Kick and Dinner

Veggies

All asparagus avocado Broccoli Broccolini Brussels Sprouts Cauliflower Corn Cucumbers Fennel Green Beans Kale Mushrooms Mushrooms Peppers Poblano Peppers Spaghetti Squash Spinach Squash Sweet Potato Swiss Chard Tomatoes Zoodles Zucchini
Brussels Sprouts Chips

Brussels Sprouts Chips

Brussels Sprouts Chips

Oh kale, you know I think the world of you. A gold medalist in the world of crucifers, you are rich in those compounds that help reduce cholesterol, curb inflammation and prevent cancer. You are the mainstay of my most favorite salad in the entire world, you elevate my smoothie into the nutritional stratosphere, and you really, really just make me feel good about myself whenever I am with you.

However.

When it comes to being lovingly smeared with olive oil and crisped to snack worthy perfection in the oven…there’s a new sheriff in town. Kale chips? Yes, you are good but I’ve found something even better.

Keep Reading
Poke Plate with Spicy Cucumbers and Avocado

Poke Plate…or…Tuna with Spicy Cucumbers and Avocado

Poke Plate or Tuna with Spicy Cucumbers and Avocado

Behold…my take on the poke (pronounced POH-Key, just in case you needed that) bowl.

A traditional poke bowl is both cooked and raw, hot and cold, all at once, sort of like a burrito bowl meets The Little Mermaid. Rice serves as the cooked portion of the production, a blank canvas to hold up the rest of the more assertive supporting cast. A staple of Hawaiian cuisine since, oh probably the dawn of the volcano, the poke bowl has found itself a place in mainland-style foodie trendiness, right alongside acai bowls, power bowls, and cereal bowls.

Yeh, I’m kidding about the cereal bowls, wink wink. Let’s not get crazy about what sort of vessel you serve this up in/on. This is so beautiful, so amazingly delicious, so easy to assemble together on the fly (NO COOKING INVOLVED AT ALL no lie), that you would probably eat it out of a shoe if I gave it to you like that. I know I would.

Okay … make that a brand new, super clean, very fancy, really nice shoe.

Keep Reading
Cheesy Cauliflower with Bacon Crunchies

Cheesy Cauliflower with Bacon Crunchies

Cheesy Cauliflower with Bacon Crunchies

This is a re-post of a recipe originally dated November 2015

Oh, I’ve been so bad.

I deliberately and willfully took an angelic head of cauliflower, the essence of purity with its gentle flavor, impressive nutritive value and soothing color…….and I went and did………this.

All wrapped up in a decadent cloak of dreamy cheesy-ness, topped with a smoky smattering of porky crispy-ness (NO soggy bacon here), this creamy cauliflower up-do had me at: Hello – oh no.

Keep Reading
Guacamole Stuffed Cutie Cucumber Cups

Guacamole Stuffed Cutie Cucumber Cups

Cutie Cucumber Cups

I’m finally fessing up, Tostitos. I’m just not really that into you.

Yeah, you heard me right, although I hid it well for years. Being from New Mexico and all, where they practically invented chips and salsa (I am pretty sure it’s an official “food group” there), I plowed through my fair share TO BE SURE. But what choice did I have? You gotta have the salsa, right? And fresh guacamole? Puh-lease, there is nothing better on this planet………so what could I do? I couldn’t use a spoon (oh, I thought about it, I did), and double dipping in public is completely out of the question….so I jumped on the bus and I ate all the chips. But you know . . . I had to.

It was that or no salsa. No guacamole. No joy.

Ever. (cue the teardrop running slowly down the side of cheek)

Keep Reading
Roasted Broccolini with Almond Pesto topped with an egg

Roasted Broccolini with Almond Pesto, topped with an egg!

Roasted Broccolini with Almond Pesto topped with an egg

Crispy-fied (not fried) roasted broccolini tossed with a garlicky, nutty rich, almond “pesto”, crowned with a perfectly runny over-medium egg. Go ahead and cut into it and that oozy, silky yolk is the foolproof foil for the sharpness of the pesto and the delicate green charred crunch of the broccolini. A perfect portion of creamy baked sweet potato serves as the delicious foundation, quietly but assuredly holding everybody together.

This sure works as dinner for ME…..but it didn’t start out that way.

Keep Reading
Almond butter chocolate chip zucchini banana bars

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Zucchini Banana Bars

This title took me so long to type that I might need to eat one of these guys for re-fuel-age. Almond butter chocolate chip zucchini banana bars

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that long but any excuse is a good reason to whip up a batch of these. With absolutely no refined white flour (or any sort of flour for that matter), very low sugar (about 6 grams per square; compare that to your basic store-bought cookie at an average of 15 grams per cookie….that’s ONE cookie, people) vitamins, minerals, fiber and protein to boot, these super moist chocolate chip studded squares of gooey goodness will trick your sweet tooth into thinking you’ve been bad when in fact you’ve been very, very good.

Think of it as zucchini/banana bread gone wild. So incredibly yummy you will not believe how good for you a “treat” can be! And that’s just crazy-ness.

Keep Reading
Kicken Chicken Picatta

“Kicken” Chicken Piccata

Chicken Picatta

If there is a restaurant within a 50 mile radius of my residence that serves chicken piccata, I have ordered it. Probably more than once. And no doubt I have enjoyed it, because to me, there is no such thing as a bad chicken piccata. Tender sand dollars of perfectly sautéd chicken in a supremely light and lemony sauce dotted with puckery pops of briny capers, dusted up with a flurry of freshly chopped parsley over an ethereal cloud of perfectly al dente’ angel hair pasta? Sounds sooooo good. Don’t ya think?

But could you take this into your kitchen and make it even bETTER?

Don’t be silly. Of COURSE you can. Piccata is so easy and delicious, and when you swap out the pasta for some beautifully sautéd kale, even more amazing.

Keep Reading
Oh Kale Yes

Kale Pesto

This is some good stuff going on right here.

Healthy cruciferous crusader kale, masquerading as a gorgeous pesto sauce!

If you like pesto sauce, (and really, please, who does not?) and you are all about getting as much cruciferous kale good-ness into you, yourself and everyone else around your dinner table because that shniz is just some nutrient packed amazingness-ness, then read on. Twenty minutes. Boom.

Dinner.

Keep Reading
Gremolota Salad

Gremolata Salad

Gremolota Salad

Excuse me but……..this just looks like a bowl of chopped salad vegetables.

Pretty lame that I would for one sliver of a second think that anyone would need to look at and glean anything from a post about a couple of chopped tomatoes, cucumber and avocado……which is pretty much what this is. Hmmm, okay. Thanks for sharing, Nichole, I’ll get right on that, like I never chopped a freaking tomato before. This was oh, so informative, yeh, buh-bye now. click

But please stay with me! And look a little closer. That evergreen mound of confetti you see scattered over the pile of veggies just waiting to be tossed together is the magic ingredient, the namesake of this recipe, and my newest flavor obsession: Gremolota. And this stuff, with all of its’ fresh, springy piquancy, is going to wake up your taste buds and make them DANCE!

Keep Reading
Navigate