Friday in the Kitchen

Friday in the Kitchen is about sharing some of the food I've been cooking in my kitchen recently.


Plant Based Eating
I started out with the desire to add more vegetables and more fruits to my diet. That has now grown to eating a mostly plant based diet.

If you are wondering what this is and what it looks like I thought I'd share a little about that in this post.

Plant based eating is pretty simple: whole grains, beans, legumes, vegetables, fruit.. Pretty much like a healthy vegetarian diet.

But I have no desire to be a vegetarian, it is just not a choice for us. So I still serve meat but with the bigger emphasis on the plant foods.

Here is what a sample day of eating looks like....

Breakfast: steel cut oats with blueberries and a small amount of milk on the cereal, an orange

Lunch: Black bean sweet potato chili, salad

Dinner: Pork chop cut up in pieces, put on a bed of greens, topped with cooked black beans, cooked spaghetti squash (it was a black bean & veggie casserole, the recipe is posted is below), a chopped roma tomato. Sprinkled a little grated cheese on top and added some salad dressing.

I find the easiest way to eat like this is to make sure I have food to eat on hand. I keep cooked beans in my fridge, I cook up a sweet potato every day or two to have in the fridge. I keep brown rice or quinoa and other cooked veggies in the fridge to easily reheat. I also make up a bowl of greens (dark green lettuce, spinach, kale). This makes it easy to put something together when I'm hungry. I can always make a budda bowl or a big salad with added veggies and grains.

So far I have loved eating like this.  I feel full longer, I have lost some weight, I don't have cravings.  I feel like this way of eating is nourishing my body incredibly well.


I've also found having my Instant Pot to be so valuable. I can quickly cook up the veggies, beans, grains to have on hand.


Black Bean & Veggie Stuffed Spaghetti Squash
I made this recipe and it was amazingly good! I did not serve it in the squash as the recipe says. I just mixed it altogether and served it as side dish with my dinner.

My husband ate it along with his pork chops and I ate it as stated above.

http://www.nutritiouseats.com/black-bean-and-veggie-stuffed-spaghetti-squash/



Spaghetti Squash in the Instant Pot
I cooked my spaghetti squash for the above recipe in my Instant Pot. The IP makes cooking any type of winter squash super simple.

You can find my video on how I cook acorn squash in the IP HERE.

I cook the spaghetti squash the same way. I wash the squash, put it whole in the IP on the trivet. I added 1 ½ cups of water. I set the IP on “manual” and set the time for 10 minutes.

When the time was up, I did a NPR (Natural Pressure Release) and removed the squash. I cut it in half (very easily) and cleaned it out.. at this point the squash is about ½ cooked.

Put it back in to the IP, put the lid on and set it to “manual” and another 10 minutes (the time at this point may vary depending on the size of the squash). If it is not cooked enough, put it back in and redo it for another few minutes.

Remove and use a fork to remove the strands of squash.

Finally a delish spring salad that I've made a couple of times now and we all loved it!


Asparagus Salad

This is super easy to make and a great way to enjoy a wonderful spring veggie!


http://www.skinnytaste.com/asparagus-egg-and-bacon-salad-with/

That is all for this week!