Instant Soup

When I think of instant soup, it usually involves a can, or maybe a cup of noodles, but this quick easy recipe from Blendtec is awesome!  I made this for lunch the other day, and in under 10 minutes, I had delicious soup ready to go.

Just assemble all the ingredients in the order listed in the recipe, add warm water, and blend it up!

Healthy, easy, and delicious!  You can't beat that!

Healthy, Delicious Shepherd's Pie

In the fall and winter, a large portion of produce boxes or CSA shares can be made of up root vegetables.  This healthy version of Shepherd's Pie is one of my favorite ways to use up all those roots, replacing much of the usual meat with vegetables.

Healthy Delicious Shepherd's Pie
2 onions, finely chopped
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, diced
1-2 additional root vegetables, chopped (I had one parsnip and one turnip, you could use celery root, rutabagas  or anything else that sounds good.
1/2 - 1 pound ground grass fed beef or lamb
1 pound mushrooms, sliced
2 TBS tomato paste
1 cup beef stock
3/4 cup red wine
dash of Worcestershire sauce (optional)
1 TBS fresh thyme
1 sprig fresh rosemary
2 TBS chia seeds
salt and pepper to taste

2-3 TBS additional water or wine for sauteing

Mashed Potatoes (approximately 2 cups)
Parmesan Cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Heat a small amount of water or wine in a large pan or dutch oven.  Water saute (just cook, stirring, in the water rather than oil to keep it from sticking) onions, celery, and garlic.  Add carrots and other root vegetables and rosemary, cook until slightly soft.  Set aside.

In the same pan, brown the ground beef or lamb, add thyme.  Set aside.  (I had saved a half pound of precooked ground beef from the previous day's recipe, so I simply mixed that in the last step, it's an easy way to reduce how much meat your family eats.)

Finally, in the same pan, saute mushrooms, and set side.

Combine cooked vegetables and meat, then add tomato paste and wine, bring to a simmer and cook until liquid is reduced by half.  Add broth, salt, pepper, Worcestershire, mushrooms, and chia seeds.

Spoon into an oven proof dish.  (If you used a dutch oven to brown everything, you can save a dish and use this to bake it in.  If not, use a 9x13 or comparable dish.)

Top with a thin layer of mashed potatoes.  (Avoid making them with too much butter to keep this healthy. This dish has enough flavor you won't miss butter in the potatoes, I just mash mine with some soy milk.)

Sprinkle a small amount of Parmesan cheese on top, and bake about 30 minutes at 400 degrees.

The perfect way to end a cold and blustery day!

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce... and How to Get Less Meat in Your Diet

Still trying to use up tomatoes, I looked for a pasta sauce recipe, and found this one on Blendtec's website.  (They have a lot of great recipes there!)  I wanted to try it, but adapt it to what I had on hand, and try to make it a little healthier.

My husband loves meat.  To the extent that if I ever truly became a vegan, as strong as our marriage is, he just might leave me.  So, while I have decided it is much healthier to have less meat in our diets, I don't cut it out entirely.  Instead, once a year, we buy a share of a grass-fed cow, put it in the freezer, and make it last for the whole year.  I grew up eating pasta sauce that had at least one, sometime two pounds of meat in it, but we don't really need that much in order for it to feel meaty.  But ground beef usually comes in one pound packages  so by default that is what I used to put in any recipe.

Now, I cook up my pound of ground beef, usually with an onion in it, and set it aside.  Then, I can put half in my current recipe, and save half for later.  (In this case, half a pound for today's pasta sauce, and half a pound for tomorrow's shepherd's pie.  Both will still taste meaty, but we've cut back on the meat consumption considerably.)

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce
2 lbs tomatoes
1 large or several mini bell peppers
1 onion
10 cloves garlic
2 TBS olive oil
1/2 tsp Kosher salt
1 tsp no salt seasoning (like Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute)
Fresh Ground Pepper, to taste
1 TBS dried oregano

Optional Add Ins
1-2 sauteed zucchini squash
1 lb sauteed mushroom
1/2 lb lean, grass-fed ground beef
2 TBS ground flax seed
1-2 TBS chia seed

So, I have tomatoes, mini peppers, onions, and garlic, so that's what we'll be roasting.

Roughly chop vegetables, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt, seasonings, and pepper, and toss in a roasting pan.

Roast for one hour in a preheated 375 degree oven.  (At the same time, I added one whole spaghetti squash in the oven, and let it roast for the same amount of time.)

Allow veggies to cool slightly, then transfer to blender jar.  In a Blendtec, select "sauces" or process until smooth.

This sauce is ready to serve, and delicious as is, but I wanted a chunkier sauce, so I opted for some add ins. I put the sauce on the stove to simmer, and sauteed some zucchinis and mushrooms.

I also stirred in 1/2 pound of precooked ground beef, and some flax seed and chia seed to thicken it up, and add a healthy dose of omega threes.  You could serve this over any kind of pasta, but I decided to serve it on spaghetti squash instead.

Squash can be notoriously hard to cut open or peel, so instead, just throw the whole thing in the oven.  I baked this one for one hour, along with the veggies, then pulled it out and allowed it to cool.  Once cool enough to handle, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, and then scrape out the flesh.  Spaghetti (or Stripettie, in this case) squash is stringy, and works well under pasta sauce.

If you have never tried squash in place of pasta before, here is my personal take- don't plan on it actually tasting or feeling like pasta, it doesn't.  But it is good, delicious in fact, in it's own right, and well worth trying.

Healthy Chili (For a Meat Lover!)

Between the tomatoes that came in my produce box this week, the ones my mother dropped off from her garden, and the ones ripening in my own backyard, I have a lot of tomatoes to either use or preserve pretty quickly.  I am thinking some homemade pasta sauce coming up later this week, but the first thing I made was a big pot of chili for my meat-loving husband.  I have a wonderful husband, who puts up with a lot of my healthy cooking experiments, as long as he gets something meaty from time to time.  Chili is a staple for us, because we both love it and I am satisfied that it is fairly healthy.  I have to confess, we ate it all so quickly that I didn't get any pictures!  Maybe I'll have to fix it again soon to remedy that.  Depending on what I have to use up, it never tastes that same twice, but it is always fantastic.  So, here you go...

Erin's Healthy Homemade Chili
1 pound lean grass-fed beef
2 large onions (red or yellow are healthier than white,) diced
2 red or yellow bell peppers, diced
2 large carrots, shredded
2-3 stalks of celery, finely chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
1-6 fresh jalapenos, (depending on how spicy you like it) stemmed and minced
any other misc veggies you think would be good- I sometimes add some very finely minced kale
4 TBS chili powder
2 TBS cumin
2 TBS oregano
1-2 tsp salt
4-5 large tomatoes, or a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
4-6 cups homemade beef stock
3 cans assorted beans, drained (or re-hydrated dried beans) black, kidney, pinto, or whatever else sounds good

Optional
1 cup fresh or frozen corn
2 TBS cornmeal
2 TBS ground flaxseed
1TBS chia seeds

In a large dutch oven, brown ground beef.  Add onions, peppers, carrots, celery, garlic, jalapenos, and misc veggies, cook, stirring until onions are tender.  Add chili powder, cumin, oregano, and salt.  Cook, stirring, for about 5 more minutes.  Add tomatoes and beef broth, stir, and then simmer for as long as possible!  At least 1-2 hours, but it can simmer on low most of the day.  About 30 minutes before serving, stir in beans and corn if using.  To thicken, mix together cornmeal, flax seeds, and chia seeds, and stir into chili.  Serves 6-8.