White Pizza with Chorizo, Peppers, and Watercress

Last night I discovered that I had a beautiful bunch of watercress in my refrigerator that I had forgotten about and went scrambling for a way to use it up. My daughter wanted pizza, so I decided to pair the two. After searching the internet, I decided to take some of the various ideas I had seen and come up with my own version of a white pizza topped with watercress. The result was tantalizingly yummy! So much so that my 18-month old son ate two toddler-sized pieces! So here's what I did:

First, I pressed 4 garlic cloves through a garlic press. Then I topped the garlic with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, added a little ground pepper, and used the back of a wooden spoon to mash the garlic into the oil. I brushed the garlic oil onto a pre-made pizza crust. Then I added a layer of ricotta cheese and topped that with a layer of shredded mozzarella. Next I added sliced chorizo sausage that I had sauteed first; watercress that I had washed, chopped, and drizzled with a bit of the leftover garlic oil, and seasoned with a little salt and pepper; and finally sliced red and orange mini sweet peppers. I put it in the oven at 350 and baked until the cheese was melted and the crust browned. I served it alongside a fresh garden salad. Even my husband, who is not usually a fan of white pizza, admitted that this was delicious!

One side note: Next time I make this recipe, I plan to add the watercress about halfway through baking instead of the start. It ended up a little over done. I'd prefer to have it just slightly wilted. Oh, and don't waste the left-over garlic oil! I mixed mine with a little balsamic vinegar and added some dried herbs for a tasty salad dressing.

Pasta with Kale, Pinto Beans, and Tomatoes

I spent most of my day off today running around doing errands... getting my son's 18-month-old photos taken, shopping, banking. Then I came home and caught up on some gardening and made a bunch of phone calls. Had the kids with me most of the day, and they were very whiny. By mid-afternoon I had (and still have) a tension headache. So I wasn't much in the mood for a complicated dinner. Thank goodness for one of my standby recipes: pasta with greens, beans, and tomatoes.

I can't recall where I originally got this recipe. I don't even have it written down anywhere and I modify it pretty much every time I make it, depending on the ingredients I have on hand. Tonight it was a pound of whole wheat linguine topped with kale, pinto beans, and tomatoes. Here's how I make the sauce:

Sautee 3-4 cloves of chopped garlic in 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil. Add a big bunch of washed and chopped kale (or other green of your choice). Once the kale is nicely wilted, pour in a can of drained beans. Tonight I had pinto beans, but I usually use cannellini. Stir. Next add a 15-ounce can of chopped tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer until the sauce starts to thicken. Stir the sauce into the drained pasta, cover and let it sit a few minutes so the pasta soaks up the juices. I usually serve it with a side salad.

Blogging is hard!

OK, so my attempt at blogging has been an abysmal failure! With a job and two young kids, it seems impossible to find the time for all the things that need to be done... cooking, dishes, laundry, yard work. There never seems to be any time for the exercise I so desperately need or even a few minutes on the couch resting or reading. Which means there also is seemingly little time for social networking or blogging. And even when there is time, I work on a computer all day, so turning it on at home is not always my first priority.

So, for all these reasons, it turns out that blogging is extremely difficult for me. I have ideas for posts but no time or motivation to actually write them! But I'm going to try again, so look for more to come...

More than 10,000 today!

Wow! It is really hard to walk 10,000 steps in a day! But I did it today! I hit 10,978. It took some effort, though. I walked to and from a lunch appointment and then I walked to and from an evening meeting. Since I've never counted steps before I guess I assumed I was more active than I actually am. After all, although I have a desk job, I'm not the type of person to sit at a desk all day. I pace. I go talk to people face to face whenever I can instead of emailing or calling. I climb stairs instead of taking the elevator. But 10,000 steps is a lot, and it's going to be hard to maintain that on days when I'm stuck home with the kids. After all, even if I drag them with me, I can only drag them so far. But I'm up to the challenge. Bring it on!

Eat Well. Live Well. Challenge

My workplace is sponsoring a Live Well. Eat Well. Challenge through our local supermarket chain Wegmans. I'm leading a team. We're competing against other teams throughout the city government I work for. The goal is to eat a minimum of five cups of fruits and vegetables per day and to walk at least 10,000 steps. I got off to a bad start today. I have a house full of relatives visiting for my daughter's birthday, and she wanted pancakes for breakfast. Of course, you can't have pancakes without bacon and eggs. So I didn't even look at a vegetable until afternoon. I did end up exceeding the fruit and veggie goal, however, with a healthy dinner of braised carrot soup, salad, and 12-grain sourdough bread and a post-walk apple. Yum!


The steps were more of a challenge for me: Even with an after-dinner walk I only hit 8,522 steps. I used to exercise a lot--weight-bearing exercises three times week at the gym and regular walks in the neighborhood with my husband. Then came my two children. Besides stretching out and weakening all of my abdominal and other stabilizing muscles, they've taken a severe bite out of my workout time. I'm lucky if I can even make it to the gym once a week--lately, it's more like once a month! So the exercise part of this challenge will definitely be the hard part. But for me it's the most important part. I have a long history of chronic back pain that I used to manage well through exercise. The pain is starting to return. In addition to hurting, it makes me tired and cranky. I don't want to be that person. I want to be healthy and happy for my children, so I desperately need to get back into a regular exercise routine. I'm hoping this challenge will be what I need to jump start that process.

Wish me luck! And stay tuned for my progress!

Good intentions gone awry...

Life has been hectic over the past few weeks. Part of it is that I've been putting in long hours at work. Part of it is that my 15-month-old son thinks his day should start at 4 a.m. On days I work, I've been coming home late, rushing to put dinner on the table, bathing the kids and putting them to bed, and then crawling into bed myself, sometimes as early as 9:30. On my days off, I've been spending all day reading and doing art projects with my kids, catching up on laundry and all of the household tasks that are neglected on work days, and just trying to catch my breath. I haven't had the energy to check email or post here. So much for good intentions...

This blog is not the only aspect of my life--or my good intentions--that has been neglected. My first few posts may have left you with the wrong impression.You see, I was feeling quite good about the fact that I had prepared healthy from-scratch meals for my family several days in a row, and I may have come across as a bit preachy. I may have misled you into thinking that I'm some health food guru who always gets it right. Ha!

The truth is that, like most people, I struggle everyday to make healthy choices, and I often fail to live up to my own standards. Last week, for example, we ordered a pizza one night (at least I get veggies on it!), ate left-over pizza the next night, and picked up $6 meals from Wegman's prepared foods counter on another night. Oh, and until this past Sunday I hadn't been to the gym in weeks.

Not a vegetarian, but...

Am acquaintance recently commented that she thought I was a vegetarian. I'm not. In fact, I've got a freezer full of organic grass-fed beef right now. It comes from my friends' farm in Trumansburg, NY. But I have been slowly reducing my family's meat intake over the past few years. We often go days without eating meat. Instead, we eat whole grains, legumes, and, of course, a variety of fruits and vegetables. We've also been trying to add fish to our diet because of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids they contain. Neither my husband nor I are big fish lovers. We especially avoid the real fishy fish. There was a time when the only fish I could get my husband to eat was a greasy fish fry. But we've grown to love salmon and can tolerate other mild fish, such as tilapia and orange roughy.

Tonight's meal was a good example of the type of meal that I feel good about preparing for my family. I made Moroccan-Steamed Salmon with Quinoa and Carrots. I got the recipe from the January/February 2011 issue of Whole Living, my new favorite magazine, and served it alongside simple microwaved store-bought frozen peas. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) is technically a seed, but it is similar in consistency to rice. It has a nutty flavor and is a great addition to any diet. It provides a complete protein, rich in amino acids, and is a good source of iron, which is important to me since I tend to be borderline anemic when I'm not careful. It is also a good source of magnesium and riboflavin.

I loved all of the flavors in this meal, but the tastiest part was the cilantro sauce that topped the fish and helped me meet another of my goals: to eat more herbs and spices. More on that another time...