Condiments

Easy Healthy Marinade

Posted on by Dr. Laura Imola, BSc, ND (Licensed)

chicken-fajita

I was making fajitas this weekend for our dinner and I was viewing the turkey strips that I was going to offer as fajita stuffer with a weary eye.  Oh the blandness of unseasoned turkey or chicken!  And I didn’t really have time, or a grand selection of ingredients in stock, to make a kicker of a marinade.

I have memories in my early days of using the pre-made “Tex-Mex” seasoning in a yellow package from the grocery store to season meat used in tacos and fajitas.  These days I’d rather skip the high sodium seasonings and opt for something more natural.  But something more natural has to be quick and easy, too!

After a quick search online I found this great little marinade that seasoned the turkey strips beautifully, and in a way that was a good compliment to the mexican flavours we were adding with the salsa, guacamole, cooked onion and peppers, tomato and lettuce.

Here’s the marinade for you to enjoy!

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

Combine in a ziplock bag.  Add turkey (or chicken), mix around in bag to cover well with marinade, seal and refrigerate for 20 minutes.  Zippity-do-da and you’re done!

Here Chickie, Chickie

Posted on by Dr. Laura Imola, BSc, ND (Licensed)

What can I say… my son really likes hummus.  I guess, he comes by it honestly.  🙂

These days, for the sake of convenience, I’ve been buying hummus at the grocery store.  So over the weekend, when he was asking me for some and I realized we were all out, I had a moment and just whipped up a small amount for him.  I crossed my fingers and hoped it would go over well… and it did!  So here’s my recipe for today…A really quick hummus.

I am fortunate to have a hand blender with a matching cup that I threw the ingredients into.  This recipe could also be made in the blender, a food processor or with a Magic Bullet.

I’m also posting this recipe because I literally eye-balled it.  No major measurements… I just went on texture and taste.  I used to make hummus by the book, and always followed a recipe… but more and more I’m getting away from that.  Cooking without a recipe is a great way to go.  These are the recipes that can be tweaked, you can use what you have on hand and it builds confidence in cooking.

If it didn’t work out, I had a base… so I could add a little more of something here and there until I got it right.  This is a simple recipe, so it didn’t take me long, even when I adjusted it a bit.

Here’s how it went down…

LAURA’S “On The Fly” HUMMUS

I pulled out my hand blender and cup.

Then I threw these ingredients together… (I’m giving rough measurements, but I really did just eye-ball it)

– About 1 cup chick peas, from a can, rinsed

– About 1 tablespoon of Almond Butter (traditionally Tahini [aka sesame seed butter] is used but I didn’t have any so I substituted this)

– About 1 tablespoon of pure organic mustard (to add a little zip because I was feeling inspired to add it)

– A sprinkle of himalayan sea salt

– Juice of 1/2 lemon

– Drizzle of olive oil

I started to blend these all in the cup together.

It was a bit thick, so I added a little splash of water and blended again.  It was still to thick, so I added another little splash of water.  This got it to the consistency we like.

It was done in less than 10 minutes and I was taking pictures while I did it!  This was a super fast recipe.

I tasted it… I like to taste the lemon in my hummus, so I added a bit more lemon juice and blended it up again.  I really liked how it tasted after that, so we were good to go and my little munchkin munched up his rice cracker and hummus snack with delight!  🙂

Spring Fever

Posted on by Dr. Laura Imola, BSc, ND (Licensed)

It’s been a little while since my last post, but I’ve been in the midst of Spring Fever.  Literally…my little guy has been down and out with a flu and it’s not been pretty.  But he’s back on the mend now, and I’m back to posting.

With Spring in the air, and the need for me to keep things simple while caring for a sick child, work and do the everyday things that seem to always be there to do, I was inspired to post about a simple, but versatile, salad dressing recipe that I’ve been loving this last week.

Here it goes:

I start with some lemon juice…

Then I add… a little raw honey, pure dijon mustard and olive oil…

Mix this up… adjust flavours as needed… depending on my mood… a little more honey if I want more sweet, a little more mustard if I want zesty…

Today I had put this dressing over chopped fennel salad.  I sprinkled a little salt and pepper over it.  Sometimes I add walnuts or pecans.  Yum!

The original recipe I got this from featured it over Belgium endive.  It’s also wonderful on good old regular green salad.

Variations:
– instead of lemon juice: raw apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar

– instead of raw honey: maple syrup, agave syrup

– instead of olive oil: flax seed oil, spicy flax seed oil, walnut oil, sunflower oil, hemp oil

– instead of mustard… uhhh… yeah, there’s nothing like a splat of dijon… 🙂

– add chopped fresh herbs: dill works really well, parsley

Mixing up these combination can lead to endless possibilities for quick fresh homemade salad dressings!