ‘red cup’?  Don’t be a hater.

Cutie patootie.  Peel me one…or ten.

Candy Cane Lane.  Warms you right down to your Christmas socks.

Missing is the Egg Nog.  and Rum.  Yes.  Someone prepare a vat.  I’m going to need it for courage to serve the ham dinner!

Snack of the Moment: Kale Chips

You can call me late to this particular health foodie party.  Kale chip recipes have made the food blog rounds many times and somehow I never grabbed on to the idea until now. I finally remembered to buy kale, remembered to use said kale, and indeed found myself a fun new snack addiction.

A Twitter survey revealed that the top favourite kale chip toppers are seemingly:  nutritional yeast, cayenne, and sea salt (not necessarily all together!).  I’ve yet to venture on into the health food store to find the ever popular nutritional yeast but I did embrace the other two seasonings and a couple of mix-ups of my own.

Kale Chips Round One: Sesame Soy

• low sodium soy sauce
• rice vinegar
• olive oil
• sesame oil (just a few drops will do ya)
• cayenne
• coarse sea salt
• toasted sesame seeds

Kale Chips Round Two:  Lemon Parmesan

• fresh lemon juice (citrus helps us absorb the yummy kale vitamins!)
• white wine vinegar
• olive oil
• dried Italian herbs
• coarse sea salt
• cracked pepper
• fresh grated parmesan cheese

Kale Chips Round Three: Balsamic Rosemary

• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• lots of coarse sea salt
• minced fresh rosemary

Clearly it’s a drizzle of this and a pinch of that…no strict recipe required.  Just wash and dry your bunch of kale, remove the stems and cut away any tough veins, tear into bite size pieces, and mix in your ingredients.

A few tips though:

1. Remember to cut out the coarse stem from the kale leaves.  It tastes like tree bark (or so I would think!).
2. If you want a drier, crispier chip keep the liquid ingredients reigned in.  Too much oil will give you a chewier, more wilty chip.
3. Massage your marinade into the torn kale leaves by hand.  Thus ensuring equal coating and distribution of fun flavours.
4. Although you can do a fast bake of these babies at 375 degrees or so, I like to slow bake mine at a super low temp for about 60 minutes.  (Lowest temp on my oven is 180 degrees).
5. Providing you don’t eat them all within minutes of removing them from the oven, these chippies keep quite nicely in a zipper bag.

What’s your favourite kale chip flavour combo?  It seems to me that the possibilities are truly endless.

Taco Tuesday

Buh-bye fruit flies.  Bananas are back in town.  Bring on the brain fuel.

Lord knows I need it.  :)

Hey look!  Something different.  OK, fine it’s still a salad…but it’s a pretty salad!  On a plate. With ham.

I know you are all soooo very excited by this.

Things you never see around here? Crispy Minis. But how could I pass up Butter Popcorn?!  And at only 99 cents it’s a good alternative to higher fat crackers and stuff.

I might have bought three bags.

Another $1 treat.  I took a break from these for a while but I was totally lured in while buying kitty litter at Wal-Mart.  I admit, I’m a sucker.

Dinner was a fun meal for two gals planning our trip to Greece (!!!).  We leave in ONE MONTH and decided to sit down and peruse our guide books for ideas of what we actually want to do when we get there. 

Obviously tacos totally say Greece!  :)  Whole wheat tortillas heated in foil until soft, chopped lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, shredded cheddar, light sour cream, and chunky salsa…

Extra lean ground beef for me, and black beans for Tiffaney as she’s recently become vegetarian.  Both cooked with my homemade Mexican seasoning.

After two big soft tacos each we cleansed our palates with chocolate and peanut butter before settling in to work on our plans. 

We’re ready to go!!  Now we just need to buy comfy, cute traveling shoes and we’ll be on our way!

Bye Bye Bananas

Monday.  The day for catch up and few collages. :) 

We are rewinding all the way back to Thursday here.  Why?  Because I don’t want you to miss out on a photo of toast with peanut butter and bananas.

No more bananas until fruit fly season ends.  Sad.

I consoled myself with tuna salad.

And cottage cheese.

And a trip to Starbucks with the other Jamie for iced tea, a Panini, and a walk down the block with the pupper.

Friday morning brought back hot coffeeeeee….

Look!  A different breakfast.  Monkey Oats courtesy of Jamie.

Nom. 

Friday afternoon was gloriously sunny so Chibi and I took a break in the park.

Then came home for leftover tuna salad and fresh veggies.

Friday night I met up with the girls and Michael for a delicious dinner with a view. 

Photos to come.  Happy Monday!