Good For You Chicken Salad

This is so good. You will never make chicken salad the old way again.
Years ago, when my husband (then boyfriend) lived on his own, his mom would bring him food. She would come down and load up his fridge. He brought out this "salad" and a bag of tortilla chips one evening. He didn't know what was in it (forcing me to back create it). One bite and I was hooked. What was in it? Hmmm Bite.. , Bite, OOOh not mayo. sour cream. YUM, and onions, and cillantro? WOW.
A few years later, when my best friend was living with me and my boyfriend (now husband), we were hungry. We had one left over chicken breast, from dinner the night before, and 1 cucumber, and 2 green onions (pretty sad looking. but edible), and cellery,  and cottage cheese, and a little bit of sour cream oh and some lettuce and cabbage (pathetic looking, But edible). we just jumped in and started dicing up everything. We used all of the sour cream, not enough to really bring it all together, so we used some cottage cheese. salt and pepper. IT was DELISH.
So here it is. We have played with it over the years and you can too. But the basics are that this is a delicious way to make Chicken Salad.
This is one of those recipes, where if you can make it for 2 you can make it for 12.
This is the for 2 recipe.

1 chicken breast (2 small thin breasts) sliced thin and then diced.
1/2 cucumber peeled, seeded, and diced
2 scallions sliced thin
1 celery stick diced thin.
1 tbs finely diced cillantro (you could omit, or swap with parsley or basil)

1/2 c cottage cheese

1/2 c light sour cream (if you like the extra tang, you could use greek yogurt)
salt and pepper, and garlic powder (we use it on everything.)
Basically, dice it all up, then toss it in a bowl. Add sour cream, cottage cheese, stir to combine. DONE. Don't put the salt in NOW. put a tiny sprinkle on when you want to eat it. if you do it now, it will draw the moisture out of the cucumber and onions and make your chicken salad wet... It doesn't taste bad. just wet.
NOW what to do with this.
Serve it like a sandwich. Soft breads for soft fillings. So a potato bread, or onion rolls, would be great.

Serve it with crackers, or chips. Top it with some chopped tomato or avocado, and eat like a dip. This is Hubby's favorite way to eat it.

Serve about 1/2-3/4 of a cup on top of a green salad with light vinaigrette. The salad offers a creamy consistency and protein. Plus if you do it on a salad of mixed greens with spinach, you are getting protein X2 and calcium X2. This would be a great work lunch.

You can change this up A MILLION WAYS>
off the top of my head. instead of cillantro, use a little Curry powder.
use left over chicken. Today I had a great buy on garlic and herb chicken breast, single packs from the lunch meat section. I have done it with rotisserie chicken, grilled chicken, pulled chicken would work too, but you would want it to be pretty dry. (maybe lay it on paper towels while you dice the veg)
I bet a salsa baked chicken would be good, nice spicy flavor. I would scrape off any extra salsa. But.. You see where this is going. Don't like cucumber? Omit it, double up on the celery, or add a little carrot. Bell pepper would be good for color and crunch. Start with this recipe, but then the sky is the limit.

Quinoa the new rice/ pasta.

I am making this again soon.  Quinoa. is NOT grain. It is a seed. It is pronounced "keen-Wah".
Nutritional facts about quinoa.

Eat one cup of quinoa (a single serving size), and you’ll consume:

• 220 calories (70 percent carbs, 15 percent fat, 15 percent protein)
• 40 grams of carbohydrates (13 percent daily value)
• 8 grams of protein (16 percent of daily value)
• 3.5 grams of fat (5 percent daily value with no saturated fat)
• A glycemic load (blood sugar spike) of only 18 out of 250
• 5 grams of fiber (20 percent of daily value)
• 20 percent of daily value of folate (various forms of Vitamin B)
• 30 percent of magnesium daily value (beneficial for people with migraine headaches); 28 percent daily value of phosphorous; iron (15 percent); copper (18 percent); and manganese (almost 60 percent)

Quinoa is stocked with life-sustaining nutrients all across the board, including all eight essential amino acids. There are other highly beneficial compounds, vitamins and minerals in this food that the Incas reverently called "chisaya mama" (mother of all grains).
(Thank you Mother Nature Network for making that information easy to find.)
I have had quinoa combined in a rice blend with brown rice and long grain/ wild rice.  and then cook in chicken broth and add your favorite flavors. Use just like rice and serve hot) 

Or cool it and use it like pasta and serve cold. Either way it is excellent for you.

Quinoa Salad
• 1 can black beans drained and rinsed
• 1 tomato diced
• 1/2 cucumber seeded and diced. (scoop the seeds out. Then cut in long strips and cut across)
• ½ c Frozen corn (I like white)
• ½ red or orange bell pepper diced.
• parsley
• cilantro
• avocado (optional)
• 1 cup quinoa
• ½ lime juice
• 1-2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup basalmic vinegar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 garlic clove
• 3 green onions sliced or ½ c of finely diced red onion.
• Small pinch of red chili flakes ( crushed red) a splash of it for the dressing
How to make it
________________________________________
• Boil 1 cup Quinoa with 2 cups water and salt for 15 minutes. The water will evaporate or be absorbed kind of like rice. Fluff and let cool.
• In the meantime, put the black beans, tomato, and cucumber in to a serving bowl. Chop parsley and cilantro well and add to the bowl (you may want a lot or a little it is up to you), about 5 sprigs or more of each.
• To make the dressing put the green onions, garlic clove, red chili, 3 parsley sprigs, 3 cilantro sprigs, 1 tbsp of dijon mustard into the food processor (or blender) and process. Then add the basalmic and olive oil and process until mixed together well. This will make MORE than enough dressing.
• Once the Quinoa is done cooking and cooled dump into the bowl and add ½ c of the dressing. Stir it all together (or put it all into a bowl with a lid, and shake to mix.) and if you would like avocado I would add it now (to avoid it getting mooshy.)
• Taste. Add salt and pepper more dressing if you would like. Enjoy!
• I have also added a jalepeno to the dressing before with the seeds removed. This is optional. GO SPARINGLY with jalepeno, unless you know you like it hot.

Lasagna Roll Ups- Now and Later

This is the recipe, photos, and results for the Lasagna Roll Ups. I made up this recipe while I was pregnant, and wanted to figure out a way to make lasagna, that could be a good freezer meal. It has almost always been exactly this recipe. I combined three recipes, and used tips from my sister (the vegan one.. not sure if I have mentioned her before. She is vegan, and loves to cook.)
YAY. I remembered to take pics the whole time.

so here is the recipe.



1/2 pound each ground turkey and turkey sausage
2 1/2 cups diced mushrooms
1 onion diced
2 cups zucchini diced
1 box of lasagna
1 jar of sauce ( dealers choice, we use four cheese)
2 cups of cheese (Italian blend or 1/2c Parmesan and 1 1/2 cups Mozzarella)
2 tbs olive oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 block soft tofu
1 box of lasagna noodles

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add 1 tbs of olive oil and 1 tbs of salt (IF YOU WANT. Some people swear by all of this. I recommend the oil though because the pasta will be sitting for a few minutes while you prep the roll ups.)
Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add 1 tbs of olive oil. Saute' mushrooms, zucchini, onions, and garlic. Cook until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms and zucchini are soft. Divide the mushroom, zucchini mixture.
Combine 1/2 of it with the tofu. Add the garlic powder,
and the grated Parmesan cheese.
This will replicate ricotta in a standard lasagna recipe.
Cook the turkey and sausage. (I use the same pan that I cooked the veggies in.)
Cook the lasagna noodles, just a little short of al dente. (if you cook by the times. do it for about 2 minutes less.) Pull the noodles out and lay them out on a cookie sheet.

So now you have, everything cooked. Lay it out and prep your area to make 3 meals worth. This can be one meal for dinner tonight, and 2 freezer meals, or 3 freezer meals.

This is how I set up to make these tonight. I am right handed. so I work right to left. Right. sauce (no need to heat it), the veggie and tofu mixture, the cooked turkey and sausage, and the rest of the cooked veggies. Middle, I am using a cookie sheet to prep the rolls on, above the cookie sheet I have the lasagna noodles in a roasting pan. (it was close and easy.) I have the black cookie sheet, for the ones I am freezing, and the baking pan for the ones I am cooking for tonight.

First coat the noodles in a little bit of sauce. As you can see in the above picture.
Second spread 2 tsp of the veggie tofu mixture across the noodle. Leaving about 1/2 an inch at the bottom of the noodle. The far left picture above, you just layer everything on. I do the tofu mixture, cheese, meat, and then the veggie. You can do a second layer of cheese. all these layers should be about 2 tsps. you don't want too much in there, then it is hard to roll.

Once you have rolled all of the noodles. It should look like this.Tonight I had enough to make 17 rolls. There was a little meat and veggie left. I could have done meat and veg in the two I made with just cheese. Instead I just topped the roll ups with the meat and veg, then the remainder of the sauce, and then about a 1/4 c of cheese. (whatever is left.)

< This is what it looked like about to come out of the oven. And that> is what it looked like in the freezer.
This is what it looks like once I bagged them up with the directions and the cheese with it.When you want to eat these for dinner. DO NOT DEFROST. Prep a baking pan, with about 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce. Lay these in the pan, cover with sauce and top with cheese. Bake 40-45 minutes in a 350.

This is what it looked like for dinner last night. I usually have one, sometimes two. I was going to make a salad, but ran out of time. This would be great with the garlic monkey bread.

This is the first in a series of Freezer Meals. The second of a Fast meals pictorials.

FoodSperiment: Green Banana Muffins

I did it. I made GREEN banana chocolate chip muffins. The worst thing in these is the chocolate chips. They came out awesome, and no food coloring. Secret ingredient? Spinach. that I got for $.99 for a pound of washed bagged leaves. My kids ate them (ages 2-4), My best friends kids ate them (ages 9 and 11), My mother in law, best friend and her husband all ate them. No one said "Hey why are these green?" or " what are these green flecks?"
Do I get extra mommy food war points when I get other peoples kids to like them?

I combined these two recipes.
http://www.anjasfood4thought.com/2010/11/spinach-banana-muffins.html
combined with my normal recipe of
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-chip-banana-muffins-2/
This is what I came up with... YUMMMY
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 egg
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
• 3/4 cup spinach puree ( I used raw spinach in my food pro, with about 1-2 tbs water)
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Measure dry into large bowl. in different bowl beat together, eggs oil, yogurt, vanilla and bananas. then add wet to dry, stir gently to combine, add spinach fold in, and add choco chips.
375 12-15 minutes.
They came out so good. They are green and pretty. (were... they are gone now. they lasted about 15 hours.) It made 12 muffins and 2 mini loaves.
That is EXACTLY the recipe as I made them.
this is the recipe I actually created
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 egg
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
• 3/4 cup spinach puree
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
I don't know HOW. But i omitted almost 3/4 cup of flour and it didn't seem to affect it at all.