Posted by Michelle Butler Jul 25 2011, 1:51 am in cookbooks, cooking, eating healthy, food, Michelle Butler, Michelle Mondays, recipes
Last week I wrote about how cooking fish or chicken in aluminum foil was a fast, easy, healthy method of cooking to give a try. One of the recipes posted – chicken baked in foil with fennel, carrots and oranges – included fruit. In the comments, Mary Curry mentioned how she hasn’t cooked fish with fruit, but she was considering trying it.
That got me thinking. I would have said off the cuff that I don’t include fruit in my dinners because I don’t tend to like it, but I can name a few main meals featuring fruit that I really like. I’ll often include fruit in salads when they are my main meal. At restaurants I have liked chicken or fish with fruit salsa. I’ve even posted some recipes here for main meals with fruit such as a golden marinade (features orange juice) for meat or fish, salmon with balsamic strawberries, curried chicken and chickpea salad (with raisins or grapes), and picadillo, a Mexican ground beef stew with raisins.
I’m sure that there are many other healthy and yummy supper dishes with fruit that I would like and enjoy. Now that we are in the heart of delicious fruit season, I’m going to make an effort to find more recipes for them.
Once again, America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook has several appealing recipes that may help me with this quest. I mentioned that I liked fruit salsa on fruit and chicken. The previously mentioned cookbook has a fast, fresh fruit salsa recipe.
Fresh Fruit Salsa
makes about 1 1/2 cups
Ingredients:
6 ounces peeled and cored fresh pineapple, cut in 1/2-inch pieces (about 1 cup)/
1/4 cup minced red onion
1/2 small red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and chopped fine
1/2 jalapeno chile, stemmed, seeded, and minced (see note below)
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice, plus extra to taste
salt and pepper
sugar
Combine the pineapple, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, cilantro, and 1 tablespoon of the lime juice in a bowl. Season with additional lime juice, salt, pepper , and sugar to taste. Let the salsa sit for 10 minutes before serving.
Per 1/4-cup serving: Cal 20; Fat 0g, Sat Fat 0g, Chol 0mg, Carb 5g, Protein 0g, Fiber 1g, Sodium 0mg
Note: For a change of pace, you can substitute mangos or peaches for the pineapple, or a combination of these fruits (or others); you will need 1 cup chopped fruit. To make this dish spicier, add the chile seeds from the jalapeno. Fruit salsa pairs nicely with chicken, pork and fish.
Do you ever include fruit in you lunch or supper main dishes? Do you have any suggestions or recipes to share?
Posted by Michelle Butler Jul 19 2011, 1:48 am in cookbooks, cooking, eating healthy, food, Michelle Butler, recipes
Variety helps to keep this journey to become and stay a healthy writer more interesting. One of the ways I try to shake it up is to try a new recipe or method of cooking regularly. A method of cooking that you might want to try is to cook food in a foil or parchment [...]
Posted by Michelle Butler Jul 12 2011, 1:01 am in cookbooks, cooking, eating healthy, Michelle Butler
Since I last joined Weight Watchers in January of 2009, I have discovered that I have a stronger sweet tooth than I ever knew. I try to be selective about it and have managed to stop myself from eating just average sweets. I haven’t been able to reach the point where I only eat sweets [...]
Posted by Michelle Butler May 8 2011, 9:35 pm in cookbooks, cooking, eating healthy, Michelle Butler, Michelle Mondays, weight loss
Last week, I read an article in which a nutritionist said that at least 80% of losing weight and keeping it off was the food. I’ve heard something similar several times before, and it reflects my experience in trying to lose weight. It still was a good and timely reminder. I made a few, poor [...]
Posted by Michelle Butler Jan 16 2011, 10:22 pm in cookbooks, eating healthy, Michelle Butler, Michelle Mondays, recipes
I’ve mentioned before that my mom does an amazing job incorporating plenty of vegetables into her diet. Over the holidays, she introduced me to another healthy eating trick that can bring me a taste of summer in the middle of winter. It is a grill pan. My parents gave me a Cuisinart 11″ square grill [...]
Posted by Michelle Butler Dec 27 2010, 1:53 am in cookbooks, Holidays, Michelle Butler, Michelle Mondays, recipes
I know this should be some profound, forward-looking post about how ambitious I am to make great strides in 2011 on my journey to becoming and staying a healthy writer, but I’m not feeling it right now. I’m still enjoying the holidays. I’m watching the snow come down outside the window as I drink tea, [...]
Posted by Michelle Butler Oct 11 2010, 1:12 am in cookbooks, cooking, Michelle Butler, Michelle Mondays, recipes
I don’t know what it is, but I now seem to get the urge to cook whenever it’s a 3-day weekend. I had not planned to do a mini-cooking marathon this Columbus Day weekend, but somehow I find myself planning to do some extra cooking as I made my grocery list on Saturday. A couple [...]
Posted by Mary Curry Sep 4 2010, 6:07 am in cookbooks, cooking, eating healthy, food, health tips
When I posted my first vegetable blog, I referred to my mother’s string bean, mushroom soup and french fried onion casserole. *shudder* I know some people like it, but that dish alone turned me off to vegetables. But I’m a grown up now and I know vegetables are an important part of my healthy diet. [...]
Posted by Michelle Butler Aug 23 2010, 1:43 am in cookbooks, cooking, Michelle Butler, Michelle Mondays, recipes
I love the four seasons. It’s one of the things I missed the most when I lived in Texas, the land of summer and not summer, and my time there made me appreciate the seasons even more. I start to long for the next season towards the end of any current one, and autumn is [...]
Posted by Michelle Butler Mar 20 2010, 7:01 am in cookbooks, cooking, eating healthy, Michelle Butler, recipes
I am in the fifteen month of what I now can call a lifestyle change without fear or the urge to choke back the words. To help me succeed on my journey to becoming and staying a healthy writer, I often ask myself how can I keep my efforts satisfying and fun. One of the [...]
