Linguine with Egg Plant

Egg plant is a good way to add a vegetable without anyone even knowing you did it:) It takes on the flavor of whatever your cooking it with. To make the sauce:

1 egg plant - peeled and diced
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves of garlic - minced
1/2 can of Red Pack 28oz canned tomato puree with oregano, basil, and garlic
lots of basil

Heat oil over medium heat, add garlic. Cook for 1 minute. Add the diced egg plant and saute until just about tender and turning slightly brown. Add the tomato's and basil and continue to cook for about another 10 minutes. That's it! Toss with whole wheat linguine.

White Bean and Chicken Chili

Instead of retyping this all up, I'll just tell you where to find it:) This recipe is on Food Network. It's one of Giada's :) It was DELICIOUS. Packed some heat. I used a bunch of escarole because I couldn't find the Swiss chard. Because escarole doesn't have to cook as long as Swiss card, I just added it in during the last 10 minutes of cooking. Of course, I used all natural or organic ingredients, whole wheat flour, omitted the salt, used prepared dry white beans, frozen sweet white corn (Hanover is my favorite), organic chicken broth, skipped the Parmesan and parsley topping at the end. We used all natural oyster crackers instead.

Sophia's Birthday Pancakes!

Tomorrow morning, when my 11 year gets out of bed for school, she'll have a stack of blueberry & dark chocolate chunk pancakes waiting for her. Topped with a nice big swirl of redi whip:)....it's a special occasion.

Birthday Pancakes
Start with any good organic pancake mix. I'm using Bob's Red Mill buttermilk mix. Follow the instructions according to the package except substitute 1 milk for equivalent amount of all natural apple sauce. Make enough for 3 cups of mix. Mix well and fold in 1 cup fresh blueberries and 1 cup coarsely chopped dark chocolate. I'm using a bar of Nestle Chocolatier dark chocolate. Pour the batter onto a hot griddle and cook until a nice golden brown.......yumm.

Wedding Soup

Meatballs
1 pd extra lean ground beef (96%)
1 egg
2 slices whole wheat toast - chopped for crumbs
1/2 cup ground flax seed
lots of parsley, basil, and oregano :)
hot paprika, cheyenne pepper to taste
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
Mix and make tbsp. sized balls
Heat a stainless steel pan over med - high heat with 3 tbsp olive oil.
Brown the meatball and cook until almost done - dump into a stock pot
Keep heat going under the skillet, do not rinse

Chicken
1 pd boneless skinless chicken breasts - cut in to 1 inch cubes
Saute in hot skillet until almost done - dumb into stock pot

Vegetables
1 lg. onion - diced
3 celery stalks - diced
3 carrots - diced
3 garlic cloves - minced
By now there should be a nice caramelization on the bottom of the skillet. Add the vegetables and 1/2 cup organic chicken broth to the skillet. Scrape the bottom to bring up all the juices.
Cook until the onions start to brown and dump into stock pot

Add 6 cups of organic chicken broth and 2 cups of water to the stock pot
Bring to a boil
Add 1 cup Acini De Pepe pasta and cook for about 10 more minutes
Add 2 cups fresh chopped spinach the last 3 minutes.
Done:)