Super Bowl parties – or any time you bring a group of friends together – doesn’t need to mean lots of time in the kitchen, or a quick run to the local take-out place. It’s pretty easy to pump up your parties with some simple tricks, using flavorful ingredients. Take popcorn, for instance. We did an article on why you should make your own, and why everyone will rave about your popcorn (click HERE). And you can pull the same trick with any nut mixture, Chex, etc (click HERE). Just take some unsalted nuts and/or Chex, toss with some healthy oil (we prefer sunflower), then toss with your favorite spice rub from the Serious Foodie . Bake at 250 deg for 1 hour, tossing every 15 minutes. How about the world’s easiest fancy finger food – crostini (or bruschetta; click HEREfor an explanation about the differences). We featured a crostini recipe with brie, arugula, and Serious Foodie Fig/Orange sauce (click HERE), along with links to other websites for other crostini recipes. Check out these cool crostini recipes: Kale & White Bean (click HERE), Sweet Potato & Feta (click HERE), Radish & Miso Butter (click HERE), and Smoked Trout & Apple (click HERE). And the […]
Category: Healthy snacks
Spice Rub Honey Roasted Snack Mix
There are so many things you can do with spice blends, besides grilling your favorite spice rubbed meats. How about snacks? As part of our own healthy eating trend at home, we wanted to do something quick and easy that would satisfy our craving for something sweet and salty, and maybe a bit spicy. And we knew we could come up with something better than what we could buy in the store, so we investigated a bunch of honey-roasted nut and snack mix recipes to find a great one to serve with your favorite summer time adult beverage. You can use this recipe with just about any combination of nuts, pretzels, chickpeas, etc. Print Recipe Spice Rub Honey Roasted Snack Mix Use a hefty amount of almonds to get the biggest healthy impact – lots of nutrients and protein in our version. Votes: 0 Rating: 0 You: Rate this recipe! Prep Time 10 minutes Cook Time 20 minutes Servings people MetricUS Imperial Ingredients 1 pound Mixed nuts, unsalted Low salt snack mixes also work well. We used almonds, cashews, pecans, Rice Chex, and gluten free pretzels3 tablespoons honey Maple syrup also works1 tablespoons unsalted butter Coconut oil can be substituted2 […]
Diet with Paleo or Veggie?
Paleo or vegetarian? It’s a hard choice when trying to lose some weight, and wanting to maintain a healthy diet (we’re not going to be making any value judgments on meat versus vegetables here). We tried a strict vegetarian diet – and lost hardly any weight. Too many legumes and grains drove our carb load up. It’s not impossible, just hard. But we’re not knocking the veggie/vegan trend at all, but we just need to lose a few pounds. And many of us do like our meat. Here’s our compromise: 3 days vegetarian, 3 days paleo. We leave one day for “cheating”, adding maybe a bit of carb. So far, so good. After a few weeks, we’re down a few pounds. When we do our vegetarian thing, we absolutely need and want flavor. But without adding much in the way of calories. So here’s a few tricks: • Use sauces. Lots of flavor packed into a small amount of calories. Our favorites are Serious Foodie Korean sauce and sriracha (the natural, organic stuff if you can find it). • Flavored oils and vinegars. If you like mushroom, then drizzle a bit of truffle oil over anything. Not cheap stuff, but […]
Our Popcorn Obsession
Obsessed. With. Popcorn. And it’s probably a good thing. Along with many others, the Serious Foodie has resolved to put more healthy eating and a bit of weight loss on the menu for 2018. We started our plan first off looking for a snacking routine that was low calorie, satisfying, and delicious. This is a tall order, but popcorn is literally made to fit the bill. Problem is, healthy delicious popcorn seemed to be an oxymoron (no, we’re not talking about politicians). We tried so many pre-made brands claiming to be healthy, but there was a still a lot of crap stuck to the bottom of the bag with most of them. Nothing deadly, but still not what we wanted. And never tasting really fresh. Then we tried various “just popcorn” brands with low or no salt, low fat. No thank you, I’ll just eat the bag – much more flavor, just as much fiber. How about microwaved popcorn? Been there, done that – smells bad, tastes, and it has nasty stuff in the bag/on the bag. Then we went back to the old-fashioned, make it on your stove top version. Turns out, once you have a few tricks down, […]