Category: Fitness & Recipes

Categories
Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Cast Iron Skillet Vegan Cornbread

We recently acquired a 10″ cast iron skillet, and are convinced that everything tastes better in it. I had been making this recipe in our 9×13 glass pan, but the first time we tried it in the skillet we were blown away by the deliciousness. Super soft, moist, and full of flavor, this cornbread recipe is sure to be a hit at parties and get-togethers. Plus, it doesn’t have a lot of butter (something many recipes do) so I like to think its a little bit healthy.

Cast Iron Vegan Cornbread

adapted from livinlightly.com
serves: 10″ skillet – how many people depends on how big you cut it up!
Ingredients for Cornbread
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
3/4 cup water
2 cups non dairy milk (we use Lactaid)
1/2 cup canola oil (melted coconut oil works too)
2 cups flour (we usually just use white)
8 tsp baking powder
2 cups whole grain cornmeal
1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray skillet with non-stick cooking spray (probably not needed, I do usually do it anyway just in case).
2. Heat water in a small sauce pan on stove. Once it is boiling, add the flaxseed. Reduce heat and whisk until you get a gel-like consistency.
3. Combine milk & oil in a large bowl. Add sugar and mix well.
4. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture (Sift flour if you want – I’m always too lazy!) and mix well.
5. Stir in flaxseed mixture.
6. Spread cornbread mixture into a cast iron skillet. It’s pretty thick, but don’t worry.
8. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
9. Drizzle with honey  & enjoy!
Airstream Kitchen -Cast Iron Vegan Cornbread Recipe

Categories
Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Italian Turkey Meatballs Over Zoodles

I usually make the meatballs one day and we’ll eat half of them over zucchini noodles (or zoodles),  and then freeze the other half of them to make Italian Wedding Soup later in the week. The ingredients for both meals are very similar, but they are totally different meals. Works great when you have very little fridge space. Usually I will serve this with french bread or whole wheat biscuits, and then cooked carrots or broccoli.

Italian Meatballs Over Zoodles

adapted from beachbody.com
Serves 10

1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1/4 cup reduced fat milk (any kind)
2 tsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed (the more the better in our family!)
2 lbs raw ground 93% lean turkey breast
2 large eggs
1/4 cup fresh parsley, or about 1 tbsp dried
2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp dried oregano leaves
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper

4 medium zucchini
Hot water
2 tbsp finely shredded fresh basil
2 Tbsp grated parmesan cheese
Your favorite Tomato Sauce (I’m lazy, and usually just do Ragu)

    1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees, and spray a large baking sheet with non-stick spray. (Most recently I cooked these in our cast iron pan and that worked great too.)
    2. Place bread crumbs and milk in a large bowl and soak for 10 minutes.
    3. Meanwhile, heat oil in medium skillet and add onions. Saute 5 or 6 minutes or until translucent.
    4. Add garlic and cook stirring frequently for about a minute.
    5. Add onion mixture, turkey, eggs, parsley, cheese, oregano salt, pepper to the bread crumbs. Mix well with a spoon, or clean hands (my preferred method). It’ll be a little stick at this point, so cover and refrigerate for an hour.
    6. Form turkey mixutre into 1-inch balls and arrange on cookie sheet or pan. You can use your hands, but I’ve found those awesome cookie scoops work really well for this. They aren’t perfectly round, but I just finish them off with my hands. Its so much faster and less messy.
    7. Bake for 13-18 minutes or until browned and cooked through.
    8. While your meatballs are cooking, boil a large pot of water.
    9. Using a cheese slicer (not the wire kind), a vegetable peeler (this never worked as well for me), or a spiralizer (if you are being super fancy) cut each zucchini into lengthwise strips about 1/8″ thick. Turn zuchinni slightly after each cut, so you are working evenly around the outside. Stop when you get to the seeds.
    10. Ideally you’d steam these, but I just throw them in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes until tender.
    11. Once your meatballs are done, pull out half to save for soup later, and add tomato sauce to the rest. Heat through.
    12. Top zucchini noodles with meatballs & sauce, basil, and cheese.

Italian Turkey Meatballs Over Zoodles

Categories
Backpacking Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore_66

We discovered these delectable treats as I was looking for a way to pack a dessert in to the Apostle Islands for Andrew’s birthday.  Made with whole wheat flour & ground flaxseed, I can at least pretend they are more healthy than regular chocolate chip cookies, right? At least until we add the marshmallow.

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cups white flour
1 1/2 Tbsp ground flaxseed
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cups semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips
Large, toasted marshmallows (optional)
Hershey’s chocolate bars

Preheat oven to 375 degrees, and spray or grease a 9×13 pan.

In a medium bowl, cream butter, then add sugars and mix until creamy. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Gradually stir in flours, baking soda, and salt until completely mixed. Really you should mix these all separately first, but I always just mix the soda and salt in the measuring cup with the flour after dumping a little in the bowl to make room. Call me lazy. Or just efficient.

Add chocolate chips until just mixed in.

Spread mixture evenly in prepared pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in pan, cut into bars.

These are easy to wrap individually and take hiking or backpacking, or cover and store in a cool, dry place.

We roasted marshmallows over the fire, stuck a piece of Hershey chocolate inside, and then smashed them on top of the cookie bars.

I don’t think we’ll ever eat a regular S’more again.

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars with Marshmallows. Delicious and slightly healthier than regular cookies!

Categories
Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Healthy Zucchini Bread Muffins

Delicious, HEALTHY zucchini bread muffins. Yum!

I love zucchini bread! One of my favorite things about having a garden (okay, in my past life) was planting a zucchini and reaping the rewards all summer long!

Growing up my mom had a super tasty recipe, but unfortunately was also not very healthy. Lots of sugar and butter, so I stopped making it awhile ago and began the search for a substitute recipe.

I found one! This one is tasty, filling, and uses coconut oil and applesauce and only a little bit of sugar. Total win.

Delicious, HEALTHY zucchini bread muffins. Yum!

Healthy Zucchini Bread Muffins

Yields approximately 16 muffins, 2 per serving
21 Day Fix breakdown per serving: 1 G, 2 Y, 1 tsp

Ingredients:
Nonstick cooking spray
6 large egg whites
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/3 cup white sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1  3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sea salt
3 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 1/2 cups grated zucchini (my kids like these more when I chop the zucchini pretty small)

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Line muffin tin with paper liners and spray with nonstick cooking spray for good measure.
3. Combine egg whites, oil, applesauce, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. Set aside.
4. Combine all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a medium bowl; mix well.
5. Add flour to egg mixture; mix until just blended.
6. Fold in zucchini and mix until just blended.
7. Spoon batter into muffin tins until 2/3 full.
8. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
9. Remove from pans and cool on a rack.
10. Eat & Enjoy!

Delicious, HEALTHY zucchini bread muffins. Yum!

Categories
Airstream Accessories Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: The Blendtec Twister Jar & Strawberry Sorbet Recipe

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Its no secret that I love my blender. My big, powerful blender. I wrote a blog post last year that got some attention from Blendtec and they graciously sent me a Twister Jar as a thank you for the photos of their blender in our Airstream. I was hesitant at first as to how it could be better than their regular jar, but I was quickly convinced of its awesomeness.

Instead of a regular sealed lid, the twister jar has, well, a twister lid. There are two arms that reach from the lid down the sides of the jar and you rotate the lid counterclockwise while you blend so that it will scrape down the sides. Genius. It works great for anything that is super thick. We’ve made guacamole, salsa, cocoa-nut almond butter, hummus, & my “famous” strawberry sorbet (as the kids call it).

I’ve also found that the twister jar is the perfect size for a single serving smoothie. It comes with a regular “gripper” lid, and I can add 1 cup of water, my strawberry Shakeology, 1 cup of spinach, 1 banana, 5 ice cubes and it blends up really nicely!

My Twister Jar also came with the “Spectacula” which is a fancy name for the spatula designed to perfectly fit the interior of the Twister Jar. It is amazing! I kid you not – whenever I use our regular spatula I can never get as much out of the jar as I can with the Spectacula. However, we do make fun of the name on a continual basis.

Okay, back to the sorbet. We love to make Strawberry Sorbet, or Dairy-Free Strawberry Ice Cream as its called in their recipe book. We find that “sorbet” sounds so much fancier, so that’s the name that stuck.

This last time we added some Oreos on top and the flavors were great together! We could probably blend the Oreos in as well (or other mix ins) but we love the regular kind so much we haven’t bothered to branch out. We’ve also made this with a mixture of different frozen fruits (Costco Berry mix, Tropical blend, etc.) but strawberry always seems to be the favorite.

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Strawberry Sorbet
serves 2 adults or 3 kids – I can’t fit more than this in the jar, so we usually end up making two batches. One for the kids and then one for us. 

1/2 cup coconut milk
5 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp lemon juice (fresh or otherwise – I never have fresh)
3 cups frozen, whole strawberries (This is approximate. I kind of fill the jar about 3/4 full and go from there. If its too runny, I’ll add a few more strawberries and run it again. Just don’t get it too thick or it’ll be hard to blend!)

Add ingredients in order listed and place Twister lid on jar. Hold the lid and select “Speed Up” to speed 7 and run for 40-50 seconds or until smooth. Turn the twister lid counter-clockwise during blending.

Happy dessert!

Strawberry Sorbet in the Blendtec Twister Jar