Orange chicken stir-fry

Chicken stir-fry.

I tend to shy away from making stir-fry. I can never seem to get the pan the right temperature so more often than not the veggies turn out mushy and the chicken over cooked. 

But today I had a big success - a low-sodium stir fry that looked amazing and tasted even better.

Broccoli, red pepper, cabbage, water chestnuts and chicken over a bed of quinoa.

 

 

I started by marinating some sliced chicken breast in rice wine vinegar, orange juice and sesame oil. 

I chopped the vegetables and mixed together some minced pickled ginger, garlic and some green onions to toss in at the end.

The best thing about making your own stir-fry is that you get to add as much of your favorite ingredient as you want.

For me, this means I use a whole can of water chestnuts. I just can't get enough of them.

And, for once, I managed to get a nice sear on the chicken. I pulled out the chicken after it had browned on both sides and put it aside.

While the veggies were sizzling away in the pan I mixed together some Hoison sauce, chicken broth and corn starch. 

When the veggies were almost done I added back in the chicken and added the sauce mixture to the pan. After a few minutes I tossed in the garlic and ginger.

I am so proud of how this turned out that I am now contemplating getting a wok:-)

Happy Wednesday all!

Early mornings and seaweed

Quinoa with cashew *cheese* over a bed of shredded cabbage.

I am finding the cashew *cheese* fairly addicting. You can find the recipe here. I changed the recipe quite a bit - I am still tweaking it to my liking but I will post my version when I get it just right.

Self control won out this morning and the cashew *cheese* was off the breakfast menu.

Miso soup, quinoa and seasoned nori.

I was reading about potential dietary deficiencies that can occur when eating a plant based diet. It seems low levels of iodine can be a problem.

But I doubt this will be an issue for me since I almost always eat some form of seaweed everyday. 

For some reason I woke up very early this morning. It was so early that the dogs didn't even bother to wake up.

What do you do when you wake up hours earlier than everyone else? You make miso soup, of course! (you can find my basic process here)

Assembling the soup was easy - 

Cubes of tofu and some wakame went into the bottom of a bowl.

 Then I poured the miso soup on top.

It was a bit of a seaweed bonanza this morning. I used Kombo seaweed to make the dashi broth, wakame seaweed was in the finished soup and the small bowl of quinoa was a wonderul excuse to enjoy tons of seasoned nori.

Yes, I do believe my iodine levels are just fine.

I am looking forward to watching the Oscars later this afternoon.

Happy Sunday all!

A protein packed breakfast (vegan)

Quinoa with seasoned vegetables and marinated tofu.

 

 

I have been going through an odd eating phase. For some reason any kind of meat is not agreeing with my stomach.

So, while I have not made a specific decision to eat a vegan diet, lately it seems like all my meals are meat and dairy free. 

I have also started a weightlifting program and I am trying to keep my protein intake fairly high. 

I will admit that I am having trouble getting my protein intake over 120g per day on this mostly vegan eating regime.

Enter the protein powder:

Vega protein powder

To my surprise I found a vegan protein powder that was soy free. While there is nothing wrong with eating soy - I just don't want to be dependent on it to provide the majority of the protein in my diet.

Since I am new to the idea of a (mostly) vegan diet, figuring out how to get enough protein to support muscle building is going to be a work in progress.

But, so far, my stomach is MUCH happier without animal products. 

It will be interesting to see if I get that 'vegan glow' so many websites talk about.
 

Cheesy quinoa crisps

Cheesy quinoa crisps.

I can say without reservation that these quinoa crisps are the best things I have made in a long time!

Although I ate them for breakfast, I think they would make amazing appetizers.

This morning, on a creative whim, I combined:

Cooked quinoa
Gruyere cheese, shredded
Homemade hummus


I didn't measure any of the ingredients because I never expected this to work out. I mixed the three ingredients together and formed them into small patties. 

I placed the patties in a skillet and browned them on each side over medium heat with a little bit of olive oil.

And, wow!!! The quinoa in the mix made the outside extra crispy. But the inside? The inside was creamy from the hummus and gooey with cheese. And to my surprise, the sharp taste of the Gruyere with the savory bite of the hummus went together perfectly!

I tried to get a photo of the cheesy goodness.

I am definitely going to make this again! Next time I will measure everything and give you a recipe :-)

Happy Monday everyone!

Crab egg florentine

Crab egg florentine with lime mustard hollandaise.

I woke up this morning wanting Eggs Benedict but the pickings are pretty slim in my cupboard and fridge at the moment so I made some substitutions.

The dish started with a layer of cooked quinoa.

Then I layered on a big handful of fresh spinach.

Next came a generous layer of canned crab meat.

Everything was topped with one perfectly poached egg.

Lastly, the star of the show appeared!

Lime mustard hollandaise sauce.

This was a very comforting and delicious breakfast.

Lime mustard hollandaise sauce

Serves 1

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of unsweetened soymilk
1/4 cup of water
1 Tbsp. of Earth Balance spread
1/2 Tbsp. of all purpose flour
2 Tbsp. of nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp. of yellow mustard
The juice from 1/2 of a small lime
a pinch of garlic powder
a pinch of onion powder
a pinch of salt
ground black pepper to taste

Instructions:

Melt the Earth Balance spread in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add in the flour and stir until the roue slightly darkens then add in the water and soymilk.

Add the rest of the ingredients and let the sauce come up to a simmer. Stir frequently. When the sauce starts to thicken turn the heat to low. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Peaches and roasted red peppers

I was up early writing (3am to be exact) and I realized I haven't cooked anything for the dogs in quite a while.

My breakfast started with a roasted red bell pepper.

A roasted red pepper ready to be put into a Ziplock bag to steam.

One cup of quinoa went into a sauce pan with water for 20 minutes.

I enjoyed the quinoa with roasted red peppers and peaches.

I made another attempt at the nutritional yeast 'cheese' sauce which included:

Unsweetened soymilk
Nutritional yeast
Yellow mustard
Garlic powder
Tumeric
Earth balance butter spread
Lemon juice

No recipe yet because it still needs some tweaking.

And I added some pea sprouts on top.

The dogs enjoyed a melange of quinoa, Udo's oil, apricots, peaches, seasoned nori, a drizzle of the sauce and some chopped pea sprouts.

Yes, they ate up every little bit. In fact, Connor stood waiting for Abby to finish her portion so he could check for any crumbs.

Sadly, there were none :-)

Cabin fever

As I am embracing this writing endeavor I am quickly realizing one thing - the need to stave off cabin fever.

Too many days in a row (I walk the dogs so I am not a complete shut in, lol) spent bent over the keyboard trying to get pages out? My productivity goes down the tubes.

And my cooking gets bizarre - check out this mornings breakfast:

The ugly breakfast: Quinoa with spinach and garlic stuffed olives topped with herbed egg whites.

Yeah, the garlic olives were not a great addition in this dish. I love the garlic stuffed olives - just not for breakfast.

Garlic stuffed olives.

But I am sure the people at the Y (when I stop in later today to re-activate my membership) will appreciate the garlic breath:-)

So I think I need to have a daily routine (not that I am much of a routine person) that includes 1-2 activities that get me out of the house (aka. cabin fever prevention).

You probably guessed the first one I picked (see above) - yup, exercising at the Y.


Other activities? I haven't decided yet but it has to be something that increases my productivity but isn't a complete waste of time...


My breakfast, although being not the cutest thing on the block, was very filling.

The bit players:

A mug of tea and an apple.

There really is tea in that mug - 

And my apple had these cool green swirls on the top but I think it is kind of hard to see them in this photo.

Time to start the day!

Laptops and lunch

Today was busy.

I tried installing Windows 7 on my laptop only to find out I didn't have enough RAM.

Off to the geek store to buy more RAM.


I tear apart my laptop - get it installed - load Windows 7 - which, of course, now cannot recognize my graphics card.

Sigh, it is a work in progress.

So, no posts of dinner tonight as I will be doing endless searches online for a solution to my laptop problems - but I will post my lunch.

Quinoa with roasted eggplant.

 I combined the leftover quinoa (1/2 cup) with the leftover eggplant mixture (1/2 cup). Tasty, fast and satisfying. 

 I also picked up this at the geek store:

It turns out that trying to mask the flavor of the coconut with berry flavor? Not such a great idea.


I did further research on my motherboard and possible upgrades and the geek consensus seems to be - there is no easy way to upgrade the video card on this laptop - most of the posts included exclamations of glee, "Great excuse for a new laptop!!!"


At this point in the laptop dilemma I am faced with two choices:


1) Just put up with the default generic video setting which is making every image distorted on the screen and just hope my postings will look OK.


2) Do the crazy option of getting a new laptop that has a setup that will easily allow me to upgrade.


It takes me forever to decide on buying anything so I am sure it will be option 1.

At first I was like...Then I was like...

This morning:

At first I was like...I want apple and plum quinoa!

This is what I had on hand:

What is missing in that picture? The plum!! Then it turned into cinnamon and apple quinoa.

The apples were already chopped and simmering away in 1 cup of water with 1/4 cup of brown sugar when I realized what I really wanted -

And then I was like...I want onion and apple quinoa!

I pulled the apples off the stove when I had this epiphany.

I drained them and set them aside while I chopped up the onion.

Cook 1/2 cup of quinoa according the the package directions (basically it is a 2:1 ratio - 1cup of quinoa in 2 cups of water).

I love how pretty quinoa looks - cooked or uncooked.

The onions went into a pan coated with olive oil spray. I cooked them on low heat for 15 min - but you probably want to cook them for 20 so they are really soft.

Then add in the chopped apples and at this point I added a pinch of sage. Cook for another 5 - 10 minutes depending on how soft you want the apples.


Plate the dish starting with the quinoa.

Then ladle on the onions and apples.

This turned out incredible! I left the apples a tiny bit crunchy and the burst of sweetness with the savory (but slightly sweet) taste of the onions and the tiny bit of sage? Delicious :-)

A dollop of greek yogurt or sour cream would be great on top.

Oh, and the drink.

Strong coffee with soy milk.

I am going to prep my laptop for blogging while I am away this weekend. 

Wish me luck in doing a wipe and reinstall of Windows 7 - Yikes!

It's all about the portions

It was another one of those early mornings.

Something tells me I shouldn't be up before the street lamps turn off...

But since I was awake I decided I might as well get busy.

I put the beans I had soaking overnight on the stove to simmer.

I pulled out this from the refrigerator:

It says it is a portion(s) and I was planning on having it for dinner but I knew it was way too big for one meal.

The dogs got the better end of this portion dilema.

The portion on the right is the one destined to be my dinner. The three on the left will be the dogs breakfast and mine as well.

I cooked up a mix of 1/2 quinoa and 1/2 basmati rice.

The halibut went into a saute pan on medium heat and got a quick sear.

I also had some pine nuts, olives and yogurt in the fridge so I created a sauce for the dog's breakfast.

I did soak the olives in water for a bit - otherwise they would have been too salty for the dogs.

The dog's breakfast pre-saucing:

And post-saucing:

This was my meal.

Quinoa and rice with seared Halibut plus seasoned nori strips, miso broth and some of the cooked kidney beans.

 Check out this post to see how I go about eating this.

I ended up eating all of the fish, most of the rice/quinoa, all of the miso broth and only a couple of bites of the beans.

The beans will be making an appearance later today :-)