Fruits and Veggies — Cooking During Stolen Moments

Balsamic Spinach & Water Chestnuts

February 29, 2012 By Kate 2 Comments

I’ll be the first to admit that our kids are a little strange. When you consider the fact that they love spinach, I think you’ll agree with me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we introduced them to Popeye and the power of spinach early on. Or maybe it’s because it’s been a regular part of their diets since they started eating solid foods.

Whatever the reason, I choose to not examine it too much and just enjoy it while it lasts. Spinach gets added to a ton of our meals but when it comes to serving it as a side dish, I usually rely on my Creamed Spinach recipe and that’s it. While that’s delicious and fine for an occasional side, I’ve been trying to lighten our meals up a bit (more on that below). So I decided a new go-to spinach side dish was in order and that’s how this dish was born.

The balsamic flavor, with just a touch of dijon mustard, it a great compliment to the spinach and the water chestnuts add a great crunch. It’s not creamed spinach, that’s for sure, but it’s still delicious!

Balsamic Spinach & Water Chestnuts

1 T. olive oil
1/2 Vidalia onion, diced
1 16 oz. bag frozen spinach (or about 1 1/2-2 pounds fresh spinach)
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 can sliced water chestnuts
1/3 c. balsamic vinegar
2 t. sugar
2 t. dijon mustard
1/2 t. each salt, pepper, garlic powder

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add onion and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add spinach and water chestnuts; season to taste with salt and pepper, and cook an additional 5 minutes.

2. While the spinach cooks, whisk together the remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Pour into the skillet and cook for 1 minute. Enjoy!

Now, as I mentioned above, I have been working to lighten things up a bit because 2012 is the year when I finally lose some weight and get fit! Since I started in early January, I’ve lost 15 pounds and have about 20-25 more to go. This will only minimally affect the content here because there are 6 other people in this house that have to eat and none of them are trying to lose 40 pounds. (Plus honestly, they’ve all come to expect eating a certain way and I’m all for that!)

But, if you’d like to follow along on my weight loss journey, I’m blogging all about it for HealthyWage. You can check out my first post here if you’d like. Anyone else working on losing weight this year?

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Very Veggie Pasta

January 23, 2012 By Kate 1 Comment

Life is good around our house. We’ve lived here for a year and a half and I think we’re finally starting to feel like we’ve done every project that we’ve wanted to do. Since the start of the year, Eric has painted and rearranged all of the kids’ bedrooms and we’ve done some redecorating in a few of the rooms. Our project list gets smaller and smaller each week.

Now that we’ve gotten all of that work taken care of, I need to start really focusing on some new meals on a more frequent basis. We’ve been eating a lot of our old favorites lately, and while no one is complaining, I’m really itching to get back to spending more time working on new recipes.

This dish originally started out as sauteed veggies, but as they were cooking, I decided to mix things up a bit for a new side dish. It turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to the Parmesan Chicken Fingers we had for dinner and I think it would go great with a lot of other meals too. In fact, it’s robust and flavorful enough that it could easily serve as a main course too. I’m definitely excited to make this again in the future. I’m thinking I’d like to make some on a Sunday night and then eat it for lunch for the next few days. It would be perfect for that.

Very Veggie Pasta

2 T. olive oil
1/2 lb. sliced mushrooms
1 red pepper, sliced
1 12 oz. bag frozen French-style green beans, thawed
1 t. salt
1 t. oregano
1 t. dried basil
1/2 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. pepper
1/8 t. crushed red pepper flakes
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1/2 lb. cooked pasta

1. Heat olive oil and add mushrooms. Cook for 5 minutes, until the start to brown. Add sliced pepper, green beans and seasonings and cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in tomato sauce and simmer over low heat for 5 minutes.

2. Add cooked pasta and stir to combine well. Enjoy!

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Honey Mustard Glazed Green Beans & Bacon

November 8, 2011 By Kate 2 Comments

So, let’s just skip my few paragraphs of rambling and skip right to the recipe today, okay? I’m on round two of a cold that has been making the rounds in our house and hoping that I’m the only one who has to go through it twice, because it’s not fun.

Anyhow…not too much to say otherwise, except that you really need to try these green beans! They are so delicious! I wasn’t too sure about the combination of the honey mustard and the bacon when I was putting it together, but it was definitely a hit. Experiments that turn out great are my favorite!

Honey Mustard Glazed Green Beans & Bacon

6 slices bacon, diced
1 12 oz. bag frozen French-style green beans, thawed
1/3 c. olive oil
2 T. mustard
1 T. honey
1 t. apple cider vinegar
Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Cook bacon in a large skillet until crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon to drain and pour out all but 1 tablespoon of the bacon grease. Reduce heat to medium-low and add the thawed green beans. Cook for about 5-10 minutes, until beans are tender.

2. Meanwhile, whisk together olive oil, mustard, honey and vinegar. Remove green beans from heat, stir cooked bacon back into the pan and pour on dressing mixture. Toss to coat well. Season well with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately or at room temperature.

NOTE – If you want to make this even easier, you can use 3 tablespoons of prepared honey mustard mixed with 1/3 cup olive oil.

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