Sneak Attack Lasagna

Ali and I have been holed up in our study rooms over the past few days, going a little stir crazy for sure, and for me that means little exercise and craving treats...all the time. This is a recipe for a dish that I like to have on hand during exam time because it's healthy, easy to make in advance and sneaks in extra veggies.

What you will need:
Sauce:
1 pound of ground chicken or turkey
6 Italian sausages
3 medium onions
head of garlic
olive oil
1 head of celery - finely diced
6 medium carrots grated
10 mushrooms grated or finely diced
3- 4 cans of tomatoes - blended or pureed
dried oregano, basil, salt and pepper, hot chilies to taste

Lasagna:
1-2 packages of noodles
Spinach
Cottage cheese
Mozzarella cheese

Directions: 
Saute garlic and onions in olive oil until soft. Add in meat and brown. Add veggies, tomato puree and spices and simmer over medium heat for an hour. To make the lasagna fill the bottom of a glass dish with some sauce, then layer the noodles on top, then add a layer of spinach, and then a layer of cottage cheese (or whatever order you like), when you are done cover with a layer of mozzarella cheese. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, or store in the freezer. We make a few at a time so we have dinners for busy times, like exams!

Enjoy!
-M

^^ making a few lasagnas ^^ 

^^ layering^^ 

^^ cottage cheese layer ^^

^^ bake at 350 for about an hour or until golden brown on top ^^

^^ enjoy^^ 

Healthy Quinoa Jambalaya

This week Mel and I found out that we are going to be living 4 months together in Calgary for our last year of pharmacy rotations. This will give us tons of time to cook things together and be creative. I think we come up with some of the better recipes when we are together; I am more of the structured person in the kitchen, thinking logically before adding an ingredient and how much of each ingredient should be added, which sometimes can cause me to be less creative and miss out on adding different unique ingredients. Mel on the other hand has no patience in the kitchen and doesn't like to think about things before she does it so she just throws random ingredients in. This makes her recipes really unique with creative and cool ingredients but can sometimes make her recipes go awry.

This quinoa jambalaya is one of my favourite recipes we have made together and represents the balance between our two cooking styles when we work together.

Ingredients:
746 ml Can of Tomatoes
1 cup Quinoa
4 Chicken Chorizo organic sausage (we found this at the Strathcona Farmer's Market I'm not sure where else you can find it, so you can just replace it with normal chorizo if need be, it just won't be quite as healthy)
~1 1/2 cups Reduced sodium chicken broth
2 Large carrots
1 Onion
1 Red pepper
1 Jalapeno
2 stalks celery
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp each of: chili powder, cumin, red hot chili flakes, hot paprika
1 tbsp olive oil

Step 1: Empty the juices from the tomato can into a 2 cup measuring cup. Top off the remaining amount with the chicken broth until it makes up 2 cups. Bring to a boil in a saucepan and then add the quinoa. Turn to low and cook for 15 minutes.

Step 2: Chop the chorizo into about half inch thick pieces. Ours was frozen so we had to cook it a bit before we could do this. Chop the onion and cook with the chorizo until no longer pink.

Step 3: Have your sous chef chop up all the vegetables. We grated the carrots but chopped the rest of the vegetables and minced the jalapeno and garlic

This is my sous chef hard at work ;)

Step 4: Mix all the spices into a bowl with the oil and mix well adding it to the chorizo in the pan. Add all the vegetables to the onion and chorizo and cook for about 5 minutes- we both prefer our vegetables still a bit crunchy but if you like yours completely soft you can cook it for longer

Step 5: Add the can of tomatoes and the quinoa to the vegetable mix and simmer for about 10 minutes. Mel hates chunky tomatoes but I love them so we had to compromise and blended it up slightly with the immersion blender before adding.

We topped ours with green onions to serve

-A

Healthy yellow smoothie

^^ The extra gets made into popsicles ^^

This is a really easy  'orange' smoothie recipe I like to make. It's another sneak attack recipe because I like to sneak carrots and wheat germ into it. 

Here's the recipe: 

1 banana 

1 orange 

1-2 carrots

1 cup frozen mango 

1/3 cup wheat germ 

1/3 cup plain yogurt 

1/3 cup orange juice 

ice cubes 

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in your blender and blend until smooth. 

Enjoy!
-M

The Cabbage Blend Smoothie

This is me just wishing I lived on a tropical island

I didn't think my average blender was strong enough to make cool smoothies with carrots, beets or all the weird and wonderful vegetables out there so I haven't been making any smoothies at my house for some time. A few days ago I decided to just try and see if I could blend a beet and make a smooth textured smoothie without steaming the beet first and it worked! I have been so excited ever since that I have been making smoothies every day and my belly is always feeling likes its going to explode, but I mean I have to try it to make sure it tastes good right?
I've been challenging myself to try and put the weirdest vegetables in them that you would think would taste disgusting in a smoothie. That's what led me to this creation: The Cabbage Blend Smoothie. The name really sounds unappealing and that's kind of the humour it in because it is actually so tasty!

Ingredients:
1 orange
~6 strawberries
2 slices of red cabbage
1/4 of a small pineapple
2 tbsp water
3 ice cubes

-A

Black bean banana muffins!

^^ the whole recipe can be made in a blender! ^^ 

^^ black beans ^^ 

^^ I had a little extra batter so I made a mini banana loaf ^^ 

Surprise, these banana muffins have black beans in them!  They taste just like regular banana muffins, although not quite as sweet as the banana breads that you can buy from coffee shops, but I like to eat mine for breakfast or an afternoon snack, and prefer not to get a major sugar high. They are also a little more on the grainy side as they are not made with refined white flour, but this is because they are full of whole grain carbohydrates, that will fuel you for hours and keep you feeling full. The black beans add great nutritional value, fibre and moisture to these banana muffins, and you can't even taste them. Black beans are really high in fibre and protein. One cup contains 15 grams of protein, without any of the saturated fats found in some other sources of protein.  Adding pureed black beans to these muffins not only makes them extra moist, but it ups their nutritional value in a sneaky way!

Here's the recipe: 

2 cups of flour ( I used oat flour, which I make by blending rolled oats in the blender, but you could use any homemade or store bought flours, some options are whole wheat, quinoa, coconut etc) 

1/2 cup of liquid - I used almond milk 

1 cup cooked black bean puree - I boil raw black beans for a few hours in large batches and keep them in the fridge for the week to use in different recipes, but canned beans would work as well, be sure to rinse them though 

2 ripe bananas 

A splash of vanilla 

1 teaspoon of cinnamon 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

1.5 teaspoons of baking powder 

1/2 cup maple syrup - or any sweetener of your choice, next time I make these I want to try using dates, or homemade date syrup! 

1/4 cup of oil- I used olive oil, but any oil would work fine, coconut would probably taste great 

1 tablespoon of chia seeds 

* this is a great muffin base that tastes great as is, but is also fun to play around with and add things to to suit your cravings **

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Blend you oats into flour and mix with baking powder and soda. Blend your bananas, black beans, maple syrup and almond milk until you get a smooth consistent (this will be dark charcoal grey due to the beans). Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix. Add any seeds, nuts, dried fruit or chocolate that you would like. This is a great base that you can manipulate in any way you like. I added coconut and a handful of chocolate chips to this batch, and topped with a little more coconut. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!
M

"Green" Smoothie

^^ I always make extra so I can make popsicles with the leftovers - yum! ^^

Hi there! I'm sure many of you have seen, or heard of the 'green smoothie', it's been popping up all over the internet lately, and, well, I'm going to jump on that bandwagon too! It's not surprising they are so popular, who doesn't love the idea of drinking your veggies in a great tasting smoothie. Here's one of the ways I like to make my 'green' smoothies.

I came up with this recipe (it's nothing original, I just used ingredients-fresh and frozen, that I had on hand) a couple days ago when I needed an afternoon snack. I was making it for me and my boyfriend- who is not a fan of  veggies in his smoothies, so I had to find a way to mask the greens - taste and color. I stuck with a mainly fruit based smoothie - my go to ingredients are always a banana, orange and frozen strawberries, to maintain the sweetness, but added some blueberries to hide the green color, and give it an antioxidant boost. This is a great way to sneak veggies into those picky eaters, up the nutrient content of your smoothies, or if you've never tried adding veggies to your smoothies, this is a great place to start. The options are truly endless, give it a try!

Recipe: 

1 banana

1 naval orange 

10 frozen strawberries 

1/2 cup frozen blueberries

2 tablespoons plain yogurt - I like to use plain yogurt so I can control the sugar

A couple handfuls of spinach 

A handful of ice 

A splash of liquid (water, milk, almond milk, juice) if needed

Add all ingredients to your blender (we got a Blendtec for Christmas and I am in love- I've used it every day since, sometimes 2 or 3 times! It is expensive, but if you're looking for an amazing all-in-one kitchen tool this is it! thank you so much A&B ;) and blend until smooth- easy peasy!

^strawberries, blueberries, spinach, an orange, a banana,
a couple tablespoons of plain yogourt and some ice cubes ^^

^ can you believe this has spinach in it!? ^

p.s. those popsicles were gone in no time, and I only got one- maybe spinach isn't so bad after all...

-M

Valentine Squash Brownies

Last year Mel and I came up with a no egg, no dairy, practically no guilt brownie that is packed full of zucchini (which contains antioxidants) and fibre! This was our first "Sneak Attack" recipe, as the majority of the recipe is zucchini. It took us five tries to finally come up with a recipe that had the perfect balance between sweetness and healthiness.
These are the perfect Valentine's day treat for your friends and loved ones as they taste yummy and are healthy! Since Valentine's day is a special holiday I topped them with icing so they can be extra sweet for your sweetie :P.

Ingredients:
13 tbsp (slightly less than a cup) semisweet chocolate chips
4 cups of shredded zucchini
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp chia seeds
3/4 cup sweetened apple sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup cocoa unsweetened
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup oat bran
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon

(we used different flours to make it healthier and more fibre packed, and we also found this proportion worked best, but you can alternate this for all white flour, quinoa flour or oat flour)

Directions: 
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Step 2: Use a food processor and shred around 4 small zucchini's to make 4 cups of packed zucchini, and put in a bowl.

Step 3: Add the chocolate chips, vanilla, chia seeds, apple sauce and oil to the zucchini and mix well, making sure the chia seeds start to form a gel.



Step 4: Add all the dry ingredients and mix well. At this stage you may think there is not enough of the wet ingredients, but keep mixing and it will eventually all become wet. *Tip: when mixing use more of a pressing action to get the liquid out of the zucchini

Step 5: Spread in a 9x13 inch pan and cook for 45 minutes. (For the Valentine's day hearts I cooked them in a circle cake pan)

Step 6: Cut into squares or for Valentine's day use heart shaped cookie cutters!

The icing didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to. It tasted amazing but I didn't use an emulsifying agent so the coconut oil coagulated and you could see white flakes in the red icing (all you pharmacy students can empathize with how hard those emulsifying labs were!). If I would have left it a white icing though it would have been undetectable!

Icing:
1 cup frozen raspberries
3 tbsp coconut oil
1 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Step 1: Cook the raspberries until completely soft. De-seed in a mesh colander or cheese cloth.

Step 2: Measure out 3 tbsp of the raspberry liquid (you can eat the rest that was left behind!) and put in a large bowl.

Step 3: Add the rest of the ingredients and mix it with an electric mixer. I then stored mine in the fridge for about 10 minutes then topped the brownies.

-A

What is Sneak Attack?

Sneak Attack is a name we came up with for healthy recipes we create. These recipes sneak in a lot of undetected vegetables, making them perfect for people who do not like vegetables, such as your kids, and presenting them in a fun to eat way.