Grilled Flatbread Pizza

If you like pizza, this is a sure bet. As far as pizza goes, it's healthy as it uses a flatbread, whole wheat crust, lots of veggies, not an overwhelming amount of cheese and no oil. This is nothing like pizza from a delivery restaurant. This pizza is light, crispy and may leave you wanting more. Make two if you and the people you're sharing it with are really hungry!

Here's a picture of all the ingredients I used for the flatbread pizza. 

• Flat, whole wheat lavash bread - got these from Trader Joe's. They come in a pkg of 6 for about $2.49
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese - not from a can - grated
• 1/4 cup Feta cheese - regular or flavored is fine
• Veggies - I used green bell pepper, garlic, yellow onion, zuchinni, mushrooms and tomatoes. Slice all of them. 
• 5 oz. Marinara sauce - Fresh & Easy has some in jars for $1.79 that do not have any chemicals or preservatives 

I used one flatbread for two people. First, lay your flatbread on your grilling pan or surface. It's much easier than having to transport the flatbread with all your pizza ingredients later.

 Spread marinara sauce on the flatbread very sparingly, leaving about a 1/4" around the edges for a crust. Too much sauce will make the flatbread soggy and you won't get a nice, crisp crust. (see photo on the left) Then evenly sprinkle the parmesan cheese over the sauce.

Flatbread Pizza Before Going Under Grill

Sprinkle on the chopped garlic. Place slices of onion, bell pepper, zuchinni, mushrooms and lastly tomatoes. Finally, sprinke on the feta cheese.





Grill for about 5 to 6 mins at medium, then check the bottom of the crust. It should not be darkening too quickly. Grill for about 2 more minutes. To give the veggies on top of the pizza a nice, grilled look, put grill pan under the broiler for no more than 2 minutes.

Flatbread Pizza Just Off the Grill

These slices don't stay on the plate very long!

Use a big spatula to remove the pizza from the grill pan. If you have fresh basil, wash about 10 leaves, rip them up and spread the pieces over the cooked pizza. Slice, serve and enjoy!

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!

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. 

Healthy Oatmeal Cookies

 

Oatmeal Cookies! (psst, they're healthy)  

Make oatmeal cookies that are actually pretty good for you, that will give you energy and that have very little fat, no butter and no oil. They're very tasty and naturally sweet.   

I found this recipe on recipezaar.com. They credit foodnetwork.com for the tasty cookies. There's another I've made from wholegraingourmet.com. The one below makes the cookies taste better, however...as in a little sweeter. This recipe also works fine if you double everything to make more cookies. Makes about 25 small cookies (depending on how big you spoon the dough onto the baking sheet).

Ingredients  

• 3 tablespoons butter, room temperature (replace with 3 Tbsp. applesauce for healthy version)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 egg 
• 1 tablespoon water 
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (all-purpose works, too) 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 
• 1 &  1/2 cups rolled oats(aka oatmeal) 
• chopped dates (optional) or fig (optional) or  raisins (optional) or currant (optional) or chocolates chips (optional) or chopped nuts, etc (optional)        
 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

Spray a cookie sheet with nonstick cooking spray (just for convenience :]) 
Using a mixer with the paddle attachment, mix together the butter (or applesauce), brown sugar, honey, egg and water thoroughly.  Sift together the dry ingredients then stir in the oats. 

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix. Add any additional ingredients you've chosen. 
Drop heaping teaspoonfuls onto the cookie sheet. 

 Bake 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!