Thai-tastic!!!!

One of my Turkish friends really likes Thai food and asked if I could cook it (I'd told him that I was a pretty good cook so... ) and I said I could but couldn't get some of the ingredients here. He volunteered to do all the shopping if I'd cook for him and some friends. I readily agreed and planned a pretty good menu that included:

Cucumber Salad
Salad Rolls
Tom Yum Goong (spicy sour shrimp soup)
Pad Thai
Green Curry

He got me nearly everything I needed and wanted and I was able to make some adjustments and substitutions that helped to keep the flavour profile pretty similar and it was tasty... I found my recipes from www.thaitable.com and www.thaifood.about.com for a great green curry paste recipe. Take the risk and make your table Thai-tastic sometime... I had a blast doing it!



Tom Yum Goong... it was so tasty and sour!!

Green Curry... making the paste myself was much easier than I thought! I loved doing it!

Salad Rolls with imitation crab in them... also yummy!

Cucumber Salad...so refreshing!

Stuffed Eggplants

The other day I was really digging my detox diet but had already stopped detoxing.... so I decided that eating healthy is a lifestyle and I wanted to keep on it. Sure, I can have whatever I want but I am going to choose to have healthy foods more often than not and so I made my own version of stuffed eggplant.

Here is how I did it:

I took 2 small eggplants, cut them into halves and then topped off the ends and hollowed them out. I cased them in foil and sprayed them lightly with olive oil and put them in the oven at 350 to baked while I prepared the filling which consisted of:

1 of the eggplant innards all chopped up
1 diced onion
1 cup cooked brown rice (cooked in salted water with olive oil, oregano, garlic and sumac)
1/2 cup cooked bulgher wheat

After about 10 minutes I took the eggplant shells out and put the filling in and topped them with a light cheese and put them back into the oven for about 15 more minutes. Then removed them from the foil and enjoyed. They were great!!!

Happy Eating!

Vegan Green Lentil Soup

Sorry... no picture for this one. I actually took a photo (or thought I did) but ended up not having the memory card in the camera... hehehe Somedays I don't know where my brain is!

Anyway, in my detoxing that I was doing, I was allowed lentils and I LOVE the lentil soup that they make here in Turkey. I searched online to find a recipe that would be similar and contain no meat or meat products. I found a recipe but needed to tweak it a little and here is what came out:


2 tsp olive oil
1 cup finely chopped onions
3 cloves of minced garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
8 cups water
1 1/4 cups dried green lentils
salt and pepper to taste

First take the onions and garlic and sauté them in the olive oil until the onions are translucent. Then add the rest of the ingredients and bring them to a boil. Once you have them boiling, turn the heat down to a simmer and cook until your lentils are completely soft. Then turn it off and let it cool before putting it in a blender and pureeing. Reheat to the temperature that you like your soup at. It's a great soup!!

I didn't have a blender so I elected to eat it chunky style and it was still tasty and I thought it would be amazing over brown rice!!

Happy Eating!

SPRING!!!

When I lived in Oman, a woman from Jordan introduced me to this little spring jewel and I am thrilled to be back in a part of the world that sells, enjoys and loves them! They are the green, spring almond. It's an almond before it reaches maturity. It's crunchy, tangy and just plain good!! The green fuzzy part is what becomes the shell given time to ripen and harden. The inside is what will become the almond nut itself. Anyway, they come just once a year and are a treat! Soak them in a little salted water before eating, or simply crunch away while dipping in a little sea salt. Up to you!!

Call For Recipes

Hi Foodie Friends!!! I've recently gone to the doctor for something that I think is unrelated to my weight but my doctor wants to put all the blame on my weight... so I'm happy to comply and lose the weight (I'm sure that it's not the cause of the issue, but I am also sure it's not helping things). Here are the parameters I must function within from now on (some are fairly easy for me since I don't partake in them often):

• no salt (at all)
• no sugar (at all, this includes fruit juices)
• no oil (as little as possible)
• no bread (guess what? It has salt!!)
• no fast food (easy... I don't have that often anyway)
• no cheese (this is like murder for me... if you remember, I had a post about melted cheese alone!!!)
  

Here's where you come in... please leave me links to good recipes or even some recipes you know and have that I could use in my comment box. After my Spring Break I had planned to follow a detox program and I have a few recipes with that, but I am going to need more... especially considering that I can't get all ingredients readily here.

Help me get back to happy eating, my friends!!