Low Sodium Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

There are quite a few things that I made on a regular basis. Weekly dinner menus in my house usually consist of a chicken day, a fish day, taco day, and a spaghetti day. I've been trying to make more conscious food choices for my entire family. While reading the ingredients and nutrition facts of a jar of spaghetti the other day, I was gobsmacked to learn that every single jar of sauce contained approximately 350-400mg of sodium PER SERVING!!! This is extreme considering the recommended sodium intake for the average person is somewhere on the lines of 1500mg daily. For some people the sodium in one serving of sauce is acceptable. However, a jar of sauce contains about seven servings and most people don't have just one serving of sauce with their noodles. With a single meal, you could easily consume the entire recommended daily allowance of sodium! For people with high blood pressure (like myself) that extra sodium isn't only unnecessary, but extremely unhealthy.

I left the store feeling hopeful though. I've made several food items from scratch and jumped on the chance to make my own spaghetti sauce. Within the hour, I had made a sauce that was sweet, tangy, and had just enough kick of spice that I will only make my own spaghetti sauce from now on. And the best part of it was the entire pot of sauce contained 200mg of sodium, and it was from the store-bought tomato paste! I added ground beef to my sauce, but you can add whatever else you want to the base sauce. Next time I plan on making a mushroom marinara instead of beef.

This is what you'll need for the spaghetti sauce:

6 medium tomatoes

1 medium onion

1 head of garlic (about 5-6 cloves)

1 large bell pepper

1 10-ounce can tomato paste

To taste:

Basil

Oregano

Thyme

Pepper 

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. In that boiling water, add the tomatoes. Boil tomatoes for one minute. The skin should start puckering and peeling off. Transfer tomatoes to a pot of cold water and peel the tomato skins off in the pot of cold water. Quarter the peeled tomatoes and transfer into an empty pot.

2. In the pot of quartered tomatoes, add the remaining vegetable (all chopped into small pieces), garlic (peeled and chopped as well), and the herbs. Put the stove burner on medium low and allow tomatoes and vegetables to stew for half an hour. Be sure to check the vegetables periodically so that they don't burn to the bottom of the pot.

3. Once tomatoes are mushy and there is lots of liquid in the pot (about 30 minutes), take a a potato masher and mash the remaining large tomatoes up into much smaller pieces. It will literally look as if you are making a stew.

4. Once the tomatoes and vegetables are mashed up, add the tomato paste. Mix all together and season additionally if needed. 

5. Allow spaghetti sauce to summer on low for at least another 15 minutes, taking time to stir frequently.

Once the tomato paste is mixed in, you can add in pre-cooked beef or raw mushrooms. Thicker veggies can be added in with the other veggies before you start stewing them. 

We put our sauce over a bed of blue and green noodles (Chloe's idea!) and served them with salad and garlic bread. This was the first time ever that I didn't feel guilty about spaghetti night at my house! I knew that it was healthy and hearty. The sauce got rave reviews in my house last night. Even our German Shepard, Ascha, liked it! 

I hope you give the sauce a try. It's extremely easy to make and you could put it over anything. I'm thinking about making a baked eggplant Parmesan with my sauce next time.

Happy Friday, everyone! I've worked out every day for the last 12 days. I'm taking a much-deserved day off from the gym, but will be back at it tomorrow! Have a wonderful weekend and I hope to hear your comments on the sauce!

A Healthier Roasted Chicken with Vegetables

About 8 months ago I posted a recipe for roasted chicken with vegetables. I remember eating it. It was absolutely delicious! Looking back, I see that I could have made this recipe a lot healthier for my family and for myself. I used a bit of butter (not criminal, but I could have opted for a healthier oil) and I used salt as well (I have high blood pressure, so keeping a low-sodium diet is a must now).

Last night, I roasted chicken again with some vegetables. I made healthier choices by choosing skinless chicken, no salt, and olive oil instead of butter. The results were incredible. It was still moist and juicy and using seasonal vegetables gave the meal an entirely different flavor, so it wasn't like the other roasted vegetables from November.

This is what you'll need for my healthier roasted chicken with vegetables:

Yields 4 servings
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 55 minutes

8 boneless skinless chicken thighs (or breasts if you want to save about 50 calories per serving)
2 ears of corn, shucked and peeled
1 large bell pepper
2 C green beans, uncooked
8 large mushrooms
1 zucchini
1/3 eggplant
1 small sweet onion
2 medium tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic
1/4 C olive oil, halved

To taste (use half with chicken and half with veggies):
Chopped sage (usually about one handful)
Rosemary (about 2 sprigs pulled from the stem)
Oregano (about a palm full)
Celery Seed (about 4 tablespoons)
Pepper


1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. While oven is preheating, slice bell pepper, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, and onion. Chop garlic up finely as well. Slice the tomatoes, but save them for later.

2. In a roasting pan (or glass pan that you can cover in aluminum foil), place the chicken on the bottom center and season with herbs to taste, then drizzle half of the olive oil on top of the chicken.

3. Place the shucked corn at either side of the chicken and cover the corn and chicken with the sliced veggies, garlic, herbs, and the rest of the olive oil.

4. Cover roasting pan with a lid (or glass pan with aluminum foil) and roast in the oven for 45 minutes.

5. At the end of the roasting time, remove the the lid (or foil) and place the sliced tomatoes on the top. Keep the lid off and place the pan back in the oven for another ten minutes.

Once everything was completed, I cut each ear of corn in half and divvied it up on the plates. Because we are a family of three and Chloe and I eat half portions, we have plenty of leftovers for lunch this week!

I hope that you try this tonight. The chicken was juicy, the eggplant and zucchini tasted just like summertime, and the overall experience of preparing this meal (and eating it) was wonderful!

July 17, 2013

Even the fittest girl has an Achille's Heel. Mine, sadly, are two specific foods: spaghetti and tacos. I can eat mindfully when it comes to anything else: I use proper portion control, I fill my plate reasonably, and I don't go in for seconds. But spaghetti and tacos, man.... I go in for seconds. And thirds. And more and more. By the time I'm done, I hadn't even realized I had three helpings of spaghetti or four tacos. This is something that I am constantly working on in an effort to live healthier. The good news is that I do follow the 90/10 rule: 90% of healthy and 10% of what I want. Luckily for me, my entire week won't be derailed from one day of spaghetti.

With that said, yesterday was an overall good day. I enjoyed an hour of cardio, pushing it harder and working that much more yielded great results that I'm so proud of! For breakfast, I had my fruit and kale smoothie, which I still encourage you all to try kale in the mornings. I use one cup of kale, one bananas, two cups of frozen fruit, and water (though some prefer yogurt or milk), and blend it all together. My fruit smoothies are so filling and only about 250 calories. If you require more calories in the morning, even it out with a piece of whole wheat toast covered in either peanut butter or hazelnut spread. I still have my mornings of eggs, oatmeal, and toast, but lately, the smoothies have been hitting the spot!

Yesterday was my cardio day. I took my spin class that I always take on Tuesday. This week, I decided that I needed to push myself more. Every time the instructor told me to add "a little more tension," I did, and I added more, pushing myself out of my comfort zone! The results were great! I burned 719 calories in an hour. That's 74 calories more than last week's spin class! Pushing  yourself is hard, but the reward is so worth it!

For lunch, I took some of my leftover ceviche and put it on my veggie sandwich. My veggie sandwich consists of 1/4 avocado, 1/2 tomato, a few slices of onion and mango chutney. Adding that shrimp ceviche on gave me some extra protein (which I really needed after my workout) and it tasted wonderful! You can use leftovers in a variety of ways! You never have to eat leftovers the same way twice!

On my agenda is back and traps at the gym during lunch and a run to and from the youth center before and after work. I've included my accountability report for yesterday: calories burned, my smoothie, and my ceviche sandwich. I hope you all have a wonderful day! The week is already half over... I know you can see the weekend right over the horizon!

July 16, 2013

Do you ever have one of those days where you just can't stop dancing or smiling, and you are having a wonderful day for no particular reason? Well, that was yesterday for me! I woke up for work bright and early for work (for those who don't know, my current work shift is 4AM-1PM, so I'm up at 3:50AM to work from my home office), feeling like the day was going to be great. Instead of sitting down, I stood up in front of my computer, helping my customers, talking with co-workers, and dancing to no music. My breakfast was awesome, my work day was awesome, my kid and husband were awesome, and my following workout and evening were spectacular! 

Monday was my chest and shoulders day. I also switched up my cardio machine. I usually LOVE the cross-country machine, but I opted for the elliptical instead. The different muscle groups that it hit and the sweat dripping down my chest, back, and face were confirmation that I made the right choice! I ended up burning 500 calories and felt pretty freakin' wonderful afterwards! 

After the gym, my husband and I ran to the store to grab some more fresh fruit. We are eating so many more fruits and veggies without even thinking twice about it! It makes it so much easier to make healthier snack choices when there are ripe peaches, apples, and bananas sitting in a HUGE bowl on your dining room table! It's a great start to clean eating if you are interested in giving it a shot! 

Even though we are making cleaner food choices, we do still have a ways to go. The biggest hurdle that I have at this time is dessert. Even though it's not clean, I made delicious lemon crinkle cookies yesterday. The recipe did call for powdered sugar, which I didn't use, but you can always use it if you'd like to. In the future, I'm going to add my own lemon zest and juice to amp up the lemon flavor. As well, I'm looking into healthier alternatives for the boxed cake mix and Cool Whip (read: LESS PROCESSED SUGAR). However, since the recipe was so easy and fast (3 ingredients, 3 dozen, 30 minutes), I'm going to share it with you. Chloë helped me with making these and we had an absolute blast working together!

Here's what you need for crinkle cookies:

1 box of cake mix (I chose lemon today. Get what you want!)

1 8-oz package Cool Whip

1 egg

1. Lightly beat egg. Add cake mix and fold in Cool Whip.

2. Drop small balls of mix (it will be very sticky) onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. I used a table spoonful per cookie.

3. In an oven preheated to 350 degrees, bake cookies for 10-12 minutes.

4. Pull cookies out when finished baking. Allow to cool for several minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

These cookies were so easy to make and yielding a large amount- three dozen. The best thing about these cookies were they were only 64 calories each! My husband and I enjoyed a couple each while sitting on the front porch together last night without feeling guilty about having dessert. 

Finally, while my daughter and I were watching "Aladdin" last night (my favorite movie of all time), I was surfing the web and came across a witty, yet inspiring poster. It really hit home because there are days when all I want to do is sleep or be a couch potato or just do nothing at all, but this poster says it all: 

Keep this in mind if you are ever thinking about skipping your workout. Hell, keep this in mind when you think about skipping out on anything that you know is beneficial for you. You'll NEVER regret taking time for yourself and doing something good for yourself. Taking time to make a nice meal, a fun dessert, spending time with those you love, or working out is what makes life fun and interesting. So don't skip something because you don't feel like it. 

Have a great Tuesday, everyone! Today is my cardio day and I can't wait to get on that spin cycle and crush it! I hope you all have plans to get out there and make it one of those days where you can't stop dancing!