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Offline Bear9350

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Healthy Meals
« on: September 06, 2017, 12:42:15 PM »
The majority of the meals I prepare/ eat are very much of the meat and potatoes variety.  While I have no problem with this and enjoy it very much my wife would like to eat a bit healthier/ be healthier all around.  And truth be told I could stand to eat a little healthier myself.  I basically eat some sort of red meat for at least 1 meal if not 2.  My issue here is none of the "healthy" options generally seem very appealing to me.  I've viewed several food related threads on here where I have some of the membership has displayed/ discussed what would veer nearer to healthy food options.  I thought this might be a place where some of those healthier food options/ recipes might be shared.

Offline EL TATE

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2017, 01:46:38 PM »
I like it Bear, I love my steak and burgers and pizza etc. but we really do try to eat well, and am always on the hunt for more recipes and ideas.

Hey Nate, what do you think about scrubbing the what's for dinner thread? I can cut and paste stuff but I don't have omnipotence to just move stuff like you do.
Husband, Father, Gear guy, Patriot.

Offline TexasRedNeck

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2017, 03:26:42 PM »
Bear your timing is fantastic. I am looking to eat better and have even contemplated hiring a clinical nutritionist to help create a month of menu and shopping items to help.


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Offline Bear9350

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2017, 03:43:43 PM »
Having a plan does help.  The wife and I already sit down and try to meal plan for the entire month.  If we don't have anything on the schedule it is to easy for us to get home from work and ask each other what we want for dinner half a dozen times before we settle on pulling some burger out of the freezer for burgers and fries or even worse just popping a frozen pizza in the oven.

Offline stlaser

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2017, 04:19:32 PM »
I like meat, it's my downfall.....

For the kids as a better option than cereal or waffles and pop tarts we have been doing premade breakfast burritos. They pull them from freezer 6 to a quart bag and individually wrapped in parchment. Throw in microwave and add some salsa or hot sauce and gtg.

1 roll of sausage
15 eggs
Bag of shredded cheese
Stack of small tortillas in a bag

Makes 50-60 breakfast burritos & kids like them.

We also eat a lot of chicken, just this last weekend we bought boneless thighs on sale for $1.99 not quite 4# and trimmed the fat then threw in crock pot with seasoning if your choice. Few hours later we had shredded chicken tacos. Tomatoes from garden and a head of lettuce along with some cheese.

Living in the remote north hoping Ken doesn’t bring H up here any time soon…..

Offline TexasRedNeck

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2017, 04:29:38 PM »
I'll throw one out. Greek salad with lamb or beef or chicken.

Chopped romain and iceberg
Thin slices radish
Thin slices cucumber
Julienne of red and green bell pepper
Shredded red cabbage
Thin sliced red onion
Shredded carrot
Quartered tomato
Capers
Feta cheese
Kalamata olives
Pepperoncini peppers

Roast beef or lamb with generous lemon oregano salt and pepper and garlic

A lemon juice and olive oil dressing with oregano salt garlic pepper

Garnish salad with lemon wedges and pita


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Kids today don't know how easy they have it. When I was young, I had to walk 9 feet through shag carpet to change the TV channel.

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Offline Wilbur

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #6 on: September 07, 2017, 10:00:53 AM »
I'm with you guys on the beef, but my wife generally wont eat beef. She would eat fish with every meal if she could. So we have our difficulties with meals some times. She is way into organic and junk free food. She has gotten me reading the ingredients of packaging more and more. Her simple rule is if there are more than 5 ingredients its probably garbage, or usually if the ingredients have more than 3 syllables. I will say its darn hard to find food that isn't loaded with preservatives.

She's Italian so lots of our meals have pasta but she will make it with a ton of different ingredients to suit whatever she wants so its not always red sauce, often its a white sauce with seafood - clams or some times its shrimp (only wild caught, she won't buy the blackwater raised farm shrimp from the far east), or it might be something else depending on what's on sale. Or maybe a combination of things- clams, shrimp, mussels, etc. all together. But again, she only buys wild caught be it shrimp, salmon or other fish. 

When she makes meatballs its with 93% lean hamburger and she adds egg, bread crumbs (usually she just buys Italian bread that she knows is not full of crap and runs it through the blender to make bread crumbs), parmesan cheese and some seasonings.

She makes great red sauce but she has come to like mine too which is similar but slightly different than hers- I can share that recipe with you as its the only one I truly know....she cooks much more by feel adding a little of this and a little of that to get it to taste good. I'm a color by number kind of guy so need a recipe.

Red Sauce- start with three or four cloves of garlic, mince fine. Cover bottom of the pan in extra virgin olive oil (EVO) (we buy California after the wife read how the Mafia in Italy has bastardized the Italian Olive Oil industry and a lot of it is fake). Cook the garlic until just translucent (careful it burns quick depending on your stove), add 2 cans of crushed tomatoes (her "go to" brand is Pastene Kitchen Ready but any of the crushed tomatoes work fine). I then add a tsp or so of Italian Seasoning, salt, pepper, a bit of crushed red pepper, a tsp of sugar. We also have a jar of red wine in the fridge (when wine oxidizes or a bottle isn't quite finished it goes in there), so add some red wine also. (NOTE: anything with alcohol that's added to sauce be it red or white wine or whatever will cook down eliminating the alcohol. It just adds a richness to the flavor is all if you are concerned about the alcohol).  Bring it to a slight boil (not a hard boil) then turn it down and let it simmer. Just be careful if it boils too much it will burn on the bottom of the pan. If it does, don't scrape the bottom when you serve it. Better to just ladle it out and leave the burned part on the bottom of the pan and clean it later.

If you want you can add any meat to this be it the meatballs, or a lot of times if we have had pork chops the day before I will throw one or two in the sauce and let it simmer for a while. Or you can just pour the sauce as it over the pasta.

Linguini and Clam Sauce: We usually use Snows Chopped Clams. For a pound of pasta we will use three cans. Open the cans but don't drain them, leave the lids on to start.

Start with garlic and EVO like the red sauce, when the garlic is cooked, pour the liquid from the three cans of clams into the pan. Some times I will add some white wine (leftover usually like the red wine) and cook that down. Bring this to a slight boil. When you are ready to serve it add the clams to the mix but be ready to serve it within a couple of minutes. If the clams stay in the liquid too long they get tough and rubbery.

I have a recipe for a no-knead ciabatta bread that is really great too. It takes a day to be ready but is easy as heck and you know its really fresh and again, no preservatives. Plus there is nothing better than fresh baked bread. I will post that in a bit.



Offline Wilbur

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #7 on: September 07, 2017, 10:18:01 AM »
No knead Ciabatta bread. I like this because kneading bread is a pita. We have a bread machine and that works great for regular loaf bread (we usually just use it to make dough and then cook it in the oven) but I like this recipe as it requires no kneading. When I was a kid my mother always made bread and the kneading was always kind of a pain.

No-knead Ciabatta:

In a big bowl add 4 cups of flour, 1-1/2 tsp salt.

In a mixing bowl put 2 cups of warm water (not hot just warm tap water) and 1/4 tsp yeast. I let that sit for a few minutes in the warm water to start the yeast.

Add the water to the flour and salt and mix it thoroughly. I will use a rubber spatula and scrape the edges of the bowl so it is all in one large ball.

Cover the bowl with foil and let it rise for 18 hours. Don't look at it. If you have a warm spot that's best for it so the yeast really does its thing.

I usually cook this on a cookie sheet (ciabatta is loosely translated in/from Italian as slipper due to its shape). Oil the cookie pan, sprinkle corn meal on the pan. Roll the dough out of the bowl using a plastic mixing spatula to scrape the bowl. The dough will loosely spread around the pan. You can (somewhat) loosely form it in an oval shape but it is sticky as heck so a little oil on your hands is helpful so it doesn't stick to them.  Cover it with plastic wrap and cover the pan with a towel. Let it rise for 2 hours. Note it won't rise like bread in a bread pan as it spreads out on the cookie sheet, and the loaf will usually only be a couple of inches tall.

Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees, cook for 30 to 35 minutes.

We will eat this with butter right out of the oven or even better is EVO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) with some salt, a touch of crushed red pepper and some Italian seasoning. Slice it and dip it in the oil. Mmm. Often we will cook this if we are having Sunday dinner and will cut it before the meal is done (the wife usually puts out cheese, olives, etc. for appetizers) and many times the bread never makes it to the dinner table. Ha.

Offline dave945

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #8 on: September 07, 2017, 01:59:13 PM »
I love fresh bread, I'm going to have to try the ciabatta. As for healthy meals, you can substitute lentils for ground meat in some things.  We will do lentil or split pea tacos and the kids will eat and enjoy then. We also have a recipe with lentils and walnuts to replace the taco meat, I'll put it out here when I get home today(if I remember).


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Offline Wilbur

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Re: Healthy Meals
« Reply #9 on: September 07, 2017, 10:15:51 PM »
Had venison burgers tonight. Pretty low fat compared to 80/20 beef. And tasty too! Grilles some zucchini and onions....i was gtg

 

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