I've been trying more and more to eat "clean"--less processed foods; little to no sugar, or refined flours. So, I decided to do some cooking. First off I made some spaghetti sauce--I always try to make my own that I then freeze. Here's what I do:
I usually start off with sauteed onions and garlic and a really big can of crushed tomatoes (I make sure that is the only ingredient--no salt or other spices). Then I get creative. This time I added some chopped green peppers to the onions. After adding in the canned tomatoes I cut up some plum tomatoes (also from our garden) that I had roasted earlier. I also found some roasted green peppers that I had in the freezer, cut them up and added them in. Then I always add in a cube of my homemade pesto--I love basil--(I freeze it in cubes). I added some water--it was a little thick, then about a cup of red wine. Finally, I added some Parmesan rind, some fresh rosemary, thyme, oregano (also from the garden) salt, pepper and let it simmer away.
Since I was in Italian mode, I decided to make some turkey italian sausage and peppers. It's really pretty simple. I do this with breakfast sausage as well--the difference is the spices.
Here's the recipe:
I used 1 pound of ground turkey. To this I added some finely chopped onion and garlic--probably about 1/3 cup onions and 2 cloves of garlic (I do use preminced garlic--I put in a heaping spoonful--I LIKE garlic!). Then I added in some spices (all dried)--thyme, basil, oregano, rosemary, parsley, sage salt and pepper--all to taste. I mixed this up and formed the meat into links--I think I got 6 or 7. I set these aside.
To a large frying pan I added some olive oil. I sauteed onions and peppers until they were soft. I removed them, added a bit more oil to the pan and then the sausage links. I cooked them until they were almost done and then I added the onions, peppers and some of the tomato sauce into the pan. I covered it and let it simmer until the meat was cooked through. I didn't think to take any pictures then, but here's one of some of the leftovers:
Now, normally I would have made pasta to go with this, but since I was trying to avoid refined flour, I decided to do something with the zucchini I just bought. I searched pinterest and found that you can cut the zucchini into ribbons (using a vegetable peeler), boil it--it only takes about 3 mins-- and serve it just like pasta. So that's what I did. I made an easy Alfredo sauce--I melted some cream cheese--about 1/2 a block, added some garlic and Italian seasoning to it along with almond milk (I'm trying to limit dairy too and the cheese was enough) and of course salt and pepper to taste. Finally some shredded Parm to finish it off. It was delish! It kind of looked like this:
I rounded out the meal with some sauteed kale with olive oil and yes MORE garlic!
On another note, since I've been on this kick, I actually bought some TOFU!!! I saw this recipe on Chocolate Covered Katie and had to try it.
OH MY GOODNESS!!! I will never make chocolate mousse with milk or cream again!!! I did alter the recipe a bit. I used about half the amount of melted chocolate (yeah, I know--there's sugar--it was dark chocolate, so there's less--I did say little to no sugar). It wasn't until I made the recipe that I saw the link to a lighter version that only uses cocoa powder and agave nectar and no melted chocolate. I'm going to try that next to see if I can cut out the refined sugar. I'll report back on the results.
This all just proves that eating healthy can be VERY tasty!
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