Easy Dinner Ideas
Wow hello February 23rd. January was an exciting month because I followed through on my New Year’s resolution and started the Diet Improved Cooking Club. Better late than never… as it goes with my resolutions.
Italian Harvest Vegetable Soup Ingredients
I’m thrilled that the cooking club community came together so easily. At our first in person meeting everyone was open, honest and funny! I look forward every day to seeing all the new posts in our cooking club facebook group. I love reading the valuable feedback about the meal plan recipes, seeing the pictures “clubbers” post of their meals and smiling at all the supportive comments. It’s crystal clear that sharing our cooking experiences in a group is a fun and motivating way to improve our diets one great meal at a time.
In this post I wanted to share some simplified dinner recipes from the cooking club plans and invite everyone to our upcoming meeting this Saturday, February 25th at 10:00am at The Eddy. To clarify, the cooking club community meeting is not a meeting where we cook. We sample food (at the first meeting I made green drinks), talk about our personal health goals, and discuss our favorite recipes from the meal plans provided each week. The best part of the community meeting is meeting everyone who is involved on our facebook page and has similar health goals and struggles. Each meeting there is an educational topic to build knowledge of sound nutrition practices and fuel healthy habits. At our upcoming meeting we are discussing healthy fats. While there is little controversy that healthy fat is important in the diet let's discuss how to make sense of what research says about fat, cholesterol and heart disease.
Right now let’s talk about easier meal ideas. There is always going to be the need for time invested in planning, shopping and preparing quality food. That being said the cooking club plans can do the planning, grocery stores can do the shopping and if you cook large portions we can keep the time in the kitchen to a minimal. (If we were at a party right now you know we would be having this conversation standing in a kitchen... just saying... )
Italian Harvest Vegetable Soup
In our first meal plan we made one sheet hoisin shrimp with vegetables: http://www.familycircle.com/recipe/hoisin-shrimp-with-bok-choy-shiitakes-and-peppers/. It was a hit overall and hopefully reminded people that a quick defrost of frozen shrimp and a few peppers and mushrooms = healthy meal. We decided that the recipe as is could probably use a little more sauce, especially if a flavorful sweet sauce will help coax kids to eat more vegetables.
We had many members make this Italian Harvest Vegetable Soup: http://deliciousliving.com/recipes/italian-harvest-vegetable-soup. We enjoyed it for dinners and lunches at our desks and cooked it on the stovetop and in pressure cookers. I took an immersion blender to the soup and suddenly it became pasta sauce for my son.
Here is a sneak preview of an upcoming recipe in the first March meal plan. It’s an egg casserole pizza. If you want your house to smell like pizza and you want something that tastes like (low carbohydrate) pizza give this recipe a shot. With a few cracked eggs, some pepperoni slices, a container of pizza sauce and some cheese we are done. Serve this with a salad in a bag and wait for the compliments. http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipe/ricotta-frittata-pepperoni-pizza. Some modifications recommended in the cooking club plan- before topping the frittata with cheese and pepperoni top with pizza sauce. Use half the amount of ricotta called for and half the amount of cheese to top.
I hope to catch up with many of you soon at a cooking club meeting. First time meeting guests are always free. Please RSVP to attend: katherine@dietimproved.com.
In improved health,
Katherine