When I’m suuuuper busy, the first thing to go is dinner. I come home from work and don’t even want to THINK about what to make. When I’m talking on the phone with my mom, she always asks me what’s for dinner and I get all panicky because it never dawns on me that I need to have a dinner plan for the evening. Work totally fogs my brain!! Ummm…cereal? Mexican pizzas? But then I survey our fridge and notice we’ve got some green beans in there. Let’s roast them!
Anything roasted is considered dinner in my book! This my first time roasting green beans and it most certainly won’t be my last.
They remain crunchy and turn a little sweet! Add a little bit of lemon juice & Parmesan and they’re perfection.
Did I mention that they’re INCREDIBLY easy? Perfect thing to put in while you sit on the couch with a glass of wine at the end of a looooong day.
If I didn’t have two other mouths to feed, I most definitely would consider roasted green beans a full on legitimate dinner. The Parmesan seals the deal.
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Let’s start the week with a simple recipe. Mondays are hard!
Say hello to my favorite standby, my big fat simple GREEK SALAD. It may not be the most authentic Greek salad but is sure is good. When I’m grocery shopping, I almost always make sure to have these salad ingredients so I can easily whip it up on a week night. It’s a no brainer and it’s healthy. I love that in a salad.
I’m also kind of addicted to it. I think it’s the sumac. Do you know about sumac? It’s a Middle Eastern spice that adds a lemony tang to salads & meat. It MAKES this salad one of my favorite salads ever. It’s absolutely delicious.
If you feel like you need to add a lil somethin’ somethin’ to the salad, you could top it with grilled shrimp, sausage, chicken or steak. Marinated artichoke hearts or sun-dried tomatoes are a good additions too but don’t forget to serve it with some grilled PITA. Pita in all caps. CARBS deserve capital letters. I shouldn’t have to explain that to you.
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When you’re deep in an organizing project and you look around the room you just destroyed, it’s best to just STOP. Before you get thoroughly overwhelmed, take a breather and make something good to eat. Don’t examine your stuff!
Just LEAVE.
The act of taking a break and chopping up vegetables, grilling steak outdoors and composing a bunch of colors on a plate will not only give you a nice break from the chaos in the other room, it will give you fuel to power through.
Don’t think of the pile of papers you need to shred. Don’t agonize over how much stuff you’ve accumulated in the past few years. Just eat this delicious salad. It’s spicy, hearty and kinda light!
We spent so much of this weekend going through our unwanted items. Lucky for us, this bright/colorful salad was the light at the end of the tunnel.
Now excuse me while I get back to work sorting all the stuff I need to shred.
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I’m a huge snacker. My most favorite snacks are carb based. I’m sure you would have guessed as much. I simply cannot pass up a good cracker situation. It’s even better if there’s cheese up on those crackers. While I’m eating cheese & crackers I almost ALWAYS imagine there being a diet where all you eat is cheese & crackers. Can you imagine? I can. It would be fantastic.
But in real life…snacking can get you in trouble if you’re not careful. What you’re supposed to do is snack to tie you over until you have a legitimate meal. Stay on top of your hunger or else you find yourself like me…almost eating 2 dinners because you didn’t arm yourself at 3pm with something that contains protein & crunch. That’s where these Dry Roasted Edamame & Cranberries enter the picture. When it’s 3pm and you’re craving something salty & sweet, these will do the trick. The edamame are salty and crunchy and the tangy/ tart/sweet cranberries balance things out in a trailmix kinda way. Is it wrong to eat the whole batch? I dunno. I did it and I survived….until dinner.
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If you’ve had a crazy EAT WEEK and you’re looking for a good reset button, try this salad.
It’s my RESET BUTTON.
Crispy apples are mixed with creamy avocado, the crunch of sunflower seeds and peppery arugula in a tangy honey mustard dressing.
Your taste buds are back on track…craving good things…until you make Breakfast Cookies…
Now you need a new RESET button…
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A few weeks ago I went out to eat at restaurant near work and had the most AH-mazing kale slaw. It was a special and will probably not to be on the menu again (at least that’s what the waiter said). How am I to resist a special kale slaw? It’s my kryptonite! My coworker and I ordered the slaw and on the first bite she realized it had garlic in it (she’s allergic to garlic!).
When the waiter came back, she asked for a different salad and just when he tried to take her plate away, I called dibs on her slaw. Yeah, I totally did that. The waiter gave me a weird look, but after a few bites of my own slaw I realized that there was no way in HECK I’d let any bit of that slaw go to waste.
Nope!
Not gonna happen.
My coworker got another salad while I ate my slaw and half of hers. I would have totally eaten her whole plate if the waiter didn’t give me the stink eye. Maybe he called dibs on the salad? I heard nothing. I was too busy figuring out what was in the slaw so I could recreate it at home.
My rendition here is pretty close. There’s a little less oil and I didn’t put the grated Pecorino cheese (weird, right?) in the slaw because I wanted to keep it vegan. What I came up with is an Asian inspired slaw that will have you eating off other people’s plates. There’s just something about that mint with the crunchy cabbage & kale in that tangy sweet sesame dressing. Straight up addictive, I say!
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When I have company over I like to make some type of nut concoction. Nuts round out a cheese plate and they are usually appreciated by people who are vegan & gluten free (as long as you use the appropriate ingredients).
These orange spiced cashews evoke images of Darjeeling Limited.
It’s totally the combination orange zest, coriander & cumin with that sweet corn syrup.
You know what that means, right?! Tracy is going to do a weird visual thing again. Wait for it…
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You guys! I’m going through some SERIOUS Oprah withdrawals. It’s really bad. Last week I had a crazy dream where I was trying to find a pair of sunglasses and all of a sudden I was in Walmart and Oprah (who was wearing FLIP FLOPS!) handed me a pair. I woke up before I could hear her sweet voice. Sigh. THEN yesterday while I was driving to work, I pulled up at a stop light and a shiny black suburban passed by. OMG it was Oprah driving the car. Well…not really. It was a woman that looked just like her.
While figuring out what to type in this paragraph, I did a google search for “Oprah Vegan” because I remembered the show where she went vegan for a week with all of her staffers and LOOK! that post was a year ago! WHAT WHAT?! I think this means we’re destined to meet. Or if not, maybe someone who knows her really well could get her drunk on Moscow Mules and have her call my voicemail? All I want her to say is TRACY SHUTTERBEAN in her voice. It would seriously make my decade.
I wonder if Oprah would like this salad? I’m pretty sure she would. Besides the base of romaine lettuce, there’s a bit of brown rice, avocado chunks, cucumber, nori shreds, edamame, carrots & sesame seeds. It’s hearty yet light! I bet she’d ask for more green onion miso dressing. Of course she’d ask for more dressing! That dressing IS SO DANG GOOD.
Without further adieu…
SUSHI ROLL EDAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME SAAAAAAAALAD FOR EVERYONE!
Did I tell you that Cooper can do the Oprah voice now? It’s glorious.
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Think of soup like your favorite old sweater. It’s warm & comforting and with different accessories and separates, you can create several different outfits out of your old standby. For the past two years I’ve been obsessed with white beans. I’ve made different variations of this soup with similar flavor profiles. There’s the Tuscan Ribollita that uses white beans, bread, kale & pancetta. There’s my favorite soup ever, Sausage White Bean Soup and most recently my mom’s Pasta Fagioli Soup that also uses sage, pancetta and white beans. Never have I made a soup that purees white beans so they make the base of a soup. This is also the first time I’ve baked prosciutto in the oven and created shards out of them! I liken these little adjustments to putting your sweater over a hot new dress and sealing the deal with a fabulously fancy red scarf.
When you puree white beans in soup, magic happens. It’s as if you added a cup of silky heavy cream…And those crispy Proscuitto shards? Scrumptious! I think most of them bypassed the soup and went directly into our mouths.
Hello White Bean Soup, you’re like an awesome new outfit in my repertoire.
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I’ve spent the past 48 hours feeling like I’ve been rocking back and forth (spending 7 days on a cruise ship can do that to you!). Everything right now is a bit off kilter because in the past week, time zones were crossed, climates changed, calendar days were disregarded, and I did something I never thought was possible- I spent a whole week without using my cellphone (OMG!). Instead of tackling the laundry, emptying suitcases and sorting through the mail when we got home Monday, I immediately went grocery shopping to get provisions for the week. I figured the only way to feel like normal again at home was to get back to work in my kitchen and binge on kale.
When I was eating lifeless romaine salad with extremely unripe yet mushy tomatoes on the boat (not all the food was dreadful!), I daydreamed of crispy kale salads with toasted coconut. Spending a week without kale was absolute torture and when I was standing in my kitchen swaying from side to side chopping kale, I vowed never to let that many days go by without my leafy green security blanket.
The crispy crunchy kale & cabbage shreds tasted amazing with the roasted cashew pieces and hemp seeds. The apple added a nice sweetness too! What you have here is a gigantic plate of HEALTH! I think the slaw could have potentially erased all of those chocolate dipped mickey mouse ice cream bars I ate. Who am I kidding? What I actually need is some serious Mousercise. For reals.
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