Monday, July 13, 2009

Last Week's Meals

So none of last week's meals were particularly complicated, but they were tasty! I bought a few magazines on summer healthy cooking, and they made all the difference. Lots of citrus and mint flavors, which were used in ways I wouldn't think to and made everything a lot tastier.

Chicken Pasta Salad with Almonds
Basically chicken salad on whole wheat penne rather than bread. Also, it uses fat free plain yogurt rather than mayo to give it creaminess without the fat (and for those of us who have plain yogurt but not mayo in the fridge, it works well), with a little lemon zest to add some kick. Also, mint helps with adding a little extra freshness. I added grapes because I like grapes in my chicken salad. It also had mint for freshness and almonds for crunch. Oh, and parsley, but I substituted cilantro. Talk about a well organized description :-P

Stuffed Turkey Burgers
Use 1 1/4 pound of ground turkey, shredded mozz cheese, roasted red peppers cut into small pieces. Pack the turkey into 8 (I made 10) small patties and put shredded mozzerella, and a few red peppers on half paties. Place remaining on top and seal in the cheese and red peppers, sprinkle with ground pepper and sea salt, then grill until brown. These are super tasty with sprouts :). I also added cilantro, but couldn't taste it. Also, make sure you seal them complely, that's probably pretty obvious, but I thought I did a good job but most of the cheese oozed out. Actually, I probably didn't add enough cheese, you can probably fit a whole tablespoon in, I was worried it wouldn't fit so just put a pinch in.

Grilled Veggie Wrap
Cut 2 zucchini in thin strips lengthwise and grill until translucent and tender. Cut two roasted red peppers in quarters (or chop in little pieces because you are just using leftover from your turkey burgers). Toast a quarter cup pine nuts. Cut 1/4-1/2 a red onion into thin slices. Chop a little mint and spinach. Take whole wheat wraps (I just used tortillas) and spread your favorite hummus on them, sprinkle with pine nuts and put 3 strips of zucchini (well, a fourth of what you have, this is supposed to serve 4, I just ate one every day and prepared them in the morning), two red pepper pieces, a few onion slices, spinach and mint. Then wrap and eat! I used alphalfa sprouts again for this, in place of spinach because I had another spinach recipe in mind:

Cumin Chickpea and Spinach Salad
This was my favorite meal of the week.
One can chickpeas (or 2/3 cup dried and prepared), 2 tbsp parsley (again, I subbed cilantro!), 1/4 cup diced red onion
Mix above.
Dressing: 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 1/4 tsp finely ground lemon zest, 3/4 tsp (or more if you are me!), cumin, pinch cayenne. Freshly ground salt and pepper. Mix these and pour over chickpea mixture
Yogurt sauce: 1 tbsp orange juice, 1/4 finely grated orange zest, 1/4 tsp honey, 3 tbsp plain yogurt.

Serve chickpea mixture over spinach garnish with mint and yogurt dressing.
So tasty! Extremely refreshing and it tastes like summer!

1 comment:

  1. I like the idea of grapes in chicken salad. And thanks for the rules of taper. My friend is training for an Ironman and I wanted to tell her them.

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