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Easy and Healthy Veggie Panini

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Veggie panini is a healthy and incredibly easy dinner recipe.  Make the pesto in advance or use store bought and you have dinner ready in 15 minutes.


Every now and then, I find a vegetarian recipe that I just love. This panini was exactly that. The warm, crunchy bread and melted mozzarella cheese tasted amazing with the homemade pesto, eggplant, and roasted red pepper. Click here for the pesto recipe. Pair it with a glass of red wine and enjoy your carefree dinner!

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Easy and Healthy Veggie Panini
 
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Serves: 2
Ingredients
  • 1 eggplant, sliced into ½ inch pieces
  • ½ cup pesto
  • 8 oz fresh mozzarella
  • Roasted red peppers
  • High-quality Italian bread or bread of your choice, sliced
Instructions
  1. Grill eggplant slices (use only enough for the panini) on a panini press or George Foreman grill, 4 minutes per side.
  2. Meanwhile, spread pesto onto both sides of bread.
  3. Remove eggplant from grill and place on bread.
  4. Layer with fresh mozzarella and roasted red peppers.
  5. Place made panini on the grill and cook 2-3 minutes.

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Healthy Blueberry and Banana Oat Muffins

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Healthy blueberry and banana oat muffins with ground flax seed, no added sugar, and easy prep work. These are the perfect on the go snacks.

 

Blueberries are the best fruit to pick! Strawberries hurt your back from bending over and apples and pears get too heavy to carry if you pick a lot. A blueberry bush offers fruit at all levels for every different height, so it’s a great activity for even little kids!

I recently had a fun summer outing to Jones’s Family Farm in Shelton, CT. Although my son is too young to help pick the blueberries, he sure had lots of fun eating them! Good thing we had three pickers because he was eating as fast as we were picking!


Jones Family Farm offers 400+ acres of one of the finest pick-your-own experiences, including strawberries, blueberries, apples, pumpkins, and Christmas trees.  In addition they have a winery, which serves 18 different kinds of wine. Tastings are offered for $12/person and you get to keep the Jones wine glass. Most impressively (ok, maybe not most, but it certainly blew away this Mom) is in the tasting room there is a play area for children! A toy kitchen, a train, books, and other toys occupied my son while Mommy and Daddy enjoyed a tasting. Children must be supervised by an adult, so bring Grandma with you!

These muffins are the perfect healthy snack. There is no added sugar and they are packed with protein-filled oats and ground flax seed. They aren’t too sweet, which I like, especially since I knew my son would be snacking on these. If you’re looking for more of a sweeter muffin, try adding a tablespoon or two of honey or maple syrup!


Healthy Blueberry and Banana Oat Muffins
 
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Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 1 cup old fashioned oats
  • ⅔ cup vanilla Greek yogurt
  • ⅓ cup milk
  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon ground flax seed
  • ½ cup unsweetened applesauce
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • ½ banana, mashed
  • 1 cup blueberries
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Spray muffin tin with cooking spray.
  3. Combine oats, yogurt, milk in a small bowl, set aside.
  4. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground flax seed and applesauce. Whisk together and set aside.
  5. Add egg and banana to oat mixture, stir.
  6. Add oat mixture to the large mixing bowl, stir until moistened.
  7. Gently fold in the blueberries.
  8. Fill muffin tins until ¾ full.
  9. Bake for 20 minutes.

 

Cobb Salad

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A healthy, delicious salad that is anything but boring. Prep the bacon and hard boiled egg in advance for an easy weeknight meal.

Who doesn’t love eating salads in the summer months? They are easy to throw together, need minimal clean up, and leave you feeling great, which is especially important when you know you’ll be wearing a swimsuit soon! A cobb salad can be made to your liking. Want more protein? Add grilled chicken or shrimp, some ham or turkey – whatever you desire! When I know I’ll be having a Cobb salad, I like to meal prep a few ingredients ahead of time. The hard boiled egg and bacon can be made in advanced and stored in the fridge until you’re ready!


Cobb Salad
 
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Cuisine: Salad
Ingredients
  • 1 bag of fresh lettuce
  • 2 hard boiled eggs, peeled and cubed
  • 2-3 strips of bacon, cooked, cooled, and crumbled
  • 1 avocado, diced
  • Handful of feta cheese
Instructions
  1. Place lettuce in a large bowl.
  2. Top with hard boiled eggs, bacon, avocado, and feta cheese. Stir together.
  3. Finish with your dressing of choice.

 

Chicken sausage quinoa stuffed peppers

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This is one of my “go-to” recipes, like I mentioned in my meal planning tips.  It’s also a great recipe to add whatever you have in your fridge. I’ve used rice instead of quinoa before. You can also add any kind of dried fruit, cheese, or vegetables too!  This recipe is enough for two peppers and it gives you a little extra for lunch the next day! PERFECT! That’s two meals with one pot!

 

 

 

Chop your apple and hollow out the peppers. Bake peppers at 350 degeres for 30 minutes

 

 

You only need to use 1 sausage link for two peppers. Freeze the rest for a future dinner!

 

 

First saute sausage, then add apples and cranberries

 

 

Add cooked quinoa

 

 

Add sausage mixture to peppers

  Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup quinoa
  • 1 cup low sodium chicken broth 
  • 2 large bell peppers, red, yellow, or orange
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 chicken apple sausage, sliced thin
  • 1/4 cup chopped red apple
  • 1/4 cup dried cranberries
  1. Prepare quinoa as directed, substituting chicken broth for water. Preheat oven to 350
  2. Cut top of peppers off, remove seeds and veins, and rub peppers with olive oil. Place in baking pan and cook for 30 minutes
  3. Meanwhile, heat remaining olive oil in skillet over medium heat and saute sausage until lightly browned
  4. Add apple and cranberries; cook and stir until fruit is softened, about 5 minutes
  5. Stir in cooked quinoa and heat through
  6. Fill peppers with sausage mixture

Kale, quinoa, black bean, sweet potato and avocado salad

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Super foods unite! This salad is unbelievable!  The flavors all blend well together and the avocado sauce has the perfect amount of kick!  I really enjoyed making this because it has a lot of my favorite foods to cook and eat! It was the perfect size for two people; my husband and I polished if off!

 

Spiralize sweet potato, season with olive oil and salt and bake in oven at 400 degrees for 25 minutes

 

 

Add avocado , cilantro, lime juice, lime zest, olive oil, and salt to food processor, blend well

 

 

Season kale with salt and massage well

 

Ingredients

  • 1 cup quinoa
  • 1 bunch kale, ribs removed and chopped into bite size pieces
  • 3 tablespoon olive oil, divided
  • 1 lime, juiced
  • lime zest
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 sweet potato
  • 1 table spoon olive oil
  • Salt to taste
  • 1 avocado, sliced and pitted
  • 1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeds and stem reomoved. You can use more if you like it really spicy!
  • Handful of cilantro leaves
  • 1/2 can black beans, drained and rinsed.

Steps

  1. Prepare the quinoa as per packed directions. Set aside to cool.
  2. Spiralize sweet potato onto baking sheet.  Season with 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.
  3. Place kale in serving bowl and season with salt. Then massage kale with hands for 1 minute in order to really blend the salt.  Wisk together 1 tablespoon olive oil, juice from 1/2 lime, lime zest, and salt. Drizzle over kale. Set aside.
  4. Add avocado, 1/2 jalapeno pepper, cilantro leaves, juice from 1/2 a lime, lime zest, and salt to a food processor and blend well.
  5. Add cooled quinoa to kale, stir to combine. Distribute the kale to plates and top with sweet potato, black beans, and avocado sauce.

 

Top with roasted sweet potato, black beans, and avocado sauce

 

Black bean brownies 

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These tasty little treats are the healthiest brownies you will ever eat! No really! They are made with black beans and ground flax seed and have no added sugar or flour.  People will NEVER guess there are black beans in them. I let my family and many friends taste them and try to guess and no one even came close! What’s even better is they don’t taste healthy. The cocoa powder and chocolate chips make this a gooey, rich, and tasty dessert. You won’t even feel bad about going back for more!

They are inspired from Chocolate Covered Katie, but l substituted oats for ground flax seed.  I served them at the Mother’s Day brunch; click here for a recap.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups black beans, rinsed and drained
  • 2 tablespoon cocoa powder
  • 1/2 ground flax seed
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup honey, or pure maple syrup, or agave nectar
  • 1/4 cup coconut or vegetable oil
  • 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips, more for topping (optional)

 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients except chocolate chips in a food processor and blend until smooth.

2. Stir in chocolate chips, then pour into greased 8×8 pan. Sprinkle more chocolate chips on top for an extra chocolaty taste if so desired.

3. Bake 15-18 mins, then let cool 10 minutes.