Jewel Eats: One Pot Pasta

Hey y'all! It's...FRIIIIIDAAAAAY.  #thankyaLord.  And here we go with the second post in my adventure to try out some dishes from my new cook book, Martha's "One Pot."  Remember the Tuscan Roast, from two weeks ago? Awesome, right?  Yep.

Ben and I are going out for dinner tonight (YES).  I was planning on assembling something with our leftovers.  But last night, after semi-botching a dinner of steak sandwiches and feeling exhausted after the past few days of work, I told him I needed a night off.  Of course he was on board because that meant no dishes for him to do.  So we're venturing around Old Town/D.C./Arlington tonight for whatever fancy cuisine we can find.  But if you're staying in tonight, only have grape tomatoes, pasta noodles, garlic and an onion on hand...and don't want to mess up that many dishes...and only have 25 min...I have the recipe for YOU.

One Pan Pasta: Linguine with Tomato and Basil
And bonus: this recipe is available in the "One Pot" cookbook, and also on Martha's website!

Jewel Eats: Christmas Cookbook!

One of my sisters gifted me "Martha Stewart Living's One Pot" cookbook for Christmas. And I read it cover to cover in one day.  Y'all know that I love eating and I love cooking what I eat because it's the best way to ensure you're sticking to a low-sodium diet. Low-sodium is good for maintaining a good blood pressure which in turn is good for maintaining healthy kidneys.  Win-win. 

I've had my eye on this book since it came out because I'm a Martha Stewart Living stalker. I started cooking Martha's stuff when I was in college and moved into my first apartment with friends.  I've found most of her recipes to be fairly easy, straightforward, and delicious.  So, when the One Pot cookbook came out...I made a note to put it on my Christmas list so that someone else could buy it for me.  Now, I've only made one recipe out of this book, but I think this is a great thing to have around especially during these cold winter months.  The book is all about roasts, slow-cooker meals, dutch oven meals--full dinners that can be cooked in one pot/pan/dish.  And since it's just me and Ben in my household, most of these big dinners can be eaten over two to three days.  

So the point of this post: I'm inviting you to come on this journey with me, of trying out several recipes in this new cookbook, over the next three months.  By April it'll start to get warm again and we'll all be talking about Easter eggs and salads, and less about roasting and braising things I'm sure.  

The first thing I made:  Tuscan Pork Roast

Jewel Eats--Lemony Chicken and Orzo Soup

I know it makes no sense that I'm posting about food right after we've just celebrated the biggest food-centered holiday on the planet.  It almost seems kind of...wrong, right?  You're still recovering from the 'itis that occurred after Thursday's monstrous meal, and Friday's feast of leftovers, and Saturday's big family brunch.  Or maybe that's just me?  

I feel like I'm still having a hard time buttoning my pants while dusting off the stiffness from days of stuffing my face and not exercising.  And next week, I've got a busy schedule of baking, baking, BAKING.  Yes, it's Christmas time.  But to reset our bodies with the right types of foods while attempting to get back into some sort of exercise schedule (spin class is booked for Friday), Ben and I agreed that it's time for a detox week.  Yes, before we dive headfirst into cookie swaps and Christmas parties we need to "get healthy" again.   

Our detox meal for last night (and tonight since there was plenty leftover), was this delicious Lemony Chicken and Orzo soup from Bon Appetit.  

What's Cool About This Soup:
1.  There aren't that many ingredients.  You don't even have to mince up any garlic or onion.  But I added a carrot because I felt lazy, and also for color.  And also because we have way to many carrots in our fridge.

2.  It uses chicken thighs, which I love because they're cheap.

3.  It's a nice upgrade from your standard chicken soup because it has lemon in it.  I squeezed a whole lemon into the broth when everything was finished cooking, then I served it.  

 

4.  It's low sodium...if you want it to be!  The best thing about homemade soup is the choice to use little or no salt, instead of having a factory stuff spoonfuls of salt into a can of soup.  I used low-sodium chicken broth in this recipe.  

So yeah, go make this. It's fresh.  The lemon gives is zing.  It's cheap.  It's perfect for days like today in D.C. when the temperature has dropped from 70 degrees to 30 again.  And it's actually pretty low in calories and fat.  Unless, of course you choose to serve it with some white bread with tablespoons of butter.  Hey, I'm detoxing but I'm not crazy.  Butta makes it betta, I always say. 

Jewel Eats: Homemade Granola

I've never been CRAZY about granola.  I've always said that I can take it or leave it. What is IT anyway?  It gets too soggy to be eaten with milk, so it's not cereal, and most store-bought granola is too sugary and sweet to be eaten on it's own with a side of bacon.  It's not even efficient really.  It takes more time to make granola than it takes to stove-cook a serving of old-fashioned rolled oats.  It's not even incredibly filling...wow I'm basically talking myself out of giving you this recipe! 

What it IS, in it's most basic form, is rolled oats, some kind of nut, and some kind of sweetener.  Mix it all together, throw it in the oven, and in 20 minutes you have PART of a breakfast.  

I consulted several granola recipes (like this one and this one), before finally settling on this one from Martha Stewart.  I didn't plan ahead to make this granola, so I just tried to find a recipe that used ingredients that I knew I already had in stock in my pantry.  

This recipe uses 1/4 teaspoon of salt.  Since this was my first time making granola, I went ahead and added it in.  The salt does provide a nice contrast to the subtle sweetness without making the granola salty.  You can totally leave it out too, or add less, to make this dish REALLY REALLY low sodium.

Here's my granola before going into the oven.  And...that's all I have to say about this picture.

And there we go!  Finished granola, next to some Greek yogurt, frozen blueberries that I'd thawed, and yes, a tiny extra drizzle of honey for the yogurt. 

Things to know about this recipe:

• I put this together on a Saturday morning, when I didn't feel like cooking.  Typically I make pancakes from scratch on the weekend.  And trust me, that's not as fancy or complicated as it sounds.  I found a great pancake recipe a while back and since then I haven't bought pancake mix in four years.  As long as you have flour, baking powder and milk in your kitchen you're pretty much set.  But I digress....if you're looking for something you can pretty much mix and bake on a sleepy morning, this granola fits the bill.
• Two biiiiiiig issues with store-bought granola are 1) the amount of sugar it has per serving; and 2) the amount of sodium it has per serving.  This granola was not super sweet, hence why I added a drizzle of honey, and much lower on the salt content.  And like I said, you can eliminate the salt altogether if you like. 
• This granola is the perfect amount of crunchy without leaving cuts on the roof of your mouth.
• It's cheap.  
• It's healthy.
• It makes the perfect snack. I stored some in a mason jar and snacked on it in the days after I made it.

So there you go.  Homemade granola.  Give it a try sometime and I promise, you'll never go back buying granola.  If you keep even the basic things (oats, some kind of nut, syrup) in your pantry, you'd be wasting money by purchasing granola at a store.   I'm serious.  Use the money you save from NOT buying granola and pancake mix to go out and eat a meal that seems it actually take some effort to make. 

Jewel Eats: Homemade Bean Burritos

Things I think about a lot:

God.
My husband.
Food.  

Eat-pray-love, right?  Sadly, I eat more than I pray. But I DO pray every time I eat though.  

I've written about the way I eat a few times on this blog (here and here).  I'm a member of the "everything in moderation" club and don't subscribe to the notion that giving up any one food group would improve my quality of life or my health.  If you have a chronic illness, chances are you've had to give up a few food groups at some point in time.  It's not really as fun, hip or cool as people make it out to be.  One of my food mottos:  Life is too short to not eat ice cream.  

My diet is simple: non-processed (85 percent of what I eat is made from scratch, not out of box or jar) and low-sodium.  If I'm following a recipe that calls for 1 teaspoon of salt in something, I usually cut that down by half.  Following a diet like this for the past six to seven years has made me really comfortable in the kitchen and increased my love for cooking and eating.  In my family, eating brings us together.

I talk a lot about how I eat, but I rarely show you what I actually eat.  Last night I made one of my favorite low-sodium, from scratch meals, from one of my cooking and homemaking idols, Martha Stewart.  

Burritos with Pinto Beans, Rice and Corn

I like making these because they are:
1.  Cheap.  You would probably buy this at Chipotle for $7.  I think all the ingredients cost $10 and I made way more than one burrito.

2.  Easy. The definition of a one-pan dish.  I cooked the entire filling in my beloved cast-iron.

3.  It's low sodium.  I added about a 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the onions that I cooked on low at the beginning of the meal.  The only other sodium is from the cheese, and whatever salt is left on the pinto beans after they are drained and rinsed.

4.  It tastes quadruple billion times better than the processed frozen kind that you buy at the store.  That said...

5.  You CAN freeze these!  This recipe can make up to 10 burritos. Ben and I are only two people. We love this meal, but we are NOT gonna eat 10 burritos in one sitting.  Or even two sittings.  Unless, there's money on the line.  But if not, I roll what's left up in plastic wrap and freeze them for future happy mealtimes.  

John Lennon was wrong.  Happiness is a warm [homemade] burrito.