Showing posts with label cheese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheese. Show all posts

Monday, August 20, 2012

Beauty in a Bowl

Today's garden produce found its shape in a lovely gazpacho inspired salad. I was about to make gazpacho but decided that a blended soup is not always as visually appealing. Therefore, I kept the veggies in their chopped form and simply kept it as a salad. All of the veggies featured in my dish today were straight from my garden. I'm so thankful for freshness, nutrition, color, beauty, and tastiness found in my home-grown veggies.

  • 2 large heirloom tomatoes
  • 1 large red sweet bell pepper
  • 1 large cucumber, peeled
  • 1 extra small yellow onion
  • handful of purple basil
  • sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper
  • generous spoonful of sheep's milk feta cheese
  • several nice splashes of balsamic vinegar
  • several nice splashes of olive oil
Isn't it beautiful?
I also added some garbanzo beans for a little added protein.




Thursday, June 7, 2012

Triple Dip

In my previous life where I ate whatever I wanted to and didn't really care about the way it affected my body I used to love The Triple Dip. This was a creation in college that my best friends and I used to enjoy pretty frequently while dining out with college student coupons. We would order a free appetizer of cheese dip and with it would order for salsa and ranch dressing. This became our triple dip: tortilla chip dipped into super greasy cheese sauce, salsa, and ranch dressing. I think I could have made an entire meal out of it and probably did back in those days. Although I loved my college life, the food that I put into my body was far from nourishing or beneficial. However, thankfully right after college I was introduced to the world of nutrition when I pursued my year of service as an AmeriCorps member and actually taught nutrition. 



Recently I recreated the triple dip in my very own kitchen and think that it blows the old triple dip out of the water. First of all, I've discovered these amazing sprouted tortilla chips, Simply Sprouted, at several health food stores. I've tried the black bean and the blue corn and they are both great. Next comes the homemade hummus that I had created.

Very estimated hummus measurements:
1 cup chickpeas
1 cup soaked and drained raw almonds
Fresh garlic, I think 2 cloves
1/4 cup tahini
Lemon juice, 1 T
Olive Oil, 2 T 
1/2 t. Salt
1 t. cumin
Water to thin

When I wasn't quite satisfied with just the chips and hummus I decided to add some color and zing with the pesto that I've had in my freezer/fridge since last summer. I make my pesto with roasted almonds, basil, garlic, and olive oil. Pretty basic.

Then to top it all off a nice piece of cheese goes on top. I used the last laughing cow cheese wedge that I had in my fridge. It was pretty devine if I say so myself!


Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Quality cheese

I splurged and bought this $8 chunk of cheese this weekend at the farmers' market. It's a new cheese for the Jason Weibe cheese-makers and it's super sharp. It's also fabulous!


It was perfect on top of my scrambled eggs and swiss chard for breakfast Sunday!