Tasty Galaxy

Many refried beans recipes that I have read include lard. While that is probably tasty, I have decided to come up with a healthier refried beans recipe. The refried beans recipe below uses olive oil instead of lard, and it tastes great!

Tools You Will Need

Saute Pan
Knife
Cutting Board
Saute Pan
Potato Masher

Ingredients For Refried Beans:

2 cups of dry pinto beans
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 medium onion
3 garlic cloves
1/4 teaspoon of dry oregano
1/4 teaspoon of cumin

Make Refried Beans

Put beans in a pot with water, bring to a boil, reduce the fire and simmer for 2 hours or so, till the beans are cooked.

You can also use canned beans, in this case make sure to rinse the beans a few times before using them.

Chop onion and garlic. Heat up olive oil in the saute pan. Note: since you will be mashing the beans in the saute pan, make sure that you are using a stainless steel saute pan.

Add onions and garlic to the olive oil and saute for about 8 minutes. Add oregano and cumin and cook for 2 mote minutes. Add beans, mix all the ingredients together and cook 5 more minutes.

Use the potato masher to mash up the beans. Add some water to the beans, as you are mashing them, to bring them to the consistency you want.

In summer we all want to eat lighter meals, and this strawberry spinach salad is a great one to make in the summer. There are very few ingredients, but the result is a light and interesting salad.

Tools You Will Need

Knife
Cutting Board
Salad Bowl

Strawberry Spinach Salad Ingredients

4-5 cups of baby spinach
1 quart of strawberries
1 tablespoon of raspberry vinegar
2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt
pepper

Make Salad

Wash and dry baby spinach. If the leaves are large, chop into smaller pieces.

Clean, wash and chop strawberries.

In the salad bowl combine spinach, strawberries, oil, vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Toss together.

This is a great salad dressing and you can create many variations on this by varying herbs and spices. The salad dressing that I made is with garlic and basil, but there are tons of flavor combinations that will work as well.

Tools You Will Need

Knife
Cutting Board
Garlic Press
Salad Bowl

Buttermilk Salad Dressing Ingredients:

1/3 cup of buttermilk
1 tablespoon of sour cream
1-2 medium garlic cloves, peeled
6 large basil leaves
salt
pepper

Salad Ingredients:

romaine lettuce
4 medium tomatoes
1/2 of a small onion

Make Salad Dressing:

Put garlic through the garlic press. Chop the basil finely. Combine garlic, basil, buttermilk and sour cream to make the dressing.

Make Salad:

Chop romaine lettuce, tomatoes and onion. In a salad bowl, combine the vegetables and the salad dressing and stir to combine.

Regular sausage and peppers recipes usually call for raw peppers and onions stir fried with the sausage. I decided to change this a bit and used roasted red peppers in this recipe. I love roasted red peppers, they sweet and very flavorful. They add another dimension to this simple dish.

Sausage and Peppers Ingredients:

1.5 Pounds of bulk mild Italian Sausage
2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
4 Large Red Peppers (or 6 Medium Red Peppers)
2 Medium Onions
Pepper Flakes (to taste)
Salt
Pepper
Saute Pan

Sausage and Peppers Recipe:

Roast red peppers. Take them out of the oven. Once they are cool, peel and remove the top and the seeds. Chop them and set aside.

Chop onions.

Heat up the olive oil in the saute pan. Add pepper flakes and sausage to the oil. Saute until the sausage is almost done. Add onions and peppers and cook them together until sausage is completely done. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with pasta.

Want some vegetable soup? Don’t buy vegetable soup in a can - you can make one yourself that tastes much better and is much better for you! It is easy to make too.

For a vegetarian vegetable soup, use water or vegetable stock.

Vegetable Soup Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
3 Celery Stalks
3 Carrots
1 Medium Onion
3 Medium Potatoes
0.75 Pounds of Green Beans
A few handfuls of Frozen Peas
Water/Broth

Salt
Pepper

Soup Pot

Make Vegetable Soup:

Chop celery, carrots and onions. Add olive oil to the soup pot. Add chopped celery, carrots and onions. Saute on low to medium heat until vegetables are soft.

Peel and chop potatoes. Add potatoes and water/stock to the pot. Increase heat, bring to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until potatoes are almost done.

Add washed and chopped green beans and frozen peas. Cook until potatoes, beans and peas are done.

Here is my Roasted Cauliflower Soup Recipe:

Tools You Will Need

Knife
Cutting Board
Soup Pot

Cauliflower Soup Ingredients:

2 Medium heads of cauliflower
2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

3 Carrots
1 Medium Onion
2 Medium Potatoes
2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
Water/Stock

Make Cauliflower Soup:

Note: This recipe does not contain heavy cream/half-n-half, but the cauliflower soup turns out nice and creamy anyway because of potatoes. If you’d like your cauliflower soup even creamier, add a bit of either heavy cream or half-n-half.

Wash cauliflower and separate into small florets. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast for 20-30 minutes or until it looks golden.

Once cauliflower is done, chop carrots and onions. Heat up olive oil in the soup pot, add chopped onions and carrots and cook for about 5 minutes. Add chopped potatoes and water/stock. Bring the soup pot to boil and reduce the fire to low and simmer until potatoes are almost done.

Add roasted cauliflower and cook for a few more minutes. Take off the heat. Once the soup is cool enough, blend it until smooth.

Many people are looking for a solution for losing weight for staying slim. Many are looking for a silver bullet for weight loss. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet when it comes to weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you must eat well and exercise on a regular basis.

However, I do have a solution for you if you want to lose weight and keep it off: you should cook your food yourself!

Why? There are quite a few reasons to do this:

You control the ingredients

When you eat food that someone else prepared you don’t know what ingredients went into it. There could be a lot of oil and fat involved, and eating that food will prevent you from losing weight.

Why do this to yourself? When you cook your own food you control the ingredients and the amounts of oils and fats that are in your food.

You eat what you like

You know how sometimes you come to a restaurant, and nothing on the menu looks good? So you end up eating food that is high in calories that you don’t want to eat in the first place!

Why subject yourself to this? Instead, cook the food that you like yourself. When you cook, the food always looks good!

You control the spice levels.

I don’t eat food that’s too spicy, so this happens to me a lot. I read a description of a dish, everything sounds wonderful, and I am almost ready to order it. Except when I re-read the description I realize that the dish contains too much red pepper or other spicies. So I pass on this dishes in favor of something that i don’t really want, but at least I can eat.

When you cook yourself you control the spice level! In fact, I re-created many spicy Asian dishes by just omitting the extra hot peppers - they still turned out great and I really enjoyed them!

You use better ingredients.

Want to use organic vegetables or meats? Better cheese? Really fresh berries? When you cook yourself you will use better ingredients that are better for you, and you will enjoy your food more!

As you can see, there are many reasons to cook for yourself, especially when you are trying to lose weight. Bookmark this blog or subscribe to this blog for easy recipes that you can make for dinner!

Many people have asked for a sangria recipe. But in fact, sangria is very easy to make and it is very versatile. You can use many different fruits and berries when making sangria. I am using limes, strawberries, apples and grapefruits in the recipe below, because that’s what I had on hand. You can use blueberries, lemons, raspberries, peaches, pears, plums - whatever you have on hand.

You can also make an all berrie sangria, with just raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. Or mix and match - it’s up to you. Another great thing about sangria is that if you have an opened bottle of red wine you can finish it by making sangria. Just make sure that this is the wine that you would drink on its own.

Tools You Will Need

Knife
Cutting Board
Sangria Pitcher And Glasses

Sangria Ingredients:

10 strawberries, slices
1 grapefruit, peeled and chopped into small pieces
1 green apple, cored and chopped into small pieces
1 lime

3 tablespoons of sugar
4 cups of red wine
2 tablespoons of orange liquor
1/2 cup of orange juice
ice and seltzer water

Make Sangria:

In a sangrial pitcher combine strawberries, apple slices and grapefruit slices. Squeeze the juice of half of the lime into the pitcher. Chop the other half of the lime into small pieces and add to the pitcher.

Add sugar, red wine, orange liquor and orange juice to the pitcher. Stir gently to combine. Place the pitcher into the refrigerator overnight.

Try and adjust - you can add more sugar to make it sweeter, more lime juice to make it more sour, etc.

To serve, place ice into a glass. Pour some sangria into the glass and fill the rest of the glass with seltzer.

One of the most common questions that I receive from people who are starting to cook (or people looking for a gift for someone who is starting to get into cooking) is “What cookbook do you recommend for someone who is just starting cooking on their own?”

Well, here is a cookbook that I wish I had when I was just starting out with cooking: The New Best Recipe.

I am a “step-by-step” kind of person, especially when it comes to cooking. When I am trying a new recipe, I like to know exactly how to do make something. This cookbook does exactly that - it shows you the step-by-step approach to everything, even the things that are really basic.

The book also has step-by-step diagrams to illustrate different cooking techniques. From dicing vegetables to cutting potatoes to sorting beans to beating egg whites - there is a diagram for doing pretty much anything.

Another thing that I really like about this cookbook is that they experimented with many different versions of the same recipe. For example, if they need to find the best batter recipe, they would try a few different versions, with breadcrumbs, with flour, then with breadcrumbs and flour and discuss which one is best and why. This way you don’t really need to experiment - you will know which one is best.

Now, I like to experiment when I cook and to try different versions of recipes on my own. But their discussion of their cooking experiments helps me minimize the number of mistakes I make in the kitchen. If they tried something and failed, I learn from their mistakes and don’t repeat the failed experiments.

One thing you won’t find in this book, though, are colorful pictures of the food. All the drawings/pictures are black and white. But this is a fabulous cookbook for both new and seasoned cooked and I strongly recommend that you get it if you don’t own it yet:

Do you like plantains? Plantains look like bananas, but are bigger than bananas. Unlike bananas, plantains are usually eaten cooked.

Many people have asked me how to cook plantains. This recipe for fried plantains is very easy and it calls for very few ingredients. The results taste great!

Before we talk about cooking plantains, let’s talk about how to pick them. When I buy bananas, I buy the ones that are slightly green and the best looking. With plantains, you want to buy them when they are ripe, so you want to buy plantains that are yellow and black, like in this picture:

Tools You Will Need

Knife
Cutting Board
Saute Pan

Ingredients For Fried Plantains:

5 Ripe Plantains
Oil for frying
2 tablespoons of maple syrup

Cook Plantains:

Peel plantains and slice diagonally:

Heat up the oil in the saute pan. Once the oil is hot, add plantain pieces to the frying pan and fry until they are golden brown on both sides.

Once plantains are golden brown on both sides, remove from the saute pan and repeat with remaining plantains.

Once all the plantains are fried, return all the plantains to the saute pan and add the maple syrup. Carefully mix the plantains and syrup and cook for about 30 seconds on a small fire.

Plantains are great as a side dish. Serve these fried plantains with meat - pork, beef, chicken.