Be "In The Know"
Pilates Products
Banner
Banner
Where To Find Me
Banner
Banner
Search

Archive for the ‘Random Recipes’ Category

Sloppy Joe Recipe: Cookin’ up some plants for a Women’s Retreat

Monday, July 26th, 2010 by Karena

Normally you wouldn’t have EVER caught me at a women’s retreat.  I know what they do at those things: They intentionally make you cry which makes my brain hurt and I am a big, big fan of staying away from all sorts of pain.

But my friend, Jeri, invited me and then she put me in charge of food and exercise so there was absolutely no getting out of it. After the weekend ended there was a recipe that all of these meat eaters could not live without. Here it is! The smell alone will bring the neighbors running and convert half of them away from dangerous-to-your-health animal protein. It’s definitely a great recipe for anyone not used to eating plants.

‘Sloppy Jose’ from Millenium Restaurant’s Cookbook: The Artful Vegan

Tomato Sauce:
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 shallots, minced
2 tsp capers
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp ground fennel seed
1/4 cup Chianti
1 (16 oz) can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
1 TBSP minced fresh basil leaves
Freshly ground pepper

Sloppy Jose
2 tsp canola oil
1 red onion, cut into 1/4 inch dice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T turbinado (raw brown sugar)
1 T chile powder
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
4 (15 oz) cans kidney beans (no salt added)
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 T tamari (high grade soy sauce)

To make the tomato sauce:
Place a saucepan over medium heat and add the oil. Add the garlic and shallots and saute for 5 minutes, or until translucent. Add the capers, pepper flakes, oregano, and fennel. Saute for 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add the wine and stir to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the tomatoes and salt. Decrease the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes, or until slightly thickened. Add the basil and season with salt and pepper to taste.

To make the Sloppy Jose mix:
Place a heavy skillet over medium-high heat and add the oil.  Add the onions, garlic, Turbinado, chile powder, pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Saute for 1 to 2 minutes until the onions are soft.  Add the kidney beans and cook, stirring constantly for 2 minutes.  Add the tomato sauce, the balsamic and tamari. Stir to combine and cook over low heat for 10 minutes or until thick.  If the mix is too thick add vegetable stock or water.

You can serve this in sandwiches or I like to serve this mix on top of sweet potatoes!  Your choice!  Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

Random Recipe No. 2: Pulled Pork BBQ

Sunday, October 18th, 2009 by Karena

…..Somebody from Texas loves me even more now. Laughing

Sometimes salads don’t cut it. I eat a lot of salads but I am by definitely not a vegetarian. …Okay, I realize pulled pork is a stretch on a Pilates blog but Pilates people actually really, really, really like to eat. Why do you think we exercise so much???

So for our recipe, enter Chef Lance Toro. Chef Lance Toro is currently the personal chef to celebrity Christina Aguilera and he joined us for our radio show on 9.9.09. Thanks again, Chef Lance!

Picture 5Here’s the recipe from Chef Lance:

Pulled Pork BBQ
3 pounds of pork butt or beef shoulder
S&P the Slab O’ Meat
1/2 cup of white wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups of Chicken stock
1/2 cup of natural sugar
Put everything in a Pyrex pan and cover it with
Aluminum Foil
Bake at 425 for 30 minutes or until liquid boils
Reduce heat to 350 and bake for another two hours or until the meat shreds easily with a fork.
BBQ Sauce: Add 3/4 of a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce after shredding the pork
This stellar picture shows pulled pork topping a plate of nachos. Which looks spectacular and probably what I’ll do with the leftovers I have from tonight. I would have taken my own picture of what I made tonight but I just discovered that there is quite an art to photographing food. As yummy as our dinner was tonight, my pictures make our dinner look like nothing you would ever actually put in your mouth.

Directions for the non-cook.

I think I embarrassed myself more than once asking for clarification on this 4-ingredient recipe but the less guessing the better when you are not a cook let alone a chef. First off, I bought a pork butt at the local butcher. And don’t worry if you buy a butt or a shoulder it actually doesn’t look like either one. I know, I know; I was worried too. Anyway, I got the butt home (hee-hee-hee) and put salt and pepper on it and then poured the rest of the ingredients on top.

As for the white wine vinegar, I used the same stuff that I use to wash the windows. Not after I washed the windows but you know what I mean, the same stuff– plain old white wine vinegar.

Chicken Stock: I actually did buy chicken stock, not chicken broth. I am reading ‘Heat’ by Bill Buford and it is all about the real world of cooking and chefs. I have found that when a chef says chicken stock he/she probably totally does not mean chicken broth or chicken bouillon cubes or what I’ve been known to use in a pinch: the liquid from the Chicken Noodle soup can. Chicken stock means chicken stock.

As for the next ingredient, Chef Lance says that natural sugar is like turbinado, so I bought turbinado. I don’t know what other natural sugars there are so I thought I’d stick with what he suggested.

Pyrex Pan. Okay, so this is where I really blew it. No pyrex pan was dirtied in the making of this recipe. But a crock pot was. I’M SORRY, Chef Lance! But I had a doctor’s appointment followed by a meeting about my website and I wasn’t going to get home until 6pm which means I wouldn’t have had dinner ready until 9pm. And I hardly get to see my son anymore because he’s almost 19 and never home and leaving for college so I knew if it wasn’t ready withing a certain time frame I could kiss the chance of seeing him for dinner good-bye. ….. And Chef Lance, if you are really disgusted by my substitution: Kristy suggested it. Really, I don’t know enough about cooking to replace pyrex with a crock pot. It was all Kristy.

I pulled the pork out of the… eeeerrrr… crockpot after about 4 hours on high. Placed it on a cutting board and started pulling it apart. Okay, so, this pork was SO good it really did not need the BBQ sauce. In fact, I think I may have preferred it without. My husband started hovering at this point as well and started eating prior to the BBQ sauce application as well and totally loved it. Even my son (YES! He was still home) came and ate with us and that’s after just finishing an entire meal only 30 minute prior). Anyway, I did add the BBQ sauce and it was still just as good. Your choice. Enjoy!

Chef Lance Toro joined us on our radio show, ‘Today’s Woman’, this past Wednesday. If you want to podcast the show the date was 9.9.09. Got to www.hometownstation.com and navigate through the podcasts. If you have trouble, drop me a line. Lance helped us start each segment with a new recipe. Each recipe is low on numbers of ingredients and high on quality. Thank-you Chef Lance!!!

Please visit Chef Lance’s website: www.ChefLanceToro.com

Random Recipe No. 3: Anti-Inflammatory Recipe 1

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 by Karena

As many of you know, I interviewed Dr. Barry Sears, author of The Zone, on my radio show, Today’s Woman, last week. We talked about his program for reducing inflammation. (If you missed the show you can click here). Dr. Sears spoke about silent inflammation, the kind of inflammation that you aren’t aware that might exist within your body. You are aware if you have inflammation from an infected cut or swollen glands because they hurt but what about the inflammation that increases our risk of heart disease or diabetes or even obesity.

Dr. Sears recommended a balanced diet to decrease this silent inflammation. A balanced diet, according to Dr. Sears, includes equal amounts (in terms of calories) of healthy fat, carbohydrates and protein. So using his advice, here is what I am having for dinner tonight:

Picture 7Rick’s Tuna Salad

My husband makes the (read: THEE) best tuna salad. Here is his secret recipe. SSSSSShhhhh…. don’t tell him I gave it to you but he deserves this little divulgence. If you had been in the studio this morning you would understand why. He actually ‘corrected’ my form today while I was doing my own Pilates workout. Yes, I knooooooow. Can you believe he would correct me?? And the studio was full… of Pilates instructors. It was good they were there. Lisa, after siding with Rick….really….it was a conspiracy, wisely told him to step away. I would have taken him down….with correct form, of course. So here it is: Rick’s SECRET recipe:

2 large cans of white albacore tuna
2 green onions
1 apple
4 T of Mayo
Tomatoes
Avocado

Yep, that’s it. Now here are some of the details….

  1. The Secret: Buy all of your veggies at the local Farmer’s Market: Apples, Onions, Avocados and Tomatoes. If you live in my area, Lombardi’s has tomatoes for another month or so. Buy fresh, fresh, fresh. Makes all the difference in the world. My certified organic buddies, if you can’t buy organic peel, peel, peel. I love to peel my tomatoes. It makes them super-easy to slice and much easier to work into a salad or sandwich.
  2. You can buy Mayonnaise that contains extra virgin olive oil. Olive oil is the good fat. So is avocado, by the way. Remember Dr. Sears advice if you only had 15 seconds to spend on your health everyday? His advice was to guzzle as much fish oil as possible in that 15 seconds. Why? Because the healthy oils would help to dispel the toxic fats in your system. Cool, huh?
  3. Use the entire onion from tip to tip. Mix the tuna, onions, apples and mayo together. Serve over dark green leafy veggies (also a great anti-inflammatory food) and garnish with tomatoes and avocado on the side.
  4. I just recently bought a really nice olive oil. I like to drizzle olive oil over all my salads including this tuna salad. It gives all my salads an extra anti-inflammatory kick and as we know, olive oil helps to increase your HDL cholesterol or your good cholesterol. Dr. Sears was saying you can’t buy a good olive in the United States. Wrong. At our Farmer’s Market here in the SCV on Sundays (over at COC) you can buy fresh pressed olive oil. Yep. It’s the REAL deal. The name of the farm is Joelle and you can visit them at www.Joelleoil.com Check them out.

Random Recipe No. 1: Pilates Instructor Job Security

Saturday, March 14th, 2009 by Karena

This is recession-proof job security is for everyone in the fitness industry.

Pass it on…… Pilates Instructor Job Security. 

Picture 2

Please make, eat and call us in the morning. Also Known as toffee…. This recipe is from Diana Cusumano who got it from Rosemary St. Cyr…. My how recipes travel. :-)

Picture 3Okay, here it is. I have included notes for the non-cook (read: Pilates instructor making this for their clients)

1 stick of butter (that’s 1/2 cup) (I used unsalted and added a pinch of salt)
1/4 cup water 1 cup of sugar (I used organic cane sugar and it turned out fine)
2 cups of chopped pecans or walnuts or whatever you like/divided
1 cup of semi-sweet choc. chips

Diana said to use a heavy pot. ????? I didn’t weigh mine but I do have one that feels heavier. I used that. It’s not a real small pot and definitely not big enough to make pasta in. This is all important because the non-cook (read: yours truly) would generally have used the ‘clean’ pot.

On almost high heat (but without the flames coming around the pot so it can boil your hand) put in the first 4 ingredients. But only use 1 cup (mounded) of pecans. Save 1 cup for later. Let it boil. This is the tricky part.

Don’t turn the heat down when it boils. Keep stirring. If your hand is burning you are doing it right. Keep stirring and keep it boiling. Soon they will turn frothy like sea foam at the beach. If you are in the mountains then it is still like sea foam at the beach. Take a trip.

Diana said, ’see how it turns a nice color when it is close to being done?’ It is the same color as beach sand. But not wet beach sand. And not bleached beach sand. Kind of that in between beach sand where the tide came in and now the sand is drying out. Again, you made need to take a trip.

Next, Diana said, ’see how it is pulling away from the sides?’ Remember it is boiling on ‘almost’ high heat the whole time… Pulling away from the sides is to say that it is forming a glob in the middle of the pot and it no longer looks like sea foam. More pasty. Like mud pies. Very hot mud pies. And where it isn’t touching the sides of the pot anymore those bits are getting really brown (burning) but not black burning. Diana said, ‘look. It’s smoking. That means it’s done.’

Okay this is tricky too. When Diana saw smoke all I saw was a very light steam. It wasn’t steam because it was smoke but it looked like steam. So don’t look for ’smoke’ look for ’steam’ and not even heavy steam. Not the kind of steam that comes out of your teapot. I think I probably stirred for 8-10 minutes before it was done. but it will depend on the weight of your pot. Again, ?????

Have a tinfoil lined cookie sheet ready. Pour the toffee out quickly in one sweep. Spread it quickly just a little bit. It hardens fast. Then pour the choc. chips on top. Start spreading them around and they’ll melt and get gooey. When you’ve spread everywhere and can’t see the toffee anymore then throw on the rest of the pecans. throw it in the fridge because if you eat it now it will burn your tongue. Eat when cool.

Call your pilates instructor in the morning.

p stirring. If your hand is burning you are doing it right. Keep stirring and keep it boiling. Soon they will turn frothy like sea foam at the beach. If you are in the mountains then it is still like sea foam at the beach. Take a trip.

Diana said, ’see how it turns a nice color when it is close to being done?’ It is the same color as beach sand. But not wet beach sand. And not bleached beach sand. Kind of that in between beach sand where the tide came in and now the sand is drying out. Again, you made need to take a trip.

Next, Diana said, ’see how it is pulling away from the sides?’ Remember it is boiling on ‘almost’ high heat the whole time… Pulling away from the sides is to say that it is forming a glob in the middle of the pot and it no longer looks like sea foam. More pasty. Like mud pies. Very hot mud pies. And where it isn’t touching the sides of the pot anymore those bits are getting really brown (burning) but not black burning. Diana said, ‘look. It’s smoking. That means it’s done.’

Okay this is tricky too. When Diana saw smoke all I saw was a very light steam. It wasn’t steam because it was smoke but it looked like steam. So don’t look for ’smoke’ look for ’steam’ and not even heavy steam. Not the kind of steam that comes out of your teapot. I think I probably stirred for 8-10 minutes before it was done. but it will depend on the weight of your pot. Again, ?????

Have a tinfoil lined cookie sheet ready. Pour the toffee out quickly in one sweep. Spread it quickly just a little bit. It hardens fast. Then pour the choc. chips on top. Start spreading them around and they’ll melt and get gooey. When you’ve spread everywhere and can’t see the toffee anymore then throw on the rest of the pecans. throw it in the fridge because if you eat it now it will burn your tongue. Eat when cool.

Call your pilates instructor in the morning.