So you know, its me…. SO ALL SUMMER, I will be snacking on fruit non-stop. It’s my favorite food type and its best in the summer – ripe, cool, and lean. But when I am not downing cherries, strawberries, and fresh citrus, these are my go-to recipes for during the week. I will prep them ahead of time. Weekends, Deven and I eat up leftovers, clean out the fridge, and eat out a little for a treat. I included a drink, snack, a few meals, and dessert… YUM! Hope you enjoy!!
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SKINNY ICED TEA
Tea has SO many health benefits and it is so easy to chug the cold kind in the summer. I make a whole jug for the week on Sundays. I add two black tea bags, one “smooth move” tea bag, and one Pu’Erh tea bag. Simply add all of those tea bags to a tea pot and pour boiling water over it. Let it sit until its cool. Then pour tea into jug for the fridge, add 1 packet of stevia if you like it sweet. I ALWAYS serve with tons of ice & lemon slices.
SNACKING WATERMELON
This is my favorite summer snack and it’s SO low cal. Take a whole watermelon, cut into cubes and store in large Tupperware in fridge. Take a bowl of it out when you’re ready to snack, take half a lime and squeeze lime juice onto cubes then sprinkle with cayenne pepper. BOOM. You’re done.
LEMON/ ORGEANO GRILLED CHICKEN
For this recipe, all you have to do is throw your raw chicken in a Tupperware with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, one clove of garlic, and TONS OF LEMON & OREGANO. Shake it up a ton. Let the chicken sit in this mixture overnight, shaking whenever you can. Then cook it either on the grill (this is my preference), stovetop, or bake in the oven.
THE JUICIEST BBQ CHICKEN
This is my favorite way to prepare chicken and is TOO easy. It’s actually stolen from The Pioneer woman’s BBQ Chicken Pizza recipe but you skip the pizza part!
Here’s how I make it:
- Take a small casserole dish
- Place raw chicken into dish
- Smother with your favorite BBQ sauce
- Chop red onion, throw it in with the chicken
- Sprinkle a little cayenne pepper onto chicken (as much or as little depending on how spicy you like things)
- Then hit hard with the salt & pepper
- Mush ALL this together with your hands
- Bake at 375* for 25 minutes…. It will be SO juicy and smell SO good!
- Enjoy 🙂
FRESH BRUCHETTA
This recipe comes from watching the movie Julie & Julia one to many times… I basically improved the bruschetta she makes in her little Brooklyn apartment. It’s probably Deven’s favorite thing that I cook and its relatively healthy!
Here’s how I make it:
- Slice French or Italian loaf of bread (make sure it’s good quality bread from Whole Foods or a bakery) and cut each large slice in half.
- Chop a whole box of cherry tomatoes into quarters (I like to get the multicolored little tomatoes cuz… They’re prettier!)
- Grab a huge bundle of basil, fold it over itself, and slice it lengthwise so that what you’re getting is long skinny strips of basil. Throw those in with the tomatoes.
- Take one large clove of garlic or two small ones. Peel and press through garlic press into tomatoes.
- Toss tomatoes, garlic, and basil together.
- Take a large pan, cover the bottom with olive oil and heat.
- Once hot, add your slices of bread & cook them until golden on both sides, flipping frequently.
- Once all bread is cooked, I put bread slices into a small bowl (stacked upright) and let each person put their own tomatoes onto their bread and serve it warm if possible. YUM!
FRESH (ZESTY, NOT CREAMY) CESAR SALAD
SO, you may or may not know this…. But the original Cesar salad actually wasn’t creamy. It was garlicy, lemony, zesty. But DID include parmesan & croutons. But other ingredients too. My dad has a copy of the original recipe and we make this EVERY summer as a huge family meal. It’s filling and again, relatively healthy.
Here’s how we make it (this serves two hungry people):
- Chop one head of romaine so that each section is about 1 in thick, rip them a bit as you throw each section into a large bowl
- Hard boil two eggs, set aside to cool
- Cube French bread and cook in hot olive oil on the stove until they are toasted into croutons
- Grate 1/4c Romano cheese
- Put aside ¼ olive oil
- Add 3 crushed cloves of garlic to the olive oil
- Juice ½ a lemon, add juice to olive oil
- ½ a raw egg (YES, a raw egg) and add to olive oil mixture
- Heavily salt & pepper the olive oil/ garlic/ lemon mixture, whip mixture with a fork until smooth
- Chop hard boiled eggs, add to romaine in large bowl
- Add croutons to large bowl
- Add grated Romano cheese to large bowl
- Toss in olive oil mixture, mix well, add a little more salt & pepper
- Top with chicken, anchovies, or even steak if you’re feelin’ fancy!
- ENJOY J
NICE CREAM
So nice cream was one of the best discoveries I have ever made. When I first heard people talking about it, I thought…. That’s SO DUMB. There is NO way a banana tastes like ice cream – LOL! What kind of an idiot would believe that?? Except THEN, I kept seeing more and more food/ health bloggers INSISTING that it tasted like ice cream… Hmmm…. So I got curious. Tried it. Haven’t looked back since! It tastes like ice cream.
Here’s how I make mine:
- Freeze a banana IN THE PEEL (it doesn’t taste the same if you peel and chop them beforehand).
- Peel and put in blender
- Add a handful of spinach
- Add a pinch of flax seed
- Add a splash of vanilla
- BLEND & ENJOY!
Pretty easy huh? So few calories, so many nutrients, and all the while, you feel like you’re indulging on a big bowl of ice cream 🙂
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Which one will you make first??
x
Antigone