I love the changes of the seasons. Summer’s flipping wonderful, but fall’s here and I’m leaning into it hard with some cozy weather favorites. Does everyone roast garlic? It changes the flavor completely, with the sharpness giving way to a deep soulful sweetness. Oh baby! I roast a bunch at once, since I’ve already got the oven on. So good. My idea of meal prepping is creating a lot of awesome ingredients that I can throw into a variety of things throughout the week and make them better.
I was craving a garlicky stir fry tonight. I found a pound of shrimp in the freezer, and broccoli, carrots, peppers, and snap peas in the veggie drawer. Perfect! And it’s great for the 800 gram a day produce challenge! There’s 443 grams of produce on that plate. WooHoo! Hope you love it, too!
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It was a lovely cool day here in Ft. Worth, and it put me in a fall mood. I needed a pumpkin spice smoothie! I’m not calling it a pumpkin pie smoothie, because I don’t want a breakfast dessert, but this is filled with pumpkin, not just spice. It bangs out nearly a quarter of the daily produce goal, and it’s cheap and delicious, so I thought I’d share. Whole30 and Vegan. Hope you love it!
I went looking for a link to this blogpost yesterday, only to find I’d never blogged about it. Huh. It’s a family favorite. Super easy, delicious, and filled with all the make your body feel oh so good stuff. It has 447 grams of produce towards the 800 gram a day challenge. Hope you love it!
Jen’s Garlicky Eggplant with Beef and Tomatoes
Serves 4
2 Eggplants – Peel stripes and cube 2-4 Tablespoons olive oil (go with your preference) ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon pepper Toss. Roast at 400 for about 20 minutes. Set aside.
1 lb Ground beef Brown. Drain excess fat if needed.
1 red onion, diced 4 Cloves garlic, minced Add and saute a few minutes.
Diced tomatoes, 28 oz can 1 1/2 teaspoons salt ½ tsp Black pepper ½ cup Fresh parsley, roughly chopped Add. Place eggplant on top.
½ c beef broth Add and simmer for 20 minutes.
Toss and garnish with little more parsley if you like. I ran out.
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My favorite knife. It’s a 7″ full tang Santoku. I chose the Ikon handle design, which is wonderfully ergonomic. I have spent hours on a produce sculpture before and my hand was just as comfy at the end. It’s worth the pennies.
My favorite cast iron skillet is a 12″ Lodge dual handle pan. Why, the long handles are too heavy to hold with a single hand when they’re loaded up. Since you’re using two hands anyway, you might as well get the ones that take up less space and stack so much better!
I get asked about my spice wall all the time. The magnetic tins on the wall are great for any spices or salt-free blends. Salt corrodes the tins, so anything with salt is in a glass jar on the counter underneath.
#CVG #ConstantlyVariedGear #TTSL #ThickThighs Save Lives
I’m so excited! I won this darling hoodie for healthy recipe contributions for the month of August from my favorite active wear and crossfit programming company, Constantly Varied Gear. Silky soft, lighweight, warm, and cozy! I’m ready for leggings, hoodies, fire pit time, and warm mugs of deliciousness!
I post two or three meals a day on there. Certainly keeps me busy! Right now, we’re in the middle of an 800 gram per day produce challenge. I saw a few people worrying out loud about budgetary concerns with the 800 gram challenge. This should totally be for everybody. So, I thought I’d focus on really pocket friendly produce plates for a few days. Tofu, carrots, and celery are way cheaper than McDonald’s! 😀 Buffalo wing tofu and veggies with homemade gorgonzola dip and roasted sweet potatoes. Yummy as heck and there’s 574 grams of produce on that plate.
I’ve been playing in an 800 grams of produce per day challenge. I find that I usually meet that naturally, but I would probably come up short a day or two a week. It seems like people have a harder time hitting the number at breakfast, so I thought I’d do a brunch post. Well, this is what I made after crossfit this morning, and that was like 11:00, so I call it brunch. 🙂 Some of us are late risers.
We all love pancakes, but I like to keep grains to a minimum. I’m in love with Birch Bender’s pancake mix. It’s just almond flour, cassava (a root vegetable) flour, and coconut flour. No sugar. Today I made pear and cardamom cakes with pear syrup. Nothing but fruit. No sugar added. Boom! My kiddo said these tasted like Christmas, but I think that’s because I make lovely Scandinavian cardamom pastries every year.
I love chicken and dumplings, but wanted to skip the flour. Birchbenders pancake mix is just cassava flour (root vegetable you’ll find in Mexican applications), coconut flour, and almond flour. I played around with that and it worked nicely. And between the mix and rotisserie chicken, it fits my lazy summertime kitchen mood perfectly.
I’m celebrating over here! I won a darling cropped hoodie from my favorite CrossFit and activewear company, Constantly Varied Gear, for healthy recipe contributions. Perfect match. I can’t shut up about food, and they reward one of my obsessions with the other! 😀
I love smoking meat. It’s my favorite meal-prepping so that I can whip out delicious summertime-easy dishes. I make a lot and vacuum seal and freeze little baggies of it. No one’s ever been sad to find BBQ in the freezer!
Garlic and Herb Pork Tenderloin is one of my favorite back-pocket recipes. It only takes a few minutes to get it into the oven or grill, and then it cooks really quickly. It’s fabulous for stress-free entertaining or just a regular Monday. It’s really lean meat, lickably delicious, super fragrant, and couldn’t be easier. I got it into the oven post-workout, and let the oven do the work while I showered. Lunch was ready when I was! I made two of them. We had the first for lunch with garlic and dill roasted carrots, and saved the other for lunch the next day. I’ll show you what I did with it!
