South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up: April 2008

Photo of Pesto Fish with a Side of Green Beans

by Gluten-Free Mommy

I do consider Kalyn's Kitchen to be more of a food blog than a diet blog, but I see from my stats reports that a lot of people come here looking for South Beach Diet recipes. Last month I decided to start doing an end-of-month round-up of tasty phase one recipes I've posted on Kalyn's Kitchen or found on other food blogs during each month. Now you can find the South Beach Diet Phase One Monthly Recipe Round-Ups on their own page in the recipe archives. I hope this will be useful for people who might be starting the South Beach Diet and looking for good things to eat for phase one, but even if you're not a dieter, you'll find some delicious offerings here.

Mango Salad Recipe with Hearts of Palm, Radishes, Lime, and Cilantro

I've always been a bit cookbook-challenged, which means I rarely make a recipe the way the cookbook author writes it. I do use cookbooks endlessly though to get ideas for flavor combinations. This recipe combined ingredients paired with mangos in two of my favorite cookbooks, with a few of my own food preferences thrown in. I was completely taken with the combination of flavors (and once again I ate all the salad in the photo before I even looked at the photos - very bad food blogger!) It does have strong flavors, but if you like all the ingredients, definitely give this one a try.

Easy Recipe for Stir-Fried Spinach with Garlic and Parmesan

I love to buy those big containers of organic baby spinach from Costco and use it for spinach salad, then when the spinach has been in the fridge for a while but there's still some left, I'll make this easy and quick version of stir-fried spinach which tastes wonderful. This recipe uses the same stir-frying technique of seasoning the oil I talked about earlier. This time it's garlic that gets sauteed for a few minutes in the hot oil, seasoning the spinach with a delightful garlic flavor.

Tomatoes, Some Veggies, and Seeds are in the Ground - 2008 Garden Update #3

In my last garden update, the fabulous nephews filled the growboxes with soil and dug out flowers to prepare a place where I wanted tomatoes along a fence. This week I've been buying plants and seeds like crazy. Before I show you what's planted, first I need advice about the two plants in my planting tray above which were marked Black Beauty Eggplant. When I got them home that I realized they don't look like any eggplant I've seen. There was a whole shelf of these, all marked "eggplant" but I'm suspicious because I've had a few mystery plants that didn't turn out to be what they were supposed to be. Gardeners, please weigh in, could this possibly be eggplant, or is it a mis-marked squash plant of some type?

Saturday Morning Egg Muffin Melts (Kalyn Gets Creative With Leftovers)

Would I ever have guessed that one of the most popular recipes on the blog would be something as simple as Egg Muffins? I guess it's the total simplicity combined with versatility that makes this recipe such a hit with anyone looking for a grab-and-go breakfast option. I make a week's worth of egg muffins for myself many weekends, and even stash them in the fridge in little plastic baggies, ready to microwave and eat when it's a busy morning and I'm dashing off to school.

Kalyn's Kitchen Turns Three Today: Thanks for Reading!

Three years ago I started this blog, a spontaneous decision that changed my life in ways I couldn't have imagined. Last birthday I shared how Kalyn's Kitchen got started so I won't repeat it, except to say I didn't know what a food blog was at the time, and I'd never owned or used a digital camera. Who would have predicted that three years later I'd be happily and passionately blogging about my kitchen experiments?

Recipe for Roasted Tilapia with Black Bean, Mango, Lime and Cilantro Salsa

Now that I've perfected the recipe for World's Easiest Roasted Tilapia, I keep making it over and over, and this dinner with the roasted Tilapia served with black bean and mango salsa was definitely a winner. Not only did the black beans look great paired with the bright yellow mango, but the flavors in this salsa went perfectly with the mild-flavored Tilapia. I'm always in favor of recipes that combine lime and cilantro, so having that added to the mix didn't hurt a bit.

Chunky Pasta Sauce Recipe with Sausage, Roasted Tomatoes, Garlic, and Basil

Most of the recipes I post on Kalyn's Kitchen are dishes where I've planned ahead, shopped for ingredients, and carefully cooked the food. This wonderful recipe for chunky pasta sauce is not one of those planned-in-advance recipes. This is something I came up with on Sunday afternoon when I realized gardening season was almost here and I still had quite a few slow roasted tomatoes and some frozen basil in the freezer, and gee I really should be making something with those tomatoes and basil before it was harvest time again.

Soil in the Growboxes and Some Herbs Planted - 2008 Garden Update #2

Yes, that's a huge pile of dirt! If you saw my first garden update for 2008, then you know about the Growboxes I now have in my garden. Getting them filled with soil was the job for this weekend. The easiest way to my garden is down my neighbor's driveway, and I guess they remembered how I share my veggies because they generously let me have this huge load of compost-enriched topsoil delivered there on Friday night. The soil really was this black, and the fun was just beginning.

Recipe Favorites: Egg Burritos To Die For

(Updated April 2008) Back in the (good old) days when I was young, lean, and well tanned and was spending my summers catering houseboat trips at Utah's Lake Powell, this version of egg burritos was one of the most popular breakfasts on the houseboat. It was actually a Lake Powell client who named them "Egg Burritos To Die For," which is what I've been calling them ever since. I first posted this recipe in 2005 without any photos, but recently when the fabulous Lydia sent me some Josephs Flat, Oat Bran and Whole Wheat Tortillas, I got inspired to make egg burritos, take step-by-step photos, and add this to my Recipe Favorites.

World's Easiest Roasted Tilapia Recipe

I've been a fan of Tilapia for a long time, and have a few other Tilapia recipes in my archives (a couple of which are tasty but seriously need an update!) I've been happily re-discovering Tilapia since it showed up again at my Costco. When I picked up some Highliner Tilapia Loins (no web site found) I happened to notice the cooking suggestions recommended roasting the fish at a high temperature. This stuck in my mind, and the next time I needed an easy dinner, I adapted the directions to come up with this recipe. Since then I've cooked this several times, including once for my dad and stepmother who confirmed it's a definite keeper. I especially like this served with Double Dill South Beach Diet Friendly Tartar Sauce.

Easy Recipe for Double-Dill South Beach Diet Friendly Tartar Sauce

Although I'm sure food snobs consider it to be a horribly ordinary condiment, the truth is I really love tartar sauce. There's a fast food restaurant in Salt Lake that has tartar sauce that's so tasty, I could eat it with a spoon. However, (sigh) most tartar sauce is a long way from being South Beach friendly. 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 very friendly for any type of diet. Recently I've been loving roasted Tilapia and thinking about how much I love tartar sauce so I decided to try to come up with a tasty tartar sauce that didn't have sugar and was lower in fat. It took a bit of experimenting, but this recipe combines fat-free Greek Yogurt, regular or reduced fat mayo, dill weed, capers, and dill pickle relish, and is not only easy-to-make, it's as delicious as any tartar sauce I've ever had.

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Joseph's Flax, Oat Bran, and Whole Wheat Pitas and Tortillas

(Edit December 2011:  I was excited when I could order the Joseph's products online.)  In August of 2005 I visited Rhode Island, and while I was there I discovered a low-carb pita bread that was so full of healthy ingredients and delicious that I wrote on my relatively-new food blog about Joseph's Oat Bran and Whole Wheat Flour Pita Bread. I brought some of the pita bread and tortillas home with me from that trip, but I never could find them anywhere in Utah. I might have forgotten about it completely, except that fans of the pita bread kept leaving comments on that post asking where they could get the Joseph's Bakery products. I checked regularly, but for years there was nowhere to order them online. But obviously that's not the end of the story, or I wouldn't be writing about it again now.

Growboxes! (First Garden Update for 2008)

Coming Soon to Kalyn's Back Yard

Yesterday the weather in Salt Lake was sunny and in the 70s. All winter I've been looking forward to this time of year, and I vowed I'd finally get growboxes put into my garden. Long before raised bed gardening became rather trendy, my parents had what we called growboxes, and I'd wanted them, but they never rose to the level of "must have" on the list of home maintenance projects. When I mentioned I was definitely planning to get them this year, my generous and handy brother Mark offered to build them for me.

Recipe Favorites: Hearts of Palm Salad with Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta

(Updated April 2008) A few years ago hearts of palm appeared in big jars at my Costco, and I was overjoyed. I'd learned to like them while working at a French restaurant in college, but they were expensive in my regular grocery store, so I hadn't ever cooked with them much up to that point. Then sadly, the hearts of palm were no longer carried by Costco, at least in Utah, so they went back to being something I only purchased for special occasions. Recently I bought some and made this favorite salad, definitely overdue to be added to the Recipe Favorites category of the recipe archives.

A Taste of Yellow: Chipotle-Lime Deviled Eggs

There must be all kinds of yellow foods in the world, but one of my favorite yellow foods has to be deviled eggs. Have you ever made a bad batch of deviled eggs? I know I haven't, but this particular version of Chipotle-Lime Deviled Eggs is definitely destined to be one of my deviled eggs greatest hits. These deviled eggs were so good, I ate the ones in the photo before the pictures had even loaded into my computer and every food photographer worth the salt on her deviled eggs knows you check the photos before you eat up all the food! I just couldn't help myself.

Cooking with Herbs, Plants, Veggies, and Flowers: WHB #127

It's Weekend Herb Blogging #127 this week, and it's hard to believe three months have gone by since I've hosted Weekend Herb Blogging, and 24 people are still on the list to host, which means I'll still be sticking to my every-three-months schedule for a while.

Recipe Favorites: Grilled Asparagus with Parmesan

(Updated April 2008) I'm starting to notice asparagus going on sale around here, and this grilled asparagus that I first made a few years ago is something that definitely deserves to be nominated as one of my Recipe Favorites. I love just about everything cooked on the grill, but fresh asparagus grilled and then sprinkled with some freshly-grated parmesan cheese is about as good as it gets.

Pork and Broccoli Stir-Fry Recipe with Ginger and Hoisin Sauce

I've been a fan of Asian cooking for quite a while, and I bought my first wok in the 80's when I took a class in Chinese cooking taught by a visiting professor from China. From that class I got a collection of very authentic Chinese recipes written in somewhat halting English, as well as a good understanding of the techniques involved in stir-frying. Recently I replaced my current wok with a shiny new non-stick one which was deep and heavy, and I quickly started thinking about stir-frying more often. However, if you don't have a wok, not to worry. You can make this dish in any kind of heavy, deep frying pan.