Simple lunch

I just made a simple and delicious lunch. I ate it before I could take any pictures of it. Hell, I ate it, standing, in the kitchen, before I could even bother fetching a plate!

I took a piece of store bought whole wheat flat bread, made some quick homemade chimichurri (yum), spread it on the flatbread, and put some chopped roasted chicken I had leftover from last night's dinner.

I stuck that in the toaster oven, and had super simple gourmet tasting almost healthy flat bread pizza lunch!

Resurrection

I have been cooking, but not as much. I haven't been blogging at all.

But, I made something very cool, and wanted to post about it. I made an almost healthy version of a Spanish tortilla. For the uninitiated, the spanish tortilla is in the omelette/ savory egg custard dish family, but unlike an omelette, quiche or fritatta, the Spanish tortilla does not have cheese. It usually has potatoes, and sometimes has peppers and chorizo. I have seen one version in a local Spanish restaurant with cheese melted over the top, but that is unusual, and there is no cheese in the actual tortilla.

I just wish I had used a 10 inch skillet instead of a 12 inch. I don't have a nice 10 inch nonstick skillet. I love my new 12 inch one, but the tortilla came out a little thinner than I would have liked. It was still very good. The kids loved it.

I loosely followed this recipe, but instead of using potatoes, I used cauliflower. It was incredibly good. Cauliflower are even the right color to substitute potatoes, and the texture and flavor worked out perfectly.

Crispy salmon skin!

I have been eating a lot of smoked fish, particularly salmon and trout. I generally don't eat the skin, and have been giving it to my pets.

I had a lovely piece of salmon skin today, and I thought of tasty crunchy salmon skin sushi rolls I have enjoyed in the past. So, I sliced the skin into thin strips, heated some olive oil in a small pan, and threw the salmon skin in. It spattered a lot. And, whoa, Nelly! It's delicious!

Sorry, pets.

Yes, wow, I still have a food blog!

Holy moly, it has been a while. I have cooked and eaten lots. But, I've also been really busy with the last year of medical school and the whole single mom thing.

I'll post some pics and a retrospective soon. But, in the meantime, let's talk anti-inflammatory diet. And pine nuts.

I may have an autoimmune inflammatory disease. Well, actually, I definitely do. I have psoriasis. But, I also may have had a small flare of psoriatic arthritis. And it may not have been my first.

So, one of my ways of approaching this is to reform my diet a bit. Get me more almost healthy. Get it? Get it? The title means so much. I am going to try to adhere more to the whole anti-inflammatory diet thing. The anti-inflammatory diet has elements of a lot of other eating programs that purport to improve health: avoid processed and simple carbs, increase vegetables, increase good fats, increase fish and lean meats, and emphasize antioxidant rich plant foods.

It also helps out hat I already like these foods. I just went to Costco and bought a bunch of smoked fish, and a huge bag of pine nuts.

Today,so far, I had a salad made from my friend's home grown butter crunch lettuce, smoked salmon fillet, flaked, and toasted pine nuts. I made a simple dressing with agave and soy sauce. I figured the salmon and pine nuts were oily enough that I didn't need extra oil in the dressing. It was delicious.

I had a bowl of a close approximation of this Indian spiced carrot ginger soup, which was also delicious. I put toasted pine nuts on top.

I also made a batch of an approximation of this Cabbage Crunch salad. As you may have guessed, I substituted toasted pine nuts for the almonds and sesame seeds.

I also made fresh basil and parsley pesto last week. I still have more pine nuts.