Culturally Mormon(ish): Choppin' Broccoli

So the astute among you probably identified the chopped food above as non-broccoloid in nature.

Kudos to you.

(What you are looking at is onion and baby bella mushrooms.  But Dana Carvey never sang about "choppin' onion and mushrooms," so - yeah.

Link to Dana Carvey singing about "choppin' broccoli" here.)

Contemporaneously with my clean(er)-drinking kick, I switched to clean(er)-eating mode.  The goal, as always, is to get the entire fam on board (I'll let you know when/if I ever get there), but there isn't a snowball's chance in Hades of a program catching on around here unless Mom gets on it first.  So days 1 through 10:  juice and smoothies.  Lots of healthy veggies and fruits with other healthy stuff (Greek yogurt, flaxseed and coconut oil, spirulina and chorella) mixed in.  Never felt hungry, lost 12 pounds.

Now I'm back on solid foods, which meant spending a good bit of my Saturday morning choppin' - not unlike a certain lady that Dana Carvey knows.  (And if he didn't know her?  She'd be the lady that he didn't know.  But I digress.)

Made several kinds of couscous and eggplant moussaka (ready to tote to work for lunches), a chicken, mushroom, onion and guajillo pepper taco filling and my new favorite dish - chicken Abruzzi.  Had it at Olive Garden and was overjoyed to find a copycat recipe online (see it here). 

Here is a more artistic photo of it from the ifoodreal.com Web site:

And here is what it looks like when I make it. 

My version had less kale.  Reasons?  (1) Spouse?  Not a kale fan.  (2) After my ten-day juice-and-smoothie cleanse, I'm up to my eyeballs in the stuff.  (Little Kid remarked that "it's just been a kalestorm around here lately," which I thought was a pretty good pun coming from a nine year-old.)

But, ingredient ratios aside, you've got kale, zucchini, red bell pepper and cannellini beans in a thyme-scented broth with sliced grilled chicken on top.  Olive Garden serves theirs with lemon, and to me, the lemon is key (hence the half of a fruit plopped on top of the dish in the photo above).  Squeeze a large quantity of juice into the broth, and then prepare to overload on freshness.  SOOOO good.

More healthy recipes are on my "Healthy Lifestyle" Pinterest page.  I'm commenting on the ones that I make as I go.  Lots more to try . . . .