Super Foods....Smoothies and Spinach Salads

After running this weekend, I decided to make some healthy lunch/snack items to eat so I will get strong and awesome.

Ever since my first job as a smoothie maker at Creative Juices when I was 16, I have been obsessed with smoothies.  There is an art to it.  I recently decided that buying frozen fruit is expensive.  So instead I have been buying a can of crushed pineapple and then freezing it in individual sandwich bags to use in my smoothies.  It works very well and since the pineapple is crushed, you don't get big chunks in your smoothie.  The key to smoothie making is making sure you have blended everything together perfectly.  Feel free to take the blender cup off the blender and shake it around if things aren't blending properly.  Chunks are bad.  Your smoothie is done blending when your smoothie spins around in a circle that dips into the middle (while the blender is still going).  Like the bottom of the blender is sucking down your smoothie in a circular motion.  You will know it when you see it.  Trust me.  OK onward.

Women's Health Smoothie....
-1 small container of vanilla yogurt (6-8 oz)
-a splash of cranberry juice (or any juice really)
-1/3 of a frozen banana
-1/5 of a can of crushed pineapple (frozen in little plastic baggies, throw away bag though, don't blend)

Blend it up until it's smooth (see above) and drink it out of a beer glass (if you want to and you have a bunch of beer glasses).  Good stuff.

Then I decided to make a spinach quinoa salad.  Spinach is a super food and all.  The key to this salad is this......

Jarred grilled veggies.  You can get these at Harris Teeter (in a smaller jar, near the canned vegetables, might be roasted instead of grilled) or at Costco in this giant jar that I have.  This jar has zucchini, red peppers, eggplant and artichokes in a vinegar and oil mix.

Power Salad

-cooked quinoa

-jarred grilled veggies

-balsamic vinaigrette (whisk canola or olive oil, a spoonful of mustard, a spoonful of honey, and some balsamic vinegar together-just add stuff until you like the taste and consistency or just mix any oil and vinegar together to get some sort of dressing to mix in)

-bag of baby spinach

Mix the cooked quinoa with some of the chopped veggies (add in some of the oil from the jar of vegetables for extra flavor) and then add some vinaigrette.  Then get a large bowl of baby spinach and add some of the quinoa mixture to the top.  Mix it so that the spinach gets coated with the quinoa vinaigrette mix.  Good stuff.

If you make and eat these two recipes you will grow up to be healthy and strong.  Probably.  Maybe. 

Do you like spinach salads and smoothies?

What do you eat that makes you feel healthy?

Vegan Quinoa Salad

L-Fab decided that I should make some sort of salad with chickpeas in it.  So I went a head and decided to make a vegan recipe this week.  I went with my old standby vegetarian grain, quinoa.  This is similar to a salad I made before but I went ahead and took out the cheese and added some other healthy stuff.

Vegan Quinoa Salad-
1 cup quinoa
2 cups vegetable broth or water
2 roasted red peppers (I used the jarred kind)
cherry tomatoes (a handful)
1 medium sized cucumber
1 can chickpeas (or less, probably less)
1/2 of a medium sized red onion
4 teaspoon olive oil
4 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 of a lemon
4 teaspoons honey mustard (I used Maille, I love that stuff)
2 teaspoons minced garlic

1-Cook the quinoa according to directions in the broth or water.  (My quinoa said to use 2 parts liquid to 1 part quinoa and to put them both in the pan at the same time and bring up to a boil.  Then turn down to a simmer, cover, and wait for the liquid to evaporate which was about 15 minutes)
2-Chop up all the veggies (ie-quarter or halve the tomatoes, chop the cucumber, red pepper and onion into small pieces) while you are waiting for the quinoa to cook.
3-Mix the olive oil, vinegar, juice from the lemon, honey mustard and garlic to make a dressing.
4-Then mix your quinoa, veggies, chick peas, and dressing together.

I chilled mine for about an hour before serving.  The only change I would make would be less chick peas.  Apparently I do not like chick peas that much.  I mean some are ok but a whole can was too much for me.  As far as the dressing goes, I just mixed the ingredients until I liked how it tastes.  If you don't like it sweet you can use regular mustard or change the ingredients based on your taste preferences.

OK, so this has to be healthy, right?
Do you ever make vegan dishes?
Does cheese really make everything better or is some stuff ok without it?

OMG and who is super excited for the LIVE 30 Rock episode tonight and the return of Jan on The Office?  I am!

Eazy Peazy BBQ Chicken

As you may know, sometimes I buy a lot of chicken.  Then I freeze it.  Then I don't know what to do with it.  Then I get confused on how to thaw it.  Then I don't like the texture of it once I thaw it.  So I found this awesome slow cooker BBQ chicken recipe where you put frozen chicken directly into the slow cooker.  That is my kind of recipe.  It also cuts back on the amount of time I actually have to spend touching raw chicken.  The recipe is found here from Allrecipes.com.  I followed it pretty close (except for actually measuring the ingredients, I like estimating) and used Stubb's Spicy BBQ Sauce because it tastes good.  I also shred the chicken at some point during cooking when it just naturally sort of starts to fall apart.

And if you really want to, you can turn this in to a much healthier version of the traditional BBQ sandwich like I did here.  I'm pretty sure chicken breast bbq is healthier than pork bbq and then I made slaw using the pre packaged shredded cabbage and reduced fat mayo (I also actually cut the amount of mayo down).  I added a little extra vinegar for tang.  And then I used an Arnold's Sandwich Thins Bun which only has 100 calories.  Voila.  Healthier BBQ Sandwich.  And the leftovers of this would be great for these quesadillas.

Do you like Pork BBQ and/or BBQ chicken or is that just a North Carolina thang?

Do you have any recipes that you "lighten" up for healthiness?