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Shepherd’s Pie

February 2, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 7 comments

First of all, if you missed it yesterday, please check out this opportunity to be a part of a new cookbook that is publishing very soon. Bloggers and non-bloggers are welcome to submit recipes.

http://traveleatlove.com/2012/02/attention-boston-bloggers/

Hearty, warm, comforting, and mostly healthy, shepherd’s pie is a cold weather staple that can be changed up to suit the individuals making and eating it. The best part about shepherd’s pie, is of course, the leftovers. I made this shepherd’s pie for dinner on Tuesday night, and it made dinner for two and six lunches. There’s nothing I love more than having lunches out of the way. For some reason I have always hated making work week lunches!

There are many shepherd’s pie recipes out there, some vegetarian, many using beef or lamb, and some, like mine, that use ground lean turkey as the filler of choice.

I started off my pie by boiling four large Idaho potatoes and one sweet potato that had been hanging around, just waiting to be eaten.

While the potatoes were cooking, I thawed some sweet corn.

Chopped up half of a yellow onion

And I used my mandolin to cut perfect carrots.

Photos are missing, but I cooked the turkey and onions in a little bit of olive oil in a pan, then added the carrots and corn and 3/4 of a bottle of this delicious Stovepipe Porter that we picked up in Vermont. Vermont has some great beer!

The beer added a great flavor and richness to the turkey and veggie mixture. While it simmered on low, I got my potatoes mashed with some butter, cream, and salt. I ended up with way more mashed potatoes than I needed, but who doesn’t love leftover mashed potatoes?! As you can tell, I left the skins on the potato. I’m not lazy, I actually like the skins, and they have all of the fiber.

I popped the shepherd’s pie into the oven for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. At the end, I set the oven to broil for about two minutes to brown the top. It was delish!

On the side we had shredded Brussels sprouts sautéed in a bit of olive oil and topped with an almond “cheese” sauce I made. I have seen so many vegan cheese sauces made with nuts, and I had some almonds in the house so I decided to make my own. I played with a mix of almonds, olive oil, water, nutritional yeast, and garlic until I got it nice and smooth. It didn’t taste like cheese or remind me of cheese in the least, but it was good!

This meal provided the perfect mix of protein and vegetables for us. It was definitely a winner!

Since we’re talking recipes, do you have an all-time favorite?

Technorati Tags: beer, dinner, Food, recipe

Tags: beer, dinner, Food, recipe

Spicy Pasta Sauce

January 25, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 9 comments

Winter comfort food to me is generally hot and spicy. True, I love a good baked mac and cheese as much as the next person, but eating too much hearty, cheesy food bores my palate, leads me to overeat, and just doesn’t excite me.

My husband, on the other hand, grew up in Ireland, where as he says, ketchup is considered spicy. Over the years, he has built up not just an impressive tolerance for spice, but a love for it. Just last Friday, he was calling me weak when our takeaway Vindaloo made me sweat.

Marathon training has me craving comfort food in the form of carbs as well as satisfying protein, so I recently whipped up a super simple meat sauce to coat ribbons of fettuccini.

I started with my veggies:

2 cups of small, sweet peppers

1 yellow onion

6 cloves of garlic

Instead of chopping these by hand, I pureed them. I really wanted them to kind of disappear into the sauce rather than being chunks of veggies. I was all about the meat in this dish, but I know I need my veggies too.

For this meat sauce, I used a package of hot Italian turkey sausage, removed from the casing and broken up, cooked in a little bit of olive oil and crushed red pepper to add more heat.

It smelled amazing.

Once the sausage was cooked, I poured in a can of crushed tomatoes and added a sprinkle of salt, a few pinches of dried basil, a dash of garlic powder and a pinch of oregano. I also added a splash of red wine from an open bottle, stirred it all up, and let it bubble away on the lowest heat while I worked.

I checked on the sauce over the course of about two hours, dipping pieces of bread in for a taste. When we were little, if my mom was making her amazing homemade sauce, she would always cut up bread for us and give us little bowls of sauce after school. I can still taste it, and it is still one of my favorite ways to eat sauce.

I couldn’t even wait for my husband to get for dinner to eat. I had one bowl before he got home and another with him. This sauce was easy, incredibly flavorful, and made for a pretty balanced meal.

I am always looking for easy, hearty meals to make for after training runs when I am ravenous and craving comfort. What are your favorites? Feel free to share links!

Technorati Tags: dinner, Food, pasta, recipe, sauce, turkey

Tags: dinner, Food, pasta, recipe, sauce, turkey

Shortcuts to Healthy Meals

January 24, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 9 comments

Busy, busy, busy. The next five to six weeks are going to be full of marathon training workouts, new work, blogging and social events, and travel. Keeping on an eating budget and making healthy meals is still a priority, so on our most recent Market Basket trip, we kept an eye out for some affordable shortcuts. The Market Basket in Woburn was in-freakin-sane on Sunday, I have to tell you. I witnessed one fight and got yelled at by an elderly man because apparently my cart was at an angle he didn’t like.

Don’t mess with me when I am picking out bananas.

As always, my paltry patience somehow prevailed, and we got some great stuff, including a rotisserie chicken that was on super sale. The smell of the chicken was pretty enticing, so it was easy to add one to our overflowing cart.

I already had a giant pot of kale and three bean chili set up to cook for Sunday dinner, so I decided on a Monday night chicken salad for the rotisserie chicken.

Chunky Chicken and Fruit Salad

The ingredients:

1 rotisserie chicken, meat removed and chopped into chunks

2 medium apples, chopped

1 /2 cup each dried cranberries and dried cherries

1/4 medium red onion, chopped

3/4 cup Fage Greek yogurt (I used 0% because it was on sale, but I prefer 2%.)

Assembling this salad was, of course, very simple. I made it during my lunch break, added some salt and pepper, and let it chill until dinner time when I served it on a whole wheat ciabatta, also on sale at Market Basket. I also made a giant batch of simple roasted broccoli, mostly because I wanted to stand next to a 420 degree oven. And also because we needed greens, of course.

Everything about this salad said summer, so it was a nice treat. Lots of crunch and chew from the fruit, and it had a nice zing from the onion. I love Greek yogurt for recipes like this; I planned on adding a few spoons of mayo, but it just didn’t need it.

Healthy, simple, make-ahead, it was just what we needed. I have a dinner out tonight and another tomorrow, so luckily there are chili and chicken salad leftovers for the husband.

What are you eating this week? Do you have any shortcuts to quick, healthy meals?

Technorati Tags: chicken, dinner, Food, healthy, recipe, sandwiches