"Chicken" Salad with Mango Salsa

Chicken Salad with Mango Salsa

Ingredients:

3/4 cup brown rice
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 bag Morningstar Chik'n Strips, thawed and chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 avocado, peeled, pitted, and chopped
1 mango, peeled, pitted, and chopped
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 15 ounce can organic black beans, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons cilantro, stemmed and chopped
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 head red leaf lettuce, rinsed and torn

Directions:

Cook rice according to package instructions.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a large non-stick skillet. Sauté onion and garlic until soft. Add Chik'n and sauté until brown.

Prepare salsa by gently mixing avocado, mango, and chili powder. Set aside.

Mix rice, chicken mixture, beans, cilantro, and salt in a large bowl.

Place lettuce on individual plates. Top with rice mixture. Then add mango salsa.

Sweet Shot Tuesday - Flying a Kite

For the first time today I'm playing along with Sweet Shot Tuesday over at Life With My 3 Boybarians.

The assignment is easy.  I simply have to post my best photo of the week.  Well, it's kind of easy.  I'm participating in a Facebook challenge to post one photo a day all year long so my best photos are already narrowed down.  The hard part is choosing just one!

Ultimately, I chose this photo of Sophia flying her kite because of the brilliant colors and because it reminds me of the joy she had as she ran around getting that thing to fly.

Ikea Albert as Overflow Pantry

We are an Army family so we move frequently (8 times in 11 years) and every space is different. One of my biggest challenges is making each home livable and organized without spending lots of money. Some families take advantage of the diverse areas we get to live by filling their homes with local antiques. We are not one of these families. It breaks my husband's heart to put nice things in the hands of movers so for the most part our furniture was handed down or it's from Ikea. Ikea is great for inexpensive pieces that require assembly. I'm getting pretty good at putting their things together and everything holds up surprisingly well.

This weekend I needed a solution for this:

I would rather not have an overflow pantry but we live over an hour from a well-stocked Commissary and across the ocean from Trader Joe's so I have to stock up when I can.

My solution for this mess was the Arthur shelf. It was under €10. A price that doesn't make my husband cringe. Something I should know by now though is the cheaper the price, the more assembly that's required. This simple piece ate up over 50 screws. Each slat of each shelf had to be screwed in. I bought two shelves but was thrilled when my groceries fit on one so I can put the other shelf together some other day.

I'm excited to be able to see what's in my overflow pantry!

DaCaBo - Vegetarian Food in Bamberg

It rained off and on all day today but it was warm so we headed into Bamberg to see what looked good at the market. Last week Kenny found a DaCaBo, a restaurant with quite a few vegetarian options, and he wanted to take us.

Asparagus was all over the market this morning. I'm still a little traumatized from peeling white asparagus for soup last week so we stuck to purchasing simpler foods like strawberries, mini cucumbers, and radishes.

The first thing I saw as we approached DaCaBo was a statue of a woman that looks like she enjoys food. Photos of her peppered the menu. Breakfast is served until 2, they offer lots of lunch options, and they have seasonal specials that change every week.

I started with a salad like I usually do. It is my secret for not overindulging in restaurants. The dressing was light, flavorful, and the salad was not swimming it it as it so often is elsewhere.

Next I chose a very fresh pea soup from the weekly specials. The bright green color sang of spring and it was nice to have crunchy sugar snap peas mixed in with the purée. There was just a small dollop of sour cream adding just enough richness.

Sophia and Kenny both ordered the asparagus ravioli. Kenny ate it earlier in the week and he liked it so much that he ordered it again. I was impressed with how well the asparagus flavor came through.

The service was really fast and I still had a lot of tea to drink after we finished eating so Sophia went ahead and picked an orange cheesecake from the dessert case. We never get tired of the German desserts. They are not as sweet as American desserts. We still have to watch portions but I feel better about eating them.

I am excited about this restaurant find. Next time you want to go to lunch with me this is where I'll take you. I can't wait to see what's on the menu next!

 

 

Parent vs. Kid - Finding Effective Consequences

When Sophia puts her mind to something you can be sure she's going to do it. She decided she would run two miles, machine piece a quilt block, clear a severely overgrown flower bed, memorize a piano piece, and ski a black diamond run. And she did. She applies equal determination to not doing the things she does not want to do so she is unlikely to be led astray by people who have bad ideas. Theoretically, these are all wonderful qualities. But Sophia is seven.

It is often hard to parent her. If she does not want to do something, even routine things like taking a bath or doing homework, you can be sure that she will throw a fit until she is exhausted which is quite some time for a strong, determined girl like her. If I've said no I don't change my mind and if I've threatened a punishment I always follow through. I would think that she would realize by now that it's a terrible waste of time and energy to throw such big fits but that's a lesson she has failed to learn. Something about my parenting is not effective.

Yesterday, we went to a gathering at the school to celebrate our village. It was a school night and the event didn't start until 7 which is bedtime. I agreed to go for only a short time. Sophia quickly tired of the scheduled program and she wanted to run around outside with her friend with whom she had already spent the entire afternoon. I told her she could sit and listen to the program or we could go home. Well, we had to go home and she screamed and cried (in English in our small German village) and hit and kicked all the way home. It was behavior that you would expect from a two year old, except for when she was two I could carry her home. Now she's too big.

 

When we did finally get home I was absolutely exasperated, embarrassed, and exhausted. But I followed through on the threat I had made. I removed everything from her room except for books, her bed, her alarm clock, and one ugly outfit. She will have to earn everything else back by being cooperative with her responsibilities and by helping around the house, things that I expect from her that we often have to fight about.

 

My dad will say that I should have been able to outsmart her because I am older and more experienced but I didn't have any smarts left when I was embarrassed out in the neighborhood. In the end I think this will be an effective punishment with several side benefits.

 

Experts disagree on how long it takes to form a habit, but 21 days is thrown out a lot. If it takes at least 21 days for Sophia to earn her stuff back then perhaps she will be in the habit of being a helpful, cooperative girl and maybe things will be better going forward.

 

We were able to really clean her room this afternoon since it was empty.

 

I'll be able to easily purge clothing that is too small since we'll be looking at it piece by piece.

 

She was sweet as pie this afternoon and it was wonderful. Can it last for three weeks? I hope so!

 

Every child is different so it's hard to share parenting strategies but if you've discovered something that is particularly effective for your child I'd love to hear it. You too dad!

 

5 Free Sources for Healthy Recipes

These brownies look decadent but they are made over using healthier ingredients.

Earlier this week I had lunch with a new friend who is a chef.  She hasn't been able to find a job in her field while here in Germany and was excited to have an opportunity to spend an entire lunch discussing food.  I was excited to talk about my newly formed goal of someday owning a yoga studio/cafe.  My husband is in the Army so I have at least 8 1/2 years until he retires to build skills and figure out how I'm going to make it happen.  Right now, in addition to improving my yoga teaching skills with every class, I'm paying more attention to my cooking.  I'm keeping track of flavors that I like together and ways that I can make healthier substitutions for traditional ingredients.  I'd like to begin developing my own recipes.  My friend brought a bag of books to our lunch date for me to borrow to see if I wanted to buy any new books for my collection.  A couple of weeks ago she gave me an old edition of Professional Baking and I was so thrilled with the instructional quality of it I wanted to know what else she had at home that might have a healthy flavor to it.

She brought me a couple of textbooks that were great but they lacked the instructional quality within the recipes that really drew me to Professional Baking.  As an Army family we have to be concerned about the weight of our household good and finding places to put our things in our different houses.  I'm getting pretty selective about the books that I add to my shelves.  I've made a big push in the last year to make new purchases on my iPad or Kindle.  I was pleased that a couple of the resources she brought me could be found online for free.  She introduced me to Ellie Krieger from the Food Network and she let me borrow an issuer of Clean Eating magazine.

Here's a list of free resources for healthy recipes that I've been using as well as new ones that I'm going to start turning to.

1. Ellie Krieger.  Ellie is a registered dietitian as well as the host of Food Network's Healthy Appetite. I've never seen the show because we're over here in Germany but I immediately looked her up online after perusing her cookbook The Food You Crave.  You could of course buy one of her many cookbooks, but she has over 300 recipes for free here on Food Network's website.  She also has some recipes here on her website.  I like to have recipes always available to me on my iPad, wifi or not, so I went ahead and downloaded her Vegetarian Meals booklet for 99 cents.  If I like her recipes I might spring for the full digital books.  I really like that The Food You Crave includes instructional pages like "Building a Better Muffin," "The Story on Eggs," "10 Grab and Go Breakfasts," etc.
2. Clean Eating Magazine.  A different chef friend recommended this magazine to me awhile back.  I looked at it at her house but hadn't had a chef to read an issue cover to cover.  I intended to try some of the recipes available free online but never remembered to go back.  When I had the chance to finally read through an entire issue I saw the 14-day meal plan at the back of the magazine that was full of in season ingredients I decided that I needed to subscribe to the iPad edition so that I could have fresh infusions of seasonal recipes all of the time.  And if you know me, you know that I'm a sucker for a plan.
3. myrecipes.com.  You can find unhealthy recipes at myrecipes.com but Health and Cooking Light are two of the magazines in their collection that they publish from so there are plenty of good recipes to be found.  I love that you can type in ingredients that you have on hand and the site will spit out recipes that you can make with those ingredients.
4. Vegetarian Times.  Vegetarian Times is another great online resource for healthy recipes.  I often forget to check there when I'm looking for a new recipe.  I wish My Recipes would include them in their lineup!
5. Yoga Journal.  Yoga Journal uses the recipes from Vegetarian Times but I thought I would include a link because they have a lot of good articles about food and you can access the recipes from the same page.

Have you started craving healthier recipes?  Do you have some favorite resources?

The Oatmeal Chocolate Raisin Cookie Experiment - Traditional vs. Made Over

I'm making an effort to keep my family healthy by cooking with whole grains, reducing sugar, and reducing dairy. Sophia didn't have school today and it was beautiful outside so I wanted to celebrate by making some cookies to share with Sophia and her friends.

The first cookies I made were Chocolate Covered Katie's Flourless Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies. I just added some chocolate chips. I doubled the recipe but still only ended up with 10 cookies. That's not enough to share!

I wanted to make more cookies and since I was intending to share them I turned to a more traditional source, Le Cordon Bleu's Professional Baking, again adding chocolate chips to their Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe. This book talks about using lots of butter and sugar because that's what sells.

So how did they compare?

The cookie on the left is the healthier one. It is made with ground oats rather than flour so it has an rougher texture and appearance. But it was moist and delicious. I've been weaning myself off of sugar so I actually preferred this cookie.

The cookie on the right is a perfect shade of brown and it was a little bit crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. It was indeed a professional quality cookie. It comes with a price though! It contained nearly three times the amount of sugar and had 17 tablespoons of butter as compared to 4 tablespoons of oil in the other cookie. Quite a difference!

Kenny complained that the cookies contained chocolate but he didn't complain that the flourless cookies tasted too healthy. Even so, I would like to develop a cookie that bridges the gap between these two cookies. I'd like to make a healthy version that looks like a normal cookie with normal texture.

Wrapping Up a Blog Challenge With the Month's Most Read Posts

Today wraps up my second month of participation in The Ultimate Blog Challenge. Our task was to publish 30 posts in 30 days and read and comment on other participants' posts. It's a bit of a time suck to do so much reading and writing every day but I really enjoy the creative boost I get from having to come up with content every day and seeing what everybody else is up to. I'm relived to be done with the challenge but excited to participate again next quarter.

These were my five most read posts of the month:

Amsterdam by Bike

Having the Courage to Set Big Hairy Audacious Goals

10 Ways to Reduce Anxiety

Beet, Orange, Mozzarella, and Aragula Salad

The Very Unusual Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam

And, honorable mention goes to this post that wasn't the most read but it received a lot of positive buzz:

Daily Journaling for Joy and Appreciation

Thanks to my fellow participants who read my posts and inspired me with the things they wrote!

Tomato Soup with Halloumi Cheese

I saw a recipe for tomato soup on Pinterest that looked really good but it was full of butter, flour, and half and half.  I made it over to using cornstarch instead of the butter and flour roux and I of course made it vegetarian.  I forgot to put in the onion but it tasted great anyway.

I was introduced to Halloumi cheese in Turkey and I loved it.  It's maybe just a bit more flavorful than mozzarella but what makes it special is that you can grill it or heat it in a skillet and it doesn't melt.  This makes it great for adding to warm dishes when you don't necessarily want gooey cheese, like soup.

Tomato Soup with Halloumi Cheese

Servings: About 8

Ingredients:
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 14.5 ounce cans petite diced tomatoes
3 stalks celery, finely diced
1 small onion, finely diced
3 medium carrots, finely diced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 bay leaf
4 cups vegetable broth
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup cold water
1 225 gram package Halloumi cheese, cubed
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1/4 cup fresh basil, finely chopped
Directions:

Heat butter and oil in a large soup pot. Add celery, onions and carrots. Saute 5 minutes. Add oregano, bay leaf, tomatoes, and vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until carrots are tender, about 15 minutes.

While soup simmers, whisk corn starch and cold water together until smooth. Set aside. Brown the Halloumi in a seasoned cast iron skilled until brown. Set aside. After carrots become tender add cornstarch mixture to soup.

Simmer, stirring constantly, until soup begins to thicken, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in warmed almond milk, salt, and pepper. Simmer over low heat 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently. If you'd like a smoother consistency remove from heat and pulse with an immersion blender. Serve, topping with the Halloumi and basil.
Nutritional Info:Calories 215.4 Total Fat 15.2 g Saturated Fat 7.3 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.7 g Monounsaturated Fat 3.3 g Cholesterol 7.6 mg Sodium 1,080.7 mg Potassium 181.5 mg Total Carbohydrate 14.4 g Dietary Fiber 3.1 g Sugars 5.5 g Protein 7.6 g