Apr 15, 2011 Posted by Jennifer on Apr 15, 2011 in Food Finds, fruit, smoothies | 9 comments

Jazz apples?

So, I’m at the store last night picking up some milk and such when I headed into the produce dept. I was thinking about picking up a baby seedless watermelon. My son Mark and I saw them and when I saw the price ($4.99!) I said to my son, that’s way too much for such a tiny watermelon. So we started to look for other things, my son noticed the GIANT seedless watermelons and yells “Hey Mom – this gigantic one is also $4.99!!” So we got it. I’ll talk more about that in a minute.

As we were walking by the apples, I noticed a brand of apples I had never seen before called JAZZ. Jazz apples? I’ve never heard of them! So we decided to put some in our basket. When we got home, I immediately cut one up to see what it tasted like. I am a huge fan of crunchy and very sweet apples and this is exactly what the JAZZ apple is. After reading more about the company who is growing them, it turns out these are a breed of Braeburn apples and the Royal Gala apple. Originally grown in New Zealand, it’s now grown in Washington state here in the U.S.

If you happen across them at your store, I highly recommend picking some up! You can find out more about the growers of Jazz apples HERE. In the Chicago-land area I bought these at Jewel Food Stores.

So, now to continue on with the watermelon. Mark and I each took a half and started scooping out with a melon baller. In the end we had 2 gallon sized ziploc bags full!

Mark asked if we could freeze some for smoothies the next day, so we threw one in the freezer and kept one in the fridge.

For Mark’s super deluxe smoothie? 1 cup frozen watermelon and 1 cup orange juice and mix in a blender or magic bullet. Since the watermelon was frozen, it was kind of like a slushy – so good!

So, have you tried jazz apples, or am I the last one to find out about them?

Mar 8, 2011 Posted by Jennifer on Mar 8, 2011 in breakfast, chicken, Dinner Idea, fruit, smoothies | 7 comments

Awesome smoothie/chicken feta barley dinner

Today’s smoothie was AWESOME! Here is what I put in it today:

1/2 cup carrot juice
1/2 cup blood orange juice
handful of fresh baby spinach
handful of frozen blueberries
5 strawberries
1 tablespoon chia seeds

Mixed together in a blender and that’s it.

I’ve never had blood orange juice before, but it was on sale at the store and cheaper than regular orange juice – and it’s delicious!!

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For my dinner, I actually made everything separately and then assembled this so everyone could make what they wanted.

3 boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 cups cooked pearl barley
feta cheese
salt and pepper to taste
juice of 1 lemon – lemon zest
fresh spinach
1 tablespoon olive oil
pine nuts.

So for my bowl, I put in 1 cup pearl barley, some chicken, chopped fresh spinach, a drizzle of olive oil, squeeze of lemon, a little lemon zest, few tablespoons feta cheese and a tablespoon of pine nuts.

Oct 26, 2010 Posted by Jennifer on Oct 26, 2010 in dessert, fruit, sauces, vegetables | 10 comments

Pumpkin/banana bread + awesome salsa

This recipe I got from The Cooking Club of America. To be honest, I didn’t play around with it too much to try to make it less calories, I made it as is, and tried to keep the portion I ate smaller! This bread is delicious and moist. And of course if I had chocolate chips, those would have gone in as well.

After I made this, I did figure out the calories, and if this loaf is 14 slices, then each slice is this, which I didn’t think was that bad!

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 stick of butter, softened
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 very ripe bananas (optional)
2 eggs

Mix all the ingredients together and put in a 9×5 bread loaf pan coated with Pam Cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 60-65 minutes, or until the edges start to pull away from the pan or a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Mine was more like 70 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

You can serve as is, or make a glaze with powdered sugar/milk

Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1/4 tsp. vanilla

Stir until smooth, then drizzle over the loaf.

Since I had more pumpkin than I needed, I made another batch of these except I made 48 mini muffins!

If you make the mini muffins, bake for about 10 minutes. Here is the nutritional information for that:

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Pretty much every weekend I’ve been making a different version of salsa. This weekend I used 4 tomatoes from my Mom’s garden, 1 big poblano pepper, 1/4 of a white onion, 4 cloves of garlic, pinch of salt and cooked that in a dry large non-stick skillet until it starts to blacken on all sides. One tip, keep the paper on the garlic so it doesn’t get bitter, then before putting it in the blender, take the paper off. Also, before blending, take the top off the poblano pepper and remove the seeds. For the tomatoes, I just added them as is.

Blend that altogether and then add a squeeze of half a lime and a few shakes of Tapatio Picante sauce and blend again until smooth.

Now, I need to find something to make with leftover salsa…this made 3/4 of a blender full! Any suggestions??

Sep 10, 2010 Posted by Jennifer on Sep 10, 2010 in breakfast, fruit, Muffin of the Week | 4 comments

Healthy Brown Sugar Banana Muffins

This muffin is my version of a brown sugar cornmeal muffin from the 2000 Cooking Light Complete Cookbook. I didn’t have any cornmeal and I had bananas to use up, so I threw those in instead. I also didn’t have vanilla yogurt the recipe called for so I added ricotta cheese instead. It turned out great!

For 12 muffins

2/3 cup brown sugar (unpacked)
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup ricotta cheese (I used reduced fat)
2/3 cup skim milk
2 TB. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large egg, beaten lightly

Directions

In a large mixing bowl, add all the ingredients and blend for about a minute, or until it’s all incorporated.

Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups coated with cooking spray. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean

The calories for each muffin isn’t bad either!

I have to say, the 2000 Edition of the Cooking Light Cookbook is REALLY good. So far I’ve read about half the recipes and there isn’t one I don’t like. And the best part is the nutritional information is already figured out for you. They have a bunch for sale on Amazon, some used for only a few dollars too!