Pita – Fervent Foodie

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.

Recipes

Chipotles in adobo don’t mess around

June 29, 2010 11 Comments

Since I had a post-work meeting today, I was amazingly proactive last night 😉 . Not only did I cook up my dinner ahead of time but I also packed a Berry Almond Luna Bar to hold me over til dinner:

This was pretty tasty, and the berry flavor was really strong. However, the blueberry bliss Luna bar tops this bar hands down. That is for darn sure!

For dinner tonight, I tweaked and further healthified a recipe I found in this month’s Cooking Light for Spicy Shrimp Salad. The recipe called for two ingredients I had never used: bibb lettuce and chipotles in adobo.

For those of you who have no idea what bibb lettuce is, it looks kinda like a little bouquet:

I was just going to use romaine, but this little guy was so cute I decided to give it a shot.

Last night, I grilled up one serving of medium sized shrimp seasoned with salt and pepper.

Then I tossed the shrimp with:

2 tsp lime juice
1 tsp fat free mayo
1 tbsp chopped chipotle in adobo
2 tbsp chopped red onion
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 tsp ground cumin

After my post-work meeting, I heated the shrimp mixture up in the microwave and threw it on top a bed of bibb lettuce and added some tomatoes. I tasted a bit, and realized it was pretty spicy, so I topped it off with a dollop of fat free sour cream to cool things off.

I consider myself a lover of spicy foods. Case in point, I put black pepper, red pepper flakes, and franks red hot on pretty much everything but my yogurt and overnight oats. Despite my love and affection for hot foods, about two bites into the salad I literally felt like my entire face was on fire! Chipotles in adobo seriously do not f’ around.

After my mouth cooled down, I tried to give it another go, but one bite in and the insane heat was back in full fury. I quickly downed half a tomato trying to calm the fire engulfing my face.

Needless to say, I didn’t finish the salad. I think this could have been really tasty if I cut the chipotles back to 1 tsp and also used a different type of lettuce. The bibb lettuce was kind of soft and didn’t have much crunch to it. I prefer a crunchy romaine for my salads.

Stats on the salad I wasn’t physically cable of eating: 205 calories, 20g carbs, 3g fat, 21g protein, 5g fiber

Upon some deliberation of my freezer inventory, I decided my back up dinner would be a Gardenburger black bean burger on a Joseph’s low carb pita with onion, tomato, ketchup, and mustard.

It was ok… but I was really craving shrimp. Maybe I’ll make a smoothie later to compensate 🙂

Stats on the burger: 210 calories, 36g carbs, 5g fat, 12g protein, 10g fiber

Recipes

Healthified Gyros & Tzatziki Saucziki

June 23, 2010 8 Comments

Tonight, I had a craving for gyros. Mmmmmm…. Can’t remember the last time I had one of those.

The task at hand: satisfy this craving as healthfully as possible.

I decided to go with ground turkey for the meat to stuff my gyro. I combined the following ingredients and formed a meat “log” which I cooked on the george foreman grill for about 7 minutes.

5 ounces 99% lean ground turkey
sprinkling of dried oregano, S&P, garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley, red pepper flakes

Then I sliced the meat into long strips and placed atop a Joseph’s Low Carb Pita:

And topped it off with the KEY component of any gyro: Tzatziki Sauce! I mixed up the tzatziki sauce about an hour before grilling the meat. It consisted of:

2 tbsp Oikos plain greek yogurt
1 tsp lemon juice
2 tbsp grated cucumber
S&P, Dill weed
1 clove garlic, minced

Tzatziki ingredients in the bowl:

All together now!

I used some of the leftover cucumber to make a small cucumber salad (sliced cucumber, dill weed, white vinegar):

YUM!!! This really hit the spot! I do want to note that the meat was a little on the dry side. I personally didn’t really mind because I doused it in the yummy Tzatziki sauce. Next time, I’ll either add some of the shredded cucumber to the meat or try shredded zucchini and/or onion.

Stats on the gyro: 278 calories, 24g carbs, 4g fat, 39g protein, 7g fiber

Despite this delicious dinner, the night did not end on such a happy note:

What’s that, you ask? Ohhhh… that…. Whelp, that’s my iPhone, chilling in some rice, because I apparently dropped it on my way in the door and let it sit outside in the rain for three hours. 🙁

Hopefully this rice trick I found on google with do the trick and suck all the water out!

QUESTION OF THE EVENING: What was the dumbest thing you did today?

P.S. to respond to this question click the little blue button that says “Leave a comment” … look right below this line… just a little further… You can do it! 😉

What I ate

Girl loves coffee

June 7, 2010 3 Comments

This morning, I literally sprung out of bed before the alarm went off because my body was subconsciously excited to try the coffee I picked up at Trader Joe’s yesterday. Just the smell of coffee beans makes my mouth water and instantly improves my mood.

Trader Joe’s French Roast didn’t disappoint!

Breakfast #1 today was a 3 egg white scramble seasoned with my go-to seasoning combo: salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes.

I served the egg whites up in 1/2 a Joseph’s low carb pita, and a bit o’ ketchup.

Stats: 86 calories, 7g carbs, 1g fat, 14g Protein, 2g Fiber

Breakfast #2: 1/2 a Thomas’ Whole Wheat Bagel Thin and 1 tbsp Trader Joe’s almond butta with Trader Joe’s pomegranate Greek Yogurt!

Both the almond butter and the yogurt were DELICIOUS. I’m now officially obsessed with Trader Joe’s!

Stats: 265 Calories, 27g carbs, 10g fat, 21g Protein, 5g Fiber

Lunch = Big ole salad with 2 tbs balsamic dressing and a Turkey/Ham Lettuce wrap with 1/2 a Laughing Cow french onion cheese wedge with some leftover Gionino’s hot sauce!

I think it’s safe to say I have mastered the lettuce wrap 😀

Side note — how weird is this?? http://www.sushipopper.com/default.aspx