Delicious Omelet Muffins - Fail-proof Breakfast for the Week!

These muffins are an awesome way to make breakfast for the whole of a busy week. They also make a fabulous lunch addition or a snack. I've had quite a few people ask me for the recipe to these, so I refined them again and have revealed here the simplest version. You may replace the ground turkey with any sort of ground meat, or you could take portobello mushrooms and grind those up. You could replace the bell peppers with another veggie - spinach would be delicious.

Delicious Omelet Muffins
(makes 6)

6 eggs
1/2 cup ground turkey, browned
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
2 spoonfuls veganaise, or mayo if you prefer
1/8 cup water
3 turns sea salt
3 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 F. Brown ground turkey in a skillet. Whisk eggs in a bowl with a fork; add turkey, bell peppers, veganaise, water, salt, and pepper. Combine well. Spray a muffin tin with olive oil. Pour egg mix into the muffin tin. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Ultimate Green Splendor Soup

I've been experimenting with soups to bring with me to rehearsal at night, but this one was just so much fun to make that I'll probably just start making it at home to munch on. This is a completely guilt-free, extra tasty chilled soup to cool your palate in the hot weather and soothe your throat through flu season. It's sweet, tangy, and full of delicious nutrients.

Did you know that spinach is a super concentrated source of iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, vitamins K, C, E, and many of the Bs including folate? Folate, for those of you who don't know, is a water soluble B vitamin that helps produce and maintain new cells (you need it to make DNA and RNA) and one of the cool things about that is that eating more of it can help prevent changes to DNA that lead to cancer! How awesome is that? Asparagus is also very handy, full of potassium, fiber, folacin, thiamin, B6, and rutin. There has been evidence that rutin strengthens blood vessels and can help improve circulation. And apples keep the doctor away; everyone says so.

Ultimate Green Splendor Soup
(serves ~8)

1/2 lb asparagus, wooden ends broken off, cut into 2 inch sections
1/4 lb baby spinach, chopped
5 green onions, white parts removes, diced
1 avocado
juice of half lemon
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves
3/4 cup water
sea salt
fresh ground black pepper
2 gala apples, chopped
1/2 cup coconut milk, unsweetened and unflavored

Puree asparagus with 3/4 cup water until smooth. Add the green onions and spinach. If you have a small food processor like me, just keep removing the blended veggies to a sealable bowl. After the green onions and spinach, add mint and lemon juice and blend again. Next add the avocado. Blend again. Chop up the two apples to small bits and blend those with the veggies. Add the coconut milk. Blend again. Make sure that all your delicious bits are well combined. Salt and pepper to taste (I used a couple turns of sea salt and about 3 tsp of fresh ground black pepper). Serve chilled. Enjoy!

The Popeye Bento!

Nutritious and delicious, the Popeye Bento consists of high iron and protein dishes in moderate portions to give me the energy to be strong and resilient and energetic through a weekend of rehearsals. Here's what's in it: Blackened Sea-caught Tilapia, Spinach and Tomato Salad, and Spinach and Lentil Soup. (Did you see where I got the Popeye name from?)



Blackened Sea-caught Tilapia
(2 servings)

Two filets of sea-caught tilapia (if you can only find farm-raised, substitute this with cod)
juice of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 lime
~2 tbsp paprika
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp black pepper
3 tsp sea salt

Combine the spices and juices in a flat bottom dish. Coat each filet on both sides with the spice/juice combination and set aside for about twenty minutes to let the fish absorb the flavors. Warm about 1/2 tbsp olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and pan fry the filets; it should take about 3 minutes on each side, but the main thing is to keep an eye out for the blackening and test the fish with a fork when you think it's done. If the filet flakes, you're good to go. (The neat thing about this - I got this idea from my dad's apple pie recipe actually - is that the white pepper gives you a heat sensation without tasting "spicy", so even if you eat this fish cold - I did - it's still "warm" and delicious.)

Spinach and Tomato Salad
(8 servings)

10 plum tomatoes, diced
1/2 onion, diced
1 cup fresh basil, chopped
2 cups fresh baby spinach, chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Combine elements in a bowl and toss. I only used the pepper, but it's a matter of preference at that point. Yum!



Lentil and Spinach Soup
(8 servings)

4 cups low sodium organic chicken stock (if you're veg, use vegetable stock)
3 heaping handfuls baby spinach, chopped
2 tbsp tomato paste
1.75 cups dried lentils, rinsed
1 tsp thyme
~3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 small onion, chopped
fresh ground black pepper
5-6 pinches Erbe Salle (This is a wonderful herb ground sea salt I adore. If you can't find this, use regular sea salt, about 5 turns of the grinder.)

In a large saucepan over medium heat, sauté the chopped onion in a little olive oil until translucent. Add garlic, thyme, and 2 pinches of your salt of choice and sauté ~1 minute.
Stir in lentils. Make sure you really mix up the lentils with the onions and garlic. It should be smelling simply wonderful at this point.
Add the stock, tomato paste, and 1 cup of water. Raise heat to high, bringing the pot to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover partially, and allow to simmer 20-30 minutes. Add your spinach, simmer until wilted, about 2 minutes.  Serve hot or cold.
For the bento, I have an awesome little soup-storage container that retains the heat in the soup for about 3 hours. That said, I ate some of this cold the next day and it was still delicious, so go for it. Enjoy!

Dehydrated Decadence (or My Love Affair with my Dehydrator)

I may have mentioned before - I adore my dehydrator. This contraption (Nesco 500 W Dehydrator Kit, which only cost about sixty dollars from Amazon and is one of the highest rated of these machines on the market) is positively wonderful. Banana, zucchini, and apple chips, sweet potato crisps, homemade raisins, all in addition to dried peas, green beans, cantaloupes, pears... basically anything you can think of from the produce section of your grocery store is suddenly and majestically transformed just by virtue of having its water removed. The best part, which I was quite pleased my parents have finally discovered, is that by using your own dehydrator, you discover the concentrated flavors of these fruits and vegetables without their various textures perplexing your tongue. And they make fantastic baking additions as well as healthy, nutritious, and satisfyingly crunchy/chewy snacks.

After a few weeks of haphazardly collecting whatever has looked tasty at the market and drying it, filling mason jar upon mason jar with a variety of delectable dried treats, I decided to play. Like I do.

Now, if you don't have a dehydrator, you can purchase these fruits already dried from a store and I'm pretty sure this recipe will still serve as a yummy, healthy treat - you might simply be missing some of the extra flavor layers that drying your own fruit avails you of.

They look a teensy bit like meatballs...
which also gave me a great idea for an April Fool's meal of these on top of a bed of melon "noodles". 

Take That, Larabar!
(makes 15-20)

4 heaping spoonfuls of unsalted almond butter
1 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup homemade raisins (if purchasing, go for jumbo golden)
6 slices dried pear
1 cup dried tart cherries

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Combine almond butter and cherries in food processor and puree until blended smooth. Add cranberries and raisins, puree again. Add pears last and make sure they're well combined.
Spoon ~1/2 tbsp sized dollops of the blended dried fruits and roll in your hands into little balls. (The next time I made these, I will probably make the balls smaller. Go for a size you'd prefer for just popping in your mouth - bite-sized, you know.)
Place the little delectable bundles onto the cookie sheet; they can be close together so long as they don't touch. They won't expand.
Bake for ~8 minutes. Remove.
Now... I ate two of these warm from the oven and they were... amazing. But I also put a few in the refrigerator and packed them in my bento box for later, and they were equally tasty cold and room temperature - although I did notice that different flavors came through at different temperatures.

I recommend these whole-heartily. Really. Have a peace. Share them with your friends. They are, frankly, wonderful.

Cheers!

Take That, Larabar! Continued!
(makes 15)

3 heaping spoonfuls unsalted peanut butter
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup jumbo raisins
1 handful sliced almonds

Same as before. Preheat to 350 F. Prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Puree the peanut butter and dried fruit in a food processor. Spoon 1/2 tsp sized dollops out, roll them in your hands, lay them out evenly on the cookie sheet. If you bake these for 15 minutes instead of 8, they brown and look just like cookies. Have fun tricking your friends. :)