Low Fat Eggplant Parmigiana

I was a bit nervous today, vegetarian food is not always welcome unless served with a big piece of steak. I regularly do a chicken and eggplant parmi at home but today I wanted to show my students how delicious eggplant can be, for me it is one of the 'meats' of the vegetable world, the other being mushrooms!

Firstly, the eggplant was crumbed and baked,
rather than fried, making it very low in fat

Secondly add the cheese

Anyway back to today, we cooked a basic tomato sauce comprised of onion, tin tomatoes and carrots (for sweetness without the addition of sugar) and garlic. Meanwhile we sliced the eggplant about 1cm thick, floured  it, egg wash and then crumbed it. We sprayed it with olive oil spray and popped the eggplant in the oven at 180C for about 30 minutes, turning them over 20 minutes in.

We layered the eggplant, mozarella cheese, tomato sauce, eggplant,cheese, tomato sauce then topped with some parmesan cheese and baked it in the oven for 20 minutes. It was served with pasta and salad.

Speaking of which, I shopped this morning for the class and felt like making a tasty salad, I think people forget to put effort in to a salad and as a result, don't enjoy them or eat them as often as they should. Ingredients of the salad included cos lettuce, spring onions, bean sprouts, basil and avocado, topped with toasted almonds and served with a lemon dressing.

The finished dish

Low fat Eggplant Parmigiana, served
with high fibre pasta and salad

Cumin Spiced Chicken skewers served with an Orange and Lentil Salad

The chicken has been cooked
simply under the grill

The Orange and Lentil Salad- I used the
Cara Cara Orange because it looks so pretty

The finished lunch, yumm...

Another yummy lunch today. This is a recipe I have made a couple of times before. What I like about it is that it is so ridiculously healthy you feel virtuous eating it!! Oh yeah....and it's tastes delicious to boot. You marinate some chicken breast pieces in olive oil, orange rind, cumin and garlic. The oranges are then used for the salad, along with some tin lentils, my home grown parsley and chives, cucumber and red onion. On the plate are perfect proportions of protein, vegetables and carbohydrates. I served it with a slice of Wholemeal Sourdough bread and topped the skewers with low fat yoghurt.
Leftovers: You could freeze the chopped, marinated chicken in to individual portions for later use. The salad could be eaten over a couple of days and would be a delicious addition to any barbequed meat or as a vegetarian wrap served with yoghurt or cheese.

Healthy Apple Crumble

Even too many apple peelings for me to eat

Delicious apple, cinnamon and nutty flavours and aromas

Today we joined others at the housing estate in a shared meal, I decided to do a healthy apple crumble, 48 peeled apples later I was ready to get stuck in to making the crumble. The recipe I used was from Taste and I added some ground ginger, why, because I love it! What is great about this recipe is that it uses macadamia nut oil rather than butter and the apples are baked without sugar. This gives the dish a lovely gooey tartness that contrasts with the sweet and crunchy topping. I served it with some cream.

Beef and Bean Burritos

While the meat was browning we diced the
capsicum and tomatoes

I call it deliciously ugly

Today we enjoyed some very healthy and tasty burritos...mmmm...this is a firm family favourite. The recipe I used uses a lot of vegetables, in fact each serve is approximately four serves of vegetables, we added onions, garlic, capsicum, tomatoes and corn. The proportion of lean mince to kidney beans is 1:1.5 ie. We had one kilogram of mince so I used 1.5 kilos of kidney beans.

Prior to the roll up!

I used frozen corn and canned beans in this recipe , both are quality ingredients in their prepared form. As I am teaching simple recipes there seemed little point adding the extra work of pre-preparing these ingredients.

The beef and bean burritos were served with guacamole, lettuce, low fat greek yoghurt, grated cheese and fresh coriander.

If you wanted to save the leftovers there are a couple of options.

1. Make up the burritos with the mix plus cheese, wrap them in cling wrap and freeze them. You can then pull them out of the freezer as needed, bake them in the oven and top them with salsa. Serve with a fresh salad. Don't forget to take the cling wrap off!
2. Freeze the mix in individual portions and then reheat and serve with rice and salad.
   

Roast Chicken and vegetables for One

This Tuesday there was a wintery chill in the air, so perfect weather for cooking a healthy version of roast chicken and vegetables. The maryland pieces had the fat and skin removed, we then scored the flesh and marinated the meat in chinese five spice, soy sauce and chinese cooking wine. By keeping the guidelines of;
25% protein
25% potato
50% vegetables
makes for a well balanced and nutritious meal. I suggested to the students that with the leftovers they could make a 'bubble and squeak', even add an egg to the pan (as there was no chicken leftover) to bulk out the protein...anyway leftovers always taste so good. The choice of maryland is very economical and perfect for one! Roasting your dinner in the one pan also minimises the clean up, that's never a bad thing!

Italian Meatballs and salad

Italian meatballs and salad

Started with my students on Tuesday and enjoyed a delicious meal of Italian meatballs served with a green salad and crusty bread.

A perfect meal for one as the meatballs and sauce can be frozen into single portions, served as we did today or with pasta, rice or potatoes....mmm....

You could even make larger meatballs and shape them as burgers, freezing them raw and cooking them later on the BBQ as needed. Here is the link to the recipe.
Italian Meatballs