Diet Friendly Fast Food

(Updated with better photos and step-by-step instructions, March 2014.)  Have you heard that cauliflower is the new trendy vegetable for 2014?  I don't know who decides these things, but personally I'm kind of excited to see a versatile and low-glycemic vegetable like cauliflower getting the spotlight!  My love for cauliflower is well documented in the recipe archives, but there are quite a few of my early cauliflower recipes that can really use a photo update, like this amazing way to cook cauliflower I posted in 2006 when I was infatuated with Mark Bittman's wonderful book The Best Recipes in the World.  In this recipe with Tuscan origins, the cauliflower is briefly simmered, then sauteed in a generous amount of olive oil that's been seasoned with garlic and finished with both lemon zest and lemon juice.  This is a pretty garlic-flavored dish, which was fine with me. But if you're not sure how much you like garlic, or if you're planning a romantic evening, you might want to reduce the amount of garlic.

Most tartar sauce is definitely not diet-friendly, which is why I came up with my Ultra-Easy Double-Dill Diet Friendly Tartar Sauce Recipe.

How do you feel about tartar sauce? I'm sure some food snobs consider it to be a very boring and ordinary condiment, but I absolutely love tartar sauce and don't think I'd ever pass it up in a restaurant if I was having some kind of mild-flavored fish.  Unfortunately, most tartar sauce is a long way from being diet friendly for South Beach or any other type of diet.  The reduced fat ones you buy at the grocery store are loaded with sugar, and most tartar sauce recipes are a bit too heavy on the mayo to be what most people would consider a healthy condiment.

But lately I've been really trying to eat more fish, which got me thinking about how much I love tartar sauce, so I decided to try to come up with a tasty tartar sauce recipe that didn't have sugar and was lower in fat. It took a bit of experimenting, but this Ultra-Easy Double-Dill Diet Friendly Tartar Sauce recipe combines fat-free Greek Yogurt, regular or reduced fat mayo, dill weed, capers, and dill pickle relish, and it's not only easy-to-make, it's as delicious as any tartar sauce I've ever tasted.

This Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken with Lime and Melted Mozzarella is a new recipe for A Month of Daily Phase One Recipes, and I'm pretty sure this four-ingredient recipe will become a favorite for lots of my readers who like flavorful dishes that use things you usually have in the house.  But if anyone is looking at the photo and thinking it doesn't look like a slow cooker dish, let me share how it took Jake and me three attempts to come up with this final version of the dish (which we thought was perfect.) 

(For Phase One Fridays I feature Phase One Recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites.  Phase One Recipes are also Low-Carb and Gluten-Free.  These amazing Oven-Fried Green Tomatoes are seriously delicious, but almond flour is calorie-dense, so use portion control if you're eating this for phase one!)

This is the time of year when people with vegetable gardens have a lot of green tomatoes on the vines, and some of those tomatoes are never going to get ripe. And if you still have green tomatoes, do I dare to say that you *must* make these Oven-Fried Green Tomatoes with Sriracha-Ranch Dipping Sauce.  Seriously, they were so good that I wondered why it has taken me so long to try a healthier riff on fried green tomatoes, and I'm sure I'll make them every year now when I have green tomatoes.

Here are 25 Deliciously Healthy Low-Carb Recipes found on Kalyn's Kitchen and other great blogs during January 2015.

It's already February 2; can you believe we're that far into the new year?  I normally post this monthly round-up of 25 Deliciously Healthy Low-Carb Recipes on the first day of the new month, but I waited a day because I was pretty sure my low-carb round-up wouldn't be able to compete with the Superbowl!  I spent last night at the Denny Family Superbowl Party at my brother Mark's house, where I tried hard not to consume too much of the sugary and carb-loaded foods most people bring.  (And I took these Deviled Eggs with Green Olives for Mark, who loves green olives as much as I do.)

Of course in January when half the world goes on a diet it's a great month to spot low-carb recipes, both on Kalyn's Kitchen and other blogs around the web, so there are some amazing ideas being featured here.  I also did a round-up of 25+ Amazing Low-Carb Slow Cooker Dinners on my slow cooker site, and if you take a look at that you'll have a double helping of delicious low-carb recipe ideas (just in case you got a little off track at your own Superbowl party!)

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this recipe for Baked Chicken Stuffed with Pesto and Cheese is something I've made over and over.  It's also been one of the most popular recipes on the blog for a while now; hope you enjoy if you haven't tried it yet!)

For several weeks now I've been keeping an eye on the basil plants in my garden, hoping to get one more batch of pesto in the freezer before the plants started to freeze.  For the last few days the leaves were starting to look a little brown on the edges, so today I trimmed the plants vigorously and made a big batch of pesto.  Then I made this Chicken Stuffed with Pesto and Cheese!

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this recipe is one I'd love to make on the weekend so I'd have leftovers to eat for lunch of a quick dinner during the week.  If you're not a slow cooker fan, there are directions at the end for making this on the stove.)

On Halloween night you know the kids aren't going to want to eat anything but candy, so why not make this slow cooker beef stew with lots of adult flavors to keep the grown-ups happy?  You can start this mid morning and by dinner time it will be ready to go.  If you'll be gone all day, just do the advance prep the night before, refrigerate the ingredients in a plastic container, and put the cold ingredients in the slow cooker and let it cook all day while you're out.  I'd love this with a dollop of sour cream on top, but no matter how you eat it, this stew is loaded with flavor.  (There are also stove-top instructions if you don't have a slow cooker.)

A few years ago I shared  Al's Famous Hngarian Cucumber Salad, and that amazing recipe from my friend Al has been a huge hit with everyone who tries it.  When I made that salad with Al, we talked about cooking together again, but I'm sorry to report that it's taken us nearly two years to tackle another Hungarian dish together.  Then I saw Al and his girlfriend Judy at a party recently and we made a plan for them to come over and make Hungarian Summer Squash with Sour Cream, Paprika, and Dill.  This Hungarian dish uses a combination of  zucchini and yellow squash with all those Hungarian flavors I like so much, and it turned out to be just as good as the cucumber salad.  We had a great time making it a few days ago, and if you have summer squash in the garden, you must try this recipe!

(Updated with better photos and step-by-step instructions, August 2014)  One of the wonderful things about having summer squash in your vegetable garden is that soon you'll have so much of it you feel perfectly justified in picking them when they're tiny, similar to the baby squash you get in the fanciest of restaurants. I first posted this wonderful recipe for Easy Roasted Baby Summer Squash with Feta and Thyme back on 2007 when I had an abundance of baby squash from my garden, but now that I don't have a garden at the new house (yet!) I buy the packages of baby squash from Costco to make this. If you don't have a garden or a Costco membership you can still make this recipe with larger squash that are cut in strips.  Roasting the squash with fresh thyme concentrates the flavor in vegetables in the most lovely way, but dried thyme will also work fine for this recipe.

I re-did the photos for this recipe with my niece Kara and her adorable four-year-old daughter Quinn.  It had been a long cooking day and Quinn was getting tired of entertaining herself, so I grabbed a kid-safe knife and enlisted her to help cut the baby squash in half.  Quinn has pretty strong food preference, as most kids do at that age, and the whole time we were cutting them up she kept saying "I hate zucchini."  But when the finished dish was ready, she surprisingly agreed to take a bite, and even more surprisingly, she liked it and ate a couple of pieces.  So if you have kids who won't eat their vegetables, maybe getting them to help cook will help!

Turnips don't get much respect, but these Roasted Turnips with Balsamic Vinegar and Thyme are delicious!

(Updated with better photos and step-by-step instructions, April 2014.)  Kale has had it's place in the food spotlight, and now cauliflower seems to be the new trendy vegetable, but turnips don't get much respect.   I grew up eating raw turnips as a snack (thanks mom!) but I'd never cooked turnips until 2007.  Then one day I thought to myself, "I wonder how roasted turnips with a bit of balsamic vinegar would taste?"  And you guessed it; I loved these Roasted Turnips with Balsamic Vinegar and Thyme.

I wasn't sure where the idea came from (although I found Roasted Kohlrabi on A Veggie Venture, which might have inspired it.)  I peeled some turnips, tossed them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and decided they were very good indeed.  When I decided to update this recipe with better photos, I added a little dried thyme to the turnips (and a little Feta cheese sprinkled over the top would also be a nice addition.)   I cooked the turnips in my counter-top toaster oven, which makes them a good option when you don't want to turn on the oven.  If you've never thought of turnips as a side dish option, I hope you'll give them a try.

It's January 1, and I always love the promise the new year brings of better things to come.  And this January is bringing a new mobile-friendly design and a better way to find recipes by diet type for Kalyn's Kitchen, so I'm excited about that.  Happy New Year to all my readers and friends!

Although I usually start each month with the round-up of Deliciously Healthy Low-Carb Recipes from the previous month, I wanted to start the new year with a brand new recipe.  This Low-Carb Mock Lasagna Spaghetti Squash Casserole is something that really knocked our socks off when we tested the recipe, and if you're in the need of some low-carb comfort food, I promise this will hit the spot.