My kids looked into the pot and declared: “Mom…it looks like dog poop!” But I assure you, it tasted delicious! So fall-y and pumpkin-y…perfect for a chilly weekend, or anytime you want your kids to compliment your culinary skills! :/
Pumpkin Turkey Chili
Ingredients:
1 T. olive oil
1 onion – diced
2 bell peppers – chopped
3 garlic cloves – minced
1-1.25 pounds lean ground turkey
2 cans diced tomatoes (14.5 oz. cans)
1 can pumpkin puree (15 oz.)
1 1/2 C. broth (veggie or chicken) – separated
1 can black beans
3 T. chili powder
1 t. paprika
3/4 t. cumin
1/4 t. chipotle chili powder (or cayenne)
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Heat oil in a large pot/dutch oven. Add onions, garlic and peppers. Cook until onions become translucent (about 4-5 minutes), add ground turkey and cook until evenly browned. Drain excess fat (if any). Add tomatoes, pumpkin and 1 C. of the broth (reserve the rest to adjust the consistency as desired). Add spices, salt and pepper. Simmer over low-medium heat for apx. 20 minutes using the extra broth as needed.
Nutrition Facts
Calories – 176, Protein – 17 g., Carbohydrates – 16 g.
I was busy in my kitchen yesterday! Sometimes, I just get in the mood to put on an apron and go to town! I made whole wheat pizza dough for family pizza night and while the dough was rising, I decided to make some homemade pumpkin granola. It turned out REALLY well, and even the kids give it a thumbs up! You can just pour a little milk on it and eat it like you would cereal, or you can sprinkle some on top of your Greek yogurt, maybe add some fresh fruit? I enjoyed popping it into my mouth by the handful – just making sure it was edible…you know! It’s just part of the job. 🙂
Pumpkin Granola
makes 25 servings
Ingredients:
5 C. old-fashioned oats
3/4 C. quinoa
1 t. pumpkin pie spice
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
3/4 t. sea salt
1/4 C. honey
1/2 C. pumpkin puree
1/4 C. applesauce
1/2 C. 100% pure maple syrup
1 t. vanilla extract
3/4 C. dried cranberries (or any combo of dried fruits)
1/2 C. pepitas (or any combo of chopped nuts/seeds)
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 325°. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper, and set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine oats, quinoa, spices and salt. Mix well.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together honey, pumpkin, applesauce, maple syrup, and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and toss together until evenly coated. Spread the mixture onto the baking sheet.
4. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the pan and stir the mixture. Bake for another 15-20 minutes or until the granola is golden and crisp. Remove from the oven. Stir in the cranberries and pepitas. Let the mixture cool completely before storing in an air-tight container.
I’m still getting a zillion peppers from our CSA farm and trying to come up with different ways to use them ALL!
Step 1 – Share some with my neighbor!
Step 2 – Search the internet for recipes to start with and then change to match the contents of my fridge and pantry! Which brings us to last week’s creation:
Stuffed Pepper Soup – with lean ground turkey and quinoa (or brown rice)
Ingredients:
3 cups cooked quinoa or brown rice
1 T. olive oil
1 – 1.25 pounds of lean ground turkey
3 bell peppers (any color will do!) – chopped
1 med. onion – diced
3 cloves garlic – minced
1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz.)
1 can tomato sauce
2-3 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
1 tsp. paprika
1 T. chili powder
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
1/2 t. marjoram
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Directions:
In a large pot, over medium heat, add olive oil, onion and garlic. Cook until the onion is translucent (about 2-3 minutes). Add turkey and cook through. Drain fat, if any. Add peppers and cook about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, 2 cups of chicken broth, paprika, chili powder, cayenne, marjoram, salt and pepper. Simmer for 30 minutes, adjusting consistency with reserved 1 C. of broth as needed. Serve with 1/2 cup of quinoa or brown rice.
Makes about 8 servings
Nutritional Information:
WITH quinoa/rice – 241 calories, 17 g. protein, 32 g. carbs
without quinoa – 131 calories, 13 g. protein, 12 g. carbs
I’m at it again, stuffing stuff! I made these stuffed zucchini last week and they were delicious and totally blog-worthy! I use the term “zucchini” loosely, however. This is actually just a summer squash variety, I can’t seem to remember the exact name, that I got from our CSA. These were good-sized squash that I used, so you’ll need to adjust accordingly, depending on the sizes you’re using for this recipe. We really enjoyed these though! I hope you will, too.
Turkey Stuffed Zucchini
4 Servings
Ingredients
2 large zucchini or 4 medium zucchini
½ small onion – diced
3 cloves garlic – minced
1 C. + 2 T chicken broth (separated)
1.3 lb 93% lean ground turkey (go leaner if you like!)
1 egg white
1/3 C. grated parmesan cheese
1 t. paprika
1t. basil
1 t. oregano
¼ t. cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
Salt and pepper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°. Cut zucchini in half lengthwise and use a spoon to remove seeds and flesh leaving about ¼ – ½ inch thickness around. Arrange in a baking dish. Chop the flesh into small pieces.
In a large sauté pan, cook ground turkey over medium heat. Drain fat (if any) and add onion and garlic. Cook for 2-3 minutes. Add chopped zucchini and the 2T. of chicken broth. Add paprika, basil, oregano, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Cook another 2-3 minutes.
Remove mixture to a large bowl and let sit until it begins to cool. Once cooled – add parmesan and egg white. Toss well. Using a spoon or measuring cup, fill the hollowed zucchinis with the meat stuffing, pressing firmly. Pour the remaining 1 C. of chicken broth into the bottom of the pan and cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 35 minutes.
Nutritional Info per serving:
220 calories, 30 g. protein, 6 g. carbs
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Every so often I get a bee – no bug – no grasshopper in my bonnet to create an alternative to a food that’s been tempting me, or someone I know, to overindulge and sabotage my best clean-eating efforts! In this case, it was those darn Keebler Grasshopper Cookies giving my challenger -> turned friend -> turned COACH – Sharon, all kinds of trouble! Never mind that when she told me about it, she thought that I thought that she was actually eating grasshoppers of the insect variety, haha! Nope, I knew JUST what she was talking about, because I too have a love for all things minty and chocolaty!
So I says to myself, “Self, what are we talking about here: mint and chocolate and cookie. Why not make a mint chocolate cookie dough bite!?” So I checked out my original Cookie Dough Bite recipe, and thought I’d tweak it a little and see what happened. The result was these tasty little things!
Disclaimer: If you KNOW you are not a “One and Done” kind of sweet-tooth satisfier, than proceed with caution. These are a much cleaner version than the Keebler Grasshopper cookies, but they should be enjoyed in moderation. In other words…they’re GOOD, so be careful! 🙂
Mint Chocolate GRASSHOPPER Cookie Dough Bites
(Phew! That’s a mouthful!)
Ingredients
1/3 C. raw almonds
1/3 C. raw walnuts
1 C. rolled oats
1 scoop chocolate Shakeology (you can get that from me if you need it!)
1 pinch sea salt
¼ C. honey (or agave nectar)
1 t. vanilla
1/4 t. peppermint extract
Directions:
In a food processor or blender, process the almonds, walnuts, oats, and salt to a fine meal. Transfer to bowl add Shakeology, honey and vanilla, peppermint and mix. Wet hands and roll into 1 tsp.-sized balls (should make about 12-15) and place them on a cookie pan lined with foil or parchment paper. Place the pan into the freezer for about an hour to firm up. Store balls in a tightly covered container, or Ziploc bag in the freezer.
Nutritional Info (per bite)
80 calories, 11 g. carbs, 3 g. protein
*BONUS!*
Here’s my FAVORITE Shakeology recipe! Guess what…It’s MINT and Chocolate!!
I’m packing up a lunch for today. I will not be tempted by the snack bar, or the fast food restaurants on the way to my destination. Even if the kids are whining in the back, “Please Mom”, they’ll say. “Heck no”, I’ll say. I’ve got tuna salad today. I made it and packed it myself.
I haven’t always been a ‘packer’. The last year has changed the way I look at a road trip, or a day away from home. I used to say,”ah, we’ll just stop and eat someplace along the way”. Nothing good ever comes of that! I have not eaten from a drive-thru in almost a year! I work too hard on my health and fitness to sabotage all of that with grease and sodium! Plus, I have a fridge and pantry all stocked with very edible and pack-able foods. It might take an extra 10 minutes before we leave, but it’s worth it. Not to mention, when we DID hit the drive-thrus, I was ALWAYS the car that had to pull ahead and wait for our food. So those 10 minutes would’ve been spent waiting for our pink slime and leftover chicken bits anyway! *I do occasionally give in to the kids pleas…sometimes they just gotta have their hockey pucks and fat sticks. Blech!
So on to the tuna…I’ve made this tuna, and even posted about it on Facebook about a zillion times! It’s a stand-by lunch for me. It’s really simple and a great way to make it without the mayo!
Tuna Salad (makes 2 servings)
Ingredients:
1 can very low sodium albacore tuna
2 T non-fat Greek yogurt
1/4 avocado (mashed)
1 t. dijon mustard
Mix-ins:
diced onions
diced celery
diced pickle
*Whatever crunchy bits you like!
I like to eat mine either like an open-faced sandwich. Sometimes I’ll just scoop it into romaine lettuce leaves. Or I like to have it in an Ezekiel tortilla.
Nutitional info: 1 serving (just the tuna salad) is about 150 calories, 3 g. fat, 20 g. protein, 8 g. carbs
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With the bounty of veggies coming from the farm this time of year, I had a plethora of peppers to eat! (Ya, I just used the word plethora! I try to use it whenever I can!) I decided to stuff a few and call it dinner! So to make it nice and healthy, cause that’s the way I roll, I settled on lean ground turkey and quinoa with which to stuff said peppers. 🙂 And so here is what I did:
Ingredients:
1 lb. lean ground turkey
2-3 cloves of garlic
1/2 C. chopped onion
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. paprika
1 T. chili powder
1/4 t. chipotle chili powder (or cayenne pepper, just something to add a teensy bit of heat)
salt and pepper to taste
3 large bell peppers (any color will do), washed
1 C. chicken broth (divided)
1/2 c. tomato sauce
1 1/2 C. cooked quinoa (follow instructions on package – I cooked mine in broth)
1/4 C. reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese
Directions:
Heat oven to 400°. Spray a large skillet with cooking spray and heat over medium heat. Add onion and garlic to the pan and saute about 2 minutes. Add ground turkey. Season with sea salt, cumin, paprika, chili powder and chipotle and brown meat until cooked through completely. Add tomato sauce and 1/2 C. chicken broth, mix well and simmer on low for about 5 minutes. Mix in cooked quinoa and remove from heat.
Cut the bell peppers in half lengthwise and remove all seeds. Place in a baking dish. Spoon the meat mixture into each pepper half and fill it as full as you can. Place all of the pepper halves in the baking dish, and pour the remainder of the broth into the bottom of the pan. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for about 35 minutes. With last five minutes, remove foil, top with cheddar cheese and return to oven until cheese is melted.
We liked ours topped with a little homemade salsa. Good stuff! (get it…”stuff”) 🙂
So if I’ve learned anything over the past year…weight loss is WAY more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge! Yes working out is hard, and it makes you sore and tired at the beginning, etc…but the real challenge is keeping your focus and getting beyond the doubts, frustrations, set-backs and plateaus that you will inevitably encounter along the way! You’ll wonder some days how you will be able to carve out the time for a workout in your busy schedule. You’ll be tired, and crabby and just down sometimes. That’s when you need your brain to remember that exercise makes you feel BETTER! You’ll struggle with nutrition, which is ALL mental! You have to retrain your brain not to pay attention to cravings caused by years of bad eating habits. You have to remember that food is fuel, not therapy or something to pass the time. These things are HARD to do! It’s almost entirely mental!
That is why I’ve decided that September is a great time, with the kids going back to school, to do some book-learning and brain re-training of our own! I’ve decided to start a book club/weight-loss support group. Two for the price of one! 🙂 I need some accountability to work on my own self-improvement goals (both physical AND mental). This group will be open to anyone who wants to get in better shape AND learn how to get MORE done in LESS time (including your workouts!).
Join me for this “Biggest Loser” type of challenge AND book club! We’ll be reading Eat That Frog: by Brian Tracy. We’ll be starting on September 9! We’ll workout, eat better, read just 5 pages a day – everybody’s got time for that! We’ll be keeping each other ON TRACK through a private Facebook support group for 30 days. I will be your coach, providing daily motivation, tips and recipes, and we’ll all check in daily for accountability.
Fitness + Nutrition + Accountability = Success!
Don’t believe me? Read some of the testimonials from previous challenge participants by clicking HERE!
*Anyone who joins with a “Challenge Pack” will receive the book for FREE! I only have a couple of spots left for this one.
What is a Challenge Pack? EVERYTHING you’ll need for maximum results: new fitness program + Shakeology + 30 day club membership for additional support and personalized meal-planning.
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Ready to join? Fill out the form below and I’ll contact you soon!
I was just asked to share this recipe here on the blog, so that is just what I’ll do. Funny, because I just thawed out some of these babies yesterday to make dinner (I’ll share that one, too!) I LOVE pesto! My husband and I both do!
When I was in my 20’s, so like a million years ago, I was a waitress at an Italian restaurant. This was my first experience with pesto. My husband initially gagged at the look of it, it’s not the prettiest site! But once he tasted it, he was hooked! He ordered the same pesto dish EVERY single time he came in to see me – which was a LOT of pesto! 😉
So…now I just whip it up myself. Easy peasy! I get fresh basil and garlic (sometimes the garlic scapes, which work well too!) at the farm where we are CSA members (community-supported agriculture). After I make a big batch (and a little goes a long way!), I like to freeze it and then pop out a few cubes at a time for different dishes I make. You can spread it on pizza, add to soups and sautéed veggies, chicken, fish… lots of stuff! Check out how easy it is to make it!
Pesto
Add to food processor (a blender will work too, might just take some stopping and starting):
2 C. packed basil leaves
4 garlic cloves
1/2 C. pine nuts (walnuts work well too)
1/4 C. grated parmesan
1 t. lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
*Give it a whirl just to blend
Drizzle 1/4 – 1/2 C. Olive oil while spinning until desired consistency.
Yum!
Now bust out your ice-cube trays and fill ’em up! Once they’re frozen, pop them out and put them into a freezer bag and save for a rainy, sunny, or partly cloudy day! 🙂
So then yesterday I says to myself, “Self, let’s make some shrimp for dinner!”.
Pesto Shrimp
1-1.5 pounds raw shrimp
apx. 4 pesto cubes (thawed)
7-10 wooden skewers (soaked in water to prevent burning) or metal skewers if you want to avoid soaking
Combine raw shrimp with pesto and marinate a few hours in a bowl.
Thread shrimp onto the skewers.
Heat an outdoor grill or indoor grill pan over medium-low heat until hot. Be sure the grates are clean and spray or brush lightly with oil.
Place the shrimp on the hot grill and cook until shrimp turns pink on the bottom, about 3-4 minutes.
Turn and continue cooking until shrimp is opaque and cooked through, about 3-4 minutes.
We served these with Zoodles!
There you go Chris! I hope that helps you find what you were looking for!
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The key to making fried rice like you get in the restaurant, is using cold rice! So first, you have to ‘accidentally’ make too much rice for dinner some night. THEN, a couple of nights later, you have to remember that you MEANT to do that, so that you could make some fried rice! I used brown rice that I cook in my Instant Pot, because that thing RULES! I could NEVER cook brown rice right until I got one of those babies! Now, that’s ALL I make! Go ME! You can eat this as a main dish, OR as a side dish with some delish Asian-inspired entrée! Either way, it’s a crowd-pleaser. 🙂
Chicken Fried Brown Rice with Veggies!
serves 4
Ingredients:
1 T. coconut oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large egg whites
1 ½ cups cooked brown rice, cooled
8 oz. cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast (chopped)
8 oz. frozen peas (about 1 cup)
2 carrots cut into small coins (about 1 cup)
*or just add 2 cups frozen mixed veggies (or any veggie combos you like)
2 T. reduced sodium soy sauce, or Bragg’s liquid aminos
1 green onion, sliced thin (for garnish – optional)
Preparation:
1. Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Add onion; cook, stirring frequently, for 4 to 5 minutes, or until onion begins to soften. Reduce heat to medium.
3. Add egg whites; cook, stirring frequently, for 2 to 3 minutes, or until eggs start to set.
4. Add rice, chicken, peas, and soy sauce; cook, stirring frequently, for 3 to 4 minutes or until heated through.
5. Divide evenly into four serving bowls; garnish evenly with green onion.
The 21 Day Fix meal plan makes it SO easy to plan, prepare and track daily nutrition. Women I work with lose up to 3-5 pounds per week! Combine the nutrition with daily 30 minute workouts and you’ll see results (or your money back!). GUARANTEED!
Check out my friend Michelle’s results after 2 rounds of the 21 Day Fix. She joined a challenge group (see below) and the daily support and accountability helped her reach her goals!
And the 80 Day Obsession program uses the same container system (cause it works!) combined with 30-40 minute strength training workouts for AMAZING results!
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Do you already have BOD or a Beachbody program? If you need some extra support and accountability, be SURE to join my next support group and I’ll help you stick with it and reach your goals! I’ll share daily tips, recipes and motivation as well as be available to support and encourage you 24/7. 🙂
pizza
