Meatless Monday : Warm Lentil Salad with a Poached Egg

How BORING was that Super Bowl? Not even the commercials were any good! I was expecting to bawl like a hungry baby at the Budweiser commercial with the puppies, but I just got this confused deja vu feeling that they had done a similar commercial a couple of years ago. Talk about stale. And I am so very sorry to any and all Denver fans out there- after the first half it was just mean what Seattle was doing to y'all.

Meatless Monday : Quinoa Cakes with Cream of Mushroom Soup

Oh my friends. Please forgive my absence. I literally had every intention of blogging through July and then as soon as I was settled back into life in the States... which I thought would be a couple weeks after our arrival. I completely underestimated (read: forgot) how difficult and stressful an overseas PCS can be. 

Quinoa Burgers with Chipotle Mayo

How difficult do you think it would be to trick an Oklahoma born & raised, red-blooded American man into absolutely loving a veggie burger? Yeah, I thought it was going to be tough as well, until I made these.

Roasted Vegetable Soup

I am on a soup kick lately- the weather here has been absolutely perfect for it. It's "winter" here in Okinawa, which means temperatures in the 50's, overcast and rainy. It's not the winter I would prefer, but I'll take what I can get. Just like the 30 Minute Chicken Noodle Soup I posted the other day, this recipe is high flavor, low maintenance. 

Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts

Hi, guys. I'm back! Did you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas? I hope so! I gotta say, it honestly wasn't my original intent to take this much time off from blogging--nearly 2 months!!-- but life just wedged its fat butt right in my way and prevented me from enjoying any of my hobbies for most of November and all of December. Sad, isn't it?

Butternut Squash Risotto

Autumn dishes are in fuuuulllll swing over here at my house. I'm cooking furiously on my days off from work to make sure I don't disappoint you all with a less than drool-worthy line up this year. Isn't that nice of me? If we're being honest, I'm being forced to do this early, since this year Travis and I will be in Seoul, Korea for Thanksgiving day and I won't be near a kitchen. What a horrible punishment I have given myself-- cooking autumn/Thanksgiving dishes early, pppsssshhhh, like I don't secretly love this 'punishment' and wish I didn't have a full time job so I could do nothing but cook and take pictures and write in my pajamas. All. Day. Long.

Back to Basics : Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Remember a few weeks ago when we made those delicious stuffed acorn squash? I hope you didn't throw away the seeds, since they make a wonderful little snack! Healthy, flavorful and prevents food waste? Those are three of my favorite qualities in a dish!

Frog Eye Salad

Happy Halloween!! My treat for you is that you get TWO posts from me in one day! I posted earlier for the Foodie Pen Pal reveal, in which I told you about the awesome fall package I got from Natalie, who blogs over at Free Range Human. Great fun! While I enjoy pumpkin flavored things over here, I would like for you to enjoy some of this food irony... Frog Eye Salad!

Healthy Green Smoothie

I have about 4 other posts I need to write, but I made this smoothie for breakfast this morning and immediately got to snapping pictures so I could post it today. I was a little leery of the green smoothie craze circulating around the blogosphere lately, but I've been feeling a little under the weather lately, so I wanted to get some nutrients into my system, and fast. A smoothie seemed like the fastest and most efficient way to do that, but I was concerned that the smoothies/shakes I had as a kid had so much sugar and dairy that it would completely negate the benefits of the included fruits.

Seafood en Papillote

As promised, y’all, here is a non-beef, perfect for the end of summer recipe! I don’t know what got into me last month… I posted way more beef recipes than I normally eat. Anyway, today is a fantastic dish. For you vegetarian (fish eating), dairy free and gluten free lovers out there, you’ll be extra happy! It’s fancy. It’s healthy (ish). It’s delicious. It’s Seafood en Papillote!

Breaded Halibut with Chipotle Mayo

I was kind of lacking inspiration for dinner last night. I had cleaned the house from top to bottom all day and been in the kitchen messing up a chocolate cupcake recipe since I didn't have enough eggs. I needed something quick, something light, something not chicken or beef.

Zucchini Cakes

The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight! In just a week, Travis and I are going on vacation to Sydney, Australia for 9 days! We are so excited and this vacation is very much needed- not to mention it will be a wonderful break from the heat and humidity here in Okinawa since it's the end of their winter there. 

In preparation our absence, we are trying to use up the produce in our fridge so it does not spoil. I've had several zucchini hanging out waiting to be used- it's very probable I saw some awesome zucchini recipes prior to going to the grocery store and plumb forgot what they were after buying the veggies! 

Back to Basics : Scrambled Eggs

Everyone has their own way of making scrambled eggs, it seems. When I took a poll at work before writing this post, I got everything from high heat/constant stirring, low heat/curdle and stir, even microwaving for 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between.

Crock Pot Macaroni and Cheese

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of this surprisingly delicious dish. I have a good excuse, I promise: I fed my coworkers. My overworked, under-appreciated, exhausted coworkers. The enlisted corpsmen live in dorm style barracks and have little to no facilities to cook food on their own, so they are forced to choke down whatever the hospital's cafeteria has to offer (Hospital food = bad. Military chow hall food = bad. Combine those and that's what they eat daily) or take a taxi out into town since most don't have cars and pay a lot more money to eat local cuisines. I feel for them, I do. I remember missing certain foods when I was a freshman in college and having no money but being completely sick of the cafeteria food. The other option was the 7-11 style store, which sold frozen dinners and junk food, which also gets old extremely fast.

Roasted Garlic Hummus

I love hummus. Really anything this versatile with golden roasted garlic, protein and fiber that I can eat with a spoon, veggies or on wraps and sandwiches is a magical ingredient in my opinion. Put it on fish, chicken or toasted bread! Use it in sandwiches instead of mayo- it would go spiffily with bean sprouts, turkey and spinach. Schmear it on a wrap filled with chicken, lettuce, black beans and cucumbers. Dollop it on a salad with tomatoes, carrots, celery and radishes. The possibilities are ENDLESS!

Tuna Pea Wiggle

Sadly I only have one picture of this delicious dish. Me being a complete space cadet left the camera in the "on" position for a couple hours before deciding to make this for dinner, and the battery died after I was able to snap this one shot. What can I say, I've been frazzled lately!! Travis and I are going to Hiroshima for the weekend in celebration of our 3 year wedding anniversary on April 25. I've been working, doing laundry like a crazy woman, cleaning, getting our dog Otis to our friend's house for the duration of our trip and trying to finalize our to-do list for while we are in mainland. It drives Travis crazy, I am sure, that I try to plan out flights, hotels, trains, subways, and busses down based on their schedules I can find online. Despite his free spirit desiring to wander around for 3 days, I am proud of myself for finding them since everything is in Japanese and it can be difficult to determine which link to follow when you're looking at everything written in a very foreign language. I just don't like getting lost, or having a lot of downtime on vacations. I don't like feeling like I've wasted time walking around when I could have researched the destination a little better prior to going. So with that monstrosity of a to do list right before our trip, a quick dinner was in order.

Quick and Simple Fish Tacos

I have a confession- these were my first fish tacos. 

It's blasphemy. I know it's what you're thinking. I know I'm probably the last person in the modern world who hasn't tried them. I don't even really have a good excuse! I could say I grew up in Dallas and fresh fish just wasn't a big thing there, but that's not necessarily true. I know Dallas is in Texas and Texas is known for beef, blah blah blah. But flash frozen fish has been a big thing since I can remember- my parents bought salmon all the time even though my sisters and I wouldn't touch the stuff as kids. 

Minestrone Soup

We are smack dab in the middle of Lent, and this has been by far my favorite meatless meal for Fridays. I've been eating the leftovers shamelessly throughout this past week. Sadly, soup season is coming to an end here in Okinawa, it's simply becoming too hot to curl up on the couch with a hot bowl of soup- you know, not like Okinawa was "cold" to begin with. This soup makes me want to eat it year round though.