Clean Dinner Plate: Pork Chops, Cauliflower Mash (faux mashed potatoes) and Fall Kale Salad

Yeah yall, I went all out for this meal. I have never been a pork chop person, but I wanted something to test out this cranberry sauce on before I subjected everyone to it at Thanksgiving and let me tell you- the marinade I put on these pork chops changed my taste on this. I'm in the pork chop club. Officially. As long as I marinade it the same every single time.

Oh and I had my first experiment with kale. And goat cheese. And fruit. And nuts. All together. HELLO.

Can we just talk about how much work this amazing meal took? About 4% of my evening energy, but it appears to the eaters that it took hours. bwahaha.

Pork Chop Marinade: 
Servings: 2
Prep Time: 1 minute

Ingredients:

• 3 Tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar
• 3 Tablespoons Raw Honey
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt

 Yep. That's it. Put it in a ziploc freezer bag, shake it up and mush it around until it's all blended together. Add the pork chops to the bag, seal, and allow to marinate in the fridge for an hour or 2.

Put the marinated pork chops (2) onto a frying pan over medium heat and cover. Allow to cook 7 minutes on each side. So, that was easy. I'm still confused about why that was so easy yet tasted so good.

Garlic Cauliflower Mash (Low Carb Mashed Potato Substitute)
Servings: 2
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1/2 head of cauliflower ($2.50)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup chicken broth ($.50)
• 1 teaspoon ceyenne pepper

Cut the florets (the flower things) off the stems. Put the florets, minced garlic, and chicken broth in a pot and bring to a boil. Once the broth and cauli are boiling put a lid on it and reduce the heat to medium. Let it cook for about 10 minutes.

Test to make sure they're ready to come out by poking the florets with a fork- the fork should easily poke through the florets.

Dump the contents of the pot into a blender and add the ceyenne pepper. Pulse until you have a mashed potato-y substance.

Cranberry Sauce:
Servings: About 2 cups
Prep Time: 1 minute
Cook Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

• 12 oz bag of fresh cranberries ($4.00)
• 1/2 cup honey ($1.00)
• 1 cup water
• 1 cinnamon stick 

Put all the ingredients in a pot and cook over medium for 30 minutes stirring occasionally. That's it. Once some of the liquid is cooked off you're going to have to stir more to make sure it doesn't get stuck to the pan.

Fall Kale Salad:
Servings: 2
Prep Time: 5 mins
Cook Time: 0

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of kale ($3.50)
• 1/2 lemon worth of lemon juice ($.30)
• 1 apple, diced ($.99)
• 1/2 cup craisins ($.50)
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts ($.50)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese ($1.00- I def added more. As I've said before, goat cheese is crack for white girls)
• 2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 3 Tablespoons honey

Rinse off the kale, pat dry with a paper towel, and put in a bowl with the garlic salt and lemon juice and massage it (yes, just rub it with your hands, it's weird) for about 5 minutes or until the kale has turned a darker green and is softer and wiltier. Add all the ingredients and toss together.

THESE cauliflower florets with chicken broth...

Turn into THESE faux garlic mashed potatoes

and THIS

turns into THIS cranberry sauce!

 

Clean {Faux Fried} Chicken Fingers

When I visited my brother in Memphis I cheated on clean eating a little bit with soul food. Ok, I cheated a lot. We ate a LOT of soul food, and man did it make me miss all southern cuisine. Enter: Dijon Mustard and Stone Ground Corn Meal for the win! These crispy baked chicken tenders were so delicious. I made a southern faux-fried chicken salad, the BF dipped his in BBQ sauce. They were awesome.

Servings: 4
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 25 mins

Ingredients

• 1.5 lbs turkey breast, sliced into the size you want your tenders (I wanted mine to look like real chicken tenders so I sliced them long and thin) ($4.50)
• 1/2 bottle Dijon Mustard with no sugar added ($1.00)
• 1 Cup Stone Ground Corn Meal
• 1 tsp ceyenne pepper
• 1 tsp pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil. Set out 2 bowls. Put the Dijon Mustard into one bowl, and combine the corn meal with pepper and ceyenne pepper into the other bowl. Dip a strip of chicken into the mustard until it is covered in mustard. Then set the mustard covered chicken into the corn meal and roll it around until it is completely coated with cornmeal. Place it onto the baking sheet. Repeat this with all your chicken finger. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the center of the chicken fingers are completely white (no pink!).

The assembly line

I chopped up my chicken and put it with arugula, chopped onions and diced tomatoes. Yuuummm. 

Clean Eating Rosemary Crusted Tilapia

It was a hit! We had it "Italian Style" aka we each drank a bottle of red wine (yes I said we each had our own bottle with dinner- anyone have a clean eating hangover cure?) with our fish, which somehow increases the deliciousness of any meal. 

For the Clean Eating Rosemary Crusted Tilapia
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 10-15 mins
Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1/3 Cup Old Fashioned Oats ($.50)
• 1/4 Cup Cornmeal ($.40)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 lemon (for the juice) + 1 sliced lemon for garnish ($1.00)
• 1 Tbsp Parsley (I used fresh chopped parsley but you can use dry parsley too)
• Rosemary (enough to sprinkle a little on top of each fish)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper 
• 4 white fish (tilapia, flounder, cod..I just bought the cheapest pack I could find- $12 for a pack of 4 tilapias!)
• 4 bottles of wine (JK, but the red wine blend does go REAL well with this meal)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Put the oats in the food processor or the blender on grind until they are all finely ground up. Mix the ground oats, cornmeal, garlic, lemon juice, and seasonings together in a bowl. Put the thawed filets onto a baking sheet covered with foil or parchment paper (yay easy cleanup!) and spoon the mix evenly on top of the thawed fish filets. Sprinkle each filet with rosemary. Heat them in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the topping is golden.

Arugula Side Salad (sidenote- this is a great addition to any meaty meal): 
Prep Time: 2 minutes
Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 4 handfuls of Arugula ($4.00/bag)
• 2 tomato, diced ($1.00)
• 2 cucumber, diced ($1.00)
• 1/8 large onion, minced
• Balsamic Vinegar to taste

Your topping should look like this. Kind of pukey looking.

Put the topping on the fishy fishayyyy and heat em up

OH and don't forget to sing this song while you cook:

Clean Cava Copycat Salad

And so the week of leftovers continues to yield great discoveries!

I love the idea of Cava- a Chipotle-esque salad place. But I don't love spending twelve dollars on a salad. The BF made this based on his favorite twelve dollar lettucy concoction and is apparently never going to need to go back to Cava again.

Prep Time: 30 minutes (if you are using leftover turkey burgers like we did then it's 10 minutes)

Cook Time: 20 minutes for the burgers, if you have leftovers then 0 minutes

Servings: 1 filling salad serving for a 250 lb manchild (to me this is 3 servings)

Ingredients:

• 3 handfuls of arugula ($1.00)
• 1 handful of spinach ($.50)
• 1/2 bell pepper- diced ($.90)
• 3 slices onion- diced 
• 1 tomato ($1.00)
• 1/4 cup chopped mushrooms ($1.00)
• 1 heaping spoonful of Tahini flavored hummus
• 1 garlicy turkey burger cut up into little pieces OR if you don't have the turkey burgers made you could 1/8 lb of lean turkey meat and combine with garlic and a few slices of chopped up onions and get the same taste/texture

In a small frying pan saute the bell pepper, onion and mushrooms. Combine all the ingredients, including the sauteed veggies and toss together. We do this in a giant tupperware so we can put the lid on and shake it up niiiiceee and gooood. This was actually really good and we are definitely eating it again.

Clean Eating Taco Salad with Avocado Sauce

Look I LOVE Mexican food. It doesn't matter what kind or what's in it or how clean/dirty the restaurant serving it is- give me some hot sauce and I'll eat the whole thing. So on Sunday I prepped all the ingredients for my taco salad and had pretty much the best week ever (my food plays a big role in how my week goes ok?). This is so easy to make, easy to store for the week, super healthy and filling and completely clean.

Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 30 mins (for the quinoa)
Servings: 5 (one week's worth of lunches)

For the Taco Salad
Ingredients:

• 1 can black beans ($1.00)
• 2 cloves of garlic minced
• 1 tomato chopped ($1.00)
• 1/4 large onion diced ($.25)
• 1 avocado diced ($1.50)
• 1 head of lettuce or bag of lettuce- I mixed spinach, mixed greens, and arugula ($3.50)
• Small container of fat-free Greek Yogurt ($2.00)
• 1 cup cooked quinoa ($1.00)

Combine beans (undrained), garlic, tomato and onion into a sauce pan and mix together. Cook over medium heat on the stove for 5-10 minutes or until it is aromatic. Store the bean mixture, lettuce, avocado and Greek Yogurt separately. Put it all into a tupperware in the morning for an easy to-go taco salad. I switch up the avocado and avocado sauce to keep things exciting.

For the avocado sauce:

• 1 avocado diced ($1.50)
• 1 tomato chopped ($1.00)
• 1/4 large onion diced ($.25)
• 2 cloves garlic minced 
• Handful of cilantro or parsley (I had fresh parsley that was about to go bad, it worked!)

Put all this in the food processor or blender. If you're using a blender put it on "liquify" or an equivalent setting and let 'er rip. If you're using a food processor pulse it until you get a creamy green substance. Instead of the tomato/onion/garlic/etc you can use just combine a clean salsa with the avocado (Trader Joe's has a lot of great options, but so does the regular grocery store. Check the label and make sure nothing unclean is in it like corns syrup, sugar, artificial flavors, etc).