Midweek Meals: Healthy, Quick Mediterranean Vegetable Saute

Vegetables are amazing.  In looking up nutritional content for the ingredients for a midweek meal, I learned some very nifty things about what I was eating...

Eggplant - Is a fabulous "diet" veggie.  It's low in fat and calories, high in thyroid-supporting manganese and a good source of fiber.  Another interesting thing about eggplant?  It has more nicotine than any other edible plant!  Though you'd have to eat a bushel of eggplant before you reached the concentration of nicotine found in just one cigarette, so it's probably not the best idea to light one up, sorry.

Cauliflower - Considered a "nutritionally dense" food, cauliflower is a happy place to find vitamin C and a host of phytochemicals to fight cancer.  There are also studies that show it may work as a estrogen regulator (due to indole-3-carbinol) and glucosinolates that could help your liver detoxify.  Happy news for pub crawlers!

Chickpeas (garbanzos) - A nice low-fat source of protien and fiber.  Tossing a can of these precooked babies into your veggies gives your 29% of your protien in every serving.


Green (or French) beans - Great for your bones as they contain 25% of your vitamin K in each serving (helps fight osteoperosis), and a good amount of calcium.  Many sources believe that green food sources of calcium are betterfor the body then dairy sources, too, by the way!  I know my favorite clinical professor way back when I was in school as a bodywork therapist always paraded that theory.

In 2010 I'm making efforts to revive an old way of eating that worked really well for me, but I just got away from.  On the weekdays, I would focus on vegetarian and seafood meals only and enjoy meat only on the weekends.  I always felt like I had great energy when I followed this with care.  The problem came in when I was too busy to make proper meals and ended up eating potato chip dinners.  Bad, bad!  That's where having some nice pre-planned recipes that I love come in handy.  For me, it's motivational to know why the foods I'm preparing are good for me, too, so I've been doing my research!

Essentially, these recipes are going into a sort of food journal for me to improve my eating habits.  In doing so, I figured why not share them with all of you, too?  I'm planning to add some recipes that are based on fun healthy foods lists (if such a thing can be called fun?) such as the recent New York Times article on The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating (thanks to Cheryl for printing that out for me!).

So what do you think?  Would you like to see more recipes like this one?  What are some of your favorite healthy foods to include in weekday meals? 

Recipe: Healthy Quick Medditerrean Vegetable Sautè

What you need...

1 can chickpeas
3 cups chopped eggplant
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 pound whole fresh green beans
3 cups chopped cauliflower florets
2/3 cup chopped yellow onion
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon dry dill (or small bunch of chopped fresh)
1 tablespoon dry oregano (or small bunch chopped fresh)
1 tablespoon dry mint (or small bunch chopped fresh)
1 1/2 teaspoons allspice
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 lemon, juiced and zested
1 cup vegetable stock or water
Olive oil for sauteing
Salt and pepper to taste

What to do with it all...

• Heat (on medium) enough olive oil in a large heavy bottom sautè pan to coat it
• Add your onions and cauliflower florets and allow to sautè for 3 mins or until they get a fragrant
  
• Add eggplant, red pepper and green beans and cook for another 5 - 8 minutes on medium, stirring occassionally
• Add all the rest of your ingredients, toss/stir to combine and cook on medium-low until cauliflower is just fork tender (about 10 mins)
• Serve over rice!

Asian Potato Salad: 3 Ingredient Recipe #5

3 Ingredient Recipe: Scallion and Ginger Potato Salad

I love potato salad.  It's something I've made many times to bring to potlucks and I always found myself making the recipe more and more elaborate: ham and capers and artichokes.  Yes, they were tasty but at some point you can barely see the potatoes at all drowning under layers of smoked gouda and bacon.  

Here's a simple version of potato salad that uses both sauteed scallions and raw, bright citrusy ginger and nutty sesame oil.  I used a blend of Szechuan and black pepper corns, but just black pepper works nicely.

For a refresher on the rules of my 10 day, 3 ingredient challenge, check out the first post.



3 Ingredients....

• 3 cups quartered red potatoes (or other waxy potato)
  
• 1 bunch of scallions
  
• 1 nob of ginger

What to do with it...

1. Bring potatoes to a gentle boil and cook for approx. 20 mins, or until they can be pierced with a knife, but before skins start to loosen
   
2. Drain and place into large bowl to cool
   
3. While the potatoes cook, chop white & green portion of scallions finely, keeping separate
   
4. Heat a small saute pan with enough sesame oil to coat generously and add white portion scallions
   
5. Saute on medium-low until golden, about 11 mins
   
6. Add sauteed scallions and raw green scallions to potatoes
   
7. Grate in about a tablespoon of fresh ginger (a microplane grater works well for this)
   
8. Add salt and pepper to taste and more sesame oil if desired
   

Just 5 more days left!