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52 ways to save money on a healthy diet

Roasted Frozen Broccoli

September 11, 2019 by KimiHarris 13 Comments

This is not only a simple recipe, but it's delicious and kid-friendly too. Yes! Even frozen vegetables can taste good!

We have a problem. If we don’t like how I prepare vegetables, they are pushed around on our plates and barely touched. This is no good, as I believe that vegetables are not only important for our health, but they can also be a delicious part of our daily diet as well. 

So when we made our big move to South Dakota, I faced a new problem. Back in Portland, Oregon, I had a large array of options for vegetables. Here? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of stores and some good options, but I found that I was eating less vegetables, they were costing a little more, and I wasn’t getting as good of a variety into our diets. Because of the climate here, we simply don’t have as many local options for produce. 

I needed to change my game plan, and that meant being willing to try more frozen vegetables. I have, admittedly, long eschewed frozen vegetables, and we mainly used them as a stop-gap. But I realized that there were many great frozen vegetables options here and I needed to figure out how to make them a little more delicious. I’m proud to say that we now eat them on a regular basis and all of us love them. Why? 

Can You Roast Frozen Vegetables?

Well, it turns out that you can roast them just like you do fresh vegetables! Why does roasting make fresh and frozen vegetables so much better? For a number of reasons: It helps crisp vegetables while they cook and if you leave them in long enough they will start to caramelize and give you a savory depth of flavor. 

Steamed frozen vegetables can sometimes have a mushy texture once cooked, or be very bland in flavor. I did find that the recipe I used for my cooking like a Roman day, using a spiced wine sauce with frozen broccoli, was really delightful. So you can absolutely have good steamed frozen vegetables. 

However, roasting them is a more fail-safe way for delicious vegetables that takes very little hands-on time. 

It’s also very versatile. We’ve done frozen Brussels sprouts, a carrots, broccoli and cauliflower mix, and both cauliflower and broccoli. The only thing we haven’t really been fans of is the frozen carrots. They were far better when roasted than steamed, but we found we preferred the other vegetables. 

Basic Method for Roasting Frozen Vegetables

Basic Method: Roasting vegetables is very easy. The basis concept is to toss frozen vegetables (don’t defrost) with oil, salt and pepper and roast in a hot oven until they are browned and crispy. I often don’t even set a timer. 

Additions: You can also toss them with dried herbs, fresh garlic before they go in the oven, or toss with a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh herbs right after they come out of the oven. Or, roast with chopped bacon. This is the type of recipe where knowing the basic method is helpful, and then you can have fun trying a variety of vegetables and herbs and spices. 

But to get you started, here is a basic recipe for Roasted Frozen Broccoli

Roasted Frozen Broccoli

1 package of frozen broccoli (16 oz) 

2-3 tablespoons of oil or melted fat of your choice 

Salt and pepper 

  1. Preheat oven to 425F. I use parchment paper because I use sheet pans that are aluminum, but you can an unlined sheet pan as well. 
  2. Toss broccoli with oil/fat and salt and pepper. Place in oven and cook until browned to desired doneness. (between 15-35 minutes). 

Variation: My favorite variation is adding some sliced fresh onions to the broccoli before it cooks and then tossing with chopped fresh basil and a splash of balsamic vinegar once it’s out of the oven. Fabulous! 

Filed Under: $5 Dishes, 52 ways to save money on a healthy diet, AIP, Dairy Free, Egg Free, For the Kids, Gluten Free, Grain Free, Health, Sides, The Low Energy Guide to Healthy Cooking, Uncategorized, Vegan, Vegetarian

15 Unrecipes for Healthy Busy Day Meals

February 27, 2019 by KimiHarris 2 Comments

These easy methods can produce yummy healthy meals with what you have on hand - and without a formal recipe!

There is a certain lovely rhythm you can fall into in the kitchen that lends itself to creating simple meals and snacks with what you have on hand. A pinch of this, a handful of that, some leftovers, and a pot of beans, and dinner is served.

While I continue to experiment with some new recipes to bring to you at The Nourishing Gourmet, I wanted to share some of my “un-recipes,” or methods that are so simple, and pliable to what you have on hand, that an exact recipe is not needed.

I will link to some easy recipes as well, to get your thought process going. But I find that a well-stocked kitchen can often supply delicious meals without a recipe and just a dash of creativity.

You will notice that some of these snacks and easy meals are inspired by the books I read as well.

Bed of Greens + random bits and pieces
Cover a plate with fresh greens of choice (I use the baby salad greens), and top with leftovers such as shredded meats, cooked grains, chilled vegetables, leftover (or canned) beans, fresh vegetables, and top with dressing of your choice (here are 8 of my favorite dairy-free salad dressings). Other options: Canned fish, fried egg, boiled eggs, diced, homemade croutons (fry diced older bread cubes in a pan with melted butter and olive oil and salt and pepper).

I’m amazed at the delicious meals I am often able to make using just the little bits and pieces of leftovers used over salad greens.

Nutritious Smoothies
If you keep frozen fruit in the freezer, it’s easy to whip up a last minute meal or snack. Add salad greens for vegetables, or cucumber or zucchini. Use banana or some juice to sweeten it. Add protein by using white beans, collagen powder, or a spoonful of nut butter (like in this recipe )

Easiest soups ever
If you have broth, you can make a soup with leftovers or pantry items. For example, many soups can be created with a few vegetables, and some eggs (egg drop soup [PDF file]is one of my favorites!).

Or heat broth and add leftover vegetables, rice, and diced meat. Or saute vegetables, add broth, and then add some leftover pasta and meat. There are as many variations as you can imagine! If your broth is homemade and flavorful (just salt it well!), you can get away with adding less to it, and it still being delicious.

Apples and Cheese or Apples and Nut/Seed Butters
This makes a light meal or a snack. Slice apples and cheese, and enjoy. Or slice apples and serve with your choice of nut, peanut, or seed butter. (We love this DIY Maple Pumpkin Seed Butter too).

Celery Stick and Peanut butter or nut/seed butter
You know the drill, slather celery sticks with nut butter of choice, and top with raisins, if desired. If you want to get even fancier, there are other versions as well according to Google.

Swedish Rye Bread and Cheese
Weston A Price noted that Swedish villagers used dark rye bread and a large slab of grass-fed cheese (about the size of your hand) for meals. When both the bread and the cheese are using nutrient-dense ingredients, you get a surprising amount of nutrients in such a simple meal. It’s important to remember that people in the past didn’t have time to make elaborate meals, but their bread and cheese were often more nutrient dense because of the ingredients and methods they used to produce them. (Grilled cheese is also delicious, and to make it more “grown-up” you can always add grilled onions or vegetables, or serve with a soup or salad on the side). Our kids also love quesadillas!

Stuffed Avocados
Slice an avocado in half and fill with egg salad, top with sliced boiled eggs, or tuna or chicken salad. Yum!

Japanese Avocados
This is a favorite from my husband’s childhood. Follow the recipe once, and never need it again!

Open-faced sandwiches
I love this Norwegian tradition. Use hearty sliced bread (I use gluten-free) and serve with leftover sliced meats, hard-boiled eggs, butter, sliced cucumbers, and radishes, baby greens, leftover cooked fish + whatever you have on hand, or want to use! People can make their sandwiches as they like it. You can even put out lettuce cups for those not eating grains or use a paleo bread.

This easy dish makes a wonderful and flavorful frugal main dish that is paleo and AIP friendly too! Serve it over desired carbohydrate (AIP - think cauli-rice or sweet potato). -- The Nourishing Gourmet

Skillet Meals
Again, using leftovers, you can create excellent meals. Fry up leftover rice or quinoa into fried rice/quinoa. Use diced meats, frozen peas or corn, or saute up some vegetables and then add pre-cooked ingredients to the pan. Read, The Art of Skillet Dinners, for more ideas, including some grain free options.

Fried Bread (inspired by James Herriot)
James Herriot, in one of his beautiful books, talks about his wife making him fried bread to bring along when he was driving to visit a farm in his veterinarian duties. It makes a delicious snack! Basically, you pan-fry a slice of bread in butter, olive oil, or bacon grease, and serve nicely browned, while warm. Top with sandwich makings, if desired, or enjoy as is! This is like toast, but better.

Eggs in a Million Ways
Eggs are the perfect fast food. Scrambled, fried, boiled, soft-boiled, and on. Serve it for dinner along with sausage and toast, and everyone is happy. One easy recipe – Simple Deviled Eggs.

Grain “Puddings”
This makes an easy and delicious snack (or dessert!). Use leftover cooked and chilled grains such as rice, quinoa, buckwheat, or oats. Cover with milk of choice, lightly sweeten with sweetener of your choice (pure maple syrup is delicious), dust with cinnamon, and then serve cold or warm.

Sliced leftover meats with veggies, cucumbers, or baked goods
Put out a platter of leftover sliced meats (like pot roast, which is delicious cold), serve with cucumber slices and carrots and red bell pepper slices, and toast, muffins, or biscuits (biscuits are easy to make last minute!).

Leftover Baked Potatoes or Sweet Potatoes
I always try to make extra when we have these for dinner (see how to make sweet potatoes in a slow cooker here), and then I can quickly reheat them and serve with butter and salt and pepper, or stuffed with cheese or sour cream, or diced meats or leftover shredded beef. I also make roasted sweet potatoes rounds on a regular basis (another recipe where you really only need to use the “recipe” once or twice, before you have the method down).

Filed Under: 52 ways to save money on a healthy diet, For the Love of Food and Books, Nourishing Frugal Recipes, The Low Energy Guide to Healthy Cooking

If You Aren’t Already, Start Saving Your Bacon Grease

May 4, 2016 by KimiHarris 31 Comments

Don’t waste that bacon grease, but save it to use in these simple recipes. So delicious, and so easy! Adds great flavor. – The Nourishing Gourmet

How many reasons do you need for saving your bacon grease? Really, the first one should be the only one needed. Saving and then reusing bacon grease adds that delicious bacon flavor to other dishes that can’t be beat. Bacon lovers, you know what I’m talking about.

There are a couple of ingredients that always make things taste better. For me, those foods are butter, bacon, bacon grease, cream, coconut milk or coconut cream. My husband and kids would add tamari to that list.

Bacon grease – especially when it’s not from the cheap bacon – can add a subtle bacon or smoky flavor to dishes that would otherwise be plain Jane.

The second reason to save it is an obvious one – why waste food that makes everything taste so wonderful? I think people only stopped saving bacon grease when fears about animal fats appeared. (You can read about that controversy here.) Since we choose to eat a more traditional diet (including animal fats) and research is not pointing to animal fats not being a problem, it’s time to bring back the bacon grease!

All you need to do is have a designated bacon grease jar. I just keep adding the liquid gold to the jar, and then putting it back into the refrigerator. I even keep a spoon in the jar for easy scooping when I need a spoonful for a dish. You can strain the bacon bits out of the grease, and that’s probably a good practice (but I never bother because #whohastimeforthat). I find that this method works quite well for me, but you can buy something like this stainless steel bacon grease container  (affiliate link) that comes with a strainer to use for it. However you choose to save it, here are some great ways to use it.

6 Delicious Ways to Use Bacon Grease

Fried Rice

Now we like this best with bacon bits in the fried rice, but even without, it’s delicious. My husband showed me how to make it as it was a family dish he had growing up. You re-fry rice with shredded carrots, thinly sliced celery, and thinly sliced green onions with bacon grease, and then add some crumbled bacon and peas in the last couple minutes of cooking. It’s so good! I want to make a cauliflower rice version soon for a grain-free version. Yum.

Yummy Veggies

I still think that the reason that so many people don’t like vegetables is that they’ve had steamed frozen vegetables served to them one too many times. There are many delicious ways to enjoy vegetables. They can be fancy, like this Roasted Asparagus with Lemon Butter Sauce, or they can be simple – like a simple one vegetable sauté. But when you sauté your vegetables, try using bacon grease! Vegetables that are cooked in a touch of bacon grease are delicious and have a much richer flavor.

Gingery Broccoli and Mushroom Beef Stir-Fry

There are many main dishes that are even better when you use bacon grease. For example, I love it when I have bacon grease on hand when I make this dish. It adds a great smoky touch to the dish.

Eggs

Scramble or fry your eggs in bacon grease. Because bacon and eggs just go together.

Wilted Spinach Salad

Spinach salad never tasted so good! This old fashioned salad is a great way to use bacon grease. You can get my version in my cookbook, Fresh: Nourishing Salads for all Seasons.

Baked Goods

I have tried this yet, but you can also use bacon grease as the fat in pie crusts, biscuits, muffins, pancakes, etc. It could be delicious if used in the right recipe. Think of corn muffins made with bacon grease instead of oil served with hot chili. Yum!

Do you save your bacon grease? If so, how do you use yours?

Filed Under: 52 ways to save money on a healthy diet

Greek Sweet Potato Hash – $15 Meal from Trader Joe’s

March 31, 2016 by Natalia Gill 1 Comment

$15 Trader Joe's Meal - Sweet Potato Hash -- The Nourishing Gourmet

By Natalia Gill of An Appetite For Joy

What could be better than diced sweet potatoes fried up with garlic and green onions, then topped with wild peppery arugula, salty feta and a sprinkle of sumac? Not much in this world if you ask me.

This Greek sweet potato hash is also versatile – delicious on its own or stuffed into a pita pocket or lettuce wrap!

One thing I love about the direction Kimberly takes with this blog is learning to save money while eating right. She came up with the idea of buying meal ingredients at Trader Joe’s with $15 in pocket and I thought it was a fun challenge!

I didn’t include cooking fat and spices in the cost. To more than offset this, know that there will be plenty of leftover sweet potatoes, arugula and sheep feta. My son loves packing the feta with olives in his lunch. And the extra sweet potatoes come in handy for our favorite dessert – Sweet Potato Pie with Lemon Zest.

3 FAVORITE TJ’S FINDS

When creating the recipe, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite items at Trader Joe’s:

Sweet potatoes – I find TJ’s to have good prices on basic organic sweet potatoes.

Wild arugula – This was a new one for me. I like that there are a couple of wild-grown foods in the store as a cost-saving option compared to organic (wild blueberries and now wild arugula). This bagged arugula was amazingly fresh and the best arugula I have ever purchased from a grocery store. It was almost as tasty as the one I buy from a local farmer.

Sheep feta – I love this stuff. It comes in a sizable block that is pre-cut into manageable pieces. This cheese is much creamer than cow-milk feta and easier on digestion, like goat’s milk. It lasts all week for us!

COST BREAKDOWN

3 lb bag of sweet potatoes – $4.49
wild arugula – $2
green onions – $1.29
sheep feta – $6.49
lemon – 50 cents

TOTAL – $14.77

This meal comes together in a flash, especially if you can grab a few minutes earlier in the day to prepare the sweet potatoes (I like breaking up cooking tasks). I just cut them into french fry shape (a good knife makes this easy!) and soak in ice water in the fridge til I’m ready to cook.

$15 Trader Joe's Meal - Sweet Potato Hash -- The Nourishing Gourmet

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Greek Sweet Potato Hash - $15 Meal from Trader Joe's
 
Author:
Natalia Gill
Recipe type: Main
Cuisine: Greek-inspired
Serves: 4-6
Print
 
This Greek-inspired sweet potato hash makes a great light meal for spring or summer. Enjoy it on its own or stuffed into a homemade pita, tortilla or lettuce wrap. A cup of bone broth on the side completes the meal.
Ingredients
  • 2 pounds sweet potatoes (about 4 large), peeled and diced small
  • 4 scallions, diced
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1-2 tablespoons dried oregano, to taste
  • unrefined salt and pepper, to taste
  • 2 tablespoons cooking fat (ghee, bacon fat, coconut oil, etc.)
  • OPTIONAL TOPPINGS:
  • chunks of sheep feta
  • arugula
  • sumac
Instructions
  1. This is a one-pot meal if you halve the recipe. But with the quantity of sweet potatoes, it's necessary to make it in two skillets.
  2. Heat two skillets over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon cooking fat to each. When hot, add diced sweet potatoes and cook until they start to soften, about 5-10 minutes. Add a little salt.
  3. Add the scallions and cook another 5 minutes, or until they start to get a little crispy. (Add extra fat if needed.)
  4. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the garlic and oregano and cook another 5 minutes being careful not to burn the garlic.
  5. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
  6. Serve with a lemon wedge, a pile of arugula on top and some feta if desired. I also like to sprinkle on a little sumac.
3.3.3077

Filed Under: 52 ways to save money on a healthy diet, Breakfast and Brunch, Egg Free, Gluten Free, Main Dishes, Nourishing Frugal Recipes, Uncategorized, Vegetarian Tagged With: Greek, sweet potatoes, Trader Joe's, Vegetarian

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The information you find here at The Nourishing Gourmet is meant to help you become a better cook! This site is primarily for sharing family friendly recipes. It's not meant to give medical advice or to make any health claims on the prevention or curing of diseases.This site is only for informational and educational purposes. Please discuss with your own, qualified health care provider before adding in supplements or making any changes in your diet. Also, any links to sponsors or affiliates (including Amazon) may give me a percentage of the sale or a pay per click. Thank you for supporting this site.

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