Fast Udon Soup

You get home from work, take care of bills, play with the kids (if you have them), say hi to the dog or cat and before you know it, it's 7pm. Oh no! What to do for dinner?

Udon noodle soup is very tasty and, yes, it's healthy. This recipe adds diced tofu. You don't have to put tofu in it. Chicken or beef works, too. This recipe literally only takes about 10 minutes from start to eat. This soup provides a hearty meal and warms you up on a cold day.

Tofu Udon Soup

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces udon noodles
• 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth 14 ounces firm tofu, diced
• Salt 
• 4 handfuls baby spinach leaves 
• 5 scallions, thinly sliced 
• 1 teaspoon hot sesame oil, plus more for serving

Cook udon noodles in salted boiling water until tender, about 5 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water until cool. (You can find udon in the Asian section of most grocery stores.)
Bring vegetable or chicken broth to a boil. Add tofu and udon. Bring broth back to a boil. Stir in spinach and cook just until heated through. Add scallions and sesame oil.
Add a few pinches of salt and/or drops of sesame oil to taste.

This recipe is courtesy of Whole Foods. Serves 4.

The EASIEST Burgers Ever!

Ever tried Portobello Mushroom burgers? They're savory, a little sweet, juicy and delicious. So what if they're meatless burgers?! It's easy to dress them up with sauteed onions and garlic, avocado and tomatoes.

All you need to do to make these is less than 1/2 hour, a grill pan (remember the one from a couple previous posts?) or barbeque, and shallow bowls or plates with an edge that curve up.

Ingredients:

• Large Portobello Mushroom Caps (one for each person)
• 1/4 cup Low Sodium Soy Sauce for each mushroom
• 1 Tbsp honey for each mushroom
• 1 Tbsp water for each mushroom
• (optional) 1 tsp minced ginger for each mushroom
• (optional) 1 tsp chopped garlic for each mushroom

You can marinate the mushrooms in separate bowls or one large baking dish or similar container.
Mix soy sauce, honey, water, ginger and garlic together in the separate bowls or in the one container. Mix thoroughly so that honey is completely absorbed. Place clean, washed mushroom caps into the mixture. Coat on both sides. Leave on one side in marinade for 10 minutes. Flip and leave in mixture another 10 minutes. 7 minutes from now, heat up your grill or grill pan (on med-low). If using a charcoal grill, allot for the amount of time it takes coals to get hot.

Now you're ready to grill up your portobello burgers. Place each over direct heat on the grill or grill pan. Cook for 5-6 mins on the first side. Flip and cook another 3 minutes on the second side.

 Add fresh tomatoes, grilled onions, avocado, cucumbers, pickles or any other garnish you like...or just leave the mushrooms as they are. They will be juicy so watch your clothes!



Lastly, don't forget the whole wheat hamburger buns! Buying hamburger buns and other bread products evokes one of my biggest pet peeves when grocery shopping. If your goal is to buy completely whole wheat bread products, PLEASE be wary when perusing the baked goods section at the store.
Manufacturers get away with a lot of sneaky labeling in this category so turn the package over and read the list of ingredients.

They can print "Whole Wheat" on their packaging even if the product only contains a small amount of the natural wheat. They also can say that if they're using enriched whole wheat, where some of the wheat has been stripped out so they can replace it with their own modifiers instead. Basically it's taste engineering. I've literally been to grocery stores where there are no suitable whole wheat breads containing 100% whole wheat. You might also want to watch out for products containing high fructose corn syrup - a cheap and highly processed sweetner food makers use instead of sugar. Sugar in moderation is not that bad for you and doesn't contain weird chemicals that do who knows what to you.

Nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat Buns

This is the ONLY brand I've found that uses 100% Whole Wheat and uses no high fructose corn syrup. It's sold at a very reasonable price, about $2.50 per pkg at a store called Winco Foods.

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.

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!

Keema

Keema is an Indian vegetarian dish that's really tasty with the right combination of curry powder and cumin. I've been using cumin a lot lately and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite spices because of its unique aroma and intense flavor. The recipe comes from allrecipes.com. Play around with the amounts of curry powder and cumin because the amount the recipe calls for was not enough to make it taste right, or even good. I also added about 1/2 tsp of salt and about 1/4 cup of water because the tofu mixture dries in the pan.

Also, use a whole pkg of tofu.

If you're serving it with rice, put the rice on to cook first, and then prepare the Keema. By the time the Keema is done, the rice should be done, too. All Recipes.com Keema recipe - click here


So the finished product, well, it's not the prettiest of dishes, though believe me, it is very tasty. You taste the curry, the cumin and all the vegetables add to the ethnic flavor. One of the best parts of this dish, it's quick and can be made in less than 1/2 hour. 

Ooh! Spice Market Sweet Potato & Lentil Packets

What a beautiful and colorful, completely vegetarian dinner this turned out to be. It's full of flavor and filling that you may never miss the fact this dish has no meat. With a good amount of protien, it is low in fat and low in calories. If you want to serve it with something more, try brown rice with just a splash of soy sauce.

This recipe comes from May/June 2010 issue of Vegetarian Times. Other than cutting up the vegetables and cooking the lentils, this only takes about 20-25 minutes cooking time. Each person gets his or her own packet and the nice part, the packets and the contents stay hot for a long time.

First, preheat the oven to 400-degrees F. Ok, here comes the recipe:
2 cups finely diced sweet potato (this is one large sweet potato. You can also use a yam for extra sweetness)
1 large red bell pepper, diced (1 & 1/2 cups)
1 cup fresh green beans, thinly sliced (we used zuchini instead of green beans and it was good)
1/4 cup golden raisins (used regular raisins and was still good sweetness)
2 Tbs. hot sesame oil
1 cup vegetable broth
2 Tbs. minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. curry powder (don't forget this. Adds a lot to the flavor of the whole dish!)
1 & 1/2 cups cooked lentils or 1 - 15oz. can lentils, rinsed and drained
4 Tbs. prepared mango chutney, optional (we didn't use this and it was fine. Could use fresh mango to add to sweetness)

Place 4 16-inch lengths of foil on work surface. Fold foil in half from short side. Unfold. Shape corners and edges of one half in to semicircle "bowl" with 1/2" sides. Coat insides of foil with cooking spray. You can also use a "Misto" sprayer to spritz olive oil instead of chemical cooking spray.
Combine sweet potato, bell pepper, green beans and raisins in medium bowl. Add oil and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper if you'd like.

Whisk together broth, ginger, garlic and curry powder in small bowl.

Divide sweet potato mixture among the packets. Top with 1/3 cup lentils each. Pour 1/4 of the broth mixture over the lentils in each packet and season with salt and pepper. Fold the other half of the foil over the ingredients and crimp edges in overlapping folds until packets are sealed.

Transfer packets to baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes. 30 if you're at sea level and you don't want the sweet potatoes to be on the crunchy side.

Transfer the packets to plates and let each person open the packets...carefully. Escaping air will be hot and steamy. Here's where you can top with the mango chutney if you want. Enjoy!

Here's the finished product. It's tasty and very hearty.

Corn & Black Bean Salad with Lime/Basil Dressing

Ooohh.... this is different, unique, and of course, good... as in, Yum! The cumin in the vinaigrette gives this dish wonderful kick. It's hearty enough to stand on its own as a satisfying main dish.
This recipe came from the kitchens of Food Network and I, and my husband, thank them for that. We've made this dish twice. The 2nd time, we forgot to buy a red bell pepper.
My advice, do not forget the red bell pepper. While it's okay without out and still very tasty, the red bell pepper imparts the essence of sweetness needed to even everything out. It does not quite get there with the mango. Really!

This recipe is very easy and pretty quick to make - especially if you use frozen corn. It does taste better using fresh corn. Frozen has too much water content but will work in a pinch. Romaine lettuce leaves work as garnish and as non-carb wraps for the bean mixture.
Courtesy Food Network:Everyday Italian - Corn & Black Bean Salad w/Basil Lime Dressing

My husband and I have eaten all vegetarian dinners this week. ie. No Fish! Everything has tasted fantastic. Look for more vegetarian recipes soon!