Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Chocolate and cherries will get me through the rest of this cold, rainy February. In the midst of the low-carb/gluten-free/paleo craze, I've been thinking that all of these cookie recipes with almond meal look really good. I decided to go all out and try some cookies that have 100% almond meal, no flour. I wasn't sure what the texture would be, but my standards for texture in my baked goods have been significantly lowered since that three-year stretch around middle school when I enjoyed inventing fat-free cake recipes (with green food coloring, usually), so I decided to give it a go. It turns out they have great texture! I actually like the texture better than ordinary cookies. They're really hearty and rich. I love for my cookies to have a little bit of a bite to them, rather than dissolving in my mouth and making me instantly want another one. I felt really satisfied after two of these.  I pretty much followed  this recipe  and just added dried cherries, ...

They smell good, too. I'd never had tilapia cakes before, but I figured if it works for crab and salmon, it would work with tilapia too. And it does! I've made these twice now, and we love them. For flavor inspiration, I turned to the things I usually put in tuna salad: mustard, capers, lemon, yogurt, onions, and celery. Except that I use shallot instead of onion because it is positively delicious in things like this. I bake the tilapia with a casual sprinkling of salt, pepper, and olive oil over the top. It's hard to mess up the cooking of the fish here. By the time the cakes are done, no one will know if your original tilapia was overdone. Or underdone, as long as you can flake it apart sufficiently. Easy. Line the dish with foil for less mess later... unless you flake the cooked fish in the same dish and end up poking holes in the foil and letting the fish juices coat it anyway. Oops. The Mixture. I like to serve these over a bed of spinach, wi...

It was SO hard to take this photo before digging in. Snow days definitely bring out the "ish" in "healthy-ish." But they taste so good. I got hooked on rarebit sauce during college. We used to get it at this Welsh pub where they served it with homemade potato chips. Heaven. Since I had a baking bug today, soft pretzels seemed like a good accompaniment. I turned to Alton brown for both recipes:  pretzels  and  rarebit sauce .  The pretzels are outstanding. They're done the REAL way: boiled, then baked. It brought me back to my bagel-shop-managing days. It's a process, but it wasn't difficult and it really didn't take as much time as I thought it would. It's worth it if you can spare a couple of hours. Alton Brown's instructions are great and I followed them exactly, so I won't regurgitate them here. In confidence that his recipe will never disappear from the internet, I say  read Alton Brown's original recipe  if you wan...

This soup is spectacular. Well, it happened. My beloved  root vegetable soup  recipe has been ousted by a better version. This one has mushrooms. Lots of mushrooms. It also has sweet potato, gouda, and bacon. I got the recipe from my friend Megan (who got it from  here ) after we enjoyed it at her place just last weekend. Five days later, nicely in time for a snow day, it was on our table. As I started cooking, I realized I had no vegetable stock. With snowy roads, I had no choice but to whip up a quick homemade stock. It was easier than I thought. I browned up some onion, celery, and garlic, then poured in water and let it simmer over low with a bay leaf and some thyme. I then set about making the soup, and by the time I was ready to add the stock, it was full of flavor and ready to be strained. I'm not sure I'll do it again next time, but it's nice to know I have the option. There's bacon actually blended into this soup! I got a good quality turkey ...

Not out of a can, but almost as easy. I totally missed the boat on sloppy joes as a kid. I never chose it at school (I only ate turkey or tuna for lunch during my entire elementary school career) and my parents never made it. But once I discovered the possibility of simmering tempeh in barbecue sauce and eating it on a sandwich, I was a sloppy joe convert. This is one of the quickest dinners I can whip up. One day I want to make up a sauce from scratch so I can eliminate some of the sugar, but the convenience of this recipe in its current form is pretty great. I usually freeze the leftovers in individual portions over rice for an easy lunch. UPDATE October 2016 - Avocado! From now on, avocado will be spread on the bun before spooning the hot filling over it. It's amazing. It adds richness and also mellows the sweet tang of the sauce, plus the hot/cold contrast is yummy. The Recipe (serves 4): 1 red bell pepper, chopped 1/2 onion, chopped 1 package t...

With grilled cheese, OBVIOUSLY. If you have an immersion blender (and you should), this is one of the quickest, easiest meals you could possibly whip up. I often have all of the ingredients on hand, too. Roughly chop some onion and garlic, throw it in a pot with some other stuff, immersion blend it, and mix in milk and cheese. The accompanying grilled cheese is generally Jess's job, and I can make the soup from start to finish faster than he can assembly the grilled cheeses and melt them in the panini press. Stuff thrown into a pot. Stuff thrown into a pot, blended. It also works with goat cheese in place of the parmesan if you like your tomato soup creamier. But I like the nutty bite of the parmesan. It goes really well with the basil and spinach. The Recipe: 1 tb olive oil 1 onion, roughly chopped 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 1 bunch spinach leaves 28 oz tomatoes, pureed 1 tsp sugar 1 tsp dried basil (or 1/4 c fresh basil leaves) 1...

Cake? Muffin? Microwave-baked Thing? Call it what you wish, but I like it. Disclaimer: This is probably not a recipe that will wow your brunch guests. It may not wow you either, if you're not always obsessively seeking the Most Nutritious Breakfast like I am. But if you are, then maybe you'll be as excited about this as I am. Since I like to eat the same thing every morning, I want it to address my dietary needs as well as it can. For me, that means lots of protein and fiber, and as many other good nutrients as I can pack in without too much sugar, diary, or starch. And it has to be fast to prepare on groggy school mornings. When I found  this recipe , it seemed to fit the bill. I was skeptical that a microwaved egg with flax meal would taste good, but it's not bad! And when you add some fruit into the mix, I dare say it's quite good. With the addition of fruit, I found that it doesn't need the oil listed in the original recipe. It also doesn'...

Delicious simplicity. A friend brought these to a party and I loved them so much that I demanded the recipe. I couldn't believe how easy they are... they make for a perfect quick appetizer. There are three ingredients: mushrooms, cream cheese, and crescent rolls. Okay, four if you include salt. It would be very easy to spice up the mushrooms (garlic salt? sage? cajun seasoning?), but they're really good just plain, and they make for good contrast if you're serving other food with stronger flavors. If you have the time to roll each crescent triangle separately, you'll have cute smaller rolls than the ones I made. If you do this, you'll end up using less filling and therefore you will probably need three cans of crescent rolls. The easy route, as pictured here, is to mush together two crescent triangles into a rectangle and just fold it over a big heap of the filling. I tuck the messy ends together and make that the bottom of the roll. Note to sel...