Tag Archives: healthy

Clam Chowder

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This clam chowder was inspired by two things: my desire to make something that I normally don’t, and my parent’s recent trip exploring New England. While I would love to be tasting my way through New England and Canada like they are, I am not retired like they are, so clam chowder at home it was. We made this soup on a dreary, end-of-summer day at home, and everything about it was just so right. Let’s talk about it.

Clams
I was able to buy wild, USA caught cherrystone clams at my grocery store for this. You could use a variety of types of clams for this soup, but as I feel about all seafood – try to use wild, USA caught.

Veggies
If you are a fan of clam chowder, you know that this can really vary between versions. Some have very few or no veggies; some have potatoes and some don’t. This one is full of veggies – onions, carrots, garlic and celery – and lots of potatoes. This is my preference, but feel free to customize types and amounts of veggies in this to your liking.

Broth
The broth for this soup is made from boiling the clams. To prepare the broth, you add the clams to a pot, top them with water, bring to a boil and then boil until the clams open. You then remove the clams and strain the liquid – that’s your broth. I recommend straining several times because the broth can tend to be a bit sandy from the clams. I love that the broth for this soup is made from just water + clams. Also, this is a brothy clam chowder. There is no thickener in it, so it’s a thin and extremely flavorful broth – just how I like my clam chowder.

Flavors
This soup uses: clams, bacon, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, potatoes, fresh thyme, white wine, a touch of milk, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper. That’s it. If those flavors sound amazing to you, make this soup ASAP! 

This recipe is the epitome of end of summer, beginning of fall cooking and eating for me. Clam chowder always reminds me of summer vacation days, but is warm and comforting like fall. Since I can’t be wandering around New England right now, this was my best attempt at bringing end of summer, beginning of fall New England vibes to my home, and it worked just perfectly :).






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Clam Chowder

Ingredients

  • 24 medium to large clams (I used cherrystone)
  • 1/2 pound bacon
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 6 carrots, chopped
  • 6 celery stalks, chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 12 baby potatoes, quartered
  • 1 cup dry white wine
  • 1 bunch fresh thyme
  • 2 cups whole milk
  • Salt
  • Pepper

Instructions

  1. Scrub clams well and place in a large pot. Cover the clams with water. Place pot over high heat and bring to a boil. Boil 5-10 minutes, or until all clams have opened.

  2. Strain clam stock into a bowl and set aside (if the stock is sandy, you may want to re-strain). Remove clams from shells, roughly chop and set aside.

  3. Wipe out pot and add bacon, cooking over medium heat until done. Remove bacon from pot, crumble and set aside.

  4. Keeping pot over medium heat, add onions, carrots, celery, garlic, potatoes, wine and a few sprigs of fresh thyme to the bacon fat. Cook 5-10 minutes, until wine is almost evaporated.

  5. Add strained clam stock and a few more sprigs of fresh thyme to pot and simmer until vegetables are tender, 20-25 minutes.

  6. Turn off heat but keep pot on burner and add milk, bacon and clams to the pot and stir well. Remove thyme stems. Season with salt and pepper to taste. We used 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. 

  7. Serve in bowls garnished with fresh thyme if desired and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Grain Free Peach Crisp Bars

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These peach crisp bars were created out of my desire to have a dessert/snack using end-of-summer peaches, and that were free of white sugar and flour. This recipe is for all of you like me, who want dessert, but also want to be healthy. These peach crisp bars:
-are grain free
-have no added sugar (they’re naturally sweetened with dates)
-utilize delicious end of summer peaches
-are tasty and filling
Let’s talk about what makes them so excellent.

The crisp
The crisp part of this dessert is made simply out of five main ingredients: whole pecans, almond flour, (unsweetened) coconut, coconut oil (you can use butter, too) and dates. There’s also a bit of salt and vanilla in there. It’s extremely easy to prepare – all of the ingredients are added to a food processor and mixed until crumbly.
A note on the dates – here are the dates that I use and highly recommend. These dates are perfectly textured and the pits are easy to remove. They blend up into a perfect date paste which is what I use in this dessert. To make the date paste, you simply place the dates in your food processor and process until they come together to form a ball of paste. That is the only sweetener used in this recipe.

The peaches
I kept the peaches super simple for this – they are diced and then mixed with just a bit of arrowroot starch, in order for the peach layer to thicken while baking. I use arrowroot starch but you could just as easily use another starch, like corn starch. You don’t have to do this, but I like smashing the peaches up a bit with the back of my spoon while mixing together the peaches and arrowroot. 

I love this dessert because it’s wholesome, it’s healthy and I can eat it without consuming lots of sugar. It’s a great dessert but would also make a wonderful snack, or even breakfast!










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Grain Free Peach Crisp Bars

Ingredients

Peaches

  • 4 cups peaches, diced
  • 2 tablespoons arrowroot starch

Crust/Crisp

  • 6-8 dates, depending on your preferred sweetness
  • 1 cup pecans
  • 1 cup almond flour
  • 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 6 tablespoons coconut oil, or butter

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare an 8x8 baking dish by lining with parchment paper or greasing well. Set aside.

  2. Add the diced peaches to a bowl and sprinkle the arrowroot starch on top. Mix well, even smashing some of the peaches with the back of your spoon. Set aside.

  3. Add dates to a food processor and process until they form a ball of paste. Remove and set aside.

  4. Add pecans, almond flour and coconut to the food processor. Pulse a few times. Add the salt, vanilla extract, coconut oil and date paste and process until mixture is well combined and crumbly.

  5. Add about 2/3 of the crisp mixture to the bottom of prepared baking dish. With a spoon, smooth out the crust evenly. Top the crust with the peaches. Crumble remaining crisp mixture over peaches.

  6. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until peach layer is bubbling and the top is slightly browned. I recommend letting it cool completely before serving.

Mustard Potato Salad

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I know that potato salad does not sound overly exciting, but to me, this recipe makes it exciting. I love the idea of potato salad, but I’m just not in love with traditional mayo-based versions. This one is everything I’d want in a potato salad and satisfies that craving – it’s full of tangy, mustardy flavor and is still creamy but with no mayo. Here’s what makes it so great:

The potatoes
The potatoes are roasted for this dish rather than boiled like a lot of other potato salads. Roasted potatoes are sturdy and slightly crispy so they make a great base, and they just take potato salad to a whole new level. To add even more flavor to this dish, the potatoes are tossed with a bit of oil, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary before roasting. I used a combination of mini purple and gold potatoes for this, but you could really use any potatoes that you would like.

The dressing
The dressing is a simple but flavorful mixture of grainy Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, lemon and a bit of salt, pepper and oil. Everything is added to a jar and shaken until well combined. I used this mustard and think it worked just perfectly.

The extras
We decided to add hard boiled eggs and thinly sliced red onions to our potato salad and could not have been happier with that combination. The eggs add great flavor and almost a creaminess to the potato salad once everything is mixed together. The red onions – if sliced thin enough – add amazing flavor and just a bit of crunch. 






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Mustard Potato Salad

Ingredients

Potatoes

  • 2 pounds potatoes, diced
  • 2 tablespoons avocado oil, or oil of your choice
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 4-5 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped

Dressing

  • 1/4 cup avocado oil, or oil of your choice
  • 2 tablespoons grainy Dijon mustard
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper

For the salad

  • 5 hard boiled eggs, chopped
  • 1/4 of a red onion, thinly sliced

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

  2. Toss potatoes with avocado oil, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary.

  3. Arrange potatoes on baking sheet and bake for 40 minutes, or until soft on the inside and slightly crispy on the outside.

  4. For the dressing, combine avocado oil, mustard, lemon, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper in a jar and shake until well combined.

  5. Once potatoes are roasted, let cool slightly. Toss potatoes with chopped hard boiled eggs, sliced red onion and dressing.

  6. Enjoy warm, at room temperature or cold.

Herb + Garlic + Lemon Baked Chicken

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When I first started cooking meat back in January, I definitely did not know what I was doing. I didn’t think there would be any way that I’d be coming up with my own recipes any time soon, but after lots of time in the kitchen, this chicken recipe came to be and is one of our new favorite things that I’ve made.

It’s so easy to make and is so incredibly tasty – all that you do is rub the chicken with salt, pepper and a little homemade rub, and then bake it until cooked through.

The rub
The rub is a mixture of fresh herbs – basil, sage and rosemary – fresh lemon juice and zest, fresh garlic and just a bit of oil. You could definitely mix up the herb mixture depending on what you like/have, but this combination is just so delicious. And a note on the lemon – the end result of this recipe is not overly lemony, but if you aren’t a huge lemon fan, you could definitely use less. I use avocado oil in this but I think that most oils would work just fine.

The chicken
I have been getting all of our chicken locally, and I buy whatever is available that day. Usually, it’s a whole chicken, chicken quarters, or like in these photos, chicken legs – always skin on. You can definitely use any type of chicken that you like, using the same rub and method and just adjusting the cooking time depending on what you’re baking. The amount of rub that this recipe makes is enough for about 6-8 average servings of chicken, no matter the cut. While this recipe is very easily modified depending on what you have, made as is, the flavor and texture of the chicken is just so delicious.

One other note – the side dish that is shown in these photos is worth mentioning – it’s something that Greg and I make all of the time and is so delicious. It’s collard greens and kale, cooked in butter with fresh garlic, salt, pepper and lots of fresh lemon juice. For this batch, we added fresh Romanesco cauliflower because we had some that needed to be used.  I will think about sharing the recipe at some point :).







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Herb + Garlic + Lemon Baked Chicken

Ingredients

  • 4 large garlic cloves minced
  • 1 bunch fresh basil chopped
  • 1 bunch fresh sage chopped
  • 1 bunch fresh rosemary chopped
  • Zest from one lemon
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons avocado oil
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • 6-8 servings chicken, about 3-4 pounds

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

  2. In a small bowl, combine minced garlic, chopped herbs, lemon zest, lemon juice and avocado oil. Stir well to combine.

  3. In a large bowl, toss the chicken with salt and pepper. I usually use about 1/4 teaspoon of both salt and pepper per serving of chicken. Add garlic, herb and lemon mixture and toss to completely coat the chicken.

  4. Arrange chicken on a baking sheet and cook until internal temperature reads 165 degrees, about 20-30 minutes.

Summer Steak and Egg Salad with Honey Dijon Dressing

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It feels a bit weird to be posting this recipe after being a plant-based blog for so many years. I know I haven’t talked much on here about incorporating meat back into what I eat, but this is what most dinners look like for Greg and I these days. Animal protein, lots of veggies, all whole foods and little to no grains. This exact meal is so, so good, but is also very easily modified. Let’s talk about it:

Greens:
Use any type of salad greens here that you’d like: spinach, mixed greens, any type of lettuce, kale, arugula, etc. Anything would be good!

Toppings:
For this version we used: cucumber, thinly sliced red onion and sunflower seeds. I don’t usually like raw red onion, but when sliced thin enough, it adds amazing flavor to this salad. For the sunflower seeds – I like to have something with a crunch on my salads. You could also use any kind of nut here. We used cucumber because we have a ton of garden cucumbers right now, but any other veggie addition would be wonderful in this. I highly recommend avocado – we just didn’t have any the night we took photos of this.

Dressing:
Homemade dressing is the way to go! This is a super basic, super easy to make homemade honey Dijon dressing. You just add a few ingredients to a jar, and shake it all together. It is so, so good and so much better than store bought.

Protein:
You could really use any protein on this salad that you’d like, but the combination that we used – hard boiled eggs and steak is so, so good. I used two small flat iron steaks, seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked for a few minutes on each side, until they reached 140 degrees. I let them rest 10 minutes before slicing and they were just right.

Assembly:
This makes a big difference to me when it comes to salads – rather than topping all the salad ingredients with dressing, I like to add most of my salad ingredients into a big bowl, then toss well with the dressing so that everything is coated in dressing. For this salad, I tossed the spinach, red onion, cucumber and sunflower seeds with the dressing and then topped each serving with the steak and eggs.

I’m going to type up more of a recipe below, but for me, the key to salads is just having a variety of ingredients and textures, with everything tossed together with a homemade dressing. Meals like this taste amazing and make me feel amazing, so I hope that this inspires you to make something like this, too.



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Summer Steak and Egg Salad with Honey Dijon Dressing

Servings 2

Ingredients

  • Greens (could be spinach, kale, lettuce, etc.)
  • Cucumber
  • Red onion
  • 1/3 cup Sunflower seeds
  • Hard boiled eggs
  • 2 flat iron steaks

For the dressing:

  • 1/4 cup avocado oil (or other mild-flavored oil)
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

  1. Prep your vegetables: slice cucumber and thinly slice red onion.

  2. Make the salad dressing: combine all ingredients in a jar and shake well until combined.

  3. For the steak: Let steaks come to room temperature. Season each side well with salt and pepper. Cook over medium high heat, about 3-4 minutes each side, until internal temperature reads 140 degrees. Remove from heat, let rest 10 minutes. Slice for salad.

  4. To assemble the salad: In a bowl, toss together greens, cucumber, red onion, sunflower seeds and dressing. Place on plates and top with hard boiled eggs and steak.