Light Vegetable Soup
- First, put a pot on the stove. Add a generous amount of water - a cup, or two cups, if you prefer. With this whole recipe, feel free to add what intuitively feels correct for the proportions you're intending to add. This is simply guiding you through what I did my first time. I did not exactly measure anything out, so be prepared if you need to add a little more water or a little more broth later on after taste-testing it. I'm just recollecting what I put together through experimentation, so again, you may need to end up doing different measurements to your liking than what is stated here. I'm simply estimating the amounts I had originally put.
- Second, cut up whatever vegetables you have or want to use. For my first time, I used a mix of thinly sliced potatoes, cut up leek, fresh parsley, and fresh cilantro. For seasoning, I used a touch of cumin, a bit of oregano, and some salt (not too much). Also, stir the soup every couple of minutes, especially when you add in new ingredients.
- Third, add in some broth - whether it's chicken, beef, or another flavor, is up to you (I used beef) - add between 1/4-1/6 of the amount of water you used, because you don't want this to be a heavy soup. If you add too much broth, it will become thicker and heavier, which is not what we want. You want it light in flavor and feeling.. unless you do actually want it heavier, then add more to the point you desire. Make sure the stove is turned on medium-high. Low if you wish for the veggies to be cooked more thoroughly, I suppose.
- Then, this is very important. Make sure you have a soup packet called "Osuimono". You can buy it here on Amazon. The soup is relatively light in flavor and calories, so if you're on a low calorie/low carb diet, tune the vegetable ingredients to your liking (i.e. don't add things like potatoes). However, since I put about 2 cups of water, I added 2 packets of Osuimono to the pot. Osuimono has seaweed bits, so it has a little hint of seaweed flavor as well, though it isn't so strong that it'll overpower everything else, so you have no need to worry (unless you add too many packets or have basically nothing else in the pot aside from water...).
- Finally, once your soup is at the boiling point that it may start to overflow (don't actually let it overflow, though...), stir it a little more and then taste it, making sure it's customized to your liking. If you wish, you may add something like instant ramen to it. Any flavor of ramen will do. It pairs well together and adds more substance, if you aren't counting the carbs.
Greek Lemon Garlic Pork
- First, take a bowl and add quite a bit of pure virgin olive oil to make sure it's enough to marinate and cover our pork in but not too much so you aren't smothering it in a pool or anything and killing it. Then, add in a mix of greek seasoning, fresh ground black pepper, and salt.
- Second, add in some fresh herbs such as cilantro and bay leaves. You should also cut up fresh garlic and green onion. I only used one clove.
- Third, add some butter into the mix and melt it in a pot or pan on the stove or in the microwave. Mix that well into the olive oil base. Add some honey and lemon juice (I used freshly squeezed). If you want, you can cut up two or so lemon slices to sit ontop of the pork later while it marinates.
- Then, add in your pork and mix it up in the sauce you've made. Make sure it's well coated on both sides. For marinating, I put it in a pan and put that in my fridge, though you can use whatever you have available to you. If you wish, this is when you would add ontop your sliced lemons if you have them and you can also optionally sprinkle just a little bit of garlic powder ontop of the pork. (I know there's already a whole clove, but the powder ensures you get that flavor a bit more soaked into the pork as well).
- You can leave it in the fridge to marinate however long you wish, but I advise that every few hours if you can to turn the pork over so that both sides can be equally marinated.
- Finally, you can cook it however you wish. However, I decided to cook it in my oven. That's it. You're done. If you want a sauce on the side, choose whatever you think tastes good.
Simply Refreshing Healthy Snack 1
- 1. Make 1 slice of tomato and 1 slice of cucumber (both fresh, and organic tastes better if you can get it). For this, I also peeled the skin off the tomato slice (do it with your fingers gently! so you don't break the slice), but you don't have to if you prefer it that way.
- 2. Take pesto (yes, pesto!) and spread a little bit on top of the tomato slice. Also, put dijon mustard (specifically! dijon) on it as well on the same side and mix it in a little with the pesto, but not too much - just sort of put them both together on top of the tomato slice. Side by side, mix it in together, or however you want to do it is fine. You can use anything you like to spread, but I used my finger so that I wouldn't overuse anything like you may do if you use a spoon or fork or knife, but I'm not really sure if that's actually correct or not, so feel free to do it however you like.
- 3. Put a little bit of hummus (I used roasted garlic flavor) on one side of the sliced cucumber. Grind some fresh black pepper ontop of the hummus, and then place the cucumber hummus-side face down on top of the tomato connecting the pepper-ified hummus to the pesto/dijon.
- 4. To finish it all off, sprinle a little bit of greek seasoning on top of the blank side of the cucumber, and then serve on a plate if you wish to do so. You're done. I like this recipe, so I hope you do too. Feel free to customize it however you like with the ingredeients, but I like it this way.
Note: if you would like, I'd suggest trying it with a piece of toasted garlic bread and once the toast is done sprinkle some oregano on top of it and then add the tomato-cucumber snack onto that and try it. My s/o and I both approve. However, this snack is good both by itself and paired with toast. I'll leave it up to you to find what else may pair well with it (and I may update the suggestions for this if I find something myself).
name is TBD.
- 1. Make white rice. Any rice is fine, but just make it. Add some salt to help cook it, not too much though.
- 2. Put rice in bowl. Any bowl is fine. Just put as much as you will eat in the bowl.
- 3. Brown a bit of butter in a pan and then fry veggies (I used bell peppers and onions) in it. Make sure they taste really good. I also used fresh garlic.
- 4. Layer the veggies ontop of the rice inside of the bowl.
- 5. Fry 2-3 eggs in the same pan and wait until they're fried but don't let them stick to the pan. Add more butter or oil if you need to. Preferably olive oil but any oil should be fine as long as the flavor profiles of the two things match. I also used some general greek seasoning, oregano, and black pepper for the eggs and veggies, and in the next step, also for the meat. Also a bit of salt but not too much. Just a tiny bit. I sprinkled some salt and black pepper on top after everything was plated correctly but you don't have to if you put enough in previous steps. Just don't make it too much pepper or too salty.
- 6. Heat up some left over meat (or if you don't have any, I suggest buying and/or just cooking some pork, since that's what I used, but steak or beef or chicken should be fine - I don't know about fish though, you'd have to try that out yourself.) Then place the rice on top of or next to the eggs ontop of the veggies ontop of the rice.
- 7. Make some pesto or buy it, it doesn't matter. Put the pesto on the side of the eggs on the side of the meat.
- 8. You're done. Enjoy! (I know my wording is abit rushed and wacky, so I'll fix it later when I'm sober.)
Sweet Vitamin C Concoction
- Pour your favorite orange juice into a glass. I used the brand Coral Reef because it is, in my opinion, one of the highest quality, sweet but not too sweet orange juice brands in my area. Use whatever works for you though. Then all you need is a fresh grapefruit and a fresh lemon, along with some honey. Cut the grapefruit in half and squeeze only one half into the cup (before or after putting in the orange juice is fine, I put it in before, so it doesn't really matter what order you do this in. Then take some lemon, a slice or two, or however much lemon juice you want, and add it to the mix. Then add a little bit of honey and mix it all together and it should be really good.
PLEASE NOTE that if you use a low quality brand and low quality ingredients, it will most likely taste bad, or if you use too much of one ingredient it won't taste right. I advise you to adjust it to your taste, but I think that if you're on this page, you would know how much juice of each thing you want in it, and how much honey you want. Also, don't expect the honey to mix in well without mixing it rather well. I used a butterknife to mix it in. It's a simple but good juice that tastes good and it also may help to soothe a sore throat (don't quote me on that, but it did help mine).
Hot Chocolate Chai
- Make a cup of hot chai tea and mix in a hot chocolate packet or some melted chocolate (however you want to do it is fine). Then all you do is add a splash of milk and a small dollop of honey and you're done. (It's really good)
So far, the most recent one I've created as of 1/8/2024, FRUITY PEANUT GRILLED CHICKEN & SAUSAGE STIRFRY (HOT) into BARBEQUE CHICKEN AND SAUSAGE STIRFRY (COLD).
- First, make a sauce using peanut butter (I used creamy), cranberry orange juice relish, water, milk, a little bit of garlic powder and a little bit of basil. Mix it all up.
- Second, grill some chicken (I used breast) and whatever sausage you want (I used andouille sausage precooked). Put the grilled meats into a pan with some bell pepper and onion (I used red peppers and sweet onions).
- Next, after all that is done, put the sauce into the pan after the meats and veggies (you can also add other veggies, I just use what I had...) and then add some greek seasoning (yes, yes, I know I use this a lot but still it helps) and then let it cook a bit before serving. I also added a bit of olive oil so nothing would burn but that isn't really necessary if you don't want to or don't have it.
- Finally, it's done. Pretty simple and easy. It sounds weird, but it tastes super good!!! When the sauce is hot with the meat and veggies it tastes like peanut butter cranberry orange juice sauce. When it's cold it tastes like barbeque!!! Super weird but it tastes great. However, make sure that if you want it cold, you put it in the fridge to get cold, instead of leaving it out. I do not know what would happen if you leave it out... but I would not risk it, and instead put it in the fridge where it is safe. I hope you enjoy :heart-emoji: :prayer-emoji:
Avocado (ripe or not) Salsa Dip with Crackers (I had saltines, but you can use what you have/like).
- However you do it, mash up an avocado - use the entire thing, except the pit. Mash it up as much as you can.
- Add a little bit of butter, lime juice, (optional) spicy salsa/hot sauce (I used tobasco habenaro), all purpose greek seasoning, a bit of milk, and then putting it in the microwave if you need to to make mixing easier.
- Mix all together if you haven't already and then also add some flavor of pasta sauce (I used tomato basil flavor). That's it. It shuold be alright.
Sweet, Sour, & Savory Porkchops
- Melt salted butter in a pan, it doesn't need to be browned but it would probably taste better if you know how to do that.
- Cook the porkchops in the pan on the stove without a lid for a bit until it's nice and around halfway cooked on one side.
- Season the still raw side (the one facing up, you shouldn't have flipped it yet - but it's fine if you did. It works either way) with dill weed seasoning, black pepper, and curry powder (since it already has cumin, tumeric for color, and all the other good flavors). You can wait a couple minutes to let the other side cook a little more or just flip the side you just seasoned to make it face down.
- Give it a few minutes to let the other side cook a bit (the one you just seasoned) and then season the more cooked side facing upwards - at this point, you should add a few pickled banana peppers and some cut up/diced shallots (or any onion but I used shallots). Make sure they start to caramlize but don't let them burn. Nothing should be sticking to the pan.
- Feel free to flip it as much or often as you feel is necessary at this point, but you're not done yet. Next, add a little bit of fresh squeezed lemon juice to each side or just the dish in general is fine as well - not too much though. Also, it is optional, but I used orange peel seasoning so it would have a little more of that flavor to it.
- At this point it should be smelling good, but missing something. It's okay if it's a little too vinegar-y right now. Take a bowl or cup of sorts, and mix olive oil and honey (you can use any honey but I used organic honey). Make sure it's mixed well to the point that the honey becomes more liquid-y and it's pretty much sweet olive oil. Add this mixture to the pork and use it as a sort of "sauce" or basting thing or whatever. Don't use too much oil or honey because you don't want it too sweet but you don't want too much oil left over (unless you plan to cook it with something else like veggies afterwards which is fine, though I didn't try that yet).
- Now the aroma of the pork should be really nice. It shouldn't be too savory, too sour/vinegar-y, or too sweet. You can adjust the amounts of flavors to your liking to how strong you like each of them to be, but I made them roughly around the same strength (I guess is the term? I'm unsure) so that nothing was really overpowering anything else. Once the pork is (or is close to) done, you can add salt if you need to - I actually added in salt a little earlier but I didn't know where to put this optional step so I ended up typing it here. This should be about it.
- Notes:
1. I feel like this would have been good with a variety of stir-fry veggies on the side and fresh mozerella cheese. I had swiss and some other kind of Irish cheese, but the flavors were just unsuitable. Mozerella has a subtle flavor, so I think it'd go well with it (rice might be good as well since it also has a bland/almost palette cleansing factor to it, though fresh Italian mozerella has a really nice and refreshing subtle flavor).
2. It may have also been good with a bit of heat to it, so if you would want it spicy, maybe adding cayenne powder or something would be good. I wouldn't recommend hot sauce because depending on the kind you use and how much you use, it could become too vinegar-y and whatnot. Something like cayenne powder would be easier to control the amount of, and it wouldn't add anything but spiciness and maybe a little bit of pepper flavor.
3. You can also serve this dish with any drink you like, though I recommend something carbonated and/or refreshing to drink. I find that it paired really well with a cocktail mixer drink (non-alcoholic) that I had tried which was really good. It's called Owen's Ginger Beer. The carbonated but kind of sweet but not too sweet ginger drink goes well with it. It's much better than something like ginger ale soda. It's a little similar, I suppose, but it just tastes much better in my opinion. I would recommend it.
4. I guess it's okay to also try and substitute honey + olive oil with sugar and more butter, but you would need to be willing to experiment with that since I do not have nor feel like going to buy sugar. I do not think I can say this enough, but I'd not recommend using a lot of olive oil or honey. A little bit goes a long way. I hope you like the dish.