Chef Baby

Daughter of a culinary genius. Cooking fresh and healthy for a fresh and healthy life.

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What can I pray for you?

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Can you please pray that I am unafraid in serving Him? Sometimes I worry that my fears and anxieties are going to hold me back in what His plans are for me. 

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I can use the same prayer

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(by Brittney Borowski)

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Turkey, Avocado, and Hummus Roll Ups (No Bread)…RECIPE

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Sugar is a treat!

Mama Rita

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I have never really cooked with different kinds of squash and in the last year I’ve used spaghetti squash and butternut squash in a couple different recipes. So the other day I stumbled upon this recipe for stuffed acorn squash and it look delicious. I will include the link of the recipe below but I change quite a bit of it so I will explain the Chef Baby twist I put on it. The original recipe uses ground beef and rice but on the Perfect 10 Diet you cannot have either one of those. I was going to use ground chicken but I didn’t have any at the time. However, I did happen to have the very versatile cauliflower on hand. So I grated the cauliflower and cooked it like fried rice in the pan instead of the ground beef (I added it when they add the ground beef). Also, I added some wilted spinach to the mixture and instead of sunflower seeds I used pecans. That is only because I didn’t have sunflower seeds and since there was no meat in it I thought it would give it a heartiness. I crushed them a little bit though so you don’t get a big pecan in your mouth. Also, I added feta instead of the white cheddar because that’s what I had but it turned out so delicious! It was so filling and fun to eat. The flavors work together and the textures to almost taste like there’s meat in it! And obviously if you don’t have some of this stuff you can add things just like I did a whole bunch of! Original recipe: http://thecozyapron.com/a-cozy-resolution-oh-to-be-like-the-roasted-stuffed-acorn-squash/

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Last night I made the most delicious red pepper cream sauce on baked chicken tenderloins. I completely made it up too! I melted butter in the pan then minced garlic and let that cook for a minute and added the roasted red peppers. I let those flavors meld and added some lemon juice and sprinkled dried basil, oregano, and spicy red pepper flakes. I added it to the blender with cream and blended. I tasted it to see if it needed more seasonings because I’m in love with oregano so I usually add more of that. I baked the chicken at 425 for 15-20 minutes. When the chicken was almost done I poured the roasted red pepper cream sauce over the tenderloins and let it bake the last couple minutes with the sauce on. When I plated the chicken I sprinkled it with fresh feta cheese and a little bit of shaved parmesan and the heat melted the feta and parmesan. It was perfect and creamy. And then I took this awful picture.

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Fall is here! I love this time of year so much and we can finally feel it in Florida. Fall reminds me of curling up on the couch with a blanket and eating some delicious warm food. And I was totally wanting that feel so I went on a hunt for something to make that will make me feel like fall is here and to combat that chilly weather we were getting in Florida. And I found the perfect recipe for roasted butternut squash soup that will gave me that wonderful fall feel and is also healthy! I had never made roasted butternut squash soup so I had no idea what to expect. I had only cooked with butternut squash one time and I made pasta with it so this was going to be a new challenge for me and it turned out amazing! It was sweet and savory. There was almost a meaty flavor to it. It was so flavorful and the flavor from the onion and the apple really worked well together. *A tip for making this: don’t refrigerate your butternut squash before roasting them. Also, let it blend until a smooth consistency. http://www.chow.com/recipes/30466-roasted-butternut-squash-soup

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I absolutely love Thai food and there’s not that much Thai food I can have on this Perfect 10 Diet unless I made it myself. So, I decided I was up to the challenge. I made Tom Kha Gai, which is also called Thai coconut soup. I had to make a couple change like leaving out the sugar because you totally don’t need it. Also, CHECK YOUR CHICKEN STOCK. It is almost impossible to find chicken broth without sugar as one of the ingredients! And if something doesn’t NEED sugar then why add it? I found one brand of stock without sugar as an ingredient but it still had 1 gram of sugar on the nutrition facts label so I decided to get a brand called “Kitchen Basics” and it has honey as one of the ingredients, but had 0 grams of sugar.

I added some vegetables too, like tomatoes, green onions, and green peppers just to make it heartier. But, MMM! It turned out delicious! I ate this soup for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or for a snack. It was super filling and very satisfying because of the savory and sweet flavors. It is so aromatic when you’re cooking it.

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/tom-kha-gai-chicken-coconut-soup

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Tacos bring back such good memories for me. Food can evoke childhood memories and nostalgia, it can remind you of sad things and happy things, times of being wild (greasy food in the middle of the night, anyone?). Especially in my family, we were always gathered in the kitchen or the dinner table. That’s where we bonded. Unfortunately, this also harbored very unhealthy eating habits for all of us. However, Friday night tacos was my family’s tradition. This is the only time we would be allowed to watch TV while eating dinner. We would watch Boy Meets World and Sabrina the Teenage Witch and drink loads of soda and eat tacos and it was tons of unhealthy fun. So, making taco salad was such a good trip down memory lane, but I just made some few healthy changes to my taco salad and it was so delicious and satisfying to eat. I used ground chicken instead of beef and found a fajita seasoning at a store called World Market, you can use any seasoning. BUT always make sure that all your seasonings don’t have any sugar or chemicals you don’t recognize. You would be surprised how many seasonings include sugar. I also used romaine lettuce because it is better for you than iceberg. I also used whole fat sour cream. In The Perfect 10 Diet, Dr. Aziz encourages use of whole fat items. The fat helps satisfy us and we get more benefits from our food that way. Ingredients 1 lb ground chicken Fajita/taco seasoning (check to make sure there is no sugar or chemicals you don’t recognize) Romaine lettuce Shredded cheddar cheese Whole fat sour cream Onion Lime Avocado, tomato, and onion to garnish Salt and pepper (I’m a little heavy handed on the pepper) Hot sauce *optional (make sure all real ingredients and no sugar, I use Louisiana) Cook the chicken, add onions and seasoning and add lime juice. Assemble salad with romaine, the chicken, sprinkle with cheese, tomato, and onion, avocado, add lime juice on top and sour cream. (2 tbsp of whole fat sour cream is only 60 calories)

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This isn’t a diet blog. It truly is about healthy food and a healthy lifestyle. I am on a diet and I will be talking about it but not in the complaining, impossible way that so many people deal with diets. A lady I work with introduced me to this diet and she’s super health conscious. I call her Mama Rita and she is awesome. She is Native American and Mexican and she is just the coolest lady ever. She told me about this diet called The Perfect 10 Diet. It’s a book written by Dr. Michael Aziz and I’m reading it now. In conjunction with that I watched Fed Up and it was like the perfect marriage of motivation and knowledge that inspired me to think seriously about my health. I highly recommend both the documentary Fed Up and The Perfect 10 Diet, but they are best if you use them together. The Perfect 10 is different from any other diet that I’ve been on (and trust me I’ve been on a lot of diets) in the sense that you can eat like this for the rest of your life. Not only can you eat like this for the rest of your life, but it is how you should be eating. I am a week into stage one of the diet and I’m waiting to complete the three weeks of stage one before I weigh myself again to see how much I lose. The book says you can “lose up to 14 pounds in 3 weeks” so we will see if that prophecy comes true for me. The most difficult part of this diet is planning your food. The first three weeks is pretty restrictive so I’ve made lots chicken, fish, veggies, and fruits. So far I haven’t felt bored with anything I’ve eaten. There’s a lot of ingredient checking because sugar is in everything! I MEAN ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. It is the SECOND ingredient in Sriracha. SECOND. And all that added sugar we are consuming is turning into fat and feeding the sugar addiction. I feel so much better already though and it’s only been a week. So if that’s not a testament then I don’t know what is.

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Soup and appetizer

Today I made broccoli cheese soup in the crockpot and chicken salad on apple slices topped with a pecan and a drizzle of pomegranate balsamic vinegar. I've never made soup or chicken salad so this was a lot of fun. The broccoli cheese soup was pretty easy. It was one of those things that I felt worried that it might not turn out well but it did! It all came together at the end, literally, you don't put the cheese in until the very end. It was so delicious, my mom, sister, and my mom's boyfriend loved it! 

For the chicken salad, I was looking on Pinterest for the perfect chicken salad recipe. Everything I stumbled upon was not catching my interest or I didn't have the ingredients for, so I decided to just do my thing. I put my chicken in my Ninja Express Chopper. I absolutely LOVE this thing. It was a Christmas present from my mom and her boyfriend. I can't stand having to cut/chop/mince everything because I'm lazy and not very good with a knife, so it is perfect! After I chopped my chicken so that it's smoother and not as chunky for my chicken salad I chop my pecans and cranberries. I decided to chop my cranberries because, although I love cranberries, sometimes if you get a big cranberry in the mix it can be a very dominant flavor. I added mayonnaise, Coleman's mustard, and smoked paprika. I mixed it together, thinly sliced an apple and put a little dollop of chicken salad on each slice, topped with a pecan, and a little drizzle of pomegranate balsamic vinegar on top. They were so GOOD. The smoked paprika really gave it a unique flavor, and the tart, sweetness of the pomegranate balsamic worked really well together. The chicken salad is really good with crackers but the apple gave it a crispness that you can't get with a cracker. 

Here's the recipe for the slow cooker broccoli cheese soup:

http://www.cookingclassy.com/2013/11/slow-cooker-broccoli-cheese-soup/

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Sweet & Spicy Peach Glazed Salmon

This is one of the first dinners I made, sweet and spicy peach glazed salmon. It was really good but I bought freezer section salmon which I should not have. I love salmon, it is my favorite fish and I can taste cheap salmon from a mile away. The glaze was delicious and so easy. It was hard for me to get that really delicious seared look like she has in the pictures. The link for the recipe is below.

http://www.mountainmamacooks.com/2012/04/sweet-spicy-peach-glazed-salmon/ 

And here is my attempt! Looks like slop but I'm getting better! 

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The beginning.

Let me start by saying I am a complete novice. I cooked my first piece of chicken six months ago. Also, my mom is not Ina Garten or anything. She is a wonderful woman from Houston who married into an Italian family. She harvests all that warm, southern cooking that's in her bones and accompanies it with the delicious flavors of Italian food. She hardly ever follows a recipe and when she does, she ends up changing it anyway. I learned so many things from her about cooking but she is very dominant in the kitchen. Even when I wanted to cook something myself she would come in and take charge and suddenly I'm her sous chef, but hey, that's how things roll with a mom of six kids. 

I find all my recipes on Pinterest and I follow them pretty exactly. Recently I've been trying things on my own or experimenting lightly with the recipes I'm using. I'm finding out what flavors go well together and will be reporting them back here. I'm on here to see other cooking Tumblrs from novice (like me!) to expert.