basil – Fervent Foodie

Chicken Pesto Paninis

February 7, 2012 9 Comments

It’s Thursday–the day I spend approximately two to three hours scouring the internet, flipping through cookbooks, and rifling through my big black book in search of amazing recipes and/or inspiration for things to cook this weekend. It’s a ritual that borders somewhere between dedication and obsession.

Nothing cheeses me off more than spending all those hours (HOURS!) researching on top of shelling out my hard earned moo-lah on ingredients, taking the time to cook the darned thing, and having it turn out to be a flop. After trying one-too-many frown-evoking recipes, I adopted a new blog bylaw in 2012: only post recipes that I would recommend (without hesitation) to a friend. Even though I painstakingly snap photos of everything I cook, if it ain’t delicious, it ain’t going on the blog. Jarrod knows exactly what I mean when I ask if a dish is “blog worthy,” and he’s pretty truthful about so-so meals (in a I’m-just-glad-you-cooked-please-don’t-make-me-do-this sort of way).

When he REALLY likes something, he doesn’t hesitate to let me know. Like this Chicken Pesto Panini, for instance, which he declared the BEST SANDWICH OF HIS LIFE.

If those aren’t fighting words, I don’t know what are.

Recipes

Spinach Caprese Quesadilla

August 4, 2010 5 Comments

While at work yesterday, my mind kept drifting to dinner–but nothing was sounding good to me. Since I have an abundance of tomatoes and basil (thank you backyard garden for your fruitfulness 🙂 ) I decided to do something caprese inspired.

Caprese is one of my all-time favorite Italian dishes, and it typically consists of tomato, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.

Before diving into to the caprese, I got to work on some brussel sprouts. I halved 10 brussel sprouts, trimmed down any rough ends of the stem, and then made a small slit down the core of each sprout half. I read that making this little slit on the rougher part of the sprout helps to ensure even cooking. I put the sprouts on a cookie sheet that was liberally sprayed with cooking spray, then seasoned them with S&P, and gave them a good toss before throwing them into a 415 degree oven for 17 minutes.

Brussel sprouts!

Now onto the caprese! First, I sliced up 1 roma tomato and 1 Sargento light mozzarella string cheese and put them into a bowl:

Then, I drizzled the tomato and mozzarella with 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar and a 1/2 tsp olive oil and sprinkled with some salt and pepper. Next I added 3 sliced up fresh basil leaves and tossed everything to coat.

Meanwhile, I topped a Mama Lupe’s Low Carb tortilla with some fresh spinach and topped with the tomato mozzarella mixture:

I topped this off with a second Mama Lupe’s low carb tortilla, then I popped this baby onto the George foreman grill for about 5 minutes (until the tortilla was crisp and the cheese was melty):

None of these pictures do the quesadilla justice! If you like caprese, you will love this:

I’m hoping I get some tips on taking pictures of food indoors at the Healthy Living Summit! I can never seem to get indoor pictures quite right!

By the way, if you love caprese too check out the recipe I tried for hot caprese! I also added a “rating” scale to my recipe page

Stats on dinner: 325 calories, 43g carbs, 12g fat, 20g protein, 14g fiber

A few hours after dinner, it was time for my night time snack. I was craving a green monster smoothie, so I put the following into the blender:

1/4 cup Stonyfield Farms Fat Free Yogurt
1/2 cup Almond Breeze unsweetened vanilla almond milk
2 cups spinach
1/2 cup fresh frozen strawberries
1/2 cup fresh frozen blueberries
1 packet Truvia
1 ice cube

Green Monster:

This guy was so much GREENER in person than in these photos… my camera was being stubborn last night!

Stats on the green monster: 119 calories, 24g carbs, 2g fat, 8g protein, 6g fiber

Question: what’s your favorite “healthified” Italian dish?

Restaurants, Travel

Last night I ate like a queen

July 15, 2010 6 Comments

For dinner last night, Jarrod and I headed to Coco Osteria. We found this restaurant last time we were in Charlotte and loved it not only for the food but also the location and lovely outside patio right in the heart of uptown Charlotte.

First thing first, we ordered a bottle of wine:

Though we love wine, Jarrod and I are not wine experts. We usually order wine based on which name sounds the most appealing. This wine was fantastic!

We ordered some bruschetta to split:

I think bruschetta is our #1 favorite pick for appetizers. We get it pretty much everywhere we go, and it is ALWAYS amazing. I love balsamic.. and tomatoes… and basil… and bread… 😀

We also had some of the house beans and bread, which was so simple and so tasty:

When we go out to eat, Jarrod and I often split an appetizer and dinner. That way we get to try lots of things without overeating (at least not TOO much). We split the bucatini with grilled chicken for our main entre. This consisted of hollow spaghetti, caramelized onions, smoked pancetta, tomato sauce & shaved pecorino cheese plus the grilled chicken we requested:

A fabulous first night of food on vacation!

Interval Training: Day #1, Week #5

This morning, I woke up around 6:30am to get my run in for the day before the streets of Charlotte got too busy. I am now at 3 intervals of 3 minutes walking and 7 minutes running. I was a little nervous about the jump in running time from 5 minutes to 7, but I think being in a different city really energized me. I had to do most of my running on the sidewalk, which made me worry about my knee. So I tried to “think light” as I was running and put as little impact as possible on my legs.

I really didn’t have a route in mind, I just kind of set out and turned whenever I came across a red light:

There are so many beautiful buildings in Charlotte, and also very many beautiful restaurants I’d like to try 😉

Recipes, What I ate

Pita Pizza & a Green Monster

July 7, 2010 7 Comments

Some nights I am really amped to try out a new recipe…. And some nights, I just want pizza. Tonight was one of THOSE nights.

I decided to use a Joseph’s Middle East Bakery Low Carb pita as my base. I topped that off with:

1/4 cup Classico Fire Roasted/Tomato Garlic spaghetti sauce
Sprinkling of garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley, dried oregano, black pepper, and red pepper flakes
1 ounce thinly sliced grilled chicken (leftover from the batch I grilled up sunday night)
1 light babybel cheese sliced into four super thin discs
1 tbsp fat free ricotta
thinly sliced red onion
a couple thinly sliced cherry tomatoes

Popped it into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Then, I topped it with some chopped basil from the back yard garden:

I served the pizza up with a side salad that consisted of romaine, cherry tomatoes, red onion, banana peppers, and 2 tbsp Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Northern Italian dressing with Basil and Romano:

The salad was delicious. That Ken sure does know a thing or two about dressings 😉

And the pizza was.. in a word… Umm…. YUM. Ok, that’s two words, but regardless this pizza really hit the spot:

Soooo goood!!! Why don’t I make pizza more often?!

Check out this huge banana pepper I’ve got growing in the back yard:

He might have to go on my next salad 🙂

Stats on the pizza: 197 calories, 20g carbs, 6g fat, 20g protein, 5g fiber

Stats on the salad: 97 calories, 13g carbs, 5g fat, 3g protein, 4g fiber

All together now: 294 calories, 33g carbs, 11g fat, 23g protein, 9g fiber

I’ve previously eluded to the fact that I’m a messy cook. Given the simplicity of my dinner tonight, you’d probably assume that my kitchen would be in pretty good shape. Whelp, you’d be wrong!

Take a look at this monstrosity:

I wish I were kidding. Can you imagine the disasters I could create if I had a big kitchen?

After dinner, I couldn’t wait for late-night snack time to roll around. I decided earlier in the day that I’d make up a green monster smoothie for my snack to give me lots of energy for my run in the morning.

Threw the following into the blender:

1/2 cup Almond Breeze Unsweetened Almond Milk
1/4 cup Oikos plain Greek Yogurt
1 packet Truvia (stevia) all natural sweetener
1/2 cup fresh frozen strawberries
1/4 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup fresh SPINACH
3 ice cubes

It’s green. It’s delicious.

Mmmmm…

Thankfully, the green monster gave me the energy I needed to clean up that disaster kitchen:

Stats on the green monster: 105 calories, 18g carbs, 2g fat, 9g protein, 5g fiber

Blog Updates

I recently updated my About Me page to incorporate some comments I had posted on the blog. I also added a Foodie Q&A page where I plan to keep a running list of questions readers ask. And as always, I am continuously linking all my recipe posts to the Recipe Page. This page is actually getting pretty long, so I think I’ll be reformatting it in the near future.