My favorite dinner recipes from around the web

I shared some of my favorite breakfast and lunch recipes here and here, but today I am talking about whats for dinner!  Here are some favorites of mine, some are more summery and some are more for the fall/winter…so still suitable for May in Minnesota.  Ugh. 

Grilled Avocados

These are MY FAVORITE thing to have in the summer.   I serve them exactly as pictured, with quinoa salad on the side.  My quinoa salad is literally just cooked quinoa, black beans, red onion, and jarred salsa all mixed together. Such a yummy and healthy meal.

African Sweet Potato Peanut Soup

I remember the first time I had sweet potato peanut soup, it was from the deli at a local co-op I visit sometimes for lunch.  It was truly a life-changing experience for me, I had never tasted such flavors and I knew immediately that I would forever be trying to recreate it.  I made at least 3 big batches of this last fall.  I had a soup exchange party with my friends and this is what I made.  I followed the recipe for the most part, but I used vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, and I pureed it after adding the beans to make it smoother.  This is definitely favorite soup of mine, which says a lot because I am obsessed with soup.

Ratatouille with Polenta

I love this meal, there is something so comforting about warm polenta on a cold day.  I don't like the tubes of prepared polenta, so I cook my own and serve the veggies on top of it.  I also leave out the eggplant as its one of the only foods I don't like.  I've made this with a can of diced tomatoes instead of the fresh ones and it still turned out well.   Talk about a cheap meal!

Crock Pot Italian Sloppy Joes

I couldn't get away with all vegetarian recipes because Mark would go crazy after awhile.  However, we haven't had meat for dinner for at least 4 nights now and he hasn't complained.  That's neither here nor there though, because these sloppy joes are great!  I love sloppy joes and have been known to regularly use good ole manwich with ground turkey, but this is a special twist on your typical sloppy joe. I love that its a crock pot recipe too because these are really easy to serve to a crowd.  I made these when Mark had a few of his friends staying with us on a weekend and they all went back for extra helpings!

Skillet Cassoulet

I came across this recipe when I was trying to figure out how to use up some ingredients I had on hand.  I love that its made up of a lot of stuff that I usually have already, and everything else is easy to find.  I'm not a big meat eater, but I can usually find it in me to eat ham, I love the saltiness.  This makes a big batch and the leftovers get better as the flavors blend together even more.  

I hope you guys try some of these, let me know if you do!  I can stand by all of them!

Paleo banana bread

I'm definitely NOT on the paleo diet, and never intend to be, but yesterday I did a little paleo baking.  In all honestly, I actually have a quite negative view of the paleo diet and other restrictive diets, so maybe you're wondering why I made paleo banana bread in the first place.  While I don't believe that people should be grain-free, I do enjoy learning how to use new ingredients.  I had some almond flour that had been taking up space around here for way too long.  I got it to make paleo cookies for a friend who follows the diet, but the cookies were an epic fail, so I wanted to use up the almond flour in a different recipe.  I won't lie to you and say this is the BEST banana bread I've ever had.  No, the best banana bread would be the one with the flour and butter and sugar.  BUT…if you must be on a special diet, this is a pretty good alternative to the real stuff.  It's not much to look at though, but I can promise it tastes better than it looks. 

2 cups almond flour

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup agave syrup

2 ripe bananas, mashed

Chocolate chips (optional- mine weren't paleo)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spray loaf pan with cooking spray.

Mix together almond flour, ground cinnamon, and baking soda in a bowl.

Beat two eggs in a bowl. Mix in water, almond extract, agave syrup, mashed bananas, and vanilla bean paste. Add banana mixture to almond flour mixture; mix until no dry areas are visible. Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake banana bread in the preheated oven until brown and crisp around the edges, about 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Favorite Lunch Recipes

I'm back today with more of my favorite recipes from around the web- this time all lunch recipes!  I usually have a hearty salad for lunch with some protein and healthy grains.  Bonus points for added fruits and veggies!  I love to make a big batch of one of these on Sunday afternoon and portion out my lunches for the week.  It saves so much time and energy for someone like me who is always very concerned with what my lunch is going to be!  As you can tell from my selection below, I hardly eat any meat, but I'm sure these would all be great with some grilled chicken or shrimp.  

THIS quinoa salad with apple, chickpeas, toasted almonds & apple cider vinaigrette is TO DIE FOR.  Also, I'm obsessed with apples.

I totally love this salad as well- the lightened up protein power goddess bowl from ohsheglow.com, which you need to go check out because I get tons of recipes from that blog.  I am in love with the tahini dressing!

This is another great lunch salad.  Quinoa with black beans, avocado, and cumin-lime dressing.

This salad is really tasty, but to be honest, sometimes I seriously skip a few steps and just mix cooked quinoa with a jar of salsa and a can of black beans.  It gets the job done.  

Of course, I don't always have time to make something like this.  My usual go-to is cottage cheese with pineapple and a piece of nut butter toast.  Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

What are some of your go-to lunches??

Homemade Rye Bread

My mother in law makes all of her own bread from scratch always sends us home with at least one loaf of rye bread.  We usually savor it until its gone and then wait it out until the next loaf comes our way, but after finishing off a loaf about 2 weeks ago, I decided that I'd try out her recipe and see if I could make something similar.  

The bread tastes so good, it is perfectly sweet and yeasty.  I didn't get mine to rise properly, as seen in the photo above, but it still tastes great and toasts really well.  I will allow more time for it to rise next time, and I think I'll try using the kitchen aid mixer with the dough hook.  Also, I'm planning to add more rye flour to my next batch because usually her loafs are much darker in color and have a strong rye flavor.  Suggestions welcome.  My MIL is going to bake some with me next time we go to visit, so I don't want to completely embarrass myself!  Here is her recipe (passed down from her grandmother) that I followed:

Mix and let stand together for 10 minutes

1/2 c. water

2 pkg yeast

1 T sugar

In large bowl mix:

1 1/2 c. warm milk

1 T salt

1/2 c. brown sugar

Add (I warm this all in the microwave):

1/2 c. melted butter

2 T. molasses (I used Plantation blackstrap)

2 T Dark Karo Syrup

Add Yeast mixture, 1 cup rye flour and 1 cup of white flour.

I beat with a mixer for a few minutes. 

If mixture is too thin, add more flour 1 cup at a time. 

Recipe calls for 6 c of white flour, but I usually don't use it all. 

Continue adding flour until soft dough and kneed till elastic and smooth.

 Place in a warm place to raise to double in size. Knead down, raise again. Then put in bread pans, smoothing out the dough. Let raise in bread pans.  Bake 350 degrees for one hour.

This dough made 2 loafs this size.  

Favorite Breakfast Recipes from Around the Web

I've been wanting to share some favorite recipes for awhile now, but I have so many of them that I decided to break this up into several posts.  To start out your Monday morning, here are some favorite breakfast recipes that I've found online.  Breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day, but it happens to be my absolute favorite meal as well!  I hope you try some of these, they are so tasty!

First of all, this is my absolute go-to on the weekends or days off from work- Cookie Dough Baked Oatmeal.  If you have never made any recipes from this website, do yourself a favor and pick one to make today.  I've tried more than I care to mention, and I haven't ever had a bad result, plus they are all healthy!  This is my favorite though.

While you're browsing Chocolatecoveredkatie.com, go ahead and check out this recipe for pumpkin bread in a bowl.  I make this all through the fall when I have a lot of canned pumpkin, but it would be good anytime of year.

Another favorite of mine is this raspberry & cardamom cream chia pudding.  If you've never had chia pudding before, give it a try before judging it based on how weird it looks.  And I won't lie, the texture is weird at first too, but it won't seem that weird after you start eating it. 

I don't usually get to eat fancy breakfasts like these, but I love it when I have time to actually make something instead of just opening up some yogurt or making toast.  Let me know if you have any go-to breakfast recipes, I'm always on the hunt for more!

Spicy Vegetarian Chili

Although I no longer consider myself vegan, I still do gravitate towards vegan or vegetarian dishes.  I love making soup and chili that is meat free, because its such an easy way to eat a vegetarian meal!  This is one of my favorite chili recipes, I always make it at least once a year.  This is the first year I made it in the crock pot though, and it turned out just as good!  Here's the rundown:

Chop 1 onion 2 carrots.  Place in crock pot.

Add 1 chopped green pepper and 1 chopped red pepper.

Add:

 a 28oz can of diced tomatoes with liquid

2-3 chipotle peppers in adobo, chopped

1 can black beans

2 cans kidney beans

3 cloves garlic

2-3 tsp cumin

1 tbsp chili powder

Stir.  (These are very complicated steps.)

I let this sit on low for about 6 hours. It makes a huge batch, we got 3 nights of dinners out of this! It is especially delicious topped with cheese and sour cream! 

 ~Enjoy!

Link up your recipe with these ladies and find lots of new ones!!

Strawberry Aperol Sorbet

I really can't take any credit for this recipe at all.  All I can say is that I discovered Aperol when we were in Austria, and it changed my life.  The second I read this recipe in the latest Martha Stewart Living, I knew I had to make it.

A little background on Aperol.  When Mark and I were in Salzburg, I noticed that virtually every woman was drinking the same thing, but it wasn't a drink that I could identify by looking at.  It looked sort of like orangey-iced tea in a wine glass.  After a few failed attempts at ordering drinks that I thought were the right one, I resorted to a totally normal solution.  Eavesdropping.  I made sure to listen to the ladies at the table next to me as they ordered, and I finally heard the magic words- APEROL SPRITZ.  I had no idea what aperol was, but I knew it was good.  Turns out its a bitter orange and rhubarb aperitif.  I should probably do an entire post on the aperol spritz cocktail, stay tuned lovelies.

Back to business.

Martha Stewart's recipe for Strawberry Aperol Sorbet is one of the best sorbets I've ever had.  It's so simple, 4 ingredients and super fast to make.  Make it now! Right now! Unless you're pregnant, in which case I am really sorry that you are missing this and I will personally make you some and deliver it to you upon the birth of your child.

When I say this is easy, I mean easy.  All you need to do is blend one pound of strawberries with 1/2 cup of sugar.

Stir in the zest from 1 orange and 1/3 cup of Aperol.  Confession- I used 1/2 cup.  Don't judge.  I also skipped the part of the recipe that told me to chill this all in a bowl for an hour before throwing it in the ice cream maker- I really didn't see the point.  Straight into the ice cream maker it went.  It only took about 15 minutes to reach the right consistency, but I had to "check" it several times, you know...just to make sure.

Pour the sorbet into a frozen loaf pan, cover, and store in the freezer.

Try to not eat it all in one sitting.  You're going to want to enjoy this for a few nights.  Trust me.

Try this recipe and all the other tasty meals and treats shared on Ashley and Jessica's link up!  Happy Taste of Tuesday everyone!

Tropical Fruit Salad

When I say that I love the way Banana Boat sunscreen and tanning oil smells, who knows what I'm talking about?? If you know, then you will love this salad.  It tastes the way that Banana Boat should. By the way, no sunscreen tastes good.  I know this much.

This recipe for Tropical Fruit Salad is absolutely amazing!  I made it twice the other week...seriously.  And I ate it all SO FAST.  It is suuuuper simple too.   Especially because I bought prepackaged coconut flakes instead of cracking open my own coconut.  Ain't nobody got time for that. 

Also, who knows how to crack open a coconut.  I sure as heck don't.

Anywho, back to business.  In order to prepare this delicious little escape to the islands...do as I say and:

Cut open a papaya.  This has got to be the weirdest fruit ever and the seeds really gross me out, but these are actually super easy to cut up into little cubes.  Do that.

Same with the mango and the pineapple (which isn't pictured):

Rough chop some coconut flakes, I didn't measure, but this is the amount I used:

Cut up a some banana just before serving.  I brought this to work for lunch all week long and used 1 banana for each serving.

The only thing that could possibly make this salad better is some rum, the beach, and some more rum.  I can't picture anyone not liking this.  Unless they don't like fruit, that would be a problem.  Or coconut, in which case I would call them cocoNUTS- see what I did there?

Go make it, you won't be sorry!  Also, make sure you check out the other recipes that are posted for Taste of Tuesday!  They can all be found by visiting either Ashley or Jessica.

Green Gazpacho!

Before I get started with this Taste of Tuesday recipe, I want to announce the next Blogger Yoga class!  The class will be at 10am on July 21 near Lake of the Isles.  I hope a lot of you can make it, this is really the only day I can do it so I'm sorry if it doesn't work for you! Check back tomorrow for more details!!

With that said, it is now time to talk about food!  If you aren't already sharing your recipes with Ashley and Jessica, hop on that bandwagon! 

The past week has been suuuuper hot in MN, which of course is a welcomed change from our dreadful winter/spring. One of my favorite summer meals is gazpacho, and I am always trying new recipes for it!  I had a great green gazpacho from Whole Foods the other week,  so I tried to recreate it  with this recipe here....not sure it is quite the same, but it will do! I made a few changes to the recipe, so pay attention!

First, chop one small onion, a green bell pepper (seeds removed) and 2 cucumbers (seeds also removed.)

Throw them in a food processor and combine until they are almost pureed.  Add cilantro and parsley. I pretty much doubled the amount from the original recipe because I love these flavors.

Add 2 tbsp of EVOO, 1 avocado, 1 cup of water and lemon juice.  I used the entire lemon from this, which is different from the recipe.  Season with salt. Puree until smooth.

  Chill in the fridge for a few hours so its super cold. Enjoy!

I just got some good bread to serve this with to round out the meal.  It's so easy to make and it makes enough for me to have it a few more times this week!  Mark liked it, but he's not as into vegetables and cold soup as I am, so I will probably be the one finishing it!

Taste of Tuesday: Honey Rhubarb Scones

If you remember a few weeks back, I posted this about having a ton of rhubarb and no clue what to do with it.  I ultimately decided to make the last recipe on that page for the scones.  The original recipe can be found here, so I won't repeat everything, but I did make a few tiny changes.

First of all, the original recipe calls for vanilla yogurt, but I had plain greek yogurt on hand, so I used that instead.  I added a little splash of vanilla to the dough also.  The only other difference between my scones and the recipe is that I used lavender honey, also because its what I had on hand.  If when I make these again, I think I'll add some orange zest to them, that would be tasty!

Exhibit A: Gigantic rhubarb plant:

I used my kitchen-aid mixer to whip up the dough.  It was very easy, just mix together:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 6 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 Tbsp. honey, plus more for drizzling
• 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

Add the rhubarb (I used 3 large stalks) after simmering it in a saucepan with 2 tbsp of brown sugar.

Form a round disc of dough, cut into 8 scone-shaped pieces (btw, why are scones always shaped like triangles?) and bake at 400 for 15 minutes.  Voila!

Very easy and very tasty.  Especially when eaten straight out of the oven!

Be sure to visit the website for the original post AND check out the other recipes from this week's Taste of Tuesday hosted by Ashley and Jessica.

Mediterranean Pasta Salad

I'm not exactly sure where this recipe came from, but I've been making it for years.  It's so easy and makes a ton of leftovers to have throughout the week.  It's also really adaptable and can easily be made vegetarian, vegan, or gluten free (with gluten free pasta.)  So, let's get to it for this week's Taste of Tuesday! 

Fill a large pot of water and bring to a boil.  Add an entire box of pasta (I used fusilli this time, but I use penne or bow tie sometimes.)

First, chop 1/2 of a red onion and place in a LARGE bowl.

Saute some chicken sausage (or omit for vegetarian/vegan.)  Add to bowl.

Add 1/2 jar of oil packed sun-dried tomatoes to the onion.

Add as many olives as you like.  I usually fill one of the small containers at an olive bar with a mix of kalamata and green olives for this.

Once the pasta is cooked and drained, add an entire package of feta cheese (omit for vegan option.)

Add an entire bag of baby spinach to the bowl.

Immediately top with the hot pasta and allow the spinach to wilt and feta to melt.  Mix thoroughly.

Drizzle with good EVOO, red wine vinegar,  and juice from 1 lemon.  Season with salt & pepper.

 Enjoy!!

Serves 6.

1 box of short cut pasta

1/2 red onion

4 chicken sausages

1/2 jar sun-dried tomatoes

1/2 pint container of good olives

1cup crumbled feta cheese

1 bag of baby spinach leaves

juice from 1 lemon

Extra virgin olive oil to taste

Red wine vinegar to taste

Salt

Pepper