This Week for Dinner – Weekly Meal Plans, Dinner Ideas, Recipes and More!: Healthy Eats

Category: Healthy Eats

Tuesday, February 12

Love Your Heart with Sodium Girl: Roasted Garlic and Fingerling Potatoes
I’ve met some amazing people through this whole blogging thing. Jess Goldman Foung is one of those people. She is the embodiment of sunshine and I am so grateful to know her.

Jess has a food blog called Sodium Girl, not because she eats sodium but because she doesn’t! Due to health reasons years ago, Jess had to cut salt from her diet and reduce her sodium intake significantly. Instead of moping she embraced the challenge and is now a low-sodium genius. Jess just published her first cookbook, Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook. It is beautiful, full of great food, well-designed and organized, easy to ready, informational and fun. It is a fabulous resource if you want to learn how to reduce or cut out sodium.

To celebrate the book launch, Jess has organized a Love Your Heart Recipe Rally, where a group of food bloggers re-create a favorite recipe without using salt. Be sure to click through to Jess’s rally post to read more facts about sodium and see the other featured recipes!

Jess is also hosting a giveaway. You could win a Vitamix. You know how I love super, duper, powerful, knock-your-socks-off blenders. You need one, so you should totally enter the giveaway! (See the Rafflecopter entry form at the bottom of this post to enter.)

So, on to my recipe makeover. Let me begin with this: I love salt. A lot. (I blame my low blood pressure rather than weak will power. ) But I also love Jess a lot, so when she invited me to be a part of the rally, I had to accept. But, I must admit, the idea of taking a deliciously-salty dish and figuring out how to make it salt-free was intimidating.

I thought long and hard and decided I need to try to make a potato dish with no salt. One of the reasons I make such good potatoes of all kinds is due to my liberal use of salt. I honestly did not believe I could eliminate this crucial ingredient and still make a good potato dish. This was my chance to try!

Here was my thought process:
- I decided to do roasted potatoes because I normally I just use salt and pepper. No salt would certainly be a challenge!
- I chose to use fingerling potatoes. Since they are smaller, I thought the ratio of potato to flavorings on the skin would be well-balanced. We’re looking to maximize flavor, here!
- Roasted garlic is magical. Tons of flavor but {surprisingly} not over-powering. I decided if roasted garlic smeared on bread is good all by itself, then it would probably be good smeared on potatoes, too.
- Balsamic vinegar packs a big flavor punch and goes great with garlic.
- Olive oil is heart healthy, flavorful and complements garlic and balsamic vinegar well.
The potatoes ended up being delicious! Great texture and flavor. Cate and Owen kept going back for seconds, which means success in my book. I must admit that I sprinkled a smidge of salt on a few of mine, because I just couldn’t help myself. Of course it tasted mighty fine with the salt, but honestly, the salt wasn’t necessary.

Here is the recipe!

Roasted Garlic and Fingerling Potatoes
From Jane Maynard, This Week for Dinner
- About 20-30 fingerling potatoes
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 10-15 garlic cloves, skins removed
- 8 teaspoons balsamic vinegar (read the label to check for sodium content!)
- Parsley (dried or fresh chopped)
- Pepper

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Place 4-5 of the garlic cloves in olive oil in a small, oven-proof dish. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until cloves are soft. Remove from oven and raise oven temperature to 400 degrees F. Smash up garlic cloves in the oil and let cool. Whisk in balsamic vinegar until oil and vinegar are well mixed.

Toss potatoes along with the rest of the garlic cloves in the oil and vinegar mixture. Spread evenly on a foil-lined pan and cook in the 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes, until you can pierce the potatoes with a knife.

Remove potatoes and whole garlic cloves from the pan and discard the foil (the vinegar/oil/garlic mixture will get all dark and sticky and gooey and sorta burned in places on the pan – that’s okay, but you don’t need it anymore at this point). Toss the cooked potatoes and whole garlic cloves with a bit more balsamic vinegar, parsley and pepper to taste.

If you would like to enter the Vitamix giveaway (and you should!), use the entry form below! (Giveaway begins at 9:00 am PT Tuesday, 2/12 and runs through 12:00 am PT Monday, 2/18. Giveaway rules can be found at the bottom of Jess’s Recipe Rally post.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Many congratulations to Jess on her beautiful book! So happy for you, Jess, and excited for you to share your healthy message with the world!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 8:41 am 12 Comments
Categories: featured recipes, Giveaways, Healthy Eats, Recipes, side dishes, the goods
Tuesday, August 28

Getting Back Into the Morning Rush Groove

It’s our last week of summer. We are living it up as much as we can this week before we get back into the school routine. That said, I think everyone in the family is excited for a new school year, especially our little Anna who cannot WAIT to wear her new school clothes.

There is one thing I am NOT looking forward to, however. Waking up in the morning. We are a family of sleepers. Nate and I both love to sleep, and our kids have inherited the gene. If we don’t wake the girls up in the morning, they routinely sleep until 8:30 or 9:00. It’s AWESOME. When you don’t have to go anywhere, that is. I am not looking forward to a school start time of 8:05. I just don’t know how we’re going to do it!

Between the tattoos and the sneer, I think Anna may be turning into a pirate. And, as you can see, our family can even sleep when eating. We are THAT good at sleeping.

I’m trying to get my brain into morning routine mode. Planning out how I’m going to feed a baby, make lunches, get kids dressed and brushed along with feeding everyone breakfast sort of stresses me out. I always have the best of intentions with breakfast, but I often end up just grabbing a box of cereal. Nate, however, is great at pulling together nice, nutritious morning meals for the kids. He is especially good at omelettes and is the best smoothie maker this side of the Mississippi.

Most recently Nate has been making “juicies,” which the girls really like and don’t require us to remember to freeze fruit ahead of time. We just grab whatever juice is in the fridge, whatever fruit is in the fruit bowl and hit blend.

I’ve been working with Tropicana a bit recently. I appreciate their juice because it is made from fresh oranges and is 100% pure and natural. No added sugar especially makes me happy. The girls like to have a small cup of juice in the morning, but I wanted to come up with something a little more fun but still quick and easy for the start of school next week. Today we created Creamy Juicies!

It’s basically a creamsicle in a cup, only healthier. And it was super fast to make. It’s definitely going on my morning routine repertoire!

Those of you have have crazy mornings, how do you tackle it? Please share your best tips and strategies for tackling the morning routine. Strength in numbers, after all! Here’s to a not-too-stressful, not-too-much-yelling, everyone’s-teeth-get-brushed year of busy mornings!

Creamy Juicies
- 3 parts orange juice
- 1 part milk
- Small splash vanilla
- A few handfuls of ice, to your liking

Add juice, milk, vanilla then ice to your blender – blend! Add us much ice you like – less ice makes for a nice, cold drink. More ice makes for more of a slushy.

This post was sponsored by Tropicana. Tropicana Pure Premium is 100% pure Florida orange juice. If you would like to connect with the folks at Tropicana, visit them at Facebook.com/Tropicana.

Posted by Jane Maynard at 2:30 pm 14 Comments
Categories: featured recipes, Healthy Eats, Recipes, side dishes, the goods
Tuesday, July 31

Orzo Salad Yumminess

My mother-in-law Pat made a super yummy orzo salad for us on the Cape last week. It was simple and oh-so-tasty. A definite keeper of a recipe and perfect for summertime!

Pat said normally the feta is all mixed in, unlike what you see in the photo. But a certain brother-in-law of mine doesn’t like feta (what the what?!?!), so we sprinkled it on top so Cuyler could pick it out easily. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Pat’s a good mother-in-law.

Happy Orzo salading!

Orzo Salad
Adapted by Pat Maynard from a recipe from Jean Harford of Gregg Lake
- 8 oz orzo, cooked and drained well
- 1 small red pepper chopped
- shaved carrots
- parsley (and dill if desired)
- 2-3 stalks celery, finely chopped
- 1 cup black beans or chick peas, rinsed and well drained
- 1 small can sweet corn, drained
- ground black pepper
- 8 – 10 sun dried tomatoes in oil, chopped or sliced
- 1/4 cup feta, crumbled
- 1/3-1/2 cup Greek salad dressing (Ken’s Steakhouse and Newman’s Own are great)

Mix orzo with dressing once it has cooled a bit, breaking up any clumps. Refrigerate while you put together the other ingredients. Combine with orzo and refrigerate to combine flavors. Can adjust by taking away any of the above ingredients and adding others such as grape tomatoes, shrimp, cucumber,green onion or black olives.

Posted by Jane Maynard at 8:44 pm 10 Comments
Categories: featured recipes, Healthy Eats, Recipes, side dishes
Wednesday, May 9

Smoothies!!!
I think we need to do a smoothie post. Because it’s been on my mind for, well, years! I want to share a few tips, a few flavors that we love, and then open up the floor to tips and recipes from all of you!

First, a small plug for expensive blenders. I have to say that one of the best things that ever took residence in our kitchen is our heavy duty blender. This is an appliance that I think is completely worth saving up for. We use it all the time and it can handle anything. Our previous blender, which was just your regular run-of-the-mill blender, just didn’t cut it. I don’t care if you get a Blendtec or a Vitamix, just get one. Or start saving up for one. They are awesome.

Okay, on to technique! Do you know how to build your smoothie in the blender? After I got my Blendtec and read the instruction manual, I realized I had been putting the juice and fruit in the opposite order than I should have been! The logic my brain followed was that you should put the harder-to-blend items in first so that they get blended better…but it just jams everything up. As soon as I reversed the order of things, my smoothies improved immediately and significantly. Here is the RIGHT way to do it.
1. Juice first. You can also use grapes as your juice base.
2. Softer, unfrozen fruits.
3. Harder fruits and frozen fruits. Say you’re doing frozen pineapple and frozen banana, put the frozen pineapple in first. Basically you want whatever is easiest to blend to go in first.
4. Ice.
Essentially you put the ‘liquidiest’ and softest stuff first then move up in order to the hardest items. Make sense?

Now, on to flavors! Nate is the smoothie master in our house. He’s always blending up some sort of smoothie or “juicey” for the family and he’s quite the master! Here are the fruits and juices he most commonly uses:
- Mango juice for the base. I also love papaya juice as the base. If we don’t have either of those, we’ll go with orange or grape, which are both nice. Apple is just too, well, apple-y for us. It’s still good in a pinch, but definitely our least favorite.
- Frozen strawberries, frozen mango, frozen pineapple and frozen banana make the most frequent appearances in our smoothies! Oh, and when peaches are in season, we love frozen peaches!!
- I love tossing coconut into the smoothie. Nate isn’t such a big fan of coconut, but it makes me (and the girls) super happy!
- Yogurt…usually plain.
- ICE. Lately Nate has been making “juiceys,” which basically means there’s no ice and the smoothies aren’t so slushy. They are very tasty and the girls like them, too…but I gotta say, I love a good, slushy smoothie! Bring on the ice!
No specific recipes from us…our smoothies change pretty much every time we make them, which is part of the fun! We’ve also recently started adding SPINACH to the smoothies and that is a great trick! I know some of you have been telling me to do that for years…glad we finally jumped on board!

Your turn! Please share your favorite fruit/juice combos, specific recipes, tips, anything smoothie related! Can’t wait to be inspired by all of you!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 9:52 am 26 Comments
Categories: call for recipes, Healthy Eats, Kitchen Tips, the goods
Tuesday, May 1

I Am a Genius Zucchini Cutter…finally.

I have always had a love-hate relationship with zucchini as a side dish. I love it sauteed with olive oil, salt and pepper. However, I could never get it to cook just right…or at least not consistently. For some reason I always cut the zucchini into discs. They were hard to flip in the pan and I was never patient enough to make sure they were all the same thickness, yielding uneven cooking. Once in a while I’d get it right, but more often than not it was a little off.

Then last night, as I was trying to scrounge up a bit of healthy food to go with boxed mac n’ cheese (this crazy work week is turning out to be even crazier than I anticipated), I had a lucky stroke of genius. I cut the zucchini into thirds, then turned those pieces up on their ends and cut them into sixths. Make sense? I hope so because it is AWESOME. Here’s a picture to clear up my confusing directions:

The pieces were all the same size, so they cooked much more evenly, and the zucchini came out great! Thought I’d share this little tip as we head into the summer months when there is more zucchini than we know what to do with!

Also, since zucchini season is on the horizon, be sure to check out the Zucchini Call for Recipes from a few years back, which is where I discovered this Chocolate Zucchini Bread recipe. Mmmmmm…..

Posted by Jane Maynard at 12:54 pm 6 Comments
Categories: Healthy Eats, Kitchen Tips
Wednesday, January 25

My New Favorite Rice: Calrose Brown

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I mentioned how much I love Calrose rice, the delicious sticky white rice that goes so well with Chinese food. Whenever we have Asian food at home, I lament the fact that my Calrose rice is white because I really like to use brown rice whenever I can. WELLLLL…I don’t know why I didn’t look sooner, but my grocery store carries brown Calrose rice. Woo-hoo!

I love it. There is a bit of a “brown” flavor to the rice, but I like that flavor and the rice is still nice and sticky. I don’t think I’ll ever cook white Calrose rice again. The brown stuff is healthier and tastes fabulous.

That’s all for today. Just a small ode to my new favorite rice.

Posted by Jane Maynard at 10:19 am 19 Comments
Categories: fab faves, Healthy Eats, the goods
Thursday, January 5

My New Year’s Resolution: Use Less Plastic
Eat Well. Heal the Planet.

That’s my focus each year when I come up with my new year’s resolution. Our behavior in the kitchen and when we eat impacts the environment in really big and meaningful ways. Each year I try to find something our family can do in our food life to help impact the environment in a positive way. 2009: Eat less meat. (Wowzah, the amount of resources going into meat production is astonishing!) 2010: Eat more veggies. (Our family did this by joining a CSA, which automatically upped our plant intake, and our fruits and veggies were all grown close to home). Now it’s time to announce the 2012 resolution! Are you ready? Drumroll please…

Use less plastic.

Mind if I get on a soapbox for a moment? Then I’ll hop off and explain this year’s resolution. I promise the soapbox shouldn’t take too long.

Humans are hurting Mother Earth. We are stripping her of natural resources and in return giving back garbage, and in many cases uber-toxic garbage that doesn’t just hurt the earth but our bodies as well. The way we live is simply not sustainable, no matter how much we want it to be. Even though I’m getting a little preachy, I promise I’m not getting self-righteous. I’m part of the problem. We all are. BUT…that is empowering because it means we can ALL make a difference by making small changes every day. Okay, soapbox lecture over.

This year I’m going to focus on using less plastic, both for the benefit of Mother Earth and our family’s health. This goal was initially inspired by the documentary Bag It. Everyone should see this movie. Look for it on PBS. If you can’t find it on TV, buy a copy. Or save it to your Netflix queue. Whatever you do, be sure to put this documentary on your to-watch list!!!

Here is what my “Use Less Plastic” goal will entail:
- I am going to try to eliminate single-use plastic from our repertoire. Our society treats plastic like it’s disposable. It’s not. It lasts forever AND it requires a lot of resources to be produced in the first place. Start looking around. When you really take notice, it’s astonishing just how reliant we’ve become on plastic and just how cavalier we are about its disposal. Because of this, it’s actually really hard to cut out single-use plastic. I’ll be sure to share our journey as the year progresses!
- We are going to use more reusable products in general, including containers and coverings for our food (glass and fabric wherever possible), cloth napkins, reusable grocery bags, no plastic baggies in our kids’ lunches, etc. It will be an ongoing process I am sure.
- When we do use plastic, I am going to try really hard to find plastic that is phthalate- and BPA-free. Trust me. You don’t want that crap getting into your body and every time we come into contact with those chemicals, they are getting into our systems. I’m going to share just one tidbit from Bag It that really got me thinking. The host, Jeb, and his wife had cut plastic out of their lives. He had his BPA and phthalate levels checked then went and stayed at a friend’s apartment for TWO days, using normal, everyday, “safe” consumer products (canned food, microwaveable plastic dishes, lotions, deodorant, kids’ shampoo…all things that claim to be safe, even for babies). After the two days, Jeb had his blood retested. His phthalate levels increased about 11 times and his BPA levels went from undetectable up 110 times. That was after just two days. The good news? It’s reversible. Cut the products with those chemicals from our lives and they will leave our bodies.
So, there you have it. That’s my goal. Use less plastic. I hope you’ll join me!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 12:42 am 46 Comments
Categories: Healthy Eats, Use Less Plastic
Tuesday, August 30

Easy Asian-Style Green Beans

Last time I tried to make a nice, homemade dinner that involved some effort, I threw my sciatica into a tizzy. I could barely walk to the dinner table to eat! So, until baby boy arrives in a few short weeks, I’m trying to take it easy in the kitchen. Which is nice in one way, but at the same time I am really craving some good home cookin’ right now. I’ll have to put my mom to work when she comes to visit next month!

What this “taking it easy” business means is that, even though I have menus planned each week, there are plenty of nights where I’m plum worn out and things don’t go as planned. Last night was no exception. But we were all starving, so I grabbed the Costco orange chicken out of the freezer along with the Trader Joe’s dumplings and got “cooking.” Since rice, chicken and dumplings don’t have any vegetables, I grabbed a bag of green beans that we received from our CSA last week and decided to sauté those up.

Nate is a big fan of green beans, so I’m always hoping I cook them well since I know they are one of his favorites. Last night he kept saying how good they were, so I decided they were blog post-worthy! And they were really easy. Which, for me, was the best part!

Easy Asian-Style Green Beans
From Jane Maynard, This Week for Dinner
- A bunch of fresh green beans
- Olive oil
- Salt and Pepper
- Soy Sauce
- White Sugar

Heat 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet that has a lid. Add the green beans and sauté over medium heat until they brown on the sides a bit. Reduce heat to medium-low and put the lid on the pan. Let cook a few minutes until they are as tender as you want them to be, stirring occasionally.

Remove the lid, splash evenly with soy sauce, sprinkle with salt and pepper and about 1-3 teaspoons of sugar (just to cover the beans evenly). Stir and serve!

Posted by Jane Maynard at 8:01 am 11 Comments
Categories: CSA, eat less meat, featured recipes, Healthy Eats, Recipes, side dishes, simple side dishes
Tuesday, August 16

First CSA Mystery Solved…They’re Cucumbers!

So, last week when I opened up my CSA bag, I found these little guys.

And when I say little, I mean little. Maybe 4 inches long or so.

Instead of doing my own research, I just went straight to Facebook and Twitter. Because you people are smart. I posted the above photo and of course immediately had bazillions of responses from people.

And the consensus was…lemon cucumbers. And while I’m obviously no expert, I think you’re all right (or at least close to right!).

Cate loves cucumbers. They’re her favorite veggie, hands down. So it was lots of fun cutting into these with her.

I must admit, they didn’t taste that different from the regular cucumbers. The texture was a bit more tender and juicy, but bottom line, they taste like cucumbers. But they were delicious and it sure was fun to try something new! Another 10 points for joining a CSA…

While we’re here…if you have any good cucumber recipes to share, please do!

Posted by Jane Maynard at 7:00 am 20 Comments
Categories: call for recipes, CSA, Healthy Eats, the goods
Tuesday, August 9

Yellow Watermelon!

I am loving summer produce this year. I think I love it every year, but this is the first year I’ve really paid attention to what’s in season throughout the summer and what grows in the area where I live. The result? We’ve been eating more produce for sure and the produce we have eaten has been more delicious than usual.

Last week I spotted these California-grown yellow watermelons at the store. I knew my girls would think that was downright amazing, so I grabbed one. Taste-wise it wasn’t any better than red, but I was right…the girls could not stop talking about the color. Listening to their little conversations and comments about the yellow watermelon made for one of those really fun mom moments.

And once we had it all cut up and in the bowl, it was so pretty and vibrant looking. Would be great for a party!

By the way…remember how I was bemoaning tasteless watermelons a while ago? I felt like for years all we got were lightly colored, tasteless watermelons. I’m happy to repot that this summer I keep picking delicious watermelons! I think part of it is I waited until they were actually in season before I started buying them. I also have been looking for watermelons that have a big yellow spot and lots of blemishes. I don’t know if that has really had anything to do with my success. Honestly, it’s probably just been luck!

Posted by Jane Maynard at 6:57 am 12 Comments
Categories: CSA, Healthy Eats