Summer Nectarines with Crispy Oatmeal Crumble

Look no further for a satisfying summer dessert, or maybe just a sweet snack. Only 4 ingredients!
Stone fruits - nectarines, peaches, plums, etc. are in season and they're delicious when fully ripe.
Make this easy and healthy dessert in LESS than 15 minutes. Mmmmm!

I picked up a bag of nectarines - 6 of them - at Fresh & Easy for 98-cents. Score! They weren't quite soft enough to eat so they were left on the counter and in 2 days they were ready. I made this for 2 people. You can increase the amounts of ingredients (all 4 of them) depending on how many you're serving.

Here's what you'll need: 

• 4 ripe nectarines (or peaches if you prefer. No need to peel them)
• 1/2 cup rolled oats (Quaker oatmeal or similar)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp. olive oil

So to make this dessert, heat your oven (or toaster oven with a door) to 400-degrees F. Cut nectarines into slices, discarding the pits. Line the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the fruit. Mix thoroughly the oats, brown sugar and olive oil in a bowl. Sprinkle the mixture over the nectarine slices and drizzle a few drops of water over the mixture.

Bake at 400-degrees for 10 minutes, or until the oats/sugar mixture starts to turn dark brown.

If you really want to treat yourself, you could serve it with some vanilla ice cream (Haagen Dasz makes a good one called 'Five' - only five ingredients, no chemicals) or frozen yogurt.

Super Easy (and Cheap) Fish Stew

When searching the fridge and pantry for something with a little protein I could put with the leftovers of the Garden Risotto (see previous post), I decided to experiment. My fish stew turned out awesome!
It's quick (under 30 mins), flavorful and very inexpensive to make.

Here's what I did. Recreate it and you and your family will be happy.

• 1 onion - chopped small
• 3 cloves garlic - minced
• 1/2 head green cabbage - chopped
• 1 zucchini - chopped small
• 3 roma tomatoes - chopped
• 1/2 cup dry white wine - seperated into 1/4 cups
• 1/2 lb. white fish (up to you which kind - can be frozen but make sure to thaw it before adding to pan)

Start with a large frying pan with high edges. Heat about a teaspoon of olive oil. Add in whatever vegetables you have lying around. I used a chopped onion, a few cloved of chopped garlic, chopped cabbage, a few chopped roma tomatoes and some zucchini. Sautee all the vegetables under slightly tender. Then put in about 1/4 cup dry white wine and 1/2 cup vegetable broth. Simmer this for about 5 to 7 minutes. Add in about 1/2 lb. of whatever white fish (I used frozen white fish you can get at the grocery store for about $7 for 10 lbs. Just make sure it's thawed before adding it to the pan.)
Cook on med-high heat for about 5 minutes. The fish will fall apart in the pan as you stir it. Add salt and pepper to taste. Another great flavor addition is Old Bay seasoning. I used about 1 Tbsp. You can also add about 1 tsp. corn starch completely dissolved in an additional 1/4 cup of white wine, then added to the fish mixture to thicken the sauce. Continue stirring until you reach the desired thickness.

Served this with Garden Risotto on the side. Yum!

Garden Risotto

If you can cook rice, you can make this extremely flavorful risotto dish. It can be made as a main or side dish and one of the great things is that you can use virtually any vegetables you have in your fridge in it. It's all vegetarian/vegan except for the parmesan cheese...which you don't have to use, though the cheese does give the risotto a lovely, slightly creamier texture.

 (Adding finishing touches to Risotto - putting Parmesan cheese in pan.)

I found the recipe on FoodNetwork.com from Ellie Krieger's show. If you haven't seen it, she does a lot of healthier dishes that are often vegetarian. I made the Garden Risotto as a co-main dish alongside slices of marinated, baked tofu. For the tofu, get a 14oz block at the grocery store, cut into 1/2" slices and drain from the pkg. Then soak the remainder of the moisture out of the tofu slices with a thin dishcloth.


My marinade was made up of:

• 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
• 4 cloves minced garlic 
• 10 leaves of minced fresh basil

Mix all ingredients together in a shallow bowl or cassarole dish and put tofu slices in there for about 10 mins on each side.

Click here for the Garden Risotto recipe. It takes about 10 or 15 mins longer than the recipe on Food Network indicates, though is well worth the wait. It also makes a good 6 servings so it's great if you want to make the full amount and then have leftovers for side dishes for the family the next day.

*I didn't have spinach like the recipe called for so substituted chopped zucchini and chopped green bell pepper, along with the peas.

Grilled Sweet Potatoes with Roasted Corn

While recently on holiday in Hawaii, I was talking with guy from Seattle at the vacation condo's barbeque area. We talked about what food we were making. He opened the lid to his BBQ and revealed slices of Molokai (Hawaiian) sweet potatoes. Hmmm. I didn't have sweet potatoes but swore to myself I'd try grilling them when I got back to the mainland. In a previous post, I sung the prasies of my Mario Batali grilling pan. It's perfect for grilling most things, including sweet potatoes.
This is so easy to prepare and paired with roasted corn and vegetarian baked beans, the meal becomes very hearty with a good amount of protein.

Start with one medium sweet potato for each person. Wash and scrub your sweet potatoes really well before cooking. Potatoes can harbor bacteria since they come straight from the ground.

Place sweet potatoes in the microwave for about 5 minutes, turning two times during this process. This will soften the potatoes up a bit, but not cook them all the way through. After the 5 minutes, heat up your grill pan. Take the sweet potatoes out of the microwave, slice them into 1/2" round slices and place on the grill. You can drizzle a little bit of olive oil over the potatoes as they're in the pan. Cook them on med-high heat for about 6 minutes on the first side. Flip them and cook for another 3 minutes. Flip again if you want to get really distinct grill marks.

For corn:
Keep your corn in the husks and place the ears in a bowl of water for at least 30 mins before cooking. Switch on your oven's broiler and place the corn close to the flame. Turn the corn every 4 minutes so that the husks are brownish on all sides. The corn usually takes about 15 minutes, depending on how close you have the corn to the broiler flame.

Here's the finished product. Enjoy!