Saturday, January 30, 2010

Balsamic-Glazed Chicken and Bell Pepper Sandwiches


One of my favorite online resources for healthy recipes is a site called myrecipes.com. You can search for recipes under many different categories such as: ingredient, occasion, dietary need and culture. Plus they give serving sizes and nutritional information. If you want a great resource where you can find easy, healthy and tasty meals, myrecipes is wonderful!

We stayed pretty close to the recipe, although we substituted a real red pepper for roasted red peppers, and used sourdough bread instead of focaccia bread.

Here's a link to the recipe:



Fresh Mozzarella, Tomato. and Basil Couscous Salad

After making this dish, Bryson and I have fallen in love with couscous! It's so good and can pair with so many different things. This salad (which we found at myrecipes.com) we actually had as a main dish, although it would also work great as a side dish. It was so fresh tasting (hence the name :) ), very filling and so simple. It's a great meal to make when you don't have a lot of time, and it's pretty healthy too. The only thing we changed was to use a can of diced tomatoes instead of fresh ones. Enjoy!

Here's a link to the recipe:



Thursday, January 21, 2010

Mozzarella with Roasted Red Peppers and Pesto Sandwiches

This is one of our new favorite sandwiches, and so simple to make. I found it in The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (I love this cookbook), although as always we made a few changes. There are four ingredients to this sandwich:
  • Fresh Mozzarella
  • Roasted Red Peppers
  • Pesto
  • Focaccia Bread
Bryson and I didn't have any focaccia bread so we used sourdough bread instead. We also only had shredded mozzarella cheese which, although a little messy, worked just fine. And our final change was that we grilled the sandwiches, which brought out all the flavors of the peppers, cheese and pesto, plus just gave it an extra kick.

Here is how we assembled them:
  • Spread pesto on the bread
  • Layer with a few Roasted Red Peppers
  • Sprinkle with Cheese
  • Spread pesto on the other piece of bread and place that (pesto side down) on the rest of the sandwich
Butter one side and put that side down on either a heated grill or in a heated pan. Once that side is finished, butter the top side and carefully flip the sandwich over.

We paired our sandwich with a bag of frozen vegetables that we sprinkled with Italian seasoning and baked in the oven.

Mexican Shepherd's Pie

It's been a while since either of us has posted any recipes. The one I'm going to post we actually discovered a few months ago. It's what we like to call a Mexican Shepherd's Pie. It's very simple to make.

For the base or filling, we used Mexican Happiness. Then we made some mashed potatoes and mixed it with a little cumin and chili powder to give it a little kick. When those are finished, spread them over the Mexican Happiness. We used little handled soup bowls to hold the pie, but you can really put it in any oven proof dish.

Put the pie in the oven at 350 degrees. Since all the ingredients are already cooked, you are really just making sure it's warmed all the way through. So there's no set time limit. When you feel it's been heated the way you like it, take it out. For a final touch we sprinkled a little cheese on top. So delicious and so easy! Enjoy!