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Ingredients Archives: Balsamic Vinegar

Healthy BBQ Beef Kabobs

My husband hates most vegetables. I on the other hand, love vegetables. This makes it very hard to cook dinners, especially when I’d like to make them a bit healthier with added veggies. We found a great solution to our problem: beef kabobs.

Beef Kabobs

I load mine full of vegetables, and his full of meat.

The first thing to do is pick a meat. I pick whatever is cheapest at the grocery store. I looked at beef stew meat, stir fry beef and flank steak. That day, stir fry beef was cheapest (I used one pound). If steak is on sale, ask the butcher to cut it up into stew meat for you. They always say yes.

I cut the pieces in half so they were about 2 inches long each. I then marinated the meat using the same marinade I use on my Round Steak

Then, I picked the vegetables. I used only tomatoes, onion and beef on my husband’s, but loaded mine with tomatoes, onion, mushrooms, green pepper, pineapple and beef. I originally wanted to buy cherry tomatoes, but decided not to when I saw how expensive they were. Good grief! Instead, I halved roma tomatoes and cut each half into quarters. It worked just as well. I then assembled the kabobs on skewers. Soak your skewers for at least half an hour in water before assembling the kabobs. This keeps them from burning and your beef kabobs probably won’t taste all that great if they go up in flames.

My wonderful husband grilled them on the barbecue on medium-high for about 10-ish minutes. All grills are a bit different, so grill them until your vegetables are roasted and a bit black on the edges. Roasted vegetables are, in my opinion, the best way to eat vegetables. YUM!

The best part about this dish is how versatile it is. Load it up with whatever you like. I made my husband one kabob that was purely meat. Enjoy your beef kabobs!!

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Homemade Sugar-Free Marinara Sauce

20150814_192438Prepare yourselves for a rant. As I’ve mentioned one, two or a million times, I get so angry when companies add sugar to things that don’t need sugar. Fruit is my biggest pet peeve (and why do we need to add sugar to nature’s sugar?), but sauces drive me crazy. A few weeks ago, I was making spaghetti for my family. I tried to buy some marinara sauce only to find they all had added sugar. Most have 5-7 grams of sugar per serving. As I was slamming jars back on teh shelves of the grocery store, I said to myself, (or possibly aloud. Going shopping with kids gives you a good excuse to talk to yourself while making it look like you’re talking to your kids) “I’ll make my own marinara sauce!” And I did. But my marinara sauce has less than two grams of sugar per serving. That’s just my way of sticking it to the man; or at least, sticking it to Ragu.

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Caprese Skewers

We’re not fancy people in our house. We spend Sunday afternoon in sweats, we spend more money on books than I do on make up, we eat every meal on mismatched plastic plates, and I have on several occasions walked into a store before realizing I was still wearing slippers. So the fact that I would take the time to make this “fancy” dish for a random Tuesday night dinner, shows how easy it is. I’m always trying to mix up how we eat our vegetables so we don’t get bored and this method is easy enough for any weeknight but still makes us feel “fancy.”

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It’s as easy as sticking everything on a skewer (or a long toothpick) and drizzling it with vinegar and salt and pepper.

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Depending on the size of the basil leaf, I either wrapped the leaf around the tomato or just layered it. It really doesn’t matter which you do. I also tried them with half a cherry tomato and a whole cherry tomato. Because my mouth is smaller, I preferred the tomatoes cut in half. But my sweet husband, who has a rather large mouth (I mean that in the best way. I really do love you, honey!), did great with the whole cherry tomato. It’s just a matter of what you like best.

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I used fresh mozzarella balls because they are so creamy, but feel free to cube up a brick of mozzarella instead. It will be a bit harder and the flavor is a little stronger, but I’ve used both with great results. I didn’t list exact measurements, but one package of basil (purchased with the organic herbs in the produce section) made enough skewers for four of us.

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Maybe one day I’ll serve these at a PTA dinner party, on a china platter, while wearing a pink cocktail dress. Until then, we’ll stick with our plastic plates and my over-sized Yoda t-shirt.

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Healthy Slow Cooker Chuck Roast

Few things are as comforting on a busy day as coming home to the smell of a roast in the crock pot. Throw some whole wheat bread in the bread maker as well and the comforting smells are right up there with world peace. Plus, using a slow cooker always makes me feel like someone else made me dinner. Life doesn’t get much better.

In my opinion, the best roast for a slow cooker is a chuck roast. They’re not as thick as other roasts so they cook more evenly.

The secret to cooking tender beef is to brown the meat before putting it in a slow cooker and to cook it low and slow.

2015-10-08 09.37.41Before you brown your meat, rub it down with a spice mixture.

Then place the browned meat on a bed of root vegetables. I use carrots and sweet potatoes. If you don’t like sweet potatoes, russet potatoes are fine. I just like the flavor and health benefits that come from sweet potatoes.

Then top the meat with sliced onions and a can of diced tomatoes and cook the whole thing in a flavorful broth for eight hours.

Cooking it this way makes the meat just fall apart. This is perfect on a cold night. Or a warm night. Or a Tuesday. Whatever. There’s no reason not to make this for dinner.2015-10-08 18.01.39

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No-Bean Chili

I don’t like beans. It’s not the taste or the texture; it’s the after effect. The night I eat beans, I’m groaning on the couch, my stomach churning. The problem is, I love chili. I love it on chips, I love it on fries, and I love it in a bowl with avocado and sour cream. But every no-bean chili I’ve tried is usually just glorified Sloppy Joe meat. So I decided we needed to come up with a healthy no-bean chili that still has that great chunky chili texture. Here is what we came up with.

Start by cooking the meat and onion, just as you do in every chili.

The great texture comes from a bunch of vegetables. Add a chopped carrot, red, green and yellow peppers and a can of diced tomatoes.

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Then add the great flavor with your seasonings. Stir in your seasonings and flavored liquids and let this simmer in the slow cooker for 6-8 hours.

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Eat this in a bowl with your favorite toppings or spoon it over hot dogs, sweet potato fries or veggie chips. Better yet, freeze half and reheat it to use in a fun, new way.

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No Sugar BBQ Sauce

BBQ sauce makes any meat better. Pour it over chicken, that’s all you need for a great dinner. Pour it over a pork roast and, voila; pulled pork. Smear it on hamburgers and they’re suddenly the best hamburgers ever. My daughter DSCN0305uses BBQ sauce like most kids use ketchup, so we go through a lot of it in our house. While I’m totally okay with adding strange things to food to get kids to eat them, I’m not okay with the sugar content of most condiments. This is especially true for BBQ sauce. When we made the change to a healthier lifestyle, I knew we couldn’t give up BBQ sauce. That’s when I began the quest to make a no-sugar BBQ sauce. Not only did I succeed, but my husband says this is the best BBQ sauce I’ve ever made and my daughter gave it her stamp of approval.

First let’s look at a typical bottled BBQ sauce. The sauce we bought before we made our own, contains 32 grams of sugar in 1/4 C with high fructose corn syrup being the first ingredient. That is crazy. My BBQ sauce has less than 3 grams of sugar in 1/4 C and tastes delicious.

This is also an easy recipe. I didn’t want a recipe that required a lot of sauteing, dish washing and vegetable chopping, so I made it simple. Just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together. Yes there are a lot of ingredients, but they are likely things you have in your pantry. If you don’t like an ingredient, leave it out.

I like to store it in a mason jar (or a washed, glass peanut-butter jar since we have a million of those sitting around) and stick it in the fridge. This will stay good for about a two weeks.

DSCN0314One night we had some left over pork roast and needed a quick dinner. I threw the roast leftovers in a slow cooker with the BBQ sauce and we had dinner. It’s almost too easy.

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Grilled Round Steak

When I was 8-years-old, I submitted my picture to a children’s Christian magazine along with interesting facts about me. Many of the other kids included facts like “I love to go camping with my family,” or “I won the third-grade science fair.” My interesting fact was, “My favorite food is steak.” Needless to say, my profile wasn’t as interesting a read as the others, but I still hold to what I said. I love steak! And this is my favorite way to make it. Plus, it’s extremely easy and healthy.

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Start by making a simple marinade. Because I don’t want to dirty more dishes than necessary, I mix the marinade in a gallon-size Ziploc bag. In the bag, combine the coconut aminos, Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, orange zest and garlic. If you haven’t tried coconut aminos yet, you should. It’s basically a healthier version of soy sauce.

Add the round steak to the bag and marinate for at least four hours.

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Now cook it on the grill. We cook it for about 5 minutes on one side and six minutes on the other for rare. I personally don’t know any way to eat steak other than rare.

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Let the steak rest for about eight minutes and then slice diagonally. This is a fabulous recipe because you don’t need to add any kind of steak sauce. The marinade makes it perfect just as it is.

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