Roll it!

New culinary adventures: Spring rolls. 

A friend of mind turned me on to the idea of making my own rice paper spring rolls.  As a gluten free eater it's something I pondered experimenting with earlier but I wasn't sure how to deal with the rice paper sheets.  Turns out it's easy - just dip them in lukewarm h2o and they soften right up.

The cool thing about these rice paper rolls is there are endless possibilities for fillings.  They're transportable, healthy, and allergy friendly.

Having just started with these rolls I chose to fill mine with homemade chicken salad, shredded carrots, bean sprouts, shredded cabbage, and parsley.  Because the chicken salad is creamy these rolls didn't require a dip.

I can't wait to try out more fillings as I think this is going to be my go-to packable lunch for a while!

Rainy day cooking

My go-to activity for a rainy Sunday involves cooking.  It's preferable when I have somebody else coming to help me eat the food but having no company doesn't set me back as I'm good friends with my freezer and having left-overs to last me through the week. 
Today was my first attempt at Homemade Hummus which turned out well and it's so easy with my Ninja blender that there really is no need to purchase it premade. I had some tahini I'd bought for another recipe and wanted to put it to good use. 

Hummus ingredients: garbanzo beans, lemon juice, garlic, tahini, cumin, salt. 

voilà - hummus!  

I also just had to try a new dessert recipe for a paleo Lemon Coconut Loaf which I saw in my most recent Gluten Intolerant Group magazine.  It's a simple recipe, just lightly sweetened, made from coconut and almond flour with fresh lemon juice and zest.  I made half of it into mini-muffins sized bites so I won't over-eat this cake :-)

I guess I shouldn't mention that I also made meatloaf and roasted baby potatoes for dinner tonight also.
 Thanks for looking through my kitchen window.

Broccoli Spinach Quinoa Soup

It's been COLD which makes people think S-O-U-P!  I've always said that I'm not much of a soup person but I think that's inaccurate.  In actuality I think I'm just a picky soup eater.  I don't much like brothy soups, I prefer chunkier thick soups with a stew-like texture.  This is why this soup turned out perfectly for me . And it was healthy to boot!


Here's the recipe I followed (via pinterest of course):
http://www.cookingquinoa.net/broccoli-spinach-quinoa-soup

Adjustments I made:
more spice!
I used multi-colored quinoa to make it a bit more colorful.
I only pureed half of the soup to leave it a bit more chunky.
A tad of shredded goat parmesan.  

Here's how it turned out for me:

Red Cabbage......smoothie?!

Red Cabbage.  I don't eat it often, except when mom throws it in her salads.  It doesn't bother me, but let's just say I wouldn't go out of my way to buy a red cabbage.  I wouldn't go out of my way to buy a red cabbage until today, that is.   It dawned on me that cabbage must be healthy, it had to have some amazing antioxidants or something like that.  Plus the color if phenomenal.  I figured if I can throw a few beets into a smoothie to brighten the hue without the flavor being impacted too much surely I could get some red cabbage into my morning smoothies for some extra color and nutrients.

I'm lazy so I don't like to pull out every fruit and veggie each morning to make a smoothie.  I'm usually pressed for time so I've discovered a quick way to improve my smoothie making.  I package frozen fruits and veggies into those little snack sized/100 cal zip lock baggies which is just enough for a single serving smoothie.  Okay, it's a little wasteful but I'll admit I save the baggies and reuse them.  When I make green smoothies I pre-blend my greens with some fruit juice or water and freeze the raw green juice into ice cubes.  This way I don't have to have fresh greens on hand 24/7 and it's easy to toss in the blender.

Back to the cabbage.  I decided I could blend cabbage the way I blend my greens and freeze the juice into ice cube trays for smoothies. Maybe it will even taste good.  As you'll see in the photo, I chopped up my cabbage into small sections and threw it into my Ninja blender with some water.  Before long I ended up with a blender full of chunky cabbage juice.....yum ;-)  So off to the freezer it went in an ice cube tray.

While I waited for my little cabbage cubes to freeze I had to do some research on the nutritional benefits of red cabbage.  After all, I had to ensure that my efforts were worthwhile.  Luckily the Internet proved to me that cabbage has wonderful health properties including:  two types of cancer-preventing nutrients, copious amounts of vitamin K, vitamin A, Vitamin C, and it has inflammation and bacteria fighting properties.

Fast forward to this morning when I tossed two cabbage cubes into my Ninja single-serve blender cup along with a banana, splash of juice, protein powder, and a little raw oatmeal for texture and voila! Done.  No gross cabbage taste, all the benefits, and a pretty purple color to boot.

Thanks for looking in my (virtual) kitchen window.

Welcome

In an effort to document my culinary endeavors throughout the year, I've created this blog.  Primarily it's journal for myself where I plan to document my successes and failures in the kitchen, yummy eats from the world around me, and probably mention slammin' deals on my favorite food products that there's no doubt I'll find.  It's likely the blog will be dull to most readers but it's here for me.  

Should you find the content interesting, 
you're invited to share in the excitement by looking through my virtual kitchen window.

 

Cheers.  

-Elizabeth