This is a very simple salad that can be put together in less then 5 minutes, especially if you are using packaged lettuce leaves.  You can make this salad with any kind of lettuce – the picture above shows romaine lettuce.

Ingredients For The Salad:

Lettuce
Cherry tomatoes
Olive oil
Vinegar or lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions How To Make A Salad:

In a cup, whisk olive oil and lemon juice (3 parts of oil to 1 part of vinegar) – this is the dressing for the salad.

Put lettuce leaves on a plate, drizzle with the dressing and toss.

Put cherry tomatoes on top.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

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Tags: healthy, lettuce, no-cook recipe, raw food, tomatoes, vegan

I love good coffee and make it almost every day.  My kids don’t drink coffee, but they love to help me make it :)

My daughter has been helping me make coffee ever since she turned 4 years old.  How can a child help with making this adult beverage?  She has a very specific job: grinding the coffee beans!

So here how it goes:

• I put the coffee beans in the grinder.
• My daughter presses the button on the coffee grinder and watches the coffee beans turn into brown dust.
• While the coffee beans are grinding, I pour water in the coffee machine.
• I tell my daughter that she is done, and thank her for such a good job she’s done grinding the coffee beans :)
• I put ground coffee into the filter and start the coffee machine.

My daughter takes coffee making very seriously – if she sees me around the coffee machine, she drops whatever she was doing and runs to help :)

My son now turned 3 and wants to help with the coffee too.  Before he was too scared of the coffee grinder noise, but not anymore!

The problem is that there is just one coffee grinder.  The last thing I want is 2 kids fighting over the coffee grinder and spilling all the ground coffee on the counter!

My son now has his own coffee-making job: pressing the “Brew” button on the coffee maker :)

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Tags: coffee

When the avocado is ripe and ready for eating, the skin peels away from the flesh very easily, and the inside of the avocado is soft and mashes easily with a fork.  Ripe avocado is full of flavor – it tastes smooth and buttery.  An avocado that is not yet ripe is tough and tasteless.

If you peel the avocado that is not yet ripe, there is no going back – you’ll have to eat it as is :)  Therefore, before you peel an avocado, always make sure that this avocado is ripe!  If the avocado is not ripe, just leave it on the counter – it will be ready to eat in a few days.

On the other hand, you certainly don’t want an avocado that is overly ripe (a.k.a spoiled)!  While the unripe avocados can be eaten after several days, a spoiled avocado goes straight to the garbage can :)

Here’s how to tell if an avocado is ripe:

Step 1: Analyze How An Avocado Looks

The avocado skin should be uniform – without dents and bruises.  The most common variety of avocado – Haas avocado – has a dark green skin with a black tint when ripe (like on the avocado picture below).   When the Haas avocado is not ripe, it is bright green (like the leaves on a tree).

However, don’t judge the avocado simply based on its color as other varieties of avocadoes can be bright green even when they are ripe.

Step 2: Analyze How An Avocado Feels

Gently squeeze an avocado with your fingers.  When I say “gently”, I mean it – don’t squeeze it so hard that the avocado gets smooshed :)  Put an avocado between your thumb and pointer fingers, and give it a very gentle squeeze on the sides.

You should be able to feel the avocado flesh give a little when you squeeze.

The avocado that is not ripe is hard like a rock.  The avocado that is spoiled is mushy and gives under your fingers way too much – spoiled avocado gets a permanent dent even from the gentlest squeeze.

After you feel enough avocadoes, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  Perfect avocado-picking skills come from experience :)

The bottom line:

Hard like a rock = unripe avocado
Permanently dented from a very gentle squeeze = spoiled avocado
Gives under your fingers, but doesn’t have a visible dent afterwards = perfectly ripe avocado

Once you picked a ripe avocado, go make some guacamole using this quick and easy guacamole recipe

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Tags: avocado

This beef enchiladas recipe tastes very authentic, and goes really well with guacamole!

Ingredients For Beef Enchiladas Recipe:

10 corn tortillas
1 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
1 bunch of cilantro (leaves chopped, stems discarded)
1 package (8 oz) shredded cheddar cheese
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions How To Make Beef Enchiladas:

Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat.  Add chopped onion and cook, stirring periodically, for 5 minutes.  Add ground beef, sprinkle with chili powder and cumin, and stir to combine. Cook, stirring periodically, for 7 minutes, or until cooked through (no longer pink).

Add garlic and 1/2 of the can of the tomato sauce.  Stir and cook for 3 minutes.

Turn off the heat.  Add chopped cilantro and 1/2 cup of shredded cheese, and stir to combine.   Add salt and pepper to taste. The filling for the beef enchiladas is ready.

Add water to the remaining tomato sauce in a can so the can is full, and stir with a spoon.   Pour 1/4 of the tomato sauce and water mixture on the bottom of the 8×12 baking dish, and spread so it covers the bottom of the dish.

Heat the corn tortillas in the microwave: 3 at a time, for 30 seconds.  After you heat the first 3 tortillas, assemble 3 enchiladas, then heat 3 more tortillas, etc.

To assemble the enchilada, put a heaping tablespoon of the beef filling on top of the tortilla, then roll the tortilla into a roll.  Put on a baking dish seam side down.  Put all assembled enchiladas in that baking dish next to each other.

Pour the remaining tomato sauce (that was mixed with water) on top of the enchiladas.  Sprinkle with the remaining shredded cheese.  Bake at 375 F for 30 minutes.

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Tags: beef, mexican food, one dish meal

Fish cooked in lemon-butter sauce is very flavorful.   You can use any kind of white fish.  The photo above shows tilapia fish in lemon-butter sauce.

Lemon-butter fish recipe is also very quick to make – it won’t take longer then 20 minutes from start to finish!  Fish in lemon-butter sauce goes really well with rice as a side dish.  Before cooking the fish, you can put the rice in the rice cooker, and when the fish is done, the rice side dish will be done too – without you lifting a finger :)

Ingredients for Lemon-Butter Fish Recipe:

Fish fillets
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small lemon
Salt and pepper

Directions How To Cook Lemon-Butter Fish:

Put butter on a large non-stick frying pan and heat over medium heat.  When the butter melts, add the oil.  Cut the lemon into quarters, and squeeze the juice from each quarter into the frying pan.  Mix lemon juice, butter and oil with a spatula.

Add the fish to the frying pan, and increase the heat to medium-high.  Cook the fish for 4 minutes, then turn over with a spatula and cook on the other side for 4 minutes or until cooked through.  The fish is cooked through when the thickest part of the fillet flakes easily with a fork.  The exact cooking time depends on the thickness of the fillet.

Put the cooked fish on a plate.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  Pour the lemon-butter sauce from the pan over the fish.

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Tags: easy recipe, fish, lemon, quick recipe, sauce

Ingredients For Blueberry Bundt Cake:

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup lowfat plain yogurt
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Directions How To Make Blueberry Bundt Cake:

Preheat oven to 375F.

Spray the inside of the bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs.  Whisk in the sugar.  Add the oil, vanilla and yogurt and mix until combined.

Add the flour, then sprinkle with baking powder and baking soda.  Mix until combined.  Add the blueberries and stir.

Pour the batter into the bundt pan.  Put in the oven and bake for 40 minutes.

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Tags: baking, blueberries, cake

Frightened by the amount of sugar in the regular ice coffee latte recipe? Here’s the sugar-free version of the iced coffee latte.

Instead of sugar, use Splenda – buy the kind in a large package labeled “for baking”.

Ingredients For Sugar-Free Iced Coffee Latte:

10 cups of brewed coffee
10 tbsp of Splenda (sugar substitute)
3 cups of milk

Directions How To Make Sugar-Free Iced Coffee Latte:

Pour brewed coffee in a pitcher.  Add Splenda and stir to dissolve.  Add milk and stir.  Put the pitcher in the regrigerator and chill until cold.

Your sugarfree iced coffee latte is only as good as the coffee you make.  To make great coffee, follow the advice in the following article: How To Brew Good Coffee At Home

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Tags: coffee, drink

Many recipes start with frying onions and then adding other ingredients, but if you really like sauteed onions, you can make it as a stand-alone side dish!   If you are always sneaking the onions from the frying pan, this recipe is for you :)

Ingredients For Fried Red Onions:

Red onions
Oil
Salt to taste

Directions For Fried Red Onions:

Slice red onions. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat.  Add red onion slices and stir.  Reduce heat to medium, and fry the red onions, stirring periodically, for 10 minutes, or until desired doneness.  Add salt to taste.

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Tags: onions

Small potatoes (a.k.a. “baby potatoes” & “new potatoes”) are about 1.5 inches in diameter.  Small potatoes are very easy to prepare, since you don’t have to peel them!  The skin of small new potatoes is very thin and edible.

Roasted Small New Potatoes Recipe Ingredients:

A bag of small potatoes
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Roasted Small New Potatoes Recipe Directions:

Preheat oven to 400F.

Wash the small new potatoes and cut them in halves.  Put the small potato halves in a bowl.  Pour 1 tbsp of oil to potatoes.  Coat the new potatoes with oil by moving the potato pieces with your hands.  If needed, add more oil, so all the new potato pieces look shiny and coated with oil.

Line the baking sheet with parchment paper.  Put the new potato pieces on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Put in the oven and cook for 40 minutes or until the new potatoes are done.  Add more salt to taste if needed.

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Tags: potatoes, side dish