Homemade potato chips

I'm a sucker for potato chips. When it comes to junk food, potato chips are my vice. However, as you know, chips can be very high in calories and saturated fat. Here is a recipe for homemade potato chips that cuts down on the things that are bad for you but satisfies that craving.

Ingredients
4 Yukon gold or russet potatoes
Olive oil
Seasoning of your choice, fresh herbs, or just salt and pepper

Slice the potatoes lengthwise very thin, about the thickness of two quarters stacked on one another. In a bowl, combine olive oil (and herbs if you are using them). Dump the potato slices into the bowl and toss to coat completely with olive oil. Lay out flat on a baking sheet covered in foil. Coat the top side with seasoning and salt and pepper and cook in oven at 375 for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and flip each slice over.sprinkle more seasoning and return to oven for another 10 minutes, or until the chips start to brown. Remove from oven and serve!

Some ideas for seasoning: Cajun spice mix, Rosemary and garlic, seasoning salt and pepper, chili powder cayenne pepper and brown sugar (spicy sweet), or just plain salt and pepper.

Please enjoy!

Salmon Bruscetta

When I wrote my blog entry earlier this week, I got to thinking about how, when I started MyFitnessPal, I actually had trouble eating enough calories to keep up with my workout routine. That's because when it comes to most of my meals, I eat unprocessed food. With the exception of peanut butter, bread, and a few other miscellaneous items, if it comes in a cardboard box or a plastic bag, I generally don't eat it. (Not gonna lie, I ate a box of Girl Scout cookies to myself) So when it comes to the big meals, I eat very low-calorie food.

Now, I don't expect everyone to do this. However, my point is that if you are looking to lose weight or eat a little healthier, cutting down on your processed foods is probably a good idea. Most of my recipes on here are, of course, very low on processed food. Here's another recipe to add to your low-calorie, high flavor arsenal. It's a little more useful over the summer, when the tomatoes are in season, but we are still getting semi-decent tomatoes down here in SoCal. So I thought I would share one of my favorite quick and easy recipes, Salmon Bruscetta.

Ingredients (for 2 people)

1/2-3/4 lb salmon

3 tomatoes, diced

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 onion, diced

1 handful basil, roughly chopped

Extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 (or grill, your choice).

In a small mixing bowl, toss together the tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper until thoroughly mixed. Be sure to add enough olive oil to coat the ingredients, but not so much that it's soupy or drenched.

On a baking sheet, lay out enough foil to surround the salmon. Place the salmon on the foil, and then add the bruscetta mixture. Wrap the foil around the salmon and bruscetta. Place in oven and cook for 20-25 minutes.

Note: This recipe tastes best when fresh tomatoes and salmon are used. If you can't get your salmon from a fresh fish market, get it from the fresh fish section of the grocery store, NOT the frozen ones on the shelves. Take it from my experience, it doesn't taste good!!

Please enjoy!

Homemade tomato sauce

For the past few weeks, I have been experimenting with homemade tomato sauce. I'm talking about the tomato sauce in a can from, say, Hunt's or X Grocery Store brand. I've been trying to buy as little as possible from the grocery store since we have such an abundance of food at the farmers markets here, and it's still tomato season out in California! So far I've made 3 dinners with tomato sauce as the base: my own spaghetti sauce recipe (which I'll share sometime in the future!), stuffed zucchini, and last night I made homemade chili. They have all come out amazing! Using the fresh tomatoes as opposed to the canned tomato sauce really adds that extra flavor. Here's the method I've found that best makes a substitute for canned tomato sauce.

Peeling and De-Seeding the Tomatoes

For every 15 oz can of tomato sauce + 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, use 6 large fresh tomatoes. Boil a large pot of water and have a bowl of ice water standing by. Once the water is boiling, place the tomatoes in for a minute or two until you see the skin starting to peel off. Using a slotted spoon, remove the tomatoes and dump them in the ice water. Let them cool for about a minute, then peel the skins off with your fingers. Cut off the tops of the tomatoes so you can see the seed chambers inside. Over a garbage can, squeeze the tomato so the seeds drip out. You can also use your fingers to scoop out the seeds as best you can.

Crushing and flavoring the tomatoes

Cut each tomato in half and place in a large bowl. Using a potato masher, crush the tomatoes. I also use my fingers (they are all covered in tomato goop at this point anyway) to crush them and then go to the masher. Mash until you have a good ratio of sauce to tomato chunks. Add salt, I'd say about two tsp.

Side note: One really cool thing about homemade tomato sauce is that you get to control the salt content. It will still taste great no matter how much salt you put in!

Keep mashing the tomatoes so that the salt dissolves and the consistency is thick but not too chunky. And there you go! Homemade tomato sauce.

It is a little labor intensive. Set aside about 20 minutes to make the sauce. Or, you can make a whole bunch at once and can it or freeze it. I'm going to experiment with canning soon, so I can make sure to have plenty of sauce to last us through the winter!

Sausageless Shrimp Gumbo

I love love LOVE Cajun food. The flavors are so rich and complex, but the dishes are generally very easy to make. One staple ingredient in many Cajun dishes is Andouille sausage, which can be very greasy, hard on the stomach, and not so great on the waistline. Which is why I love this next recipe. I got it from my dad, who absolutely loves to cook and from whom I probably got my dedication to cooking and flair for coming up with my own recipes. He loves spicy Cajun dishes, and he used to always make this one when I was growing up.

It's farmers market friendly and it's good for you, which makes a perfect recipe for Steffstainability! Enjoy!

Note: For more or less spiciness, play around with the amounts of red and white pepper. My dad had a half teaspoon of each in his recipes, but that's a little too spicy for me, so I decreased it to a quarter teaspoon.

Another note: This recipe requires a spice called "file", which is pronounced fee-lay (makes me think of my favorite TV show in my adolescent days, Boy Meets World... "Feenay! Fee-hee-hee-heenay!" Anyone??). It's sometimes hard to find, but it's almost absolutely necessary for gumbo. It compliments the taste of the seafood and acts as a thickener. If you can't find it, you can add okra to the gumbo instead; the juice from the okra will thicken the sauce. Hell, add okra anyway; it's not in this recipe but is often used in Cajun foods. It's super yummy and currently in season!

Ingredients:

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp white pepper

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried oregano

1 crumbled bay leaf

1 onion, diced

2 or 3 celery stalks, chopped

1 green bell pepper, diced

3 Tbl file

1 Tbl tabasco sauce

1 clove minced garlic

1 cup tomato sauce

5 cups vegetable stock

1/2 lb imitation crab

1 lb shrimp

1 cup rice

You can use any flavor stock/broth you want, really. I like the extra kick of flavor that beef stock adds to it; I've tried vegetable and chicken as well, and they all taste great.

You have a couple options with the shrimp. Get fresh if you can, but frozen raw peeled shrimp also works.

Instructions

1. Combine cayenne pepper, paprika, salt, white pepper, black pepper, thyme, oregano, and bay leaf in a small bowl or container.

2. If your shrimp has the shells on them, deshell them, but save the shells in a saucepan. Add the vegetable/chicken/beef stock to the shells and bring to a boil, and simmer for about 10 minutes. If your shrimp do not have shells, skip this step.

3. In a medium or large soup pot over med-high heat, heat some vegetable oil. Cook onions, celery, bell pepper, file (or okra), tabasco sauce, and minced garlic for 6-8 minutes, stirring constantly. If you did use the file, you will have to start scraping the mixture off the bottom of the pot, especially if your pot is not nonstick. Don't worry though, just keep scraping.

4. Reduce heat to med-low and add tomato sauce and spice mixture. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring every now and then.

5. Strain the broth and shells over the soup pot, adding the broth to your mixture. If you skipped step 2, just add the broth to the soup pot.

6. Bring the gumbo to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 45 minutes.

7. Prepare white rice as per the instructions on the package.

8. After the 45 minutes, add the crab and shrimp to the gumbo and cook for about 10 minutes.

Spoon rice into soup bowls and cover with gumbo. Enjoy!!

Unexpected Awesomeness and another Farmer's Market favorite - Zucchini Pasta

Today was full of pleasant surprises! After a great total body workout at the gym and lunch out with the girls, I got a text message from Kara who said "There's a Prius outside with sustainable1000.com written on it." So I looked it up to learn more about it! Turns out a man named Shane Snipes is traveling the country in his Prius in 250 days, and he's set out to do 1,000 interviews about sustainability. How cool is that?! AND he showed up in Lawton and is staying with a friend in my apartment complex! I was really excited to find this guy in my apartment complex, and I really wanted to talk to him. So of course I went stalker-status and walked by his car about 10 times, hoping he would come outside. The 100-degree heat was getting to me, so I ended up leaving him a note on his car, saying that I wanted to talk to him, and I left him my phone number and blog address. He called me about an hour later, and we walked around my apartment complex while we talked about sustainability! He even took a little video interview of me that will *hopefully* end up on his YouTube site, which you can access on his website.

It was so cool to meet him! I think it's really awesome that he has set out on such a prestigious project in an effort to define sustainability on a wider scale and show that it's not difficult to be sustainable! He has been traveling around the country since April 2, and Oklahoma was his 17th state he has visited. Check out his website and become a fan on Facebook; help get the word out there that he is doing this!

On to a new recipe! If you've noticed, I've been using a lot of zucchini and squash in my recipes. That's because it's a great summer vegetable, it's really healthy for you, and it's so versatile. You can make so many different dishes with zucchini and squash. Also, it's very popular at the farmers market; everybody has it and they are really cheap. I usually buy 3 or 4 zucchini or squash every week!

This recipe is a quick and easy favorite of mine. I think I mentioned it a few posts ago in passing, so I wanted to share it with you. This is great for a quick dinner or even lunch, and it's healthy and very tasty!

Zucchini and Whole Wheat Pasta

Ingredients:

Extra virgin olive oil

1 large or 2 small zucchini, chopped into half-moon slices

3 cloves of garlic, minced

Lemon juice

Whole wheat penne pasta (I use about half a box for my husband and myself for dinner)

Fresh Parsley, minced

Fresh Basil, chopped

Parmesan cheese

Optional: fresh mint (I tend to leave it out because the mint is never really fresh here and it doesn't taste very good)

1. Boil water in a pot and add pasta.

2. While waiting for the water to boil, and for the pasta to cook, heat the oil over med-high heat in a large frying pan.

3. Add the zucchini and cook, stirring and turning from time to time for about 5 minutes.

4. Add the garlic and cook for another minute or so, until the garlic starts to brown.

5. Remove pan from heat. Squeeze some lemon juice over the top and stir.

6. Add the pasta, parsley, basil, and parmesan cheese and stir until thoroughly mixed. The amount of parmesan cheese is up to you, I personally can't use self-restraint when it comes to parm!

One great thing about this meal is that if you have other vegetables you need to get rid of, you can add them in. Broccoli, carrots, bell peppers, or onions would all be great additions to this recipe. I had a half of a tomato I needed to get rid of, so I diced that and threw it in at the very end. It turned out great!