Silky Ginger Sweet Potato Soup

This is a modified recipe from Jessica over at howsweeteats.com. I modified it to lower the fat content quite a bit. It makes a very large bowl that is a complete meal for me. You could cut it in half for a side dish with something else. It's very filling as a meal. I love butternut squash soup as well, but this one is so deliciously sweet that it almost seems like a dessert.

Silky Ginger Sweet Potato Soup: 388 Calories for the whole thing.

Ingredients:

1 tsp coconut oil - 39 calories
1/4 c onion, diced - 12 calories
1 clove garlic, minced - 4 calories
1 Tbl fresh ginger, grated - 5 calories
Salt
Pepper
2 cups diced sweet potato (265 g or about
a medium potato) - 231 calories
1-1/2 cups low sodium chicken or veggie broth - 30 calories
1/2 cup lite coconut milk - 68 calories

Directions:

Heat a medium pot and add the coconut oil. Add the onion and cook until golden brown and carmelized, about 15 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, salt and pepper. Cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in the sweet potato cubes. Cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, till the potatoes just start to soften. Add broth and bring the mixture to a boil. Cover pot, reduce heat to low and cook till sweet potatoes are soft. Turn off heat.

Either use an immersion blender to blend the potato mixture or transfer it to a blender and cover the lid with a towel and blend it. Return the mixture to the pot and add the coconut milk. Return to the heat and stir till blended and warmed through. Adjust seasonings. Sprinkle with cinnamon or nutmeg if desired.

Strawberry Chicken Spinach Salad

I've been experimenting with different salads now that the weather is finally getting warm in St. Louis. We're famous for having about three days of Spring before the summer hits here, and summer is brutal. So it's imperative to have a collection of go-to salads that I can make.

Fortunately, the warmth timed itself exactly with the organic strawberry sale at Whole Foods and I had these delicious  strawberries sitting in my fridge. I started out with about 3 cups of baby spinach. Then I layered 1/4 cup of thinly sliced cold chicken breast, 128 g of fresh strawberries, sliced, a 1/4 cup serving of goat cheese crumbles (Feta would work well too,) and a 1/4 cup serving of Great Value Omege 3 trail mix. It was quite possibly the most delicious salad I've ever eaten, and all of this for 358 calories. Score!

Broccoli-Cauliflower Salad

This salad was always one of my favorite summer salads. It's light, It's crunchy, it's both sweet and tangy at the same time and it fills you up. The original recipe called for a mayonnaise dressing but I lightened it up with plain Greek yogurt. If you're dairy intolerant or just don't like the taste of yogurt, using a light mayonnaise thinned with a little 1% milk if necessary would work fine, just adjust the calorie count for it. You can start with this basic salad and then add things. If you need a protein boost, diced hardboiled egg, diced cold chicken, and diced cheddar cheese all go well in this salad.

Broccoli-Cauliflower Salad: 137 Calories for a large bowl


Ingredients:

78 grams chopped fresh broccoli stems and florets
(about 1 cup finely chopped)
122 grams chopped fresh cauliflower stems and
florets (about 1 cup finely chopped)
1/4 cup chopped sweet onion like Vidalia or red
1 Tbl apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup Fage Total 0% plain Greek yogurt
Salt, pepper, sugar substitute

Directions:




Chop broccoli stems and florets into small pieces and place in 3 cup bowl.

 Chop cauliflower stems and florets into small pieces and add to broccoli. Mix well.











Chop onion and add to broccoli-cauliflower and mix well

In a separate small bowl, mix yogurt and vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add a teaspoon of Swerve or other sugar substitute or add the calories for a teaspoon of sugar or honey. This sweetening is really necessary to offset the vinegar so don't skip it.

Combine the dressing with the vegetables. Refrigerate for at least several hours to allow the vegetables to absorb the seasoning. This salad will keep well in the fridge for a day or two.

Blueberry Muffins - The Lighter Version

The one food I really found myself craving since starting on the Noom program was muffins, but I really have never found a lite muffin that tasted good. For the past few weeks I've been on a mission, though, to try to find a recipe for one that would satisfy my muffin-hunger. I found a recipe for 100 calorie Banana Craisin Muffins on SparkRecipes and submitted by a member onelesspound that looked like a good place to start. I heavily adapted it and ended up with this blueberry muffin recipe. They clearly weren't bakery muffins, the 580 calorie kind with a moist, high texture due to a pound of sugar, but they were good, and I found them even better the second day after sitting in a closed up leftover container. They were moist, pleasantly sweet due to the blueberries, and had the delicious, more substantial taste of whole wheat. The adaptations that I made from the original recipe were to substitute almond milk for the  If you make them and change anything that you like better, please comment below so we can all benefit.

I also didn't take step-by-step photos of this recipe yet because I wasn't sure I was going to like it. When I make them again, I'll do the step photos.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins-116 calories per muffin-dairy free and vegan

This recipe makes 12 regular sized muffins

Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 medium bananas, mashed, about 1 cup
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup almond milk
1 cup blueberries. If frozen, thaw and drain

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375°. Either grease the bottoms of the muffin tin or line with paper.

Mix the flour, flax seed, sugar, soda and salt well with a whisk. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas and measure to 1 cup. Add vanilla, applesauce, and almond milk to bananas. Stir well. Add dry ingredients and mix just till combined. Over-mixing will result in dense, tough muffins. Gently fold in blueberries. Divide evenly among 12 muffin tins. If desired, sprinkle tops with a brown sugar substitute like Swerve. Bake at 375° for 15-20 minutes or till toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool completely. Store in covered container. These freeze well.

Best Black Bean Burgers

I admit, I've never been a big fan of veggie burgers. The store-bought kind lack much taste and have the consistency of a certain fast food burger which I despise, so it was with some trepidation that I set out to find the best recipe for one for a good friend of mine who is on the Noom plan with me.

Usually, when you find a recipe that says "The Best Ever...." in the title, it's simply not. But I confess I do use the term in some of my recipe titles, so when I happened on a recipe for The Best Black Bean Burgers I've Ever Had on sallysbakingaddiction.com, I decided to give it a try. Before I get to the actual recipe and the steps involved, here's my take:

• The burgers had a good visual appeal to them. They looked almost like real beef burgers.
• They had a good consistency to them, a good mouth feel.
• The spices were perfect, and the flavor was excellent.
• While not many less calories than a beef burger, the nutrition content is much better. On the Noom program, nearly every ingredient was either a Green food item or a Yellow food item, where beef is a Red food item.
• I used ground Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Oats instead of the bread crumbs to keep it gluten free.
• I used goat cheese crumbles instead of feta because I didn't have any feta. I believe it would be better with feta since it's a drier cheese than goat cheese and I'll use it next time.
• Paired with a Healthy Life Wheat Bun, a slice of Lite Jarlsburg Swiss and some lettuce and mustard and pickles, it was an excellent, filling lunch for 420 calories.

I only had one can of black beans in my pantry, so I made a half recipe. It yielded 3 very large burger patties. The recipe below is the full recipe as it appears on her website. The calorie total listed is for 1 of 6 patties from the whole recipe. You could lower the calorie total significantly if you used bread crumbs made from lite bread instead of the ground oats that I used. I was making the recipe gluten free so I could pass it along to another friend. You could also lower the calories without sacrificing any protein by using 4 egg whites instead of 2 whole eggs. I also used soy sauce instead of Worcestershire because it's what I had on hand. I selected ketchup instead of mayo because it's so much lower in calories.

If you want more detail on the background of the recipe, hop on over to sallysbakingaddiction.com. And, yes, the recipe title earned its keep.

The Best Black Bean Burgers I've Ever Had- 242 calories burger only, 420 as pictured

2 (14-ounce) cans black beans, drained, rinsed, and patted dry

1 Tbl olive oil

3/4 cup finely chopped bell pepper

1 cup finely chopped yellow onion

3 garlic cloves, minced (about 1 Tbl)

1-1/2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 cup bread crumbs or oat flour

1/2 cup feta cheese

2 large eggs

1 Tbl Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbl ketchup, mayo, or BBQ sauce

pinch of salt and pepper

Directions:

 Preheat oven to 325°. Spread beans evenly onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes until slightly dried out.









Meanwhile, saute olive oil, chopped pepper, onion, and garlic over medium heat until peppers and onions are soft, 5-6 minutes. Gently blot some of the moisture out.

 Place the remaining ingredients in a large bowl

 Add the beans and the sauteed vegetables and mash with a fork or potato masher until blended but still chunky.

Form into six patties and cook one of three ways:

1.On a grill on aluminum foil

2. Bake at 375° for 10 minutes, turn and bake 10 minutes longer.

3. Fry in a pan coated with nonstick spray on medium low for 8 minutes each side.

I fried them, as you can see here, but I think baking would yield the best result as it would make a more solid burger.

Excellent texture, and great taste. You can freeze the uncooked burgers between parchment paper and either thaw before cooking or cook directly from frozen for a few extra minutes.

If you want a Vegan version of it, leave out the cheese, replace the Worcestershire with BBQ sauce, and replace the eggs with 1/3 cup mashed sweet potato.

Enjoy!