This post was sort of a disaster in the making. I’ve been meaning to finalize this recipe and take photos for the blog for a few days, but things kept getting in the way. Finally I decided that I’d had enough and nothing was going to get in the way of me getting the post ready. It was 8:30 by the time I got home after working late and running some errands (I had an expiring Groupon – couldn’t let it go to waste!), but I set out to make the chili anyway.

I shouldn’t cook when I’m exhausted.

I forgot to add the beans! It’s delicious without them, but it was kind of soupy and something was clearly missing. Now, looking at the photos 3 days later, it’s clear that it was the beans. If you make this recipe, your chili will be thicker. Trust me, you want it that way.

So anyway, I finish cooking my accidentally bean-less chili and take a few photos to test my lighting… and my camera battery died. So the photos are a little washed out and the chili looks like soup.  Oy.

Despite the comedy of errors, it’s a delicious chili and perfect for the Superbowl. The chicken and beans are tender, the sauce is spicy and rich, and the celery and carrots tone down the heat and round out the flavor. Blue Cheese Biscuits are perfect for dipping – or for eating on their own. Don’t leave them out; they really make the meal. They’re also incredibly addicting. I told myself I would only have one, but I ended up eating 4. Oops. Oh well, after the night I had, I deserved every last bite.

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I’m alive! January has been an insane month, and I’ve been running around like crazy doing what feels like twenty million things at a time. Because of that, dinners have not been very exciting lately. I do have fun recipes planned though and will post them as soon as I have the time to work out a few last details and type them up. Think soba noodles with sautéed chicken and roast mushrooms, cornmeal crusted tofu with quick ratatouille, and a buffalo chicken chili that I’ll try my hardest share before the game this weekend.

In the meantime, how do sauerbraten meatballs sound? Sauerbraten is a great dish – a little bit sweet, a little bit spicy, and extremely rich – but it takes days to make. I’ve figured out a way to replicate the flavors in a quick stovetop sauce that’s delicious served over meatballs for a delicious and easy twist on the original. Check out my recipe on the ShopRite PotLuck blog! (Speaking of ShopRite, you know how I said I’ve been running around like crazy? Their Shop at Home service has been a lifesaver. I place my grocery order online, then pick it up at the store a few hours later all packed up and ready to go – and for no extra charge! What would easily take me an hour in the store can be done in 15 minutes online – plus it keeps me from putting all sorts of random impulse buys in my cart.)

Photo copyright Bon Appetit

I also wanted to mention that I spent the earlier part of this month doing Bon Appetit’s Food Lover’s Cleanse and I loved it! It’s a two week plan meant as a kickstart to healthy eating. The recipes are great and I loved that it included three meals a day plus a snack and dessert. I didn’t have to think about or plan my meals at all. We both loved the recipes and some – like the brown rice and carrot pilaf, cumin roast sweet potatoes, and pumpkin-shrimp curry will definitely be seen again on my kitchen table. It also really got me thinking about preparing things ahead of time so that meals are quicker to prepare – I now have a freezer full of cooked lentils and caramelized onions and I have no idea how I used to survive without it. It you want to check out the cleanse for yourself, you can find it here.

Happy (Chinese) New Year!

For some reason, we always celebrated Chinese New Year when I was a kid. I don’t know why, but I always looked forward to it. It was so fun, and we didn’t eat Chinese nearly as often back then as we do now. Mom would take out the electric wok and cook dinner right on the table – usually a chicken stir fry. The next night, we’d wrap the leftovers in tortillas and eat them as fajitas. Yum.

I made this clementine-soy glazed chicken a few weeks ago and thought it would be the perfect Chinese New Year post. But then I started researching and apparently I had it all wrong. The holiday has all sorts of food traditions, like eating noodles to bring long life and dumplings to bring wealth. And apparently serving a chicken or duck whole represents health, but serving it cut – like these thighs – is the opposite. Oops.

Oh well. This dish is delicious any time of the year, and you should definitely make it (if you’re superstitious or prefer to celebrate the New Year more traditionally, just wait until tomorrow.)

I almost always have a crate of clementines sitting on my counter this time of year, but they go bad quicker than I can eat them so I’ve been trying to come up with ideas for cooking with them. I’ve found that roasting them concentrates their flavor and makes them super juicy! For this dish, I roasted them along with some chicken thighs, then used the juice in an Asian-inspired sauce. The chicken was great, with a perfectly crispy skin stretched over juicy meat, but the sauce was really the highlight of the dish. It was delicate and tangy, with a slight hint of perfume from the citrus. It was delicious spooned over the chicken, but even better mixed into the red quinoa that I served on the side. Thanks to the sauce, I’d say it was some of the best quinoa I’ve ever eaten.

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Can we talk about cauliflower for a second? It’s a great vegetable with a really unique flavor. I love it and, if you haven’t tried it lately, you really should give it a second chance. But there’s a right way to do cauliflower and a wrong way. The cauliflower “steaks” that food editors seem to have decided should be all the rage this winter? NOT the right way. In fact, it’s a pretty decent way to confirm any suspicion that you may have had that cauliflower is gross.

This pasta, on the other hand, with the some of the cauliflower caramelized in the oven and the rest pureed into a creamy sauce? Even if you think you hate cauliflower, you’ll love this.

This dish is based loosely on one that I had at OTTO when I was in New York City last September. If you ever find yourself in NYC looking for a great meal at a reasonable price, I highly recommend you check OTTO out. It was easily the best meal I had in 2011.  The house-cured charcuterie was amazing. The pizza, a perfectly thin, perfectly charred crust topped with anchovies, capers and chilis, was sublime. And the pasta with spicy cauliflower? There’s no way to describe it other than sexy. Don’t even get me started on dessert.

There was only one problem with the pasta: After a few transcendent bites, it started to get … boring. There was no variation in texture, no acidity to cut through the rich sauce. It was fork full after fork full of the same of the same delicious bit, and I thought it needed something more. Something to jar your senses and bring you back down to earth.

It took me a few attempts to get this recipe exactly the way I wanted it, but it was worth every last attempt. I added roasted cauliflower and peas for texture, prosciutto for richness, and a smattering of sun dried tomatoes to give it a little bite. The sauce isn’t quite as smooth and luxurious as Batali’s (I suspect his uses heaps of butter and cream), but the flavor and texture is wonderful. It sure is a pretty darn good way to eat cauliflower.

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Me: Hey Shawn, remember when we went to the Taste of Hartford two years ago and we ate that guacamole with fruit and lobster in it?

Shawn: How the hell do you remember these things?

Me: Because it was awesome.

That guacamole was awesome, but the real reason that I remembered about it was because I’ve been meaning to recreate it at home. I was just waiting for an appropriate opportunity. Like, say, the Avocados from Mexico Guac Off Recipe Contest?

In preparation for the Big Game, Avocados From Mexico is challenging you to come up with your best guacamole recipe for a chance to win great prizes. A Grand Prize winner in each of three categories (Most Popular, Best Recipe, and Most Creative) will win an IPad2 (which I really, really, really want) and a cookbook signed by Roberto Santibanez. Seven Runners Up will win a $200 grocery gift card and the autographed book. Plus, just for entering, you’ll have a chance to win one of ten $100 gift cards!  Visit Avocados from Mexico on Facebook before January 20 to learn more.

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Like a lot of people, I re-committed myself* to eating healthier and losing a few pounds in the New Year. Unlike a lot of people, I won’t attempt to live off of cold salads and clear broths. It’s winter, people! I want comfort food – and lots of it.

This milky chowder filled with meaty bites of bacon and the subtle spice of Old Bay and peppery parsnips is what I consider the ultimate winter meal. The combination of smoke and cream reminds me of curling up in front of a fireplace while fat snowflakes fall outside. Close your eyes when you eat it and you can almost hear the bells of a horse-drawn carriage being pulled down the road. It tastes luxurious but, with less than 350 calories per (big) bowl and loads of vitamins C and A, I know its a great way to stick to my goals.

(*I refuse to say it’s a resolution. That sounds too drastic and unattainable. I do, however, resolve to fit into my pants again.)

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The holidays may be over, but the gifts keep on coming!

Over the past month, I’ve had a lot of fun playing around with the  new Marzetti Simply Dressed salad dressings line. I used the Ginger-Sesame to make an Asian-inspired chicken wrap that was full of fresh flavor. The Greek Feta made quick work of turning some couscous and zucchini into a healthy side dish. Leftover orange-soy glazed chicken thighs and sautéed bok choy got new life when I served them over romaine dressed with more of the Sesame-Ginger. And I’ve eaten more than my share of baby greens tossed with Pomegranate dressing and crumbled goat cheese.

Now it’s your turn to give Simply Dressed a try!

Marzetti has generously offered to give two of you a prize pack. It includes a beautiful wooden salad bowl, some great salad tongs (they fold flat for easy storage!), and 5 coupons for free dressing.
Want a chance to win? Simply leave a comment telling me which dressing you’re most excited to try and how you plan to incorporate it into a healthy dish. You can see the whole line here.

For an extra entry, leave me a second comment letting me know that you either tweeted about the giveaway (“Start your New Year right! Enter to win a Simply Dressed prize pack from @HealthyDelish! http://tinyurl.com/84uz57g”) or posted about it on Facebook.

I’ll randomly pick two winners on Wednesday, January 11.

Congratulations to Melani and Jaquie!

I was one of six bloggers selected by T. Marzetti Company to be a Simply Dressed Ambassador. They compensated for my time however, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

I posted less frequently in 2011 than I did in 2010, but I made sure that those posts were the very best of the best. People seemed to appreciate that. Even though I didn’t post as often, the number of people visiting Healthy. Delicious. skyrocketed – with a 165% increase in visitors and a 145% increase in pageviews. That might not mean anything to you, but to me it’s huge. Thank you to new and old friends alike.

Here are the ten most-viewed recipes that I posted in 2011. Maybe it was one of these recipes that brought you here. Maybe it was another one. Either way, Here’s to a happy and healthy 2012!

#10 Soft & Fudgy Chocolate Pea-Nut Butter Cookies

#9 Beef and Zucchini Burgers

It makes me laugh – both of these recipes have a healthy ingredient hidden inside to make them lighter (dry peas in the cookies, zucchini in the burgers). I’m pretty sure they were the only two recipes using that technique that I posted all year.  Both are delicious though – and I was actually thinking about whipping up another batch of those cookies just the other day.

#8 Cucumber Basil Spritzers

#7 Ground Chicken and Eggplant Lettuce Wraps

It didn’t surprise me at all to find these cucumber-basil spritzers were one of my most popular posts this year since they’re also one of my personal favorites. I’m looking forward to summer just so I can make them again. That post also contains a short recap of the weekend I spent at Eat, Write, Retreat. In 2011, I skipped the “big” blog conferences in favor of more intimate get-togethers like EWR and the Big Summer Potluck. It was a great decision – I left both with new friends and new perspectives. I look forward to attending more events like these in 2012!

The Ground Chicken and Eggplant wraps were part of a series of eggplant recipes that I did for General Mills and their blog, Tablespoon.  From doing several projects for General Mills (with some more on their way!) to joining ShopRite’s team of bloggers and attending the NYC Wine and Food Festival, to being a spokesblogger for Marzetti Simply Dressed, 2011 was a great year for me when it came to freelancing and building relationships with brands.

#6 Orange, Vanilla Bean & Cinnamon Pound Cake

#5 Baked Apple Cider Donuts

#4 Honey Bourbon Pulled Chicken in the Crockpot

#3 Apple Cider Vinegar Braised Chicken Thighs

Again, it doesn’t surprise me to see that these four recipes made the list. The flavor of the orange-vanilla-cinnamon pound cake was amazing, and yogurt in the batter has a dual purpose – it reduces the fat and makes the cake super moist.

The Honey-Bourbon Chicken is one of the easiest things in the world to make – just throw the ingredients into the pot and let it do it’s thing. It’s so delicious though, you’d have a hard time convincing anyone that’s all there was to it!

The Braised Chicken Thighs take a little more work, but they’re absolutely amazing and are one of the recipes that got me eating chicken on a more regular basis again. I’ve also used the braise-then-broil technique in a few other recipes since then – it’s a great compromise between crisp skinned roasts and falling-off-the-bone braises. 

#2 Beef and Bean Chili with Pickled Onions

#1 Jalapeño Popper Mac and Cheese

These were the top two recipes of 2011 and with very good reason. The chili is one of our absolute favorite – Shawn asks me to make it all the time. I had actually lamented its lack of popularity earlier in the year, but once Fall rolled around it became on of my most popular recipes ever. The combination of the tart pickled onions against the smokey, meaty stew is unbelievable. If you have a chili recipe that you can’t part with, at least try pairing it with the onions – they’re such a nice touch.

And the good old Jalapeño Popper Mac and Cheese. What can I say? It’s amazing. And by far my most popular recipe – thanks to StumbleUpon, this recipe got more views in one hour than most of my others get in a week! Bake it for a crispy crust or just serve it straight out of the pan. If I didn’t know better, I would say that this recipe was the reason I gained 20 pounds this year (really, it’s because I eat pizza about once a week. that really needs to stop in 2012!).

I hope everyone had a great holiday – I know I did! We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house so we could watch the kids open presents on Christmas morning – they were so fun! (I’m the oldest of 6, so there are still some little ones at home). My youngest brother got a little remote control monkey that sits on his shoulder. It’s pretty much the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

Also, if you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen that I was out of the country for the last two weeks. I was actually on a Caribbean Cruise! It’s been a few years since the two of us have taken a vacation that was more than just a long weekend, so it was really nice to get away (the warm weather and gorgeous beaches didn’t hurt either).

Now I’m back, rested, and ready to go… but between the all-you-can-eat buffets and general holiday indulgence I’ll admit that my pants are a little tight right now.    Oh well, no time like the present to get back to eating healthily! Seriously, who says you have to wait until the New Year to start eating right? Especially if it means eating this flavorful couscous salad. I served the salad with some seared tuna that I dusted with za’atar seasoning for a perfectly delicious post-holiday meal. As an added bonus, it only takes 20 minutes from start to finish – perfect for easing out of holiday/vacation mode and back into normalcy.

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I was one of the bloggers selected by T. Marzetti Company to review Simply Dressed Refrigerated Salad Dressings. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as my writing about my experience. I have also been provided products for review. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

I don’t know where I originally saw it or what context it was in, but I recently wrote “pumpkin, red pepper, and olive” in the little notebook that I use to keep track of recipe ideas and inspiration. Kind of a weird combination, right? But ever since I wrote it down, I’ve been obsessed with trying out that flavor combination.

I spent a few weeks dreaming up ways to make the ingredients work together, and then came up with this recipe for roast salmon with romesco over pumpkin and olive grits. It worked. The flavors were subtle but complex – not as bold as I usually go for – but this was really, really good.

Here’s the thing with grits though – make sure you cook them over low heat and stir them pretty often. If they get too hot, they’ll spit and sputter all over the place. Not only will that make a mess, but it can be dangerous! I didn’t have my burner as low as I should have, and I have a nasty burn on my arm to show for it. Lesson learned.

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