Waffleritos: And How to Use Up the Food You Already Have in Your House

March 21, 2017 By Jessica Braider 2 Comments

I’ve got an awesome, super simple, extra flexible recipe for you guys this week! Waffleritos. Yup, you guessed it, a combination of waffles and burritos, and what could be better than that? But first, some practical tips on how to cook with what you’ve got. The inspiration for the recipe and this post comes from this month’s challenge from The Recipe Redux:

Spring Clean the Kitchen. Cook with at least 3 ingredients that are actually in your refrigerator or pantry right now. Try not to go to the store to buy anything new. Give tips on how to make a healthy dish out of whatever you have on-hand.

This topic is near and dear to my heart and is tied to one of the complaints I hear from people over and over again—that they struggle with food waste—vegetables go bad before they can use them all up, meat is forgotten and goes off, and they are reluctant to buy recipe-specific ingredients because they aren’t sure how they will use the remainders in other recipes. I have even spoken with people who have decided that they’d rather order out instead of grocery shop and cook because the food waste stresses them out so much. I am very sympathetic to this struggle as it is one that I experienced for years when I was first becoming comfortable with cooking. I vividly remember going into my produce drawer and finding slimy green things that made my stomach turn. I also remember struggling with what to do with leftover ingredients from new recipes I had tried (I used to avoid buying cabbage and bok choy at all costs for this reason). Over time, though, as I became more comfortable with cooking and improvising, I found this source of stress started to dissipate and I developed a couple of tricks that were really helpful in avoiding food waste….

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Tacos with Avocado Crema

February 21, 2017 By Jessica Braider 9 Comments

This month’s challenge from The Recipe Redux is near and dear to my heart: tacos!!

Show us your healthy, creative take on the taco.

For as long as I can remember, tacos have been a favorite food of mine. When I was a kid, my mom had (still has) special bowls that she used to put out the taco toppings and whenever I saw those bowls coming down from the cupboard I knew that an awesome dinner was in store! I think because I was a picky eater I enjoyed the control I had over my own plate—I got to choose which toppings I used and which I avoided and, if I was feeling brave, I could try something new in a small and safe way. As a kid, the taco options were the same every time: ground beef, kidney beans, lettuce, tomatoes, onion, cheese, and salsa. And still, with the exception of raw onions which I am not a huge fan of, I love all of those components and would happily have one of my childhood tacos any night!

For this Taco Tuesday, though, I’m sharing a different version. While the ground beef is great and we definitely eat it from time to time in our house, it isn’t usually something I include with taco night because there are other, healthier sources of fat in the meal. In fact, many times our taco nights are vegetarian, using beans as the protein source. The tacos I’m sharing today involve one of my all-time favorite flavor combinations, black beans and sweet potatoes, along with a creamy avocado-based sauce that makes the whole meal feel special! In fact, the last time I made the avocado crema my 8-year-old said, “wow! This is such a fancy meal!” when the only difference was replacing our standard cut up avocado with the crema.

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Brazilian-Style Protein Power Bowls: Comfort Food At Its Best

October 21, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

It’s that time again! Time for another Recipe Redux challenge recipe. And this time I get to share one of our go-to comfort food meals with you! The challenge this month was:

Packed with protein, fiber and color, plant power bowls are trendy and delicious. Show us the healthy recipe that’s in your bowl.

When I read this prompt I immediately knew what I was going to share with you! This is a family favorite that I developed as a quick and simple dish that is inspired by one of my all-time favorite Brazilian meals: feijoada.

For those of you who don’t know, feijoada is the national dish of Brazil. It is a black bean based stew that is filled with many, many different cuts of pork. It was developed by the slaves when all they had to work with was black beans and leftover pork. If you ever have a chance to have a real feijoada (and you eat meat), definitely do it! But the real deal is very labor intensive and requires a long, long time to cook. One day it occurred to me, though, that what I love about the dish more than the stew was the salty and sweet flavor explosion that is added through the use of toppings and that was something I could recreate very quickly and easily, so I did!…

Baked Chimichangas

July 7, 2016 By Jessica Braider 1 Comment

I don’t know about you, but getting meals on the table during the summer can be a bit of a challenge. I always think that the summer is going to be slower and more relaxed, and in some ways it is, but then suddenly, because of that relaxation and lack of routine, it is 6pm, I’ve got starving kids, and I haven’t even started thinking about dinner yet! Panic!

That is where quick and easy dinners save the day and I have been depending a lot on quick pastas, egg dishes, and rice bowls of various sorts. These are all great, but we all need something new from time to time… or at least I do.

Enter the baked chimichanga. Now, I know that this is not even close to a traditional chimichanga, especially since they aren’t deep fried, but to be totally honest, calling them chimichangas was quite a selling point with my kids. They thought it was fun to say and if it is fun to say, then maybe it is fun to eat, and then suddenly I have two boys who are in love with a new dish to the point where one declares that he loves chimichangas more than hot dogs (true story!). So maybe I could call them baked-delicious-pockets-of-goodness, but it just doesn’t quite roll off the tongue in the same way….

Freezer Breakfast Pockets: A flexible, portable breakfast

October 8, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

We all know the drill. Scrambling to get lunches packed, breakfast eaten, teeth brushed, clothes on, maybe showered. There is a lot to do before leaving the house for work/school in the morning! One of the ways I try to streamline that process for our household is to prepare breakfast foods over the weekend that can go into the freezer to be pulled out throughout the week. Muffins, mini-frittatas, spinach pop-outs, waffles, pancakes, oatmeal, I make them all. But even with all of that variety, my kids have been starting to get a little sick of the offerings. So I wanted to come up with a different option: breakfast pockets.

That’s right. I wanted to come up with homemade hot pockets (a treat I was never allowed to have as a kid, but that’s a story for another post)….

Brazilian-Style Fried Rice: Dinner in 7 Minutes

August 27, 2015 By Jessica Braider 1 Comment

Many moons ago, when my now-husband and I first started dating, we did the thing that many couples do: we tried to increase our appeal by cooking meals for one another. At the time, neither of us cooked very much, so we both fell back on comfort foods that we had grown up with. For me, that was my dad’s Bolognese sauce. For my husband, it was eggs and rice.

When he first told me of his love for eggs and rice I was dumbfounded. Outside of fried rice at Chinese restaurants I had never heard of the combination. And to be completely honest, I thought it sounded absolutely awful. But in the interest of being a good sport with my new boyfriend, I agreed to try it. As I looked down at my plate of rice topped with a fried egg, I was still doubtful. And then I took my first bite and I was blown away! It was delicious, nourishing, and comforting. It felt like something I would imagine a grandmother would make for you when you were home sick….

Simple Grain Salad: A side dish without a recipe

February 19, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

One of the recommendations I often make to clients and in workshops is to “cook once, and eat two, three or more times.” Many times, life can get so busy that meal planning seems impossible and all we can do is try to quickly figure out the next meal—tonight’s dinner, tomorrow’s school lunch, etc. When we do that we are constantly searching for recipes and depending on our creativity, which can quickly burn us out and leave us resentful of having to cook at all. But, with a tiny bit of planning and maybe some flexibility we can turn one round of cooking into two or three simple meals.

One of my favorite ways to stretch the food I make farther is with a grain salad. If I am making a pot of grains—rice, quinoa, millet, couscous, etc.—I always make extra. So much can be done with leftover grains: you can turn them into breakfast porridge, throw them into a big green salad for some added heft, mix them into soups or stews, fold them into veggie burger batter, and, my favorite, turn them into a grain-based salad. Grain salads are great because they can serve as a hefty side dish and are so incredibly flexible—any leftover vegetables, cheese, or salad dressing you have lying around can get thrown in!…

Tostada Salad

February 4, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

When I was a kid I was a pretty picky eater and the most difficult meal for me (and my poor mom) was breakfast. I hated breakfast. So time and time again my mom would work with me to find some sort of breakfast that I would be willing to eat. Once she found one, then I would go on a major food jag and would only eat that one kind of breakfast day after day after day, until I would get sick of it (I would literally gag at the sight of the food) and refuse to ever eat it again. She must have wanted to kill me some days…

As I got older I began to realize that obsessively eating certain foods was slowly ruining them for me (I still have trouble with Canadian bacon, for instance), so I pushed myself to alternate foods so this wouldn’t happen. As a parent, I have also worked very hard to encourage variety in my boys’ diets so that they don’t grow sick of any one food.

But the recipe that I am going to share with you today is actually what I eat almost every single day for lunch. How is that possible? Because it is incredibly flexible, I just use whatever I have in the house that day, so every day is different!…

Vegetarian Mexican Lasagna

October 30, 2014 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Now that the days are getting shorter (and colder), warming hearty meals are the types of food that we start to find comforting and nourishing. This is also a time of year when we tend to be busy with semesters and activities in full swing, which means spending lots of time in the kitchen may not be such a feasible option. That is where the slow cooker comes in!…

Homemade Empanadas!

April 28, 2014 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

I wish I could take credit for this genius recipe, but I truly can’t. I discovered it on The Kitchn and have been in love ever since. The reason I love their recipe so much is that the pastry is so incredibly simple both to make and to work with, and is composed of ingredients that I always have in the house.

The filling is where I change things up. And that is the beauty of an empanada- the filling can really be made of whatever you have in your house. Yesterday I made most of mine with a black bean, corn, and cauliflower filling (recipe below), but then ran out of filling so I quickly whipped up a tomato, peppers, and chickpea version for the last few pieces of dough. Both were delicious….

The Balanced Kitchen

Time for food. Time for Life.