No mangoes to make Mango Tomato Sauce Meatballs, but there is always a pack of frozen vegetables available, so why not? For added fiber and overall nutrition as the more (veggies), the merrier.
That completes today's Meatballs Protein Bowl - steamed vegetables as the base, and portion of pasta to pair with tomato sauce meatballs.
Small yet mighty, eggs pack in dense nutrition for 70-80 calories. It's a staple in our family. Is it also a basic ingredient/food necessity for your family?
The whites brim with protein, while the yolks deliver Vitamin D, cholin, lutein and zeaxanthin. Vitamin D - essential for bone health, immune function and calcium absorption; Cholin - an essential nutrient to maintain muscle and memory; Lutein and Zeaxanthin - antioxidants to prevent age-related macular degeneration.
Today's Cottage Cheese Veggie Egg Frittata is like any other frittata made before - just tweaked and improved with addition of cottage cheese to boost amount of protein; at the same time making the egg frittata more moist and fluffy.
These Dragon Fruit Muffins are adapted from my Homemade Muffin and Bakes category. The red hue is coming from red dragon fruit puree.
Basically, I used a foundation oat muffins recipe for this Dragon Fruit Muffins. Instead of mashed ripe banana that is usually added as natural sweetener, dragon fruit smoothie pack (100% dragon fruit puree) is used instead.
This is another viral recipe tried (and tested). A savory crispy snack or appetizer Onion Cheese Crisp Chips made using 2 simple ingredients. Onions and cheese.
There is no batter involved. So, for those looking for low-carb "onion rings" alternatives, rejoice!
As there were no plans to stock up store-bought ice-cream this summer, I had to find ways to satisfy cold and chilled cravings on hot summer days. I could have made 1-ingredient Banana Ice-Cream again but let's try something different. First, is to use what is already in the kitchen, pantry or fridge. Greek yogurt came to mind, peanut butter as well. And banana as the natural sweetener.
Here comes Banana Peanut Butter Greek Yogurt Frozen Bites. Perfect.
Whole-grain oats is a great way to get soluble fiber in your diet. Research suggests that increasing your intake of soluble fiber each day may result in a drop in "bad" LDL cholesterol.
Rolled oats are usually incorporated as breakfast foods e.g. Homemade Granola or Muesli, High-Fiber Breakfast Oats with Milk. However, not restricted to morning consumption, you can also add rolled oats when making multi-grain rice for lunch or fish + oats egg frittata that tops a lunch protein bowl.
During the course of making these homemade healthy bakes such as Eggless Banana Cacao Oatmeal Cups, Banana Bran Muffins, Eggless Pineapple Cacao Muffins, Peanut Butter Powder Low-Fat Low-Cal Muffins, a personal baking-style has also evolved - call it easy, fool-proof style. Today's bakes returns to this basic, simple ingredients Rolled Oats Muffins - truly easy and fool-proof.
Camp broccoli or team cauliflower? It's hard to choose which one because each vegetable shines in its own special way, especially with how it's being prepared. For example, if it's a dish that needs slightly longer cooking time Whole Spiced-Roasted Cauliflower, cauliflower might be a preferred choice as it may withstand extended cooking duration without turning over-sulfurous.
Well, for this side-accompaniment today, both broccoli and cauliflower should be interchangeable. Adapted from Roast Broccoli Steak with Cheese, is this Roast Cauliflower with Cheese.
Skip store-bought breakfast and make your own healthier version. This time, I improved on these breakfast sandwiches with egg frittata as sandwich fillers. These are great make-ahead breakfast sandwiches.
Our family enjoys egg frittata including Onion Egg Frittata, Gouda Cheese Egg Frittata, Pico De Gallo/Salsa Egg Frittata, Frozen Veggies Egg Frittata, Fish & Oats Egg Frittata (made with leftover fish!).
Make a batch, wrap up the extras and warm them up when required.
The idea of make-ahead is to save time especially when the day gets busy. However, you still have to fork out some time about 20 minutes or so, during less hectic days to make this happen; or more accurately, make the egg frittata happen. This is an easy version of entirely-oven-baked egg frittata, all for the sake of us, the busy humans.
Traditionally, florentines are typically made from nuts (most of the times, hazelnuts and almonds) mixed with sugar melted together with butter and honey, then baked in an oven (Best Selling Smart Oven). However, modern day florentines have evolved to be healthier biscuits (or cookies) or more accurately, thin crackers formed from a mixture of nuts, seeds, egg whites, honey.
Our family version of florentines consists of a mix of sliced almonds, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, chia seeds, ground flax seeds, sesame seeds, and in replacement of honey, date syrup (I used Organic Just Date Syrup, 1-Ingredient: 100% Organic Medjool Dates)
Our family was never quite into tacos, burrittos, Mexican food and cuisine in general. However, this past year of occasional day-tripping and local travel opened up our travel food world to food trucks, especially taco trucks.
Though we prefer to have home-cooked food (these food storage containers will come in very handy), having to depend on prepared/store-bought food while travelling has become unavoidable. However, eating out past few years has become very expensive. When you are travelling on the road, what is your go-to for food?
For us, it's tacos - definitely not those fancy-schmancy $8 tacos in restaurants but traditional authentic basic no-frills meat tacos topped with onions and cilantro. We are always excited to discover and try great delicious $2-3 tacos on our road trips, and try to keep our meal budget under $15 (for two people).
Semi-homemade: carnitas tacos with pineapple salsa, cilantro
There comes a time to take matters into my own hands with semi-homemade tacos (check this best-selling taco holders) at home, getting some good quality pork carnitas from the store, then putting it together at home.
I could not wait to try this seaweed wrap hack since the tortilla wrap hack got into me sometime ago.
There are many options to fill the four quarters of seaweed nori sheets. Here is one with egg, cucumber, avocado and salmon.
This Cheesy Stuffed Shishito Peppers appetizer is easy to make and a flavor bomb even with such simple ingredients - only two ingredients.
This appetizer should also work well with other mild-heat chili peppers such as jalapeno or Korean chili peppers.
What's for breakfast or after-meal dessert (have you tried this One-Ingredient Ice-Cream yet)?
We enjoy breakfast homemade rolled oats muesli (low-sugar muesli/granola option available) with milk (dairy or dairy-free) topped with fresh berries. Feast like a king for breakfast, there is always add-on peanut butter bread paired with coffee.
In the hot summer months (right now!), high fiber breakfast oats gets amped up with bountiful fresh berries and stone fruits. When it gets to cooler months, we comfort ourselves with warm breakfast such as Black Sesame Oatmeal.
Store-bought frozen wontons is one of my freezer stash. It might not be the healthiest (homemade ones are always better than store-bought) to stock up in the freezer but it is a convenient choice especially when you want a quick and reasonably balanced meal on a busy day.
This Wontons (Chicken Dumplings) Salad is best enjoyed warm, most suitable during spring weather when the temperature swings from 70Fs to 60Fs within the same day, and varies similar range in the same week. I still love wonton dumpling soup and dumplings in egg-drop soup but not so much when the temperature inches up.
There are different variations of Wonton Salad made in the past e.g. Wontons with Pea Sprouts and Snow Peas, Wontons with Broccoli and Cabbage, colorful variations Wonton with Beets and Kale. Each time, it gets bigger and better, worthy of a bowl meal e.g. Wontons with Butternut Squash, Asparagus, Cauliflower, Wontons with Egg, Broccoli, Zucchini.
Egg frittata is my go-to for egg makeovers. Our family still enjoy our routine hard-boiled eggs and occasionally, sunnyside up sheet-pan style. But egg frittata is one of those clever ways to load up the eggs with leftovers, extras, add-ons - in short, "bonuses".
Adding on to this egg frittatas list of Onion Egg Frittata, Chive Egg Frittata, Gouda Cheese Egg Frittata, Frozen Veggie Egg Frittata, Leftover Fish Egg Frittata is this Pico De Gallo/Salsa Egg Frittata using leftover Pico De Gallo, idea inspired from a popular dish Asian-style fry tomato with eggs.
You may want to use salsa if you have leftover salsa but do take note, salsa is a more blended version of tomatoes, onions, jalapeno, so it tends to be more "watery" and liquid than Pico De Gallo (preferred) which is a mixture of fresh chopped tomato, onion, jalapeno, lime, and cilantro.
Recently, I had the opportunity to try one of the most amazing tortilla products* from Rise and Puff. Besides Organic Tortilla and Original Tortilla which I tried, Rise and Puff also has other offerings e.g. Gluten-Free Tortilla and Everything Tortilla.
What makes Rise and Puff unique and stand out among other competitor tortilla products is the simple and clean ingredient list. Just four clean ingredients in this award winning Original Tortilla: Unbleached Wheat Flour, Water, Avocado Oil, Sea Salt.
I am sold!
Surprise surprise! This was what I did - Homemade Corn Tuna Bread Rolls, when the corn-tuna mix could not fill all the avocado in these Corn Tuna Avocado Cups.
Well, I am happy to say "I baked!" but equally ashamed to be using store-bought ready-to-use dough for these Corn Tuna Bread Rolls. These savory Corn Tuna Bread Rolls with soft fluffy bread filled with sweet (corn kernels)-savory (tuna) were addictive! The dough-bread was also given generous touches of dried herb sprinkles just before sending off into the oven to bake. Another advantage of making these breads at home is the bread rolls can be loaded with more filling, to optimize the ratio of filling to bread.
Chanced upon lovely bunches of chayote shoots (what a rare find!) at the local farmer's market and decided to make Chayote Shoots Salad. In the like of Edible Chrysanthemum Shungiku Salad, Spiced Edible Chrysanthemum Shungiku and Celery Tofu Salad, these vegetables are given a quick blanch, cooled, then served with a simple dressing of extra-virgin olive oil and vinegar mix; or for Asian greens e.g. Edible Chrysanthemum/Shungiku (also known as Tung Hao in Mandarin) a drop (or two) of sesame oil and pinches of ground white pepper occasionally does the trick.
Depending on its consistency, tahini - made from ground sesame seeds, also works well as dressing (e.g. Okra with Tahini Dressing) for almost all kinds of vegetables including Chayote Shoots Salad.
A simple and easy salad is always a refreshing and welcoming treat during the hot summer days.
Today, this Marinated Feta Cheese Salad is the star of the salad. Basically, if you have prepared marinated feta cheese in the fridge, this salad comes together in less than 15 minutes.
The marinated feta cheese perfectly flavors up the entire salad of lettuce, cucumbers and red onions. This salad is very versatile and goes well with everything, almost everything. You can enjoy on it's own, use it to fill wraps or sandwiches, pair with avocado and eggs for breakfast or brunch, serve as side-salad with an entree dish.
The plan was to put together something quick, by simmering store-bought meatballs and store-bought pasta sauce in a pot, then make a one-dish meal of pasta with meatballs.
Everything was as planned, just a slight twist of adding (leftover) frozen cubed mangoes to the pot of simmer. That would only make it better, with reminiscent moments of sweet and tangy meatballs.
Make this Mango Tomato Sauce Meatballs and serve with Lettuce Fried Rice.
If you enjoy one-pot dishes, you may also like Braised Quail, Fennel and Tomatoes or Easy and Simple One-Pot Pasta.
