Ratatouille and My Promise to You

February 8, 2017 by Zucchini Runner in Main Dish | 2 Comments

My promise to you: I will keep showing up. Every Wednesday I will keep sharing a recipe that is made with healthy, whole ingredients. Every Thursday, I will keep sharing my fitness update and tidbits.

I also promise to you, I will keep it real — within reason.

There is the real, sailor-swearing version of me that I try NOT to be on a daily basis. (Which may be more interesting to some, and completely off-putting to others.) Then there is the adult, matured, evolved version of me that I desperately fight to be each day. So I will promise to give you the latter; the REAL version of myself which I TRY to be every day. Being positive, making healthy food choices and choosing to stay active are all CHOICES I make daily. Some days, I wake up and the old, negative side of me wants to rule the day. Will it benefit you if I share that side of me? I certainly don’t think so; because energy spreads like wildfire.

If I post in a negative way, when I am having a bad and negative day – that just feeds the negativity which may already be brewing inside of you, because maybe you didn’t have a great start to the day. There is already enough negativity circling the globe right now, and I REFUSE to add to it. I may feel like I’m swimming upstream sometimes, but that’s ok. I’m very much an “everything is gray” person — typically able to see both sides to every story — and therefore I am equipped to swim upstream. Does it get old and tiresome? You bet. But when it comes to spreading positivity versus negativity, that is ONE thing I know for certain. POSITIVITY is paramount.

So I promise you that I will keep showing up, and I will remain REAL and positive. That is my vow to you, and the vow I’m making to myself.

Now, onto today’s recipe!! This is not ratatouille as most people may know it, but it is a “coarse stew”, which is how ratatouille originated. (Thanks Wikipedia!) It’s a great way to smash in a bunch of veggies all in one sitting and get nice and full.

Ingredients*

1 purple onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 large carrots, chopped
1 large turnip, chopped
1 large rutabaga, peeled and chopped
3/4 cup cabbage, chopped
1-16 oz. bag frozen cauliflower (just toss them in whole, as is)
2 zucchini, chopped
1 yellow squash, chopped
1-8 oz. package baby portobello mushrooms, chopped
2 cups frozen peas (just toss them in last, as is)
1-26 oz. package of Pomi Chopped tomatoes
1 TBSP Italian seasoning (mine is a combo of thyme, garlic, marjoram, onion, rosemary, oregano, basil, savory and sage – huge time saver)
1/4 tsp. Real salt

*NOTE: You can use any combo of your favorite veggies, this is what we had on hand and felt like eating. We were also trying to use up some veggies from the fridge that were about to go bad (turnip, rutabaga, cabbage).

Instructions

In a large stock pot, add about 2 TBSP. of water and turn heat to medium. Once the water starts to get little bubbles, you can add your chopped onion. Cook for a couple minutes until they become aromatic. Add the minced garlic and stir.
For the remaining veggies, chop and cook as you move along down the list of veggie ingredients. So while the onions are cooking, chop the carrots. Once those are chopped, add them to the pot and stir. Continue in this manner chopping, adding to the stock pot, stirring and chopping until you get to the frozen peas – just dump those in as is. Basically, you add the veggies that take the longest to cook, first – essentially all the root veggies – so they have the longest amount of exposure to the heat and cook time.
Once all the veggies are in the pot, you can add the chopped tomatoes, Italian seasoning and salt. Stir well to combine, cover and let simmer, stirring occasionally for about 20 minutes. You can add 1/2 cup of water, if you want it to cook a little faster and provide a little more steam action!
When the root veggies are fork tender, it’s ready to serve!

Serves 2 people, large portions as a complete dinner for 2 days. We had this for dinner Monday night and last night; it was fantastic reheated on the stovetop! You can also add a dash of Cholula or your favorite hot sauce, or even add a teaspoon of coconut or olive oil to your individual serving, to add some healthy fat. (You don’t want to add it when cooking, because oils break down in an unhealthy way when heated above certain temps. They are best added last, just before serving.)

I also wanted to take a minute to direct you to my Shopping List Sunday posts which have been shared on both Instagram and Facebook the past 3 weeks.

Give them a peek if you haven’t already, and comment on any one of them if you’d like for me to keep doing them. Remember, I want to be providing value to readers, but I don’t know if it is valuable, unless you engage and let me know. Thanks!

I’m open to other suggestions as well. Feel free to email me or comment below with other suggestions.

Shopping List Sunday Posts

Jan. 21st – Week 1

Jan. 28th – Week 2

Feb. 5th – Week 3

Feb. 11th – Coming up!

Veggie Marinara Casserole

February 1, 2017 by Zucchini Runner in Food | Comments Off

Are you ready for a Zucchini Runner dish that only takes 10 minutes to prepare? I sure hope so! One of the things I hear most often is that people don’t have time to cook, and because I understand where people are coming from, I created this dish.

Last week we made a version of this recipe that was all from scratch. We used our leftover homemade marinara, cut our own veggies and boiled the noodles first. THEN we added it all to a casserole dish and baked it for 20 minutes. The finished product was delicious and only took both of us cooking/prepping together 55 minutes. But I wanted to see if I could create a version with less hands on time, and less dishes. (Sneak peek: if you like this recipe, be sure to catch the bonus video at the bottom of the post!)

In my household an hour prep time for dinner is totally normal and enjoyed by us… 90% of the time. We both work from home so no commute time or juggling schedules, therefore we both typcially work on dinner together and we don’t have any kids — it’s just us in the kitchen, jamming to music and cooking food. Mr. Zucchini Runner and I have talked about this A LOT; that other people don’t have some of the time luxuries, or freedom, that we do.

That’s why I was bound and determined to test a packaged version, to see if the finished product could still be healthy and taste great! In the taste arena – YES, it passed with flying colors. It tasted delicious; even passed the test of my 24 year old niece and her boyfriend. She watched me make it and exclaimed, “Hey! Even I can make this!” So, yes, it takes 10 minutes to throw together, but it still takes 50 minutes to cook. But that is 50 minutes where you could do a workout, help a kiddo with homework, enjoy some couch time, whatever! But I promise you, it’s only 10 minutes in the kitchen.

Now, the health arena… I give it a B-/C+. The main thing I will caution against… (because come on, my whole goal here on this blog is to be a resource for those who want to think outside the norm; to focus on eating whole, plant-based foods, that you make yourself from the freshest source possible) is the marinara in a jar. Check the ingredients! Read all the labels. Watch out for hidden sugars and boatloads of sodium. Look for something low sugar, low sodium/no salt added.

Sugar Situation: How much is too much, anyway?

The maximum daily sugar intake for an adult female is 25g; the max for a male is 38g. So if you are buying a marinara sauce that has 10g per serving, which is usually a 1/2 cup, then you are cutting it close to maxing out in just one sitting, especially depending on how much sauce you like. If you make the sauce at home, you get to control how much sugar (or lack thereof) that you add to the sauce.

Sodium Situation

This dish was delicious, and I loved the low maintenance aspect of it, but we both felt like we had hangovers the next day — and later realized it was from the sodium content. We do NOT use a lot of salt in this house, and if we do it’s Real salt or himalayan salt. In a 1/2 cup of sauce, there was 550 mg of sodium! To put this in perspective, the daily allowance is no more than 2,300 mg/day. HOWEVER, the ideal limit is 1,500 mg/day for most healthy adults. The body only needs 500 mg/day to function properly. So even if we just had a serving size of one half cup, we would still be over what our body actually needs. Furthermore, 550mg per 1/2 cup (serving size) of sauce is the equivalent of 1/4 tsp. of salt. And lastly, there is this little, fun fact:

“More than 75 percent of the sodium Americans eat comes from some processed, prepackaged and restaurant foods – not from the salt shaker.”
– American Heart Association

So now that I said my bit on added sugars and sodium, please feel free to enjoy this recipe with a heart-healthy marinara sauce of your choice.

Ingredients

3 cups GF macaroni noodles (or your favorite noodle)
2 – 25 oz. jars of marinara sauce (look for low sodium and low sugar)
2 – 16 oz. bags of mixed, organic vegetables (we did corn, pea, carrot, green bean)
6 TBSP. chopped dried onion (optional)

Instructions

Place uncooked noodles in a 9″ x 12″ baking dish.
Pour one jar of marinara sauce over noodles and stir.
Sprinkle 3 TBSP. chopped dried onion over sauce layer. (optional)
Using a strainer, rinse mixed veggies with hot water to defrost a bit. Pour over sauce layer.
Pour second jar of marinara sauce over veggie mixture.
Sprinkle remaining 3 TBSP. chopped dried onion on top if desired.
Finish with second bag (rinsed with hot water again), frozen veggies.
Cover with foil and bake at 375°F for 50 minutes, or until the noodles are cooked through.
Serve immediately. Great as leftovers or to take to lunch the next day or for the week even! Can be served alone or with a fresh, green salad.

And another layer of rinsed, frozen veggies.

Enjoy the step by step instructions in the slideshow below!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Looking for more quick recipes like this?

We don’t cook hour long meals for every meal, every day, somedays we are like normal humans and throw quick things together — while still being healthy and plant-based. A lot of these I post in my Instagram Stories, as I’m making them. They are only available for 24 hours on IG, so you need to catch them and follow along if you are interested in more like this! I clipped these videos/photos together from yesterday’s IG story, so you can get a preview of what I mean.

This lunch was simply a bunch of my favorite frozen veggies, thrown into a steamer and then topped with some boxed beans that had been rinsed and drained. I then topped it with a drizzle of salad dressing and a few splashes of liquid aminos.

The steamer I use is a little fancy, but you can get a simple basket like this one, or get a something a little more like mine and go this route. You just need to throw it all in the pot with the steamer insert, cover and then turn your heat on high until the water in the pot boils, producing steam. Once you have the steam going, you really only need to cook the veggies for about 2-5 minutes. (Which reminds me, be sure you have a good kitchen timer on hand too!) You want everything to be BRIGHTER than when you put them into the pot, not washed out or have muted colors.

Food