This is a recipe to make a quick, healthy, pizza, replacing tomato sauce with hummus and reducing the amount of cheese compared to a traditional pizza.  First, check out our Classic Hummus recipe and make at least a cup.  Next, slice the vegetables and sauteé the spinach with a bit of garlic.

Next, make the dough.  This is by no means a perfect pizza dough, but it’s fast and really tasty!  We added some oregano, thyme, garlic powder, and pepper to the dough, but you can experiment with others.

After letting the dough rest for a few minutes, put it in the oven just to crisp the bottom and form bubbles.

Spread the hummus, leaving room for a bit of a crust…

Add veggies and cheese, bake, and enjoy!

The result after baking!

Tacos have to be one of the easiest dishes for ground beef.  They are also great for parties and get-togethers since everyone can top them as they please!

The most important part: forget the pre-made taco seasonings.  They contain things like Silicon Dioxide and Ethoxyquin, the purpose for which only a chemist can figure out.  Instead, just mix together all the seasoning ingredients listed in the recipe.  It tastes just as good (or better in our opinion) and can be made nearly for free.

If you want, put them in a mortar and pestle to get a finer texture like you’d find in the pre-made packages, but this really isn’t necessary in our opinion.

Next, add the beef to a pan over medium heat.  The purpose here is just to get it brown, so don’t worry if the meat isn’t fully cooked.  Lastly, add the water and seasoning and wait until the sauce thickens.

Bam!  You have perfect meat for tacos which you can now top however you’d like.  This meat also works well for burritos! You can even make it spicier if you like by adding in red pepper flakes, hot sauce or your favorite spicy condiment.

Once the marinade is complete place it in a pan with the kebabs. The marinade does not have to fully cover the kebabs (ours didn’t, obviously) just be sure to rotate the kebabs every few minutes in the marinade so that they get completely covered. You can really let them sit in the marinade as long as you like but we let ours go for 20 minutes and the flavor of the vegetables was perfect.

Make sure to occasionally baste the kebabs while they are cooking on the grill. It adds extra flavor to the veggies. Once the veggies are all slightly charred, they are done and ready to be served.

I absolutely love pesto and am constantly looking for new dishes I can add it to. I even recently started growing my own basil so I can make my own pesto from scratch. Yes, my obsession with pesto goes that deep.

Being as I also recently learned how to make a roux (Its not nearly as complicated as it sounds!), I’ve been itching to make different sauces that would involve it. Well, making a pesto roux sauce seemed like a great idea and it was. We decided to pair it with Sea Bass here, but I think it would also pair splendidly with chicken if you don’t like fish as much as I do. The cherry tomatoes also add a nice texture and flavor to the dish but you could easily  leave them out if you have a vendetta against tomatoes or allergy or some other strange aversion to them.

Now let’s start making the roux! You add the butter and flour together in the pan on low heat and stir until it looks like the consistency below with a slight golden hue to it.

Now that you have a  roux , you can start whisking in the vegetable or chicken stock (whichever you prefer, I used vegetable and it turned out very good). Your sauce should now appear creamy and delicious instead of thick and pasty.

Once you are happy with the consistency of your sauce, you can add in the pesto. If your sauce is still too thick you can add more stock to thin it. If it is too thin, keep cooking it as it will thicken as you cook it.

Once the sauce is done, you can cook the tomatoes. They don’t take very long since we only want to warm them. Add them to a pan with a little bit of olive oil.

Make sure to salt and pepper the sea bass before you cook it.

Sear the fish 3 to 5 minutes on each side or until it is done and flaky.

This is a super simple recipe which is satisfying and relatively healthy.  First add stock, garlic, and broccoli to a pan over medium-heat until stock evaporates.

Next, add the rest of the vegetables for a few minutes to sweat out additional moisture.

Meanwhile, cook a sausage (we chose Trader Joe’s Jalapeno Chicken Sausage, but any type will do) however you like.  Grilling is probably best, but it was about 15° F outside so we opted to cook it in a pan with some Guinness.

That’s about it!  Slice the sausage, toss it with the veggies into the pasta and mix.  Top with feta cheese if you desire to add some saltiness.

This is a super easy recipe that is savory and healthy.  First combine onion, garlic, and ground turkey in a pan.

Cook until the turkey is browned, and the onions are translucent.

Simmer broth, veggies, and the turkey over medium-low heat until potatoes are tender.

Voilà!  A hearty meal with only a few minutes of active cook time.  Great for the cold weather!

We had never cooked short ribs before, and decided to try them sous vide.  They pair really well with a side of our crispy polenta, as pictured above.  First, season, seal, and cook the short ribs at 135° F for 72 hours.

It’s possible that 48 or less would be sufficient, but 72 seems to be the most recommended.

Then sear them, place them on top of the polenta and top with the wine reduction sauce.

These meatballs pack some serious spice with both habaneros and dried chilies.  Served in a thick tomato sauce with plenty of veggies, this is a seriously filling dish.  Enjoy with a side of good toasted bread!

First we make some meatballs.

Crush some whole dried chilies with a mortar and pestle.  Adding some salt helps with the grinding.  Simmer the peppers in vinegar until fragrant.  The fumes from this process are quite potent, so watch your eyes!  Then brown the meatballs in the spicy vinegar liquid.

Add the meatballs to the veggie and tomato sauce to let simmer!

Beef Wellington is generally prepared by wrapping beef tenderloin in pâté, mushroom duxelles, and puff pastry.  This recipe attempts to create a similar dish without the expensive ingredients.  First, mushrooms and onion are sautéd with with salt and pepper and then mixed with ground beef to create a roll.

Next, the beef roll is covered in the brown mustard and rolled in slices of prosciutto. It’s easiest (and much cleaner!) to place the prosciutto on plastic wrap before rolling.

And then rolled into pastry dough…

Then a quick egg wash and into the oven for half an hour. You can also be fancy and use a knife to cut lines in the dough for an interesting pattern when it is done.

And the final product:

Overall it is a delicious dish and not too difficult on a budget.  Our rendition resulted in some juices flowing out of the beef, making the bottom part of the pastry less crispy than the top. To fix this, perhaps use leaner beef, or even ground turkey.