Holy Guacamole: Have a Healthy Cinco de Mayo with Avocados

'Avocados are a good source of fiber, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin K, folate and vitamin B6,' Beaumont dietitian Silvia Veri said.

You can almost taste the tacos and smell the spicy salsa just thinking about Cinco de Mayo, a day many will celebrate Mexican heritage and culture. But you don’t have to be Mexican to participate in festivities or to enjoy the delicious food. On this day, Americans will use 81 million pounds of avocados in their Cinco de Mayo meals – that is 162 million individual pieces of this delicious green fruit, according to the California Avocado Commission. Guacamole, made predominantly of avocados, is a popular food people eat on this cheerful holiday. “Avocados are a good source of fiber, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin K, folate and vitamin B6,” said Silvia Veri, a registered dietitian and nutrition supervisor at Beaumont’s Weight Control Center …

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Get in the Spirit with Irish Soda Bread

Try this easy and quick bread recipe for Saturday's St. Patrick's Day holiday.

For those who don't know, traditional Irish soda bread includes only four basic ingredients, and gets its name from its leavening agent -- baking soda. The bread is quick and easy to make, and is a fantastic complement to either Irish stew or your corned beef and cabbage. My husband Brian and I used our slices to mop up all the Guinness broth from the stew I made this weekend. To make this recipe you'll need the following: To start, preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients and stir together. Add  the buttermilk and mix it all together with a large spoon (or with your hands) until the dough comes together. The dough should be moist, but not so sticky that it …

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Cooking for Special Diets: Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

Om Cafe chef submits healthy, vegan soup recipe.

Editor's note: Alissa Malerman's Saturday column explored ways to find some "me" time while catering to special diets. This recipe is one of the special diet-friendly recipes mentioned in that column. Check out this recipe from Chef Jeff Johnson of Om Cafe in Ferndale. Johnson doesn't mince words when it comes to the importance of food. Quoting Hippocrates, he said a mantra of Om is: “Let thy food be the medicine and the medicine be thy food.” And this recipe is good medicine: It's vegan, gluten-free and chock full of fresh vegetables, including the Jerusalem artichoke, which is neither an artichoke nor from Jerusalem, by the way! It is a tuber that can be eaten raw or cooked any way you would cook a small potato. Whole Foods says it …

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Green Lentil Soup with Coconut Milk and Warm Spices

Friday marks the first day of autumn. Start the season off right with this heartwarming soup.

Autumn is the perfect time to make soups, bake cakes and pies and preserve what is left of the summer's bounty. Among all the lentil soups I've had in my short life, the one featured today is by far my favorite. Not only is it very fragrant and exotic in taste, it also comes together in the blink of an eye and feels like a warm blanket on a chilly night — perfect for the colder nights still to come. The recipe calls for green lentils, also known as French lentils, or lentilles du Puy. You can use brown lentils instead; but what I love about French lentils is that they hold their shape very well, and even after they're cooked for more than 30 minutes, they maintain a meaty texture that brown lentils don't. Brown lentils tend to fall apart …

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Timothy Rath

8:35 pm on Thursday, September 29, 2011

I finally found some time and made this for dinner. It really does not disappoint! Indeed, I appreciate the texture of the lentils and while the soup is a little more thin than I would have preferred, it tastes creamier than I was expecting. Definitely fits the description of "warm" — good for a rainy night like tonight. Warda, I will let this sit tonight and I'm looking forward to having …   more ›

Simply Savory: Arugula and Goat Cheese Tart

With only five ingredients — five very good ingredients — this savory tart will have you bringing dinner to the table in minutes.

Cooking a wholesome dinner should not feel like a burden and does not necessarily require many ingredients, hours spent in the kitchen or a ruined budget. Sometimes with as few as five ingredients, plus salt and pepper, dinner can be easy to prepare and even easier to enjoy for the whole family. The trick? Good, quality ingredients. Take this tart, for instance. It has only puff pastry, arugula leaves (very good arugula leaves, I should say, from a local farm in Dexter), fresh goat cheese, some pesto, olive oil, salt and pepper. You garnish your puff pastry, bake it for 30 minutes and what you have is a delicious, crunchy yet tender tart. The arugula makes it fresh tasting and peppery, while the goat cheese adds a lovely, creamy, almost …

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Home & Garden

The Art of Apples: How to Pick, Cook and Eat 'em

As the Art & Apples Festival rolls into Rochester, area chefs, health experts and home cooks share their secrets to making the most of honey crisps, galas and Granny Smiths.

When the weather turns crisp, Julie Fromm starts thinking about crisp apples. Fromm, a registered dietitian and professional chef at Sola Life & Fitness in Rochester Hills, is especially fond of a spicy Mulligatawny soup, brimming with chopped apples, as well as her homemade applesauce. “My family and I make our own applesauce every year,” said Fromm, a resident of Royal Oak who grew up in the Troy and Rochester areas. “We use Michigan apples — usually honey crisps or galas for the sauce.” The dietitian likes to use fresh apples in her dishes not only for their taste but also for their nutritional benefits.  "Apples are naturally fat free, cholesterol free, rich in soluble fiber (which helps to lower blood cholesterol) and reduce the risk …

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Best Back to School Breakfast: Greek Yogurt Pancakes

A healthy, delicious, and easy alternative to pre-packaged pancake mixes and processed frozen pancakes.

My daughter is starting kindergarten Thursday. Although I still can't see how those early years flew by so quickly and will try and restrain myself from crying, at least in front of her, I'll take comfort knowing that when it comes to her breakfast, these pancakes will give her all the energy and nutrients she will need for a great school start. The best part is how quick and easy the batter comes together. Many pancake recipes out there will use butter or sour cream for their fat content. This one doesn't use either of them and is still delicious, with an added bit of tang from the Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt is regular yogurt that has been strained from all the whey. All that remains is extra creamy yogurt that is known to be richer in …

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Warda Bouguettaya

2:15 pm on Wednesday, September 7, 2011

That's even better! Thank you for letting us know. We'll update it. I check the sales flyer of different local stores on Mondays before the article is published on Wednesdays, which explains why we have the price from yesterday's plum sales flyer.   more ›

Moroccan Meat and Vegetable Pie

Phyllo dough makes this pie extra light and crispy, but sturdy enough to hold the delicious filling of spiced ground meat, mushrooms, spinach and Asian noodles. The best part is you don't have to travel to Morocco to eat it.

You might be familiar with the use of phyllo dough in the ever-so-popular Middle Eastern treat baklava, but did you know that it is just as scrumptious in savory dishes as well?  Many Middle Eastern, Balkan and North African dishes share the use of this thin pastry called phyllo (in the Middle East), bourek (in some Balkan countries) or warqa (in North Africa). Warqa, which literally means leaf, is thinner and easier to handle than phyllo dough but,  unfortunately, not widely available in the American market. Phyllo dough is easily found in the freezer department of any of your local grocery stores and yields a softer and more melt-in-your mouth result than the North African warqa. While I've never tried this recipe with bourek dough, I …

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Labor Day Picnic Recipe: Gougères

Forget about frozen appetizers. Instead, wow your guests with freshly-baked, French cheese puffs known as gougères (it's easy, trust me!).

Have you tried making gougères before? If not, I urge you to make them as soon as possible and you will never go back to the frozen ones again. Gougère (pronounced goo-jhair), also known as cheese puffs in America and Buñuelos in Spain, is a baked savory cream puff pastry flavored with grated cheese and sometimes chopped herbs. Pâte à Choux is a classical dough in the repertoire of the French cuisine. It is used to make sweet profiteroles, éclairs (commonly seen in doughnut shops), beignets (sort of like funnel cake or churro) and gougères. The dough contains only flour, butter, water and eggs; all of which you might already have in your kitchen. All you do is melt the butter and water together, add the flour, mix, add the eggs one at a …

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Gluten-Free Goodness: Roasted Zucchini Quinoa Salad

Not only is this salad gluten-free and packed with protein and fiber, but the fresh flavors are too good for anyone to pass up.

Quinoa is a grain-like crop grown in Latin America and is said to go back to the Incas, who held the grain to be sacred — even referring to to quinoa as “the mother of all grains." Among home cooks and chefs, quinoa is not only appreciated for its nutty flavor and quick cooking, but also for its high nutritional value, packed with protein, fiber, iron, magnesium, phosphorus and iron. Quinoa, pronounced KEEN-wah, is also gluten–free and considered easy to digest. I discovered quinoa a couple of years ago and cook it nearly every week for my family. It can be a side dish to a vegetarian meal as well as a great substitute to rice in making risotto and to oats in making cereal. I made this hearty salad with quinoa and the abundant zucchini …

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Timothy Rath

5:02 pm on Monday, August 22, 2011

I did, and I thought it was really easy, although for some reason I don't think it will last me the entire week. ;) I just went with black olives, zucchini, squash, cranberries, sunflower seeds, and green onions. No lemon juice, so I couldn't make the dressing, and sure enough it's kinda dry. Still tasty and it's worth making for anyone due to its speed and the excellent blend of spices, which …   more ›