Garlic-Parm Chicken

Quick, healthy and unique dinners can be hard to come up with. Do you ever feel like you are making the same thing over and over again? Give your typical chicken dinner a makeover with this Garlic-Parmesan rub. Your house will smell delicious and your family will be counting down the seconds until dinner is served!

When cooking dinner, sometimes we can’t help but think about prep for the remainder of the week! It’s is great to be prepared. May we suggest to double the batch and cut the leftovers up to add to salads or wraps for your workday lunches! Quick and easy! Enjoy!

Garlic-Parm Chicken

1⁄2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 cup plain Greek Style yogurt
1 1⁄2 tsp garlic powder
1⁄2 tsp pepper
1⁄2 -1 tsp sea salt
4-5 organic chicken breast

1. Mix all ingredients together (except chicken).

2. Spread mixture over chicken, place on baking sheet.

3. Bake at 375 degrees for 45-55 minutes, or until chicken is golden brown and cooked through

Minestrone Soup

We would like to share with you a very special recipe shared with us by one of our Healthy Edge Community members.  This recipe was passed on to her from a very special woman, her mother. Thank you for sharing Diane!

Note from Diane: “When you get all the ingredients in the pot in the beginning it looks fairly watery and like it might not taste that great but by the end of the three hours of cooking it all comes together and it is so rich tasting and satisfying and warm.”   Enjoy!

Minestrone Soup

3 medium carrots, coarsely chopped

3 stalks celery, coarsely chopped

2 medium onions, diced

2 cups cauliflower

¼ cup pound green beans, cut into 1 inch pieces

2 medium zucchini, cut into 1 inch cubes

½lb cabbage, coarsely chopped

1 medium clove garlic, minced

¼ cup olive oil

3 Tbsp butter

3 ½ cups beef broth

1 ½ cups water

1 28oz can Italian plum tomatoes

½ tsp salt

½ tsp dried basil, crumbled

¼ tsp pepper

¼ tsp dried rosemary, crumbled

1 bay leaf

1 - 1lb can Cannellini beans

Directions

1.  Heat oil and butter in 5 quart pan over medium heat.  Add onion, saute about 6 minutes.  Stir in carrots and cauliflower, saute 5 minutes.  Stir in celery and green beans, saute 5 minutes.  Stir in zucchini, saute 3 minutes.  Stir in cabbage and garlic, saute 1 minute.
2. Chop tomato coarsely.  Add broth, water and tomato juice and tomatoes.  Stir in salt, basil, rosemary, pepper and bay leaf.
3. Heat to boiling; reduce heat to low.  Simmer covered stirring occasionally, 1 to 2 hours.  Add Beans.
4. Uncover and continue cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally until soup is thick, about 30 – 40 minutes longer.  Remove bay leaf before serving.

Top 10 Work Snacks To Stay On Track

During the flu and cold season, your work area can be a germ haven.  With our loyalty to our jobs (and our jobs lack of understanding that even adults get sick) sick days are non-existent!  During these winter months even just a quick trip to the store can be a flu trap.  While stocking up on hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes can help, keeping your immune system strong by focusing on nutritious foods is your best bet.

There are many Super Foods (you know, foods that are super high in an array of nutrients) can help your immune system fight off these nasty colds and keep you feeling better than your co-workers. 

Here are our top 10 snacks to help keep you healthy this cold and flu season:

1:   Blueberries – Per serving, these small superfoods are packed full of antioxidants, more so than any other fruit or vegetable! They are also high in vitamins A and C, zinc, potassium, magnesium and iron.  While boosting your immunity against everyday illness, they also have been known to help fight belly fat!  Talk about a win-win! Add to your oatmeal, salads, yogurt or eat by themselves!

2: Brazil nuts (raw and unsalted) – These delicious nuts, in their raw form, are rich in protein, omega fats and selenium.  Selenium is a mineral that helps guard against colds, flu and infection.  Your body only needs a small amount of selenium each day so snack on these sparingly and be sure to stick to the right serving size (serving size is 1 oz, about 6 nuts).

3:  Carrots – Carrots are rich in beta-carotene which the body converts in vitamin A.  Vitamin A is essential for building and maintaining a healthy and strong immune system.  To be a little more specific,  it helps to keep our body’s first line of defense, our skin, the mucous membranes in our nose, sinuses and our mouth, healthy and ready to protect! Check out the Raw Carrot Salad from Chef Brian of The Healthy Edge!

4: Fennel: Fennel is a natural expectorant and can help clear congestion and soothe a cough.  One cup of chopped fennel bulb contains almost 20% of the daily requirement of vitamin C.  So chop it up and eat it raw or throw it in a salad, because vitamin C is a vitamin you defiantly want to stock up on during this season!

5: Oats – Oatmeal is full of healthy nutrients such as vitamin E, zinc, selenium, copper, iron magnesium and insoluble fiber, including beta-glucan.  The beta-glucan in oats contains antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. According to a Norwegian study, this strain of fiber is more potent than echinacea in boosting your immune system, speeds healing, and helps antibiotics to work better. Try this tasty Baked Blueberry Oatmeal Recipe!

6: Oranges – Ditch the fizzy immune-boosting drinks promising you your dose of vitamin C and eat an orange!  So much simpler! Eating an orange is the most direct way to get the valuable vitamin C found in citrus fruits.  Incase you didn’t know, vitamin C helps improve the immune system, produces and repairs skin tissue and is an antioxidant against harmful free radicals.  Studies have shown that the benefits of vitamin C in helping to fight the common cold may be particularly strong when people are exposed to stress or cold weather.

7: Red Peppers – While oranges are a deliciously wonderful source of vitamin C, bell peppers have almost three times the vitamin C of a medium orange.  We would suggest choosing red over green, they have more vitamin C, since greens are just unripe reds!

8: Sunflower seeds - A handful of sunflower seeds (unsalted) delivers a significant amount of vitamin E, magnesium, and selenium. Vitamin E is an antioxidant that prevents damage in cell walls and is essential to lung health. Healthy lungs mean less phlegm production.

9: Yogurt - The probiotics found in yogurt help keep your digestive track free of disease-causing germs and bad bacteria. Be sure to look for the “live active cultures” addition on the label, as these are the ones that contain probiotics.  Go for plain yogurt or our favorite, Greek style, and flavor it yourself with fruits, honey or granola!

10: Dark Chocolate – Before you head over to the vending machine, be sure that read the rest!  To enjoy the immunity-boosting benefits of dark chocolate (not the milk chocolate of your childhood Easter baskets), you have to understand the serving size we are suggesting, which is bite-sized.  One-quarter ounce of dark chocolate (with a cocoa content of 70% or higher) contains the antioxidant polyphenol and high levels of zinc.

Super Simple Salmon Dish

Below is a quick and easy recipe with minimal ingredients, sent in by a Healthy Edge Community Member, Jo. The Healthy Edge embraces the principle of 80/20 and we love to share recipes with each other. We thought you would enjoy this one!

Super Simple Salmon Dish

This is super easy, despite all my tips, but tastes impressive enough for company.

Ingredients:  (Note:  I have never measured with this recipe...so guessing here.)

1 pound wild salmon filet

 

King/Chinook is best flavor, texture, highest in beneficial oils, and juiciest...thus also most expensive.  Look for a sale or use other species of salmon, such as sockeye.  I have even done this dish with cod, but the mustard flavor is strong for white fish, and the fish oil content is much lower.

3-4 Tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard

I have tried other brands, to get one that is organic, etc., but this one truly tastes best to me in this dish.  The salt content is a bit high, so this is a "special treat" dish, for us.  If you try this and find a better brand of Dijon style mustard with less salt, please let me know!

Few tablespoons of organic milk

I tried coconut milk and hubby rebelled.  Didn't go with the other flavors.  The dairy milk just cuts the mustard's strength, while the coconut milk adds new flavor.

.

Tarragon to taste

Directions:

1.     Scoop mustard into a glass measuring cup.

2.     Add milk a little at a time, stirring with a fork or mini-whisk until mixture is about as thick as very heavy cream.  Add chopped tarragon to taste... approximately a tablespoon.

3.     Spread around a small amount of sauce on bottom of glass baking dish that fits the shape and size of your salmon filet, so fish won't stick (can also wipe or spray pan thinly with olive oil).  Put salmon in pan skin side down.  

4.     Cover with sauce, including over sides, sealing to bottom of pan.  This acts as a glaze that helps keep salmon moist.

5.     DEPENDING ON THICKNESS OF FISH, and your oven, bake "about" 25 minutes or until it is almost done when you try to flake it; remove from oven quickly.  (I cook this in my convection oven at 350 degrees.  You might try a regular oven at 375 degrees.)

Tips:

·      This is great served with fresh steamed asparagus, a plain baked yam or delicata squash, and spinach-arugula salad with raspberries, avocado, walnuts, and aged balsamic vinegar.

·      When cooking salmon: KEEP FROM OVER-COOKING IT, especially if using previously frozen salmon, which dries out very easily.  Always get "fresh" salmon when you can, but never "farmed."  To keep from over-cooking, stop right before it flakes in the center, as it will keep cooking after you take it out of the oven.  (If your salmon seems "shreddy," it is over-cooked.)