I'm a hungry orphan penguin

Laura gave me some of her frozen snapper, so I was excited to find a recipe to use it in.

So, here is my "I'm a member of the hoard of hungry orphan penguins Mangrove" dish.  Refer to this post for back story.

So, I found this recipe simply by typing "snapper recipe" into the google bar.  It was the first thing to pop up, and it had a short ingredient list of things I already had at home, so the decision was done. I like simplicity when I cook.  

Defrost Fish:

 

Marinate in a way too small cereal bowl for a few minutes:

And serve with a healthy side of oven roasted veggies, care of Southside's pre-bagged, pre-mixed frozen veggies:

 Yellow green beans, snow peas, red bell pepper, asparagus mix. (I added some fresh tomato, basil, and garlic to it)

And Voila! Supper

The fish recipe was pretty good, not awesome, but still good--I actually liked it better the next day.

Raime

Too Random to Label

So one of the things that keeps us growing is to admit where we suck and strive to do better.  I have been keeping up with taking pictures, I just suck at putting them out here to share.  There.  That's my attempt at being a better human being for the day.  I'm glad we're done with that.

Moving on, I was very happy to venture out with my Raimster for a lovely lunch at the Ruby Tuesdays, even though it was a coupon failure.  I even managed to take pictures of our delicious menu choices.  I left the pictures of our salads to the imagination.  Picture a salad, and that's what Raime had.  Picture that same salad and cover it with pumpernickel croutons, and that's what I had.  No shame.  No shame ever.

Raime had a quesadilla while I enjoyed the zucchini cakes ala burger style.  They had feta in them and they were a punch then ninja kick in the taste buds.  I did enjoy them.

After a trip to Southside Produce, I decided to take fellow foodie's (FF) advice and tackle my mangrove issue with some tomato sauce, Cajun style.

Behold:

Mangrove Courtboullion (sp?) (who cares.)

Mah dats good yeah!  (reference to cheesy billboard after you get off the Basin in the MotherLand)

It was pretty freaking good.  I layered onions, bell peppers, garlic, mangrove snapper, and marinara sauce in my dutch oven and baked it for about an hour.  Then I ate it over some brown basmati rice.  It was PERFECT.

This week, I made some food for a coworker who is under the weather.  In an effort to cook things that were GI (glycemic index) friendly, I made two dinner options:

Greek stuffed chicken with tri-colored quinoa with kalamata olives and feta cheese

I used chicken cutlets that were already made into cutlet form by WalMart (meat mallet was pissed) and I processed some defrosted spinach, artichoke hearts, onions, garlic, and oregano and then rolled that up in the chicken cutlets, stuck some toothpicks in it and went to town!  I sauteed them until they were brown on the outside and then I finished them up in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes.  They smelled glorious! 

I cooked the tri-colored quinoa in some fat free chicken stock and tossed in some chopped up kalamata olives and crumbled low fat feta cheese.

She seemed to enjoy it, even though the quinoa freaked her out a bit.  She also said the meal was very filling and that her blood sugar was the lowest it had been in a few days.

WINNING!

I also made an Asian Chicken Slaw Salad "thing" that involved the largest amount of raw veggies in a bowl that my kitchen has ever handled.  By the time I was done chopping/processing vegetables, I had dirtied 3 bowls trying to contain the beast.

I shredded some napa cabbage, threw in some snow peas, and put my food processor to work slicing carrots, bell peppers, a cucumber, and some cilantro.  While I did this, I boiled some chicken and then put it in the refridgerator to cool.  I made a dressing of rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, honey, fresh ginger, peanut oil, and fresh cracked black pepper and tossed that with the chopped chicken and the 8 pounds of roughage.

Voila:

I liked it.  But my Momma loves rabbits and so I grew up kinda like one.  My co-worker said she liked it...we shall never know.

Currently I am munching on some Lean Cuisine spring rolls as I type this.  I have already had the garlic chicken ones and they were delicious.  Today I am trying out the Thai rolls.  The first bite was divine.  The second bite involved water chesnuts.  Why haven't these been banned yet?  Or better yet, why do they even exist?  Oh well.  I also have a side of the Asian Slaw to wash it down.

PEACE!

Cookie Dough

Last night, I made an amazing discovery...

a healthy version of cookie dough as a snack. (the clouds parted and a bright light poured down from the heavens).

I had been seeing variations of this recipe and some variations of homemade versions of Larabars.  I was intrieged.  However, I did not have a fancy $400 high speed blender required to pulverize the cashews and oats into a flour.  But last night, I had an epiphany about how to improvise--I could use my coffee bean grinder to make the flour, and my baby one-cup food processor to do the rest of the blending.  And so I proceeded...

Something else to note, I did not follow a recipe, but rather just mixed the ingredients from memory on a whim, but here is the official recipe that inspired me to make these.

Here are the ingredients: raw cashews, oatmeal, agave, olive oil, mini chocolate chips 

1) Use the coffee bean grinder to transform the raw cashews and oats into a flour.

2) Transfer flour into a food processor and add agave and just a touch of olive oil, blend until dough starts to clump together.

3) Add chocolate chips and roll dough into bite sized balls.

Viola!

Soooooooooo goooooood.  I'm not joking. These are yummy! Actually, they are beyond yummy. I don't know how I've made it through life this long without them.   

And it was so satisfying to be able to indulge in a dessert that I knew was made of healthy ingredients.

They are so good, Bella almost gobbled one up while I was trying to take a picture of it.
Tisk, tisk bella.

Raime