I love ya, Bruchetta--fill me up, Mocha Pudding Cup

This recipe has turned more than one veggie hater into a veggie taster--Even my husband, who never eats tomatoes, kept sneaking back into the kitchen to grab another slice of the Bruchetta I whipped up for dinner the other night.

I served Panko Breaded Tillapia and Green peas for dinner this week and we usually have some sort of potato with this meal, but as I surveyed the contents of my pantry (or lack thereof) and bemoaned the fact that our grocery budget has been spent til payday--I knew it was time to come up with something creative to finish out our meal.

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I happened to have a tomato, some green onions, a tiny chunk of Parmesan,  garlic, and a chunk of french bread (leftover from our French Onion Soup with Portobello Mushrooms).  I would have added some flat leaf parsley if we had it, but I made do with what was in the house.

Here is the recipe for my Bruchetta:
Ingredients:
About 1/4 to 1/3 loaf Wheat French Bread
1 Tomato
2 Green Onions
1 Garlic Clove
1/4 cup Parmesan, Shredded
1/4 cup Flat leaf Parsley
2 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
1/4 tsp Kosher salt or sea salt
1/3 tsp Fresh ground black pepper.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400. Slice bread into thin slices about 1/3 inch thick. Toast in oven, turning once until both sides are lightly browned--10 minutes or so.

Chop tomatoes, green onion, and parsley and put in medium sized bowl. Press garlic through press and Shred cheese, then add to mixture. Salt and pepper to taste and add balsamic vinegar. Stir to combine.

At this point, you can either serve the bread with the Bruchetta spread as is, or do what I do.  I like to top each slice of bread with a scoop of the tomatoes and broil in the oven until cheese melts--just 1-2 minutes.  You do need to eat the Bruchetta right away so the bread doesn't get soggy, so wait until the last minute to top the bread.

As I stated, we ate this Bruchetta with Panko Breaded Tillapia and green peas--oh and did I mention that today's meal plan includes a spectacular dessert that is just 211 calories per serving? That's right there's chocolate in this meal plan in the form of Mocha Pudding Cups.  Don't they look delightful?  They are melt in your mouth good, come with built in portion control, and cook in just 20 minutes. 

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Here's the meal plan:

Breakfast::418 Calories

2 Pumpkin Muffins

1 apple, sliced

Snack: 139 Calories

1/2 c Yogurt with Stevia

1/2 c grapes

1 Tablespoon sunflower seeds (unsalted)

Lunch: 320 Calories

Cheesy Cracked Wheat Casserole

Garden Salad with Ranch Dressing

Snack: 52 Calories

1/2 Banana

Dinner: 474 Calories

Panko Breaded Tillapia

Bruchetta

Green Peas

Dessert: 211 Calories

Mocha Pudding Cups

Total Calories: 1615

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French Onion Soup with Portobello Mushrooms and Havarti

I'm not sure if other people find French Onion Soup as tasty as I do, but I happen to find onions irresistible and the savory, salty combination of French Onion Soup beckons to me until I make a batch each winter.

I try to make soup at least once a week during the winter months because we usually have leftovers we can freeze (see below) for lunches and because soup is just comforting food when it is cold outside.  This week French Onion Soup was on the menu and it did not disappoint!

Some recipes for French Onion Soup call for up to a half cup of butter or more.  I used white cooking wine, spices, and Worcestershire sauce to add depth to the flavor without adding unneeded fat.
The soup itself is actually very low in calories--the bread and cheese is what gets ya!

I also added portobello mushrooms to the soup because I love the taste of mushrooms and onions together.  Also, the "meatiness" of the mushrooms helps satisfy my carnivorous family.  My son thought it was sausage for a couple of bites!

Speaking of kids, French Onion soup doesn't get a great score for kid friendliness.  This might be a great day to make Peanut Butter and jelly--but Sawyer did get into dipping the cheesy bread into the broth.

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If you want to make French Onion soup like a French Chef, you would dish the soup into a ramekin with the cheese and broil it in the oven.  I'm not that fancy--if it tastes good, then I am satisfied.  I actually tried the fancy way last year and ended up with sinking, gloppy cheese at the bottom of my soup, so this time around I decided not to get hung up on technical skill.  I just broiled the cheese on the bread in the oven and made toast to add to my soup just before I ate it.

Here is the recipe for French Onion Soup:
Ingredients:

1 carton Low Sodium Beef Broth 50% Less Sodium

4 medium Sweet Onion

1 tbsp Coconut Oil or Olive Oil

2 cups Portobello mushroom

2 tsp Thyme, Dried

3 Bay Leaves

1 tsp Black Pepper,

1 tsp Garlic Powder

2 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce Reduced Sodium

1/4 cup White Cooking Wine

Wheat French Bread

Creamy Light Havarti (such as Denmark's Finest)

Directions:

Slice onions and mushrooms into thin strips. Heat oil in stock pot. Saute onions over medium heat until onions are golden brown. Don't rush the onions--cooking the onions slowly helps them to caramelize and release great flavor! Cooking them slowly allows them to sweat and you won't need as much oil to keep them from sticking to the pot.

When onions are almost done cooking, add sliced mushrooms and allow them to cook through. Add spices, Worcestershire sauce, and cooking wine and stir in with onions and mushrooms. Next, pour in beef broth and bring soup to a boil and then reduce heat and allow it to simmer for about 20 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, slice eight slices of french bread and cut eight slices of cheese. First toast bread under the broiler on both sides until lightly toasted. Put a cheese slice on each slice of bread and broil (in bottom third of oven) until cheese is melted watching carefully that bread does not burn.

Dish soup into bowls and place a slice of cheesy toast on top. enjoy!

If you don't plan to eat French Onion soup for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner then here are some ideas for the rest of your day.

Breakfast: 333 Calories

Oatmeal w/ fresh chopped apples,

 raisins, and dried cranberries

Snack: 240 Calories

1/4 cup Natural Almonds

1 Tbsp Dark Chocolate chips

Lunch: 377 Calories

French Onion Soup with

Portabello Mushrooms and Havarti

Raw Veggies

Snack: 170 Calories

1 Graham Cracker with 

1 Tbsp Natural Peanut Butter

Dinner: 484 Calories

Apricot-Mango Chicken

1 cup Brown Rice Cous Cous

1-2 cups Steamed Broccoli

Total 1605 Calories

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Life's little interruptions, pizza, and birthday cake

If you have little kiddos running around your house, you will already know the toll, the stomach flu can have on a house.  Our laundry is backed up a mile long, the meal plan may as well have been put through the shredder, and Kitchy Mama threw the towel in about halfway through Wednesday!

But, the super mom in me, just couldn't give up entirely---my son turned three yesterday and birthdays are cause for celebration!  The plan was to make homemade pizza and unveil an amazing (if I do say so myself) Lightning McQueen cake for his birthday dinner, but here's how things actually went:

My daughter got sick on Monday night (all over me)--and that was just the beginning!  About two days and 12 outfits (each) later she was just starting to feel better when my stomach started feeling kinda SKETCHY.  There was lots of work to be done before I gave into feeling sick.  So, I pushed onward finishing the cake, making the pizza dough, trying to pull it together so Sawyer would have a great birthday.

It wasn't pretty, but we made it through the day.  The cake was done and I was just about to start on the pizza, when Sawyer starts saying...."mommy, I don't feel so well."   My heart sank...poor kid...he was going to be sick on this birthday!  Sure enough, 20 minutes later I was patting his back as he leaned over the toilet.  (is this too graphic?)

Well, I wasn't going to give a sick kid, pizza and cake....so, I made Ramen Noodles (which nobody ate) and my husband I thought we could all watch a movie together.  Sawyer had never seen Finding Nemo, so we put it in....He was TERRIFIED!  So 15 minutes later, we were watching Go, Diego Go and I was sitting in the Fetal position on the Lazyboy wishing I could escape this night.  My hero husband cleaned the kitchen and got the kids ready for bed and I finally did get to escape and go off to sleep.

The good news is that everyone woke up mostly healthy and I think this family is getting back on track, but because of life's little interruptions, I am foregoing the regular meal plan and just posting my pizza recipe and links to the awesome cake recipe and pattern.   Hopefully we will get back on track over the weekend.

When I asked Sawyer, what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, he asked for a Lighning McQueen cake.  I was a bit nervous, because I am not an artist and I didn't know if I could pull of the detail work.  As I was surfing the internet looking for ideas, Sawyer saw all these great looking Lighning Cakes and got SUPER excited.

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I tried to tell him that I wasn't sure I could do it....his response?  "Yes you can mommy, I know you can."  Apparently that was all the encouragement I needed because here is the finished product.  And if you think I am just using my blog to show off....well you are absolutely right!

I got the cake idea from Andrea Meyers at Andreasrecipes.com and made a mini version of her Lightning McQueen cake using just one 9x13 cake.  However, when I splurge on a dessert, it has to be made of chocolate, drenched in chocolate or oozing with chocolate, so I bypassed the yellow cake and headed off to find a fabulous chocolate cake recipe.  The result was moist and decadent and I highly recommend this recipe found at i am baker.

There really is nothing healthy about the cake, but it is made from scratch.  So it won't make you skinny, but you will feel really proud of yourself when you are done baking it!

We made the pizza with whole grain crust and topped half with tomato sauce and turkey pepperoni while the other half was topped with garlic sauce, chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and baby spinach.

Whole Grain Pizza Recipe:

Ingredients:

Dough

1 1/2 tsp Raw Honey

1 1/4 cups Warm Water

1 tbsp Active Dry Yeast

1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 tsp Salt

1 1/2 cups All-purpose Flour

2 1/2 cups Whole Grain Flour

Tomato Sauce (makes enough for two pizzas)

16 oz Tomato Sauce

1 tbsp Oregano

2 tsp Garlic Powder

1 tsp Italian Seasoning

1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes

1/2 tsp Ground Black Pepper

1/4 tsp Salt

Garlic Sauce: (makes enough for one pizza)

1 tbsp light butter

1 tbsp light mayo

1 tbsp sour cream or plain yogurt (Greek if you have it)

1 clove garlic

2 tbsp onion, finely chopped

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Dissolve yeast in water.  Add salt, oil, and honey and let sit for about 5 minutes for yeast to dissolve.  Add flours and knead until smooth, adding a little flour if too sticky.  

Spray large bowl with non-stick cooking spray.  Put dough into bowl and roll in oil.  Cover and let rise until dough doubles in size (about 2 hours).  I put mine in the oven (turned off) to keep it out of drafts.

Makes dough for 2 pizzas, cut into 8 slices or one extra large pizza.

For the tomato sauce, mix tomato sauce and spices.  I like to make the sauce when I make the dough and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours to let the flavors marinate.   

For the garlic sauce, melt butter in small saucepan.  Saute onion and garlic in butter until onion is tender.  Remove from heat.  In a bowl mix remaining ingredients and add garlic butter mixture.  stir until combined and cheese is melted.  

Prebake the crust at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes.  Then top with sauce and your choice of toppings and bake at 400 for an additional 10-15 minutes.

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Meal Planning 101: Meal Plans

If you are looking for some great meal planning ideas that go beyond the ordinary. Check out this site!

Meal Planning 101: Meal Plans

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Whole Grain Pancakes with Blueberry Sauce

Mmmmmmm......pancakes! This whole grain version promises to make you say, "These things are going like hot cakes" Unlike whole wheat pancakes, they do not have a grainy texture and they fluff up beautifully when cooked.

Homemade pancakes can be a quick breakfast and making them from scratch really doesn't take much longer than making them from a mix. I often make the batter the night before and then they are ready to be cooked on the griddle in the morning.


Before going into the recipe for the pancakes, I want to share my whole grain flour mix which I use as a substitute for all purpose flour in cooking. Admittedly, it is pricier than buying a bag of bleached all purpose flour, but this is one area I have committed to splurging since there really is no nutritional benefit to white flour and I'm not ready to cut flour entirely out of my diet.

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Whole Grain Flour Mix

Using the following ratio, I make up a large batch of flour and keep it on hand. If you make a lot, keep it in the freezer until you are ready to use it.

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup brown rice flour

1 cup oat flour

For a long time, I simply replaced half the all purpose flour in a recipe with whole wheat flour, but with mixed results.  Many times the result would be dry and grainy and very dense and chewy for some reason.  Since switching, I have found that I can often replace all of the all purpose flour in a recipe with excellent results.  Even when I only replace half the all purpose flour with the whole grain flour mix, I like the taste much better than with whole wheat flour.  My understanding of flour is somewhat limited, but the rice flour tends to make recipes more coarse while the oat flour makes them more sticky.  Using them together balances out these reactions and gives a texture much like using all purpose flour.

Okay, enough about flour.  Let's move on to how to use the flour to make delicious pancakes!

Recipe for Whole Grain Pancakes:

1 Cup Whole Grain All Purpose Flour Mix Recipe

2 egg

1 cup Whole Grain Quick Cook Oats

2 tbsp Sugar

4 tbsp Pure Canola Oil

6 tsp Baking Powder

1/3 tsp Salt

1 1/2 cups Fat Free Skim Milk

Beat eggs and milk, add oil and sugar and mix thoroughly. in separate bowl, mix dry ingredients. Add to wet ingredients and mix--don't over mix.  For best results let sit five minutes, then give it a good stir to re-mix everything.

I use an ice cream scoop (not quite full) to pour batter onto hot griddle sprayed with cooking spray. Flip pancakes with bubbles start to burst.  Remove from Griddle when both sides are golden. 

Hint:  The whole grain flour tends to burn faster than regular all purpose flour, so turn heat down slightly and watch closely

Since even the healthiest of pancakes can be ruined by tons of butter and syrup.  Most of the time, I eat my pancakes with fruit instead of syrup.  In the summer, we use fresh fruit, but in the winter I make do with frozen.  Blueberries are my favorite.  Instead of putting the blueberries in my pancakes, I make them into a syrup to pour over the top.  This saves calories and provides a larger portion of antioxidant rich blueberries first thing in the morning!

Recipe for Blueberry Pancake Sauce:

Ingredients:

2 cups Frozen Blueberries

1 tbsp Cornstarch 

3 tbsp Water

2 tbsp Lemon Juice

1 tbsp Turbinado Sugar

Directions:

Pour blueberries into saucepan. Add lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of the water. 

Mix remaining water with the cornstarch and add to saucepan. Sprinkle sugar over berries. cover and cook on medium heat until boiling. 

Allow to boil for 1-2 minutes before removing from heat, stirring frequently.

Sauce will thicken upon standing

So, that's breakfast--how about a line up for the rest of the day:

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Breakfast- 370 Calories

2 Whole Grain Pancakes

1/2 cup Blueberry Sauce

1 cup skim milk

Snack-  230 Calories

8 oz non-fat latte sweetened with Truvia

16 Chocolate Animal Crackers

Lunch- 285 Calories

Spinach Garden Salad

w/ Avocado-Ranch Dressing

Snack- 140 Calories

1/3 cup Tropical Trail Mix

Dinner- 548 Calories

Thyme Pork Chops with

Cinnamon Apples

Roasted Carrots

Whole Grain Roll

Total Calories: 1573

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