Low Country Scallops and Bacon over Quinoa

I love scallops...one of my favorite seafood. I love it fried, sauteed, grilled wrapped in bacon...you name it, I'll eat it with scallops if I could. Sea scallops can be a little pricey so I was thrilled when I was in Albertson's last week and they were on sale for $8.00/lb. I bought a pound and a half...since that will feed me and my son, Ross. I froze them because I had other things to cook last week and didn't really want to try to think up something good and different to do with them. Mind you, I would have eaten them fried, but I'm trying not to eat fried foods so the goal was to find a less fattening way to have these wonderful treats! 

Ross and I went to lunch last week at Ruby Tuesday's and new, on their menu, was Low Country shrimp and grits. I LOVE shrimp and grits...I mean, I love them and I try them any where that I go...even Ruby Tuesday's. Ruby's had the right idea but the wrong cook since the andouille sausage was crisp...WRONG!!. Anyway, I digress, just a little only because it was those shrimp and grits that was my inspiration for my dinner tonight...that and a recipe that I repinned on Pinterest for bacon wrapped scallops (been there, done that quite well). 

So...I put my sick thinking cap on (I've had the flu-y/cold since Thursday) today while I was sitting on the couch watching this great movie, The Eagle (with Channing Tatum) and came up with an idea. A few weeks ago I cooked rabbit in white wine with bacon and mushrooms so I decided to steal some ideas from that recipe and steal some ideas from other dishes I have had in the past. I came up with Scallops and Bacon over quinoa. Now, here I will confess that I would have loved to have served this dish over some cheese grits...but alas, I didn't have any grits and finding them here in Idaho isn't that easy. So, I decided to use quinoa, which will be much healthier than the cheese grits...even though I'm secretly wanting the cheese grits! I decided to call this dish "Low Country" because I used bacon and Old Bay seasoning and if Ruby's can call their recipe low country because they throw in some Cajun seasoning, I can too. :-) One disclaimer, I've stated in other recipes that I don't do bell pepper. Typically in Cajun cooking, you use bell pepper but I cannot handle them. Instead, I've been buying bags of mini-sweet peppers. Honestly, they don't taste sweet at all, they taste like a pepper without the strong bell pepper taste. 

Low Country Scallops and Bacon over Quinoa

1/2 lg. onion, sliced
2 lg. cloves of garlic, minced
3 small sweet mini peppers, diced (here is where you might deviate and use bell pepper instead)
8 slices of bacon (chopped up)
2 lg Roma tomatoes, diced
1 cup (or so) fresh sliced mushrooms (really, you could use however many you like)
1.5 lb.s sea scallops
2 tbsp. EVOO
1 cup white wine (cooking wine is what I used but you could use the real deal too)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. Cajun seasoning (Old Bay is the only thing I can get here in Idaho...my typical go to is Tony Chachere's). 
Cooked quinoa (I cooked one dry cup)
3 tsp. cornstarch. 

Instructions: 
Cook bacon in pan until crispy, remove and set aside. Saute the scallops (season lightly with a little sea salt) in the bacon drippings for five minutes, then remove (you don't want to cook the scallops done since they will be simmering later). Add EVOO and saute onions, garlic and peppers until onion is tender on medium high heat. Add tomatoes and mushrooms and stir until tomatoes are cooked down. Add wine, scallops and bacon, bring to a boil over medium high heat, then turn down to low. Add the bay leaves and Cajun seasoning (normally I would add more than a tsp but my son doesn't like things overly spicy), then cover. Let simmer for 30 minutes. During this time, you can cook the quinoa. 

Since the scallops will create liquid, before serving, you will want to use the 3 tsp. of cornstarch dissolved in just enough water so that it isn't goopy. Add this to the pan and stir to thicken up the sauce. Serve immediately over quinoa (or you can choose rice, cheese grits or pasta). This would also be nice with some toasty garlic bread (I didn't cook any because I was trying to keep my caloric intake down but if you can eat bread, by all means do). You can also season with a little hot sauce, if you like it a little more spicy than I cooked it. 

If I must say so myself...this turned out to be fabulous! Happy Mother's Day to me!!! 

-Kim
Be Well, Eat Fresh

Crab Stuffed Avocado

I had some crab left over from my crab stuffed jalapeno recipe that I cooked on Sunday evening.  I needed to do something with it so it wouldn't ruin and I wouldn't have to toss money in the garbage. I wanted to stick with something a little lighter tonight and since I had some avocado and tomatoes that needed to be used, I decided to create a crab salad and stuff it into avocado. I looked up a few recipes online but I really didn't like what I found. One had raw onion and bell pepper (I don't do raw onion and I never do bell pepper) but I liked that the recipe called for olive oil. A second recipe that I found used mayonnaise, I didn't want to use mayo, but I liked the idea of using cucumbers. 

So...armed with some ideas, I decided to create my own version of an avocado crab salad. Here are the results: 

Crab Salad

Serving size: 1

1 lg. avocado (pull the majority of the meat out to use in the crab salad but leave a little in the avocado shell if you like...I did). 
1/2 lg. cucumber, diced
1 Roma tomato, diced
4 oz. crab meat (I used real meat...not the kind you find by the tuna but I guess you could use that in a pinch).
2 lg lemon slices (since I was only making this for me, I didn't need to go overboard on the lemon) 
1/4 tsp. fresh cilantro (chopped)
Jane's Krazy Salt (I love this stuff because it has other seasonings)
2 tsp. EVOO
2 tsp. Balsamic vinegar

Cut the avocado in half and scoop out the meat. Put in bowl along with cucumber, tomato, crab. Squeeze lemon over mixture. Add cilantro, then season to taste (you can use just plain ole' salt and pepper instead of the Jane's). Add EVOO and balsamic vinegar and mix.  Scoop mixture into avocado skins, garnish with a fresh piece of cilantro. 

Nutrition information: Avocado (234 calories), 4 oz. crab meat (100 calories), 1/2 cucumber (8 calories), Roma tomato (23 calories), EVOO (approx. 80 since 1 tbsp is 119 calories), and balsamic vinegar (8 calories). So...overall, this delish dish is about 450 calories. 

I served it with a side of sliced fruit. Yep...filling, fresh and yummy!!! 

-Kim
EatFresh, BeWell

Cinco de Mayo

I have always found it to be a bit amusing that people celebrate Cinco de Mayo since it isn't a US holiday. I'll bet if you ask half the people you know if they know what Cinco de Mayo is, some of them won't. However, a friend of mine I believe adequately described it as just another excuse to drink. I think I have to agree since bars and restaurants offer drink specials on Mexican beer and margaritas or they serve up some Mexican inspired fare...even if it's nachos. 

Well...keeping with the tradition...celebrating a holiday that didn't affect my heritage, I have been cooking some Mexican inspired dishes. Sunday night it was jalapenos stuffed with crab and bacon and Monday night, I made fresh guacamole. I LOVE guacamole so I'm unsure why I have only decided to make it just now, in fact, I bought some fresh made guacamole at the grocery a few weeks ago and I must saw, I enjoyed mine a whole lot more.  I always keep avocado in the house, so as I was cooking fajitas, I decided to make guacamole. The recipe is quite simply, it's fresh and oh so yummy! 

Simple, Fresh Guacamole

Serves: 1-2 with one avocado
1 lg. avocado (if you are making for more than two people, use 3 lg. avocados) (mashed)
1 Roma tomato (if you are using 3 avocado, use two Romas) 
1/4 fresh cilantro
1 tbsp. lime juice
Cumin
Pepper
NOTE: I did not use chopped onion because I don't like raw onion and I was typically use fresh jalapeno but I stuffed those on Sunday night so I was out (Stuff Jalapeno Recipe to follow). 

Mash the avocado in a bowl (I didn't use a food processor or blender because I didn't want it to soupy...I like my guacamole with some chunks of avocado). 
Add the tomato, cilantro and lime juice and stir. Season with cumin (this is a must seasoning) and pepper to your taste. I didn't use salt because I try not to salt unless it's absolutely necessary. 

I ate the guacamole with fresh corn tortilla chips (they make them fresh at my local grocer)! 

The second Mexican inspired recipe was stuffed jalapenos and this is my own creation: 

Crab & Bacon Stuffed Jalapenos

6 lg. jalapeno peppers (seeded and cut in half) 
1/4 cup crumbled bacon (use fresh bacon, not fake bacon bits) 
1/4 cup of crab
1/2 whole lemon
1/2 onion (diced)
2 cloves of garlic (minced)
6 oz. cream cheese (use neufchatel for lower fat, which is what I used) 
2 tbsp. fresh cilantro
Cumin
Pepper
1 tbsp. EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
Colby Jack or PepperJack cheese (whichever you prefer) 

Cook the bacon and crumble. In a saute pan, heat the EVOO then add garlic and onion. Cook onion until tender. Add the bacon and crab. Squeeze the lemon over the crab meat (this helps tone down the crab so that it blends well with everything else). Turn burner to medium low then add the cream cheese. (NOTE: Instead of pre-softening the cream cheese, I added it to the saute pan so that the cheese would blend better with the rest of the ingredients. Season mixture with cumin and pepper. Scoop mixture into jalapenos. 

Here is where you might want to deviate. As you can see from the photo, I have the jalapenos on aluminum foil. I did this because I put mine on the grill. So...I sprinkled the stuffed peppers with Colby Jack cheese, covered and creased the seams. I cooked on the top rack of the grill for 20 minutes. These peppers could also be cooked in the oven on 350 at 20 minutes in a pan.  

Hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I did! 

-Kim

Noodle Me This: Thai Ginger Chicken Soup

I love noodles...I mean really love them. I could eat noodles every single day; noodles of any kind. I have a very odd love of Ramen noodles, which is terrible because they are so terrible for you. One whole package is almost 400 calories and when I cook them, I'm going for the noodles, not the noodle soup so I have two packages. Oh my...terrible, terrible.

I'm working my way through other noodle types, Barilla now makes gluten free noodles, Ancient Harvest has quinoa noodles but they are still relatively high in carbohydrates. I realize there is some other nutritional value to the quinoa noodles like protein but my body just cannot handle complex carbohydrates. What's a noodle-loving gal like me supposed to do with that?

Well, I have bought shiritaki noodles in the past and used them in stir fry so I decided to splurge and buy a case of them (no more excuses to keep Ramen in the cabinets) to make noodle soups. Here's the cool thing about shiritaki noodles, they are made from yam paste and the ones that do not contain tofu have "0" calories...yep, that's right, they are also high in fiber! I bought a case from Genki USA. They had free shipping, I ordered and I swear I had them in two days. I was able to find shiritaki noodles at Publix, when I lived in Alabama, but I haven't been able to find them in the two stores I buy groceries at here in Idaho, so with free shipping, it was worth the order. Plus I'm pretty sure I paid less per bag than I did when I buy the single bags at the grocer AND they gave me a coupon to use for my next purchase.

The next challenge was to come up with something that was good, something that I enjoyed. So, when I was at Albertson's buying chicken broth, I noticed that Swanson's now has Thai Ginger broth. Well, that sounded very promising so I bought it in preparation for my new recipe. For the whole carton, there is only 120 calories (that's for four cups of broth).

To make my noodle soup I used the following:

10 oz. fresh chicken breast (cut into bite size pieces). There was no rhyme or reason to the use of 10 ounces, that is just how much chicken was in the package I bought.
1 head of bok choy (cut into slices and cut the leafy sections into smaller pieces. I only used half the boy choy in the soup)
1 small can of straw mushrooms
2 pkgs of Angel Hair Shiritaki Noodles

(This recipe easily makes four servings or less, depending on how hungry you are). Let's do the math on the calories for the whole pot. 1 oz. of chicken breast is 35 calories, so we have 350 calories of chicken. There are 9 whole calories in a cup of bok choy (I probably used 1 1/2 cup). 120 calories for the broth and 15 calories for the whole can of straw mushrooms.

Total Calories for the Whole Pot: 500!!!

Pour broth into saucepan and add chicken. Cook on high until chicken is done. Add the bok choy and cook for five minutes on medium. Add the straw mushrooms and the shiritaki noodles and cook for three more minutes on medium. Remove from heat and serve.

 

 

The bottom photo is the finished soup in my bowl that I had for lunch today. I really did enjoy it, got my noodle fix, ate healthy and low calorie. Oh yeah!

#EatFreshBeWell
-Kim

A Fish Tale-Orange Honey Halibut

I have been thinking about that fish in my freezer for three days now, hence the title, A Fish Tale.  It was such a pretty piece of fish that I had to do something special rather than just bake it in some lemon and seasonings, although that is sometimes just as good as anything else. However, I'm trying to eat lean and ensure that I enjoy what I'm eating and that it isn't just a *chore* to eat healthy. 

Growing up so close and living close to the Gulf Coast, fish and seafood were always easy to come by. Any time I would go to the beach, when I would return home, I would hit the grocery and most of my "meat" take home was fish for a good month. I just love fish but sometimes it can be a little boring. I remember during the summer I was complaining on Facebook that now that I live in Idaho, the abundance of shrimp and the fish that I enjoy are not here. However, I got lucky a few weeks ago and learned that our local Butcher Block (the name of the store) also sells fish! I was a happy camper, particularly learning that all of the shrimp they carry is gulf shrimp and that she can get me anything I want. Since I was in a hurry that day, I settled for this beautiful piece of Ahi and a nice 1 lb. fillet of halibut. I've been trying to think of something to do with that fish but just never came up with something exciting. I mean, if you are trying to eat healthy you should at least look for low calorie ways to jazz up your food.

After looking through a bunch of the fish posts that I had pinned on Pinterest, I decided to come up with my own bastardized recipe (meaning I took ideas from several recipes). I came up with orange and honey marinade and on the side an orange/avocado (told you I loved them) salsa. Oh yeah, this was a good one! So, here's how it went and the recipe:

• 1/2 cup of orange juice (you can squeeze fresh, which is always nice, or use bought. If you use bought, stay away from anything that is concentrate, always go with 100% juice. I used the Trop50, so the orange juice for the marinade was only 25 calories). 
• 4 teaspoons raw honey (as I mentioned in my posting about tea, you want raw, local honey). Remember, honey is only 22 calories per teaspoon and since you are using it as a marinade, you aren't killing yourself with 88 calories) 
• 4 teaspoons of EVOO (that's extra virgin olive oil. You could also use coconut oil or grapeseed oil if you prefer. I like to use grapeseed but unfortunately, I only have olive in the kitchen right now). 
• 1 pound of halibut (Quite frankly, you can use any fresh you want but you want a nice meaty fish like salmon, grouper, etc). 

Mix the juice, honey and EVOO together and take my word for it, mix it in a bowl first. Usually when I create marinades, I just slosh it all together in the baggie but that honey will stick to the sides and you'll be cursing so take it from me, mix it in a bowl first THEN pour it in the baggie after you have dissolved the honey in the juice. Put the fish in, seal and refrigerate for at least an hour. 

The next part of this dish is a side of yummishness...orange/avocado salsa. So here's how that goes: 

• 1 1/2 large oranges (I used navel because I didn't want seeds and that's really all I had on hand). I sliced, peeled and then just cut into pieces. You might want to be a little more elegant than me and peel, separate the sections then slice. I just went for the slice and then peel method. 
• 1 avocado (cut into pieces...like I have to tell you that!)
• 1/4 cup of cilantro. (Always use fresh cilantro since you won't get that flavor burst from dried. Additionally, I like to *cut* my cilantro with scissors so I'm getting nice pieces of that wonderful herb)
• 1 teaspoon of EVOO
• 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (this did kick the salsa a little bit, but I like that kind of kick. You might want to use less or use cumin or chili powder instead. You just want a little seasoning to give it a little somethin', somethin'). 
• 1/4 cup of lime juice. 
• Optional: raw onion. (Yeah, if you read my earlier post, you know I do not like raw onion but for some folks, raw onion would be a nice addition. 

Mix all of this together and refrigerate while you are waiting for the fish to marinade. 

Heat the oven to 400 (after the fish has marinated an hour) and cook. Because the fish was as thick as it was, I cooked 25 minutes. I poured just a little of the marinade over the fish and lightly seasoned with sea salt. You don't want to put all of the marinade in with the fish since you don't want it swimming in marinade, even though fish like swimming...not as good for them while they are cooking! 

I chose to accompany my fish dish with asparagus. Nothing fancy, just used my Calphalon fajita pan and sauteed in a little EVOO and seasoned with Jane's Crazy Mixed Up Salt (Love that stuff since it has onion and garlic powder and a few other tasty herbs). 

Here is the final result. This is 1/2 of the halibut, so essentially, this recipe could serve two adults or you could add another side like saffron rice (that would probably be a very nice accompaniment, but alas I'm not eating rice right now) and get 4 smaller servings from the fish. After eating this salsa with this fish, I really don't think anything but I nice big, meaty white fish will work and lemme tell ya, this was as yummy as I thought it would be! 

Well, I'm off to think of something fun and healthy to cook tomorrow night since my grandkids are coming for a spend the night party. Hmmm, yep homework for me! 

Eat Fresh, Be Well (#eatfreshbewell)

--Kim