Vegetable Frittata with Goat Cheese and Herbs

Another creation from this term's student Tara! I love frittata's and they reheat in the nuker really well also so that you have breakfast or lunch for most of the week made in one try!

4 eggs
4 egg whites
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup onion, diced
1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced
1/2 bunch asparagus, cut into 1/2" pieces
2 tablespoons sundried tomatoes (dry packed, not packed in oil), chopped
3/4 cup spinach, fresh or frozen (thawed)
1/2 tablespoon fresh oregano
2 oz goat cheese (or feta) crumbled
cracked black pepper as needed

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Beat the eggs and egg whites together with few tablespoons of water
3. Heat a medium sized heatproof (will not have rubber on handle) saute pan over medium heat
4. Add oil and then saute garlic, onion, pepper, asparagus together until tender about 6-8 minutes
5. Add spinach, oregano and sundried tomato and cook until spinach wilts. Season with black pepper.
6. Pour eggs over vegetables. Make sure the egg settles to the bottom of the pan and that the vegetables are evenly distributed throughout.
7. Crumble cheese on top
8. Transfer pan to the oven. Bake until the eggs set and the cheese starts to show some light brown color, about 10-15 minutes.

ENJOY!

Protein content in 1/4 of the frittata is 13 grams

Yogurt and Fresh Fruit Parfait

From student Tara, the cooking demo extraordinaire at Miriam's Cardiac Rehab. You can substitute any kind of fruit you want for what her choices were. Anyone can try it with my previous recipe for granola or if the bariatric patients want to purchase a granola they should use Bare Naked brand granola and leave out the honey sweetener!

1/2 cup Nonfat plain Greek yogurt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon honey (try a honey native to where you live especially if you have lots of outdoor allergies!)
1/4 cup peaches, fresh or frozen, diced
1/4 cup big cherries, pitted
1 tablespoon low fat granola
1 tablespoon sliced almonds
1 teaspoon ground flax seeds

1. Combine yogurt, vanilla and honey, if using, with a whisk until completely mixed.
2. Place 1/2 the fruit on bottom of a clear glass (this way you can see how pretty it is!)
3. Top with 1/2 of each: yogurt, granola, almond, flax
4. Repeat the layers with the remaining ingredients

ENJOY!!

**Bariatric patients - this will make you 2-3 servings; total protein content in recipe is 13grams.

Protein Drink Ideas from a patient!

If anyone is looking for a way to get their protein fix (and perhaps mask the taste/flavor of the protein powder) and get your produce all at the same time (who remembers that meals are 1/2 protein and 1/2 produce right!!) here are two great ideas from a current patient.

Incredible Hulk:

1 cup spinach
1 cup kale
3 slices cucumber
1 squirt of lemon juice
1/4 cup mixed frozen fruit
1/2 banana
1/2 cup ice
1/2 cup water
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
BLEND AND ENJOY!

Iron Man:
1 cup spinach
1 cup kale
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 banana
6 oz Vanilla unsweetened almond breeze
3/4 cup ice
1/2 tablespoon peanut butter
1 scoop chocolate protein powder
BLEND AND ENJOY!

Recent Survey

In a recent survey Boston became the drunkest city in the US with its residents averaging 15.75 alcoholic drinks per month.

Do the math on yourself, how do you shape up against your resident competitors?

Braised Chicken

The patients loved this chicken when Josh made it for support group. We hope you enjoy it too!

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken cut up with skin on or a package of chicken quarters leave skin on and bone in
2 sweet onions, diced
1 bulb garlic, chopped (use are going to use the whole bulb not just 1 clove)
1 teaspoon fennel seed, ground
1 tablespoon cumin, ground
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1 #10 can of diced tomatoes (that’s the big can on the bottom shelf!)
2/3 cup red wine vinegar (or white wine)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
1. Heat oven to 300 degrees
2. Prepare a medium size foil pan on the counter (which means nothing except make sure it is clean and dry)
3. In a large sauté pan, heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat, add onions and garlic, fennel, thyme and cumin, season with some salt and pepper - cook until soft, stirring occasionally
4. When vegetables are cooked – about 7 minutes, remove them from pan and put in a bowl, replace pan on the heat, add another 2 tablespoons olive oil to pan
5. In batches so you don’t over crowd the pan, brown the chicken pieces. Start them in the pan skin side down and let cook about 4 minutes, flip chicken and cook another 3-4 minutes. Remove from pan, and continue with raw chicken pieces until all chicken has been browned. Season each batch with salt and pepper.
6. When all chicken is browned and removed from pan, add vinegar or wine and scrape up all the bits that are stuck to the bottom of the pan (these are all little flavor bursts, they will make the end result more tasty!). Once all bits have been scraped up, pour over the vegetables.
7. Remove and discard skin from the chicken, place chicken pieces in aluminum pan. Spread vegetables out around chicken. Open tomatoes and pour over chicken, add the bay leaves, cover and cook for 4-5 hours.
8. Remove pan from oven, carefully pull foil off pan. Remove chicken and bay leaves. Then pull/shred chicken off the bone. Discard bones and bay leaves, return meat to pan, stir to combine meat with sauce.

Enjoy!

Pasta Taste Test

As part of a recent cooking demo, I decided I would do a taste test of of the so-called ‘better for you pastas’. Now in all honesty, I do not believe that pasta, or carbohydrates in general, is what is making Americans fat, so it is hard for me to sit around and berate pasta as the end-all enemy. However, people do eat far to much pasta far to often and so one can speculate that they are consuming a huge number of calories which aren’t nutrient dense, and that this is where the problem truly lies. Never fear Americans, our savvy Capitalist companies have found the answer with value added pastas. Now of course it depends on what you are looking for; high fiber, high protein, high vitamins, whole wheat taste, whole wheat without the whole taste - the options seem endless, so we put 3 different kinds to the test: Barilla Plus, Ronzoni Smart Taste, Barilla White Fiber. Experiment Disclaimer: I bought each brand in a different shape so it was easy for me to identify what was being taste tested – there may be people in the tasting pool who are discriminatory towards certain shapes.

About 3/5 of the audience liked the Barilla Plus (yellow box) the best. They commented that it had a nice texture and wasn’t overly ‘wheaty’ or ‘grainy’ but that it did have a slightly different taste from regular pasta which wouldn’t compromise the taste of sauces.

The rest of the audience liked the Ronzoni Smart Taste (which is my favorite of the 3 as well). It is the same color and texture as regular pasta, though it can be overcooked more easily then regular pasta can be. The people who did not like the Smart Taste, said that it was to soft, thus they must be true aldente pasta lovers!

No one (except 1 staff member) liked the Barilla White Fiber. They found to soft, mushy, and without texture. The White Fiber is the newest of the three products and it definitely has some tweaking to go before it becomes a consumer favorite. It easily breaks down in the pot and in your mouth, probably because the added fiber makes the shape of the pasta very delicate once it has started absorbing water, and the nature of granulated fiber (think Metamucil) is to absorb water and dissolve - not something that is super sexy for pasta.

What’s the moral of my story? If you are going to eat pasta less then 1x/week and not a lot of it, just buy the regular/real stuff. If you are concerned that you will go overkill with your portions, buy the fresh pasta, it is a little denser and people tend to eat a smaller portion of it because it sits heavier in the stomach.

Happy Cheesing!

Baked Brie

This is always a crowd pleaser at parties/gatherings, and it makes you look like a fantastic cook, but baked brie is super simple and will take you 5 minutes to put together and about 15 minutes to bake.

*1 wheel (or wedge depending on how many people you will be serving) French Brie (I actually buy mine at Costco – GASP – because the local grocery only usually has Presidente, but you might be able to find a high quality triple cream brie in your local grocery or cheese shop.
*Phyllo dough – about 6-8 sheets
*Jam – I prefer Rosepetal, Apricot or Lingonberry but raspberry or spiced pear would be wonderful as well
*Butter – 1 tablespoon, melted

1. Thaw the roll of phyllo dough (while still wrapped or it will dry out). When soft, open packaging and unroll the whole thing.
2. Place large spoonful of jam down on the dough and spread around until roughly the size in diameter of the cheese.
3. Unwrap cheese and carefully shave off the rind on the sides and top. If you don’t get it all that is ok, it does not taste bad
4. Place cheese down on dough, shaved side to jam. Then take up about 6-8 sheets of the dough and wrap them over the bottom of the brie like you were wrapping a present. I usually roll the rest of the dough back up, place in ice box and use within a week for something else.
5. Flip brie over and place jam side up in baking dish. Pour melted butter over the top and bake in oven at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, once the top starts to brown your brie is finished!

Serve with cracker, pear and apple slices.

Enjoy!