I’ve been trying to cook more lately since it’s healthier, cheaper and better for the environment.  However, I’m having issues finding recipes that fit the Primal Blueprint experiment I’m on.  So I was quite happy when someone sent this recipe my way.  It sounds delicious and I like the fact that it’s also environmentally aware and healthy.  It’s a bit complicated, but hey, I like a challenge!

The thought of mercury in your seafood is enough to ruin anyone’s appetite.

That’s why Damon Stainbrook, former sous chef of French Laundry, is leading the charge in a new “conscientious cooking” movement. He’s working with mercury certification program, Safe Harbor, to ensure the fish used in his delicious recipes meets strict standards for mercury content and is caught using only sustainable methods – verified through its traceability program.

He’d like to share the following recipe and let people know that there is a way to create delicious, healthy and sustainable dinners.

Anyone wishing to create this recipe with Safe Harbor-certified fish can do so at any local Andronico’s, DeLano’s, Woodlands Market, and The Fish Market. If these retailers aren’t nearby, those wishing to prepare the recipe should be careful if purchasing Bluefin tuna, Canned white/Albacore and imported bigeye/yellowfin tuna caught by longline as they tend to have higher mercury levels.

Recipe: grilled tuna zucchini pasta and artichoke sauce

Ingredients:

• 4 tuna steaks, 6 ounces each
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• oil

Zucchini pasta:

• 4 cups Julienne green and gold Zucchini
• 2 tsp kosher salt

Artichoke Sauce:

• 16 oz peel, seeded and diced tomatoes
• 1 medium yellow onion diced
• 3 cloves garlic minced
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 cup diced marinated baby artichokes
• 1 to 2 teaspoons finely minced hot or mild chile pepper, or to taste
• ¼ cup chopped fresh basil
• Black pepper to taste

Black Olive Tapenade:

• 1 cups pitted Kalamata olives chopped (or olives of your liking)
• 1 big garlic clove minced
• 1 Tbls capers
• ¼ cup fresh Basil leaves chopped
• ¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley chopped
• Pinch crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon red or white wine vinegar
• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation:

Combine all Tapenade ingredients, tasting and adding salt and pepper to taste. Cover and let stand at room temperature before serving. Makes 1 ½ cups

Julienne the Zucchini into long thin pasta like shape. Toss with salt and let sit in colander for 15 minutes. Zucchini will soften to an al dente consistency.

To make the sauce cook onion and garlic with salt over low heat in a heavy bottom pot until translucent, 5 to 7 minutes. Add crushed tomatoes and simmer for thirty minutes. Add artichokes, chile pepper and basil and simmer another ten minutes. Add black pepper to taste and set sauce aside to cool.

Right before grilling tuna toss the sauce and zucchini together in large bowl.

Pull tuna steaks out of fridge fifteen minutes before cooking which will help to keep the tuna from sticking to the grill (If using). Season Tuna steaks with Salt and Pepper, then brush lightly with oil.

Lightly brush a grill rack, or broiler pan with a little oil. Grill tuna over coals medium high heat. Turn after about 2-3 minutes for rare tuna, 4 to 6 minutes for more medium to well done. Tuna should maintain a pink center, but will flake easily around edges.

To finish twist equal portions of pasta onto four plates, top with grilled tuna and tablespoon of tapenade.

Serves four.

Healthy Meal Idea - Stir Fry

Thank you to a very special someone who made me walk the walk and not just talk the talk this weekend :)  Thanks to her, I have a brand new healthy recipe to share with all of you.

Ingredients (for two people)

• 1/2 red pepper
• 1 large carrot
• 1 large stalk of broccoli
• 2 handfuls of snap peas
• 4 leaves of red chard
• a few pieces of garlic
• Noodles
• Some type of protein (we used tofu)

Preparations

1. Chop up all the veggies into small pieces.  Cut diagonally for things like the carrots to provide more surface area.  By the way, I learned a new thing about broccoli this weekend.  Once you chop the broccoli bits off the stalk, you can strip the stalk of the fibery outer bits and eat the insides.  It tastes great!  Mix in the newly chopped veggies with the minced up garlic.
2. While you’re chopping the veggies, boil some water and dump in the noodles so they can start cooking.
3. Fry up the tofu (or protein of your choice) and then remove from the pan.  This should only take a minute or two but could vary depending on your choice of protein.
4. When the noodles are ready, remove them from the boiling water
5. By now all your veggies are chopped up, your tofu is fried and your noodles are out of water.  Mix everything up and dump into a fry pan with a bit of olive oil on the bottom.  Fry for a few minutes and season with whatever you want.  We used soy sauce and curry.
6. Fry for 2 or 3 minutes and you’re done!

Effort Required

Almost zero.  With two people working on this, and my contribution consisted mainly of chopping some veggies and making smart ass comments, the meal took less than 20 minutes to make.

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Oh, and for a truly healthy dinner, finish this up with some fresh strawberries for dessert, like we did!

Recipe - Sausage Salad

Today’s post is one of my favorite quick meals to prepare.  It’s fast, tasty and very nutritious.

Needed Ingredients

• 1 tomato
• 1 cucumber
• 1/4 onion
• 1 cup of fresh spinach leaves
• 1 cup of mushrooms
• 1/4 avocado
• 1 red pepper
• 2 sausages
• a bit of olive oil

Note, the ingredients matter.  If you want good flavor, you’re going to invest in fresh, organic produce and non crappy sausages.  I usually buy venison or rabbit sausages at the farmers market but you can find decent stuff at the supermarket too.  Just don’t go with some crappy factory produced sausage filled with god knows what.  Even with the extra cost of good ingredients, this is still cheaper than eating dinner in a restaurant by the way.

Preparation

Chop up all the vegetables except the onions and mushroom into very little pieces.  By little I mean no bigger than 1/4 or 1/3 of an inch (or 1cm for you metric folks).  Pour them into a bowl.  Now chop up the onions and mushrooms into similarly small pieces and pour into another bowl.  When you’re done crying from chopping the onion (which usually takes me about 10 minutes), chop up the sausage into small piece and toss into a frying pan with a bit of olive oil.  Start cooking it and, about 4 to 5 minutes it’s done, toss in the chopped onion and mushrooms.  Continue cooking for a few minutes, making sure to stir everything well.  When the sausage is cooked, pour everything out into your other vegetable bowl, mix well and serve.

Notes

• You do NOT need dressing for this.  Believe me, the sausage, onions and other vegetables have enough flavor without you drowning them in ranch sauce.
• You do NOT need a side of french fries, mashed potatoes, rice or any other silly calorie laden dish with this meal.  It’s perfect just on its own.
• Glass of wine is fine, I’m told by my local butcher than reds go well with this meat, but really, there’s nothing better to drink than water!
• You may want to adjust the quantity of meat to vegetables to suit your own tastes.  This ratio works well for me since it’s one of the few meat dishes that I eat.  However, 10 sausages to 1 tomato is probably not a good ratio.

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Anyone have their own favorite quick and healthy recipes?

A Healthy Snack Alternative!

As a nation, the French tend to be on the wrong end of many jokes.  However, as a nation, the French are also in far better shape than many other countries, even though they don’t exercise a lot.  Most experts attribute this to two things:

1. A more active lifestyle that involves a lot of activities like walking and dancing.
2. A better diet that doesn’t involve as much processed junk.

So today, I thought we would look at a great snack idea that’s been a French tradition for centuries.

Yep, you got it, it’s a simple dish of apples and cheese.

Surprised?

You shouldn’t be.  This is one of the simplest and yet healthiest snacks out there.  No empty carbs, plenty of fiber to fill you up and enough fat and protein to keep you from feeling hungry later on.

A Few Tips

• Don’t overdo the cheese, it is high in calories, and try to choose healthier options.  Avoid the dreaded “cheese slices” in their individual little plastic wrapping.  I don’t know what those are but I think they’re the cheese equivalent of twinkies.
• Don’t peel the apple.  The skin of an apple has much of the nutrients and quite a bit of fiber.  If you peel it off, you’re left with something too high in sugars.

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That’s it, a perfect snack for any day of the week.

The Toothpick Breakfast

Every once in a while, I like to share a healthy meal idea with you.  Today, it’s breakfast time.

What You Need

• One small cucumber
• Some Cheese.  Any kind will work.  I’m partial to pepper jack.
• A handful of blueberries

Preparations

This is an ultra simple breakfast.  Just slice up the cucumbers and the cheese.  Stick one on top of the other and you’re done.  The blueberries are great either between bites of cucumber and cheese or afterwards.

Calories

What calories?  Well ok, that’s not quite true.  Depending on the amount of cheese you use, this meal could have a few hundred calories in it.  So be careful not to overdo the cheese.  The cucumber has almost nothing.  Blueberries do have some calories in them but relatively few.  Using my portions, I get about 300 calories in a breakfast like this.

Nutrition

This is an amazing meal in terms of nutrient.  Zero emptry carbs, good amount of protein and fiber, plus the blueberries are a great source of antioxidants.  It’s hard to find a better way to start your day.

Cost

Most expansive part of this breakfast is usually the blueberries.  However, if you keep that part under control, you’ll probably spend around $3 each time you eat this meal.

Time

Preparation time is about 1 minute.

Small Editorial

When I told a friend about this, he said “wait, that’s not a breakfast, that’s an appetizer.”  Folks, there’s no rule that says what you can or cannot eat on a given part of the day.  There’s nothing that says you can’t have an egg for dinner and there’s nothing that says an appetizer can’t be breakfast.

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What a great day to start the day.  I feel full, it tasted wonderful (those blueberries were amazing!) and I got a good start to a very nutritious day.  Now I’m going to go take a short walk to the post office.

Healthy Meal Ideas - Chili Lunch!

I got a lot of good feedback from readers about my last healthy meal post so I thought I turn it into an irregular series of sorts and occasionally post up ideas for more healthy, easy and cheap meals.  The healthy part is obvious, but I’m also trying to show people that healthy eating doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of time or money.

One of the emails I got contained a meal idea from another Trader Joe’s shopper and I thought I would use that for this next post.  So thank you Joe R. for your email and here’s Joe’s chili recipe.

The Ingredients

• One can of Trader Joe’s chili.  I buy the vegetarian kind but feel free to substitute a brand with some meat if you want.  Try to stay away from the all meat kinds.
• One bell pepper.  Joe recommended the green kind for this but I’m still a secret fan of the yellow peppers.  Recipe works fine either way.
• One half cucumber.
• One quarter large onion.

Preparation

Slice up all the vegetables into small pieces. By small I mean no larger than a 1/4 inch.  Dump everything into a pot with the chili and stir thoroughly.  Now heat the whole thing up until the chili starts bubbling a bit.  Keep stirring as you heat it up to make sure everything is getting warm.  Note, I tried to heat this up with a microwave and it didn’t come up quite as good but still very tasty.

That’s it, once the whole thing is warm, put it in a bowl and eat.

Total Preparation TimeFrom beginning to end, this took about 15 minutes. Most of that time was spent heating.  If you use the microwave you can turn this into a 10 minute meal.

Total Cost

Can of chili is anywhere from $1 to $3 depending on type and where you buy it.  Vegetables cost another $2 or so at the local produce store.  So total cost is somewhere around $3.

Calories

Calories for this meal are around 450 with the chili contributing most of that.  The can of chili had around 350 calories.  Nutrient mix was great with the chili having 14g of fiber and 16g of protein.  Add in the veggies and you have a well balanced meal.

What Didn’t We Do?

Notice a few things about this meal.

• No dinner roll - No need for bread.  It’s nothing more than empty calories.
• No dressing - Instead of eating the vegetables as a separate salad which needs dressing, we mixed them into the main course.
• Less meat - I picked a vegetarian chili, but you could have done one that contained some meat.  Just stay away from the all meat brands.
• No sodas - As usual, we didn’t choose to add any drinks to our meal other than water.

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Ok, canned chili doesn’t sound like a healthy meal but when you toss in some veggies, it’s actually not that bad.  Would it have been better if I had made the whole thing from scratch?  Sure, but I don’t have time for that so this was the next best thing.

Healthy Dinner Choices, Burgers and a Salad

A few days ago I went out to dinner with some friends. We went to a local pub where the fare consisted of burgers, sandwiches and fries. One of my friends ordered a burger and, to make things a bit healthier, he ordered the side salad instead of fries. Unfortunately, this didn’t make his meal very healthy. The burger consisted of a patty, a large sesame seed bun and lots of dressing. The salad was mostly lettuce with a few croutons and cherry tomatoes and a whole lot more dressing. End result, over a thousand calories, lots of bad fat and carbs and very few good nutrients.

So yesterday, while cooking dinner for my wife and myself, I decided to see if I could take that theme of burger and salad and make it a bit healthier.

Note - I went non vegeterian for this meal. Yes, I do on rare occasions eat meat.

The Ingredients

• 2 buffalo burger patties. These are available at most supermarkets. We bought ours from Trader Joe’s.
• 1 large orange bell pepper (can also use the green variety but I like the taste of the yellow and orange types).
• 2 large tomatoes.
• 1 medium sized avocado.
• 1/2 large cucumber.
• Garlic pepper. You can find this in most supermarkets in the spice area.

Preparation

Salad - Take the tomato, cucumber, avocado and pepper and chop them up into small pieces. By small I mean no larger than a 1/4 inch. Add a bit of garlic pepper and mix throughly.

Burgers - Lay them out on the BBQ, sprinkle with a bit of garlic pepper and let them sit for about 5 minutes on a high flame. After 5 minutes turn over, sprinkle a bit more garlic pepper and let them sit for another 5 minutes. We like our burger medium done. If you them more or less well done feel free to adjust the time on the grill. I use a small, gas powered grill on our balcony. If you don’t have access to that, broiling in an oven is just as good.

That’s it. Take your burgers and your salad and enjoy.

Total Preparation Time

From beginning to end, this took about 20 minutes. Most of that time was spent watching the burgers on the BBQ.

Total Cost

This dinner cost less than 10 dollars. the buffalo burger patties come in packages of 4 for around $8 dollars and we only used up 2. The vegetables were picked up at the local farmer’s market for about $5 total.

Calories

If you’re counting your calories, this meal had about 400 to 500 per person. The buffalo burger patties are relatively low in fat and only had 210 calories each. The vegetables, with the exception of the avocado, are also low in calories but we did eat a lot of it.

What Didn’t We Do?

Notice a few things that were different between that restaurant meal and our dinner.

• No bun - You don’t need a bun to have a good burger. In fact, I find that it detracts from the flavor. Buns are nothing more than refined carbs. Get rid of them.
• No dressing - Neither the burger nor the salad has a lot of creamy dressing. Even those light ranch and other fat free dressings are still packed full of junk you don’t need.
• Healthier meat - Choose meat options that are healthy. Processed beef is the opposite of healthy. The buffalo patties were relatively lean and unprocessed making them a good option.
• Healthy salad - I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a few leaves of lettuce do not make a good salad. A salad should have good flavor and texture all on its own, without needing croûtons and dressing.
• No sodas - Neither of us decided to add hundreds of empty calories to our meal by tossing in a soda.

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It’s not that hard, expensive or time consuming to make a healthy dinner at home. If even I, the man who can burn water, can do it, so can you.