Black bean pizza...

This is my last bean post... promise! And it's a bit of a strange one, so I'm sure only the true bean lovers out there will try it out. But it's good! And it makes me feel better about eating pizza...

This pizza is patterned after California Pizza Kitchen's tostada pizza. Once cooked it can be topped with shredded lettuce, salsa, pico de gallo, or just dipped in ranch dressing. I like it just plain as well. Here is our version of a black bean pizza...

Ingredients
Pizza dough
1 1/2 cups black beans
1 chicken breast grilled and cut into bite sized pieces
8 ounces mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese and garlic salt

1- Prepare your choice of pizza dough (I've put my pizza dough recipe at the bottom of the post) on a pizza stone or whatever baking dish you would like.

2- Spread about 1 1/2 cups of black beans onto your dough. Make sure they are drained and rinsed and patted dry. There is no sauce, this is your sauce.

3- Add cooked chicken.

4- Spread shredded cheese on top. I also like to season my pizza, I like to think of it as the "secret pizza ingredient". I shake Parmesan cheese on top as well as some garlic powder to add a little additional flavor.You could do Italian seasoning as well if you would like.

5- Have oven pre-heated to 450 degrees. Cook for about 15 minutes or until cheese is melted and crust is starting to brown.

Again, you can serve it with some mexi toppings on top, or just eat it plain like this! Both ways are great!

Pizza Dough

4 cups flour (I use spelt, it makes a great dough!)

2 tsp yeast

3/4 tsp salt

11 oz hot water

3 TBSP oil

Mix 3 cups flour with the rest of the ingredients. Mix with an electric mixer on high for 3 minutes. Using a wooden spoon stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can. 

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead dough until it is smooth and elastic. Divide into to balls and let sit for 10 minutes to rise. Roll out dough or freeze in a freezer bag until ready to use.

Bean and cheese burrito + tacos...

Can't really talk about beans without talking about taco's/burrito's now can we? We eat some form of taco's every single week. We love them! You can stuff them full of super yummy, healthy stuff. And ours almost always contain black beans.

A quick and easy lunch that I've been making lately are bean and cheese burritos. They are really simple and take very little prep.

Ingredients:
corn tortillas
black beans
cheese
1 tomato
 cilantro
lemon/lime juice, pepper, garlic powder to taste
hot sauce (I like Tapatio)

1- Warm up corn tortilla's in a pan or on a griddle with some cooking spray/EVOO (I usually do 3 if it's just me eating them).
2- When your tortillas are slightly brown on both sides and warm, spoon some black beans on them and put some cheese on top. Melt for 30 seconds in the microwave.
3- I like to add some veggies here, so I just make a simple pico de gallo to go with. Dice up one tomato in little pieces. Dice up a few sprigs of cilantro. Mix together with a little lime/lemon juice, garlic powder, and pepper. Put a few spoonfuls on top of your beans and melted cheese. If you like hot sauce or salsa, add that too.
4- That's it! Fold in half and enjoy! Super easy, healthy lunch. When using corn tortillas these are low glycemic and will keep your blood sugar at a steady level.

Here are some other taco recipes that we do that you might want to try...

Quinoa and Black Bean Tacos. These are my all time favorite recipe!!! I'm serious! I love these! They are so yummy, so healthy, and vegetarian because quinoa is a complete protein. I recently shared this recipe with my sister in law and she loved them! If you have been wanting to try out quinoa or use it already give this one a try. (I already blogged this one a while back, find the post here).

GOOP Shrimp Tacos. This is the recipe that really turned me onto taco's way back when. It's from Gwenyth Paldrow's blog and they are so yummy. I like how she makes her beans, warming them up on the stove with a clove of garlic and a few sprigs of cilantro. If you're feeling like shrimp, give this a try.

Fish Tacos. Sorry, no pic for this one. My husband likes to fish and so we use the trout that he catches for fish tacos a lot of the time. Or you could just grill up whatever fish you have on hand. We do grilled fish, shredded cabbage, black beans, pico de gallo, some feta cheese, and hot sauce. And they are so YUMMY!!! Okay... can you tell I'm obsessed with tacos.

One fun tip when making tacos. Put a griddle right on the kitchen table if you have the room, and warm up your tortillas right there when you are making them. It's fun, you always have a warm, fresh tortilla, and it adds to the ambiance of the meal.

** Also, you might notice that I don't add onions to any of this stuff. If you like onions, by all means onion them up! I just think they are disgusting and refuse to put onions in anything that I make. My poor husband... he loves them. But I can't even kiss him if he's had onions... and I can always tell ;).

What kind of taco's do you love?

White bean chili...

 I love this soup! And I am not a soup person. This is a keeper for sure. I got this recipe from my friend Emily while we lived in Las Vegas. One day we were taking about recipes and I said something along the lines of, "You know it will be a good recipe when it starts with: put olive oil in the pan... then add garlic." Her eyes got big and she said, "Ohhh... I have a recipe you need to try. You're going to love this!" And she was right! I do love it! We make this one a lot. I've taken this to family parties, church parties, and I always have people asking me for the recipe. This one has been a life saver to me lately because it's a low GI meal, no grains to battle with here. It is good though with some crusty bread... not going to lie. 

Ingredients:

1-2 chicken breasts shredded

1 medium onion chopped (or not…I hate onions so I omit this step)

1 2/3 tsp. garlic powder

1 Tbsp. olive oil

3 cans Great Northern Beans – drained and rinsed (or if using precooked I do 4 cups)

1 14.5 oz can chicken broth

1 small can diced green chilies

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. dried oregano

½ tsp. black pepper

¼ tsp. cayenne pepper (I use half this amount)

1 tsp. ground cumin

-          Cook chicken in pan with onion, garlic powder, and olive oil. Then shred chicken, put it back in the pan.

-          Add drained and rinsed beans and the remainder of the ingredients. Bring to a boil if cooking on stove and boil for 5 minutes.

-          Reduce to simmer for 30 minutes while covered.

-          If cooking in a crock pot just put all ingredients in and cook for 4 hours

-          Just before serving add 1/2 cup (or a few scoops) sour cream or cream. Stir well and serve immediately.

-          Double recipe for 8-10 people.

** These are also good as left overs. Something I like to do is eat it the next day as lettuce wraps. Easy on the "juice" but spoon the bean mixture into lettuce leafs and enjoy!

 

Black and white enchiladas...

This is one of my favorite meals! They are a healthy-ish enchilada (depends on how much cheese you put on top I guess)... not full of cream of whatever. Just beans, chicken, and chili's.

Ingredients:
1 cup cooked black beans (if using canned, drain and rinse well)
1 cup cooked white great northern beans
1-2 chicken breasts cooked and cut into bite sized pieces
1 can diced green chili's with the juice
dash of salt, pepper, and garlic powder
corn or white tortillas
1 can green or red enchilada sauce (I like the green with this one)
shredded cheese for the top

1- Once your chicken is cooked, add beans, chicken and chili's to a pan. Season with pepper, salt, and garlic powder (just a little of each). Cook for about 5 minutes on medium heat to combine all the ingredients together.

2- Prepare a 9 x 13 baking dish with cooking spray. Grab yourself a tortilla and fill the center with a few spoonful's of filling as shown in picture below. Now, if you are using corn tortillas warm them in the microwave or on a pan before using. I prefer this meal with flour tortillas, but have been using corn lately because it's a low GI grain and fits my diet. So if you use corn, prepare them before filling them.Once tortillas are filled, roll them and place them in the baking dish.

3- Continue filling tortillas until your pan is full or you are out of tortilla's and filling. I usually fill one large pan using about 10 flour tortillas (I made a little extra with this). Corn are much smaller and you can make a lot more.

4- Cover tortillas with enchilada sauce and cheese.

5- Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until cheese is melted and the edges of the tortillas are starting to get brown and crunchy. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving to cool off a bit.

These are really yummy as left overs too so I usually make more than we can eat in a sitting and save them for lunches. This recipe is easy to adjust for a larger group. Instead of one cup of each bean do 1 1/2 or 2. I'm not really exact on my measurements of everything. I prefer to cook without measuring things if I can get away with it. This is one recipe that it's easy to do that.

This recipe is also very versatile. I like using just black beans with red enchilada sauce, or I will mix the black and white like this for variety. Serve with a side salad for a healthy dinner!

Beans...

 Let's talk about beans shall we? I don't post recipes up here very often, but a few people have been asking me about my bean recipes lately so I figured this would be a good way to share those. So for today I want to share how I cook my beans at home, and then the rest of the week (and probably into next week) I will share a different bean recipe that we love.

We eat a lot of beans around here. Beans are so good for you, and super tasty. There are lots of things you can do with beans. They are inexpensive and easy to make. We mostly eat black beans and white great northern beans... so those are what my recipes call for. One thing that beans are known for and good for is their fiber content. For example, one cup of black beans has 19 grams of fiber in it! That's huge! So unless you are munching on fruits and veggies all day long to get your fiber, you really should be eating beans when you can.

**Little disclaimer time here... I feel silly even saying this, but I think I need to address the whole "you eat beans you get gas" issue here. I just have to say that I have not noticed that we are a super gassy family or anything. I really don't think that eating beans causes you to have more of that going on. That is unless your body is not used to eating them and then you might have an adjustment period.We eat beans a few times a week usually, and we don't have problems with it... at least anymore than I already have living with two boys mind you. Anyway... if you stay away from beans because you are worried about this I say... you just need to eat more beans. Regularly... okay, on with our bean topic. 

I used to buy beans in the cans at the store but soon found that it was much easier and less expensive in the long run to cook hard beans at home. I usually will do a batch of beans on a Sunday night when we are running low and don't have anything else going on. I don't soak my beans over night, it only takes me about 1 hour 40 minutes start to finish to cook a whole batch of beans. I can't remember where I first read about this bean cooking method from, but here is what I do.

1- Get a big pot. Fill it half full of beans (or however many cups you want to do... and bag of hard beans, doesn't have to be exact measurements here). I usually fill my pot halfway because they will double in size and you need to put lots of water in there too.

2- Fill pot with water, covering beans by about 1-2 inches.

3- Put on stove on high and bring beans to a boil. Boil for 15 minutes.

4- Once 15 minutes is up, drain your beans and rinse with water (I've heard this helps with the gassiness factor too by the way).

5- Put beans back in pot and cover with water again, covering beans by 1-2 inches of water.

6- Bring beans to a boil and once boiling, cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes on medium/low (I still like mine to have a little boil going on, but you don't need it to be on high still). KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR BEANS... meaning don't let the water run out and burn your beans. If the water starts to get low add more water. Also, I've noticed that while cooking white beans they don't need this long, so check them after 1 hour.

7- When the time is up, check beans to make sure they are firm but soft... not soggy and mushy. Drain about half of the water, leaving water in the bottom section of your beans (I hope that makes sense).

8- Now I like to season my beans. I add 1 TBSP of cumin, garlic powder, and chili powder to the beans. Stir in and let sit until beans cool down and can soak in the seasoning (I usually leave them 30 mins to 1 hour).

9- When beans are cooled, put them in freezer safe Tupperware containers and put them in the freezer or refrigerator for future use. I only put the beans we will use in the next few days in the fridge, and freeze the rest.

Pretty simple I think! If I need to use beans for a meal I will just move a container into the fridge and let it thaw out in there. I like that cooking them this way doesn't take too much time, and I'm able to control the salt content in our beans which is important for health reasons. And they really are super tasty with the seasonings.

Tomorrow... my favorite black and white enchiladas. Yum!

Holiday salad...

I volunteered to bring salad to Thanksgiving this year. I love salad! I love making it, eating it... I guess you can say I'm kind of a salad snob. I came up with this combination last year for Christmas and made it again this year for Thanksgiving. It was just as wonderful as I remembered it! Which was good because there were lots of naughty Thanksgiving foods that could have covered my plate, but I tried to be good and ate a lot of this yummy salad instead.

Here's what's in it:
 - green leaf lettuce (my favorite kind to make salads with)
 - grilled asparagus
 - pomegranate seeds
 - blue cheese
 - candied almonds

The combination was pretty to look at and amazing! To candy the almonds I used about 1 cup of slivered almonds and 1/2 cup of brown sugar (brown sugar is supposedly low glycemic... I don't buy it. It's still sugar! But I did use it and pretended that it was okay to eat). Put those two things in a sauce pan over medium high heat. Stir until the sugar melts and coats the nuts. Make sure you watch them and stir the whole time... they can burn if left unattended. They will be a nice gooey brown. Then spread out over parchment paper and let dry. Break apart into salad.

** A little update on my new eating plan. It's going really great! I'm totally used to eating this way now. I don't feel hungry during the day anymore and I eat when I'm suppose to and eat things that are good for my body. Pretty great if you ask me! I'm kicking myself a little for going on about how the weight was "melting off my body". HA! Seriously, that's when it pretty much ended. I didn't lose another pound until a week ago and now I'm down 9 lbs total. Oh well... it's something right!

Thanksgiving was hard. I reserved my salad plate for the naughty foods and I did eat a few bites of mashed potatoes and gravy and two little delightful candied yams. They were so yummy, but I only let myself eat a little bit. Pie, was another story though. I told myself I could eat one piece of my mom's amazing lemon meringue pie which is my favorite in the whole world. Well... I at two pieces of lemon and one piece of chocolate pie! I know, so super naughty. Oh well. And then the next day I went to a going away party for my best friend who is moving and ate sushi. I was hoping they would have brown rice there for the sushi but they did not. So I totally ate white rice sushi which is a HUGE no no. Oh well. Now I'm back on track and feeling better about slipping last weekend. I feel better too confessing to all of you here. But I guess that's not too bad for 1 1/2 months of eating low glycemic right?

Chocolate truffles...

This year for Christmas treats we made some yummy truffles. We did a variation of this recipe (I think we added a little butter in there somewhere). We heated up the cream until it was really hot (not boiling) and then added the chocolate and let it sit for about 5 minutes off of the heat before we stirred it all together.

We rolled them in coconut, crushed up candy canes, and cocoa. My favorite were the cocoa ones, I like the bitter mixed with the sweet taste.

These could be done up for Valentines too. Instead of doing the candy cane version you could roll them in red sprinkles or something... lots of possibilities here!

Quinoa...

I've been wanting to branch out and try quinoa for a while now. So I bought some and it sat in my cupboard for a week until my husband saw it and got curious. We tried it out one night and are completely obsessed now! It is so good! It has such great texture to it. I'm hoping to get this book for Christmas so that I can try out new quinoa recipes.

One night we whipped up this tasty dinner. It was so yummy! I've been trying to find recipes and meals that I can make without meat and I've been struggling at that. I'm not trying to go vegetarian or anything, but I just don't like being so dependant on meat to make a good dinner. But this is meat free! And it was awesome!


We cooked the quinoa with vegetable broth (2 to 1). Mixed in black beans, kidney beans, tomatoes, cilantro, corn, some cumin and pepper. It really was so good. We put it on warm corn tortillas with sour cream and some Gorgonzola cheese (another awesome recent discovery). It really was amazing.

The popular man of the night was Mr. Tapatio. I've never been a real hot sauce fan (I'd only ever tried Tabasco) but this is really good too. Nice spice, not an overpowering vinegar taste like most other hot sauces... yum!

Are you a quinoa fan? How do you like to eat your quinoa?

Chicken and broccoli over rice...

This is my favorite meal ever!!!!!

I would just like to let you know that right off the bat. This really is my favorite meal. It's a family recipe, my mom used to make it for me for my birthday dinners and now that I'm "the mom" I get to make it whenever I want, which is usually about twice a month. This is also a go to recipe for me when I have company coming over for dinner, because I know that they will love it (unless they totally hate broccoli). I'm not saying it's super healthy, it's not bad. I'm just saying it's amazing and you really should try it out because it's that good.

Chicken and Broccoli over rice...

Main Ingredients

2 chicken breasts (or more if you like lots of chicken)

2 bunches fresh broccoli

1/4 c. Parmesan cheese

paprika for sprinkling

Sauce

2 c. milk

2 pkg. cream cheese

1 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. garlic salt

3/4 c. Parmesan cheese

- First boil the chicken breasts until fully cooked, and set aside to cool.

Then steam the broccoli until it's tender and set aside to cool.

- Mix all ingredients of the sauce together in a double broiler. I don't have a double broiler, so I just use a saucepan of water and use a Pyrex glass measuring cup to hold all the ingredients. Heat until the cream cheese is melted and mixed well with everything else. I like to use a wire whisk to mix this all together so that it's nice and creamy.

- In a 9x13 baking dish, lay the broccoli down on the bottom as the first layer. Then spoon 1/2 of the sauce over the broccoli. Then shred your chicken into manageable pieces and layer it on top of the sauce. Spoon the rest of the sauce on top of the chicken. Then sprinkle the 1/4 c. Parmesan cheese and paprika over the top until it looks pretty.

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook the dish for about 25 minutes or until the Parmesan cheese is melty and it's bubbling. Let cool for about 15 minutes before serving.

- Serve over rice.

If you have a small family like me this may seem like a lot of food for 2-3 people, but it makes great leftovers too! Make some extra rice and store them both together in serving size tupperware dishes. I'm handing you gold here... pure gold. Smothered in Parmesan and cream cheese... you can thank me later.

Limes...

+

I love limes. I think that they are one of the greatest things on the planet. I love their tartness, and how they intensive the flavor of other foods. Limes are in season right now so they taste so yummy! We've been eating a whole lot of lime around here lately. Here are a few of my favorite lime recipes...





... Shrimp Tacos. I made these twice last week, and might be making it again tonight. I'm in love with this one. You season the shrimp with lime and the pico de gallo. It's just so fresh and yummy!


... Brazilian Limeade. Made this the other night after a long hot day and some time at the pool. It was wonderful! So lime-y! This one is a must to try (thanks Sarah!).


... Sprite + Lime. My favorite easy beverage. So good...


... Lime-Cilantro Rice. I haven't tried this one yet, but it's on the menu tonight! It reminds me of the rice they have at Chipotle, which I'm a big fan of. So hopefully it's great (I'm sure it will be). I'm even going be brave and try the pineapple with it.


... Pineapple Mango Salsa. This is another one that I am dying to try. A nice fresh summer salsa, loaded with lime. Lovely...

My favorite pasta...

This is too good not to share...

I have a favorite pasta dish... it's so easy it's pretty much a no brainer! It only needs four main ingredients and they are things that I usually have around all the time. Husband thinks that it's pretty good too!

Here's how it's made...

Boil up some pasta noodles, any kind will do. Drain the water and then add:

olive oil

lemon juice

a little garlic salt

Parmesan cheese

That's it! No measurements, just add it in and taste, see what flavors you want a little more of. Sometimes I like it more lemon-y, sometimes a little more garlic-y. It always tastes light and fresh which I love!

I threw in some grilled chicken and asparagus last night and called it a complete meal. Yum!

Chocolate chip cookie...

I've been on the hunt for a while... for the best chocolate chip cookie out there. You see, I'd been making this one recipe forever... and I noticed that my husband would eat one and call it good. That sort of bothered me, because if I'm going to try and be a good wife and have warm cookies available then I think they should get eaten right? So one time I asked him if he didn't like chocolate chip cookies or something and he said, "Umm... I like them, just not those ones..." Oh please!

So I've tried out about six different recipes now, all claiming to be the best... each time husband has not given his utmost approval. Until yesterday...

These may be the winners... they were dang good! Crisp on the outside yet still chewy in the middle... husband took a little baggie to work this morning...

Cranberry Tea...

I posted this recipe on my family blog last Thanksgiving but it's worth a repeat! I love it, I can't wait to make it on Thursday...

Cranberry Tea

1 cinnamon stick

1 bag cranberries

12 cups water

Place all items in a pot over medium heat for two hours.

In a separate pan combine:

1 cups prepared orange juice

2 cups sugar

2 cups water

Boil and then add to the cranberry mixture. Stir it up and strain before serving!

Yum... can't wait!

Coconut Macaroons...

Oh man, these are the best cookies ever. If you like coconut that is. We are coconut fans over here and we can not get enough of these cookies. I was looking for a good macaroon recipe around Christmas time and found this one over at all recipes. I picked this one because it said that it had won many first place ribbons at the state fair... ya sounds like a good one to me! Also, I like to cook, but I have a hard time with recipes that have a million different ingredients in them. I like to keep things simple and this is a very simple recipe.

Coconut Macaroons

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
5 1/2 cups flaked coconut
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, coconut and salt. Stir in the sweetened condensed milk and vanilla using your hands until well blended. Use an ice cream scoop (or you know, a spoon) to drop dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about golf ball size.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until coconut is toasted.

*** I like to insert my own little goodness in here. I think that most things taste better dipped in chocolate (at least when it comes to cookies) so I like to melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips and dip the cookies in that. Then I put them in the fridge for the chocolate to harden. At Christmas we also dipped the chocolate part into little crushed up candy canes. Very sweet and good!