Recipe for Black-Eyed Pea Hummus with Olive Oil and Sumac

Black-eyed peas are considered a lucky food to eat on New Year's Day, and for years now I've made Hopping John Soup for good luck in the New Year.  This year I thought I'd go for a double dose of good luck, so I used all the traditional hummus ingredients with canned black-eyed peas to make a tasty and nutritious black-eyed pea hummus that only took a few minutes to whip up in the food processor.  If you're going to a New Year's Eve party where guests are supposed to bring a pot-luck dish, this would be unusual and fun, and it might even help you stick with your dieting resolve in the midst of other party foods.  

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The Top Ten Recipes of 2010 from Kalyn's Kitchen (plus Ten Honorable Mentions)

I never post recipes unless I really like how the dish turned out, so asking me to pick my best recipes of the year is like asking a mother to pick her favorite child.  Still, I love the top ten lists that pop up on blogs during the holidays, and I did manage to choose my favorite recipes in 2007, 2008, and 2009.  Last year I had such a hard time narrowing it down that I ended up with ten honorable mentions, and I did that again this year when I found it even more difficult to decide what made the cut.  (This is what my mother used to jokingly call "A Good Problem to Have.")  I started with more than forty "best" recipes and narrowed it down to this list of twenty; all of these dishes are things that made me drool during 2010.

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Recipe for Vegetarian Black Bean and Sweet Potato Soup with Lime

My sister Valerie thinks the week between Christmas and New Year's is the best part of the holiday season,.  She loves it when the rush of Christmas is over but kids are home from school and there's a little extra time to hang out with the family.  I enjoyed Christmas day at her house, watching the kids open their gifts and indulging in quite a bit of holiday food.  Now it's back-to-reality for me, and this vegetarian black bean and sweet potato soup seems perfect after a few days of indulgent eating.  It's light enough to help you recover from holiday food overload, easy enough that you don't need much time in the kitchen, and warm and comforting if you're in a part of the world where the weather is cold. 

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Christmas Favorites: Five Favorite CrockPot Meals to Cook While You're Busy Having Holiday Fun

By the time you read this post I'll be at my sister's house, taking the rest of the week off from the blog and looking forward to Christmas morning with the kids.  Before I sign off for a few days I thought I'd share one more set of favorite recipes.  I've given you ideas for Appetizers for Holiday Parties and Breakfasts for Christmas Morning, and this time I'm sharing five favorite CrockPot meals.  Food that cooks itself  in the slow cooker while you're out having fun is perfect for the holidays, so let's start with Chicken Fajitas in the Crockpot, one of the first crockpot recipes ever posted on Kalyn's Kitchen and still one of my favorites.

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Christmas Favorites: Five Favorite Breakfasts for Christmas Morning

Yesterday I mentioned how I'm not doing much cooking this week, so I'm sharing a few favorite recipes before I take off for my sister's house where I'll be spoiling these kids and probably indulging in some not exactly South Beach diet friendly Christmas food.  Yesterday I suggested five of my favorite appetizers for holiday parties, and today I'm going to recommend five favorite breakast options that I think would be perfect for Christmas morning,  If your family likes Mexican food, I bet they'd enjoy Mexican Baked Eggs with Black Beans, Tomatoes, Green Chiles, and Cilantro after they open their presents.  You can make it in one large dish if you don't have individual casseroles.

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Christmas Favorites: Five Favorite Appetizers for Holiday Parties

Everywhere you go these days people are looking harried with last-minute holiday preparations.  Around here I'm getting ready to go visit some of my favorite kids for Christmas, so there hasn't been a lot of cooking going on.  I thought for the next few days I'd share some favorite ideas for Christmas foods before I take a few days off from the blog.  (You haven't planned your whole week of Christmas menus yet have you?  I didn't think so.)  Let's start with five favorite appetizers I'd love to serve for a holiday party, beginning with this Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenade with Garlic and Herbs, something I've made many times for parties that's always been a hit.

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Recipe for Shredded Chicken Salad with Green Olives, Celery, and Green Onion

I first made this colorful chicken salad with sliced green olives when I had leftover rotisserie chicken, but since then I've made it three more times, adjusting the recipe a little bit each time to get a combination that seems just right to me.  What makes this a hit with green olive lovers is the little bit of green olive brine added to the dressing.  The salad has just enough red and green that you could serve it as a Christmas salad, especially if you serve it plated with dishes that bring out the red and green colors in the salad.  And if you're getting tired of sweets and want a savory dish for a holiday pot-luck, this might be just the thing. 

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Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Smuckers Sugar-Free Apricot Preserves

These Smucker's Sugar-Free Apricot Preserves are an ingredient I've used a few times in the last couple of months, and I love the way they add just the right amount of apricot flavor to a sauce or glaze without adding a lot of extra sugar.  They're certainly worthy of being selected as one of my Kalyn's Kitchen Picks just for that reason alone, but there's another reason I'm choosing them as a pick right before Christmas.

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Recipe for Twice-Cooked Gigantes (or Gigante) Beans with Garlic and Feta

These Twice-Cooked Gigante Beans were the recipe that inspired me to make Garlic Confit, and I'm hoping you will immediately file this in the visual category of tasty-but-gloppy-looking things like refried beans and hummus.  Admittedly these long-cooked beans won't win any beauty contests, but this is one of the most flavorful bean dishes I've ever made.  The recipe came from How to Roast a Lamb: New Greek Classic Cooking, a very interesting cookbook I got from Lydia, and I tried the beans out on my dad and Rand, who both declared them to be delicious!

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Recipe for Low-Sugar and Whole Wheat Molasses-Almond Cookies

Low-Sugar and Whole Wheat Molasses-Almond Cookies

I can go months and months without making cookies for most of the year, but when it's December I feel that cookie-making urge come upon me.  For the last few holiday seasons I've been experimenting with low-sugar and whole-wheat cookie recipes to get cookies that are at least somewhat South Beach Diet friendly. I'm not really a baker, but I am getting better at looking at a recipe and figuring out how to adapt it.  This recipe for molasses cookies came from the Bob's Red Mill Baking Book, and it already used whole wheat flour it wasn't too hard to substitute Splenda for sugar and trans-fat free margarine for butter to make these cookies more diet friendly.  I also switched out some of the flour for almond flour for a slightly different texture and a more nutritious cookie.

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Crockpot or Stovetop Recipe for Anasazi Bean and Cabbage Soup

(Updated and added to Recipe Favorites, December 2010)  A few years ago when I was visiting the Ferry Building Farmer's Market in San Francisco I was happily surprised to find that Rancho Gordo Beans sold heirloom Anasazi Beans, and I've been buying them ever since.  I love the slightly sweet flavor of Anasazi Beans, and when I taught Utah history in fourth grade I used to cook them for the students when we had our "Anasazi Feast."  This soup recipe with Anasazi Beans, ham, and cabbage is one of my favorite ways to cook Anasazi beans.  Unfortunately they lose much of the delightful speckled look when they're cooked, but they still taste great. 

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Friday Night Photos: Garden Renovations and a New Shed for a Better Garden in 2011!

I love my garden, a source of homegrown food and herbs for me every summer.  Over the years the garden has expanded with raised beds, and beds by my new deck for tomatoes.  But even with these upgrades, the main garden was hard to maintain, due to overhead sprinklers that watered all the dirt as well as the beds.  I also had nowhere to store tools, since I don't have a garage.  I had some green James Hardie siding left from the house renovations last year, so in early November I started a project to improve the garden and build a shed for tools.

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Recipe for Baked Mini-Frittatas with Broccoli and Three Cheeses

Weeks ago I had the idea of experimenting with little mini-frittatas that would be a whole-breakfast serving size, but my first attempt was less than stellar, and then I got distracted by some other idea.  Then recently I saw this crockery muffin pan that makes four large muffins, and immediately I thought of how perfect it would be for this recipe.  I bought the pan and tried again, using broccoli and a combination of cheddar, Parmesan, and cottage cheese, and I loved how these mini-frittatas turned out.

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How to Cook Dried Beans in a Crockpot Slow Cooker

Nutritious beans, cooked in the slow cooker.  Pre-soak or not, it's your choice!

Dried beans are one of those magical foods that have everything going for them. Beans are  inexpensive, and they're a good source for many vitamins and minerals, plus they're also high in fiber, high in protein, and naturally low in fat, sugar, and sodium. Many types of dried beans are listed among The World's Healthiest Foods, and beans are also listed as one of the Superfoods that we should all be eating often. Not only are beans nutritious, they're loaded with healthy slow-burning complex carbohydrates, and are low on the glycemic index, making them a good food choice for anyone who's concerned about blood sugar, whether for weight-loss or health reasons.

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Easy Recipe for Italian Sausage, Tomato, and Macaroni Soup with Basil

Every winter I try hard to remind myself there are lots of places where the weather gets much colder than it does in Salt Lake, and really I'm lucky not to be living in one of those ultra-cold spots.  (Chicago, Minnesota, and North Dakota, I'm sending warm vibes.)  Still, even if it's not as bitterly cold as some places, Utah is plenty cold this time of year.  It's cold enough that nothing sounds much better than a bowl of comforting soup.  This easy soup recipe is one I came up with for a family party, and when it was a hit at the party, I wished I'd written down the recipe.  Luckily I managed to re-create it a few days later, and now I have a few containers of this in the freezer for those cold winter nights.

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Recipe for Low-Sugar and Whole Wheat Ranger Cookies with Pecans, Coconut, and Chocolate

Low-Sugar and Whole Wheat Ranger Cookies, with Pecans, Coconut, and Chocolate

We're just heading into the time of year when there are cookies and other sweet treats everywhere you look.  I doubt many people are religiously dieting during December, but even for those of us who are just trying to limit our consumption of holiday sweets, it can be a challenge.  For a few years now I've been experimenting with recipes for low-sugar cookies for the holidays, and this recipe for Ranger Cookies, which comes from The South Beach Diet Parties and Holidays Cookbook, is one of the most satisfying low sugar cookies I've tried.  It's full of flavor from pecans, oatmeal, unsweetened coconut, chocolate chips, and whole wheat pastry flour, and even if you skipped the Splenda or Stevia-in-the-Raw Granulated Sweetener and used regular sugar, this would still be a pretty healthful and low-sugar cookie.  The book claims the cookies are named for forest rangers who like these cookies for their energy-boosting ingredients, and if you're looking for a barely sweet cookie to get you through December, this might be just the one.

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Friday Night Photos: A Fun New License Plate for Kalyn's Car!

I've been waiting for weeks for these fun (but admittedly silly) license plates to come in the mail.  Now people can tell I'm a Utah FDBLGGR . . .

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How to Make Garlic Confit (for cooking or for a homemade Christmas gift)

I'd love to tell you that I'm far enough ahead in my Christmas planning that I already made this garlic confit for a savory homemade Christmas gift idea, but the truth is that I made this for a recipe and then I had the thought that it would be pretty in little jars as a homemade Christmas gift.   If you're trying to think of something besides cookies or other sweet treats to give away to neighbors or co-workers, this is a perfect gift for the garlic lovers in your life.  In a glass jar, with a layer of oil over the garlic cloves, the garlic confit will keep for about 3 weeks in the refrigerator, and it's great added to pasta sauce, soup, stew, or any dish where you'd like that roasted garlic flavor.  I found the recipe in How to Roast a Lamb: New Greek Classic Cooking, a great book that my blogging friend Lydia sent me for an early birthday present, and if you can find pre-peeled garlic cloves, this practically makes itself.

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How to Make Chicken Stock

(Updated December 2010 - When I had my blog re-designed, I knew it would throw off the formatting in some early posts, and when I opened this post yesterday, it was clear it needed a make-over!  If anyone sees other posts that look odd, please leave a comment and I'll fix them as soon as I can.)

I'm a bit of a chicken stock fanatic.  If you came to my house, I'll usually have at least 10 containers of chicken stock in the freezer, despite the fact that I use it all the time. I'm religious about saving scraps, chicken carcasses and leftover veggies, and make stock at least once every month. If you ask me, homemade chicken stock is a wonderful thing!

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South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up for November 2010 (Low-Glycemic Recipes)

Kalyn's favorite Phase One Recipe for November 2001 was

Lebanese Lentil Salad with Garlic, Cumin, Mint, and Parsley

I've been a little distracted for the last month.  That, combined with the fact that bloggers don't seem to cook as many Phase One dishes during November means that this round-up is a bit smaller than usual.  But there are still some recipes here that I know would really hit the spot if you were doing Phase One, so take a look and see what sounds good.  This round-up will get added to the archive list of monthly Phase One Recipes Round-Ups, a section of the recipe archives (over there on the left!) that I know people use over and over.  (You also can use the label Low-Glycemic Recipe Round-Ups to see all the posts like this one.)

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Crockpot (or Stovetop) Recipe for Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup with Curry and Coconut Milk

Lately I've been making soup like crazy, because when it snows for days on end nothing sounds as warming as a big bowl of soup.  I love to make soup as much as I love to eat soup, even if I don't especially care for the weather that inspires all this soup-making.  This soup was my version of a Thai Coconut Curry Soup I spotted on Jeanette's Healthy Living.  I changed the Thai curry paste to curry powder which I thought would hold up better in the slow cooker, and also changed the proportions of the recipe a bit for a slightly different riff on Jeannete's soup recipe.  I enjoyed this with a generous dollop of fat-free Greek yogurt, which didn't make it into the photo, and this is a soup I'll definitely be making again.

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Recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash with Rosemary and Balsamic Vinegar

(Updated and added to Recipe Favorites November 2010.) Butternut squash is something I learned to love from my grandmother Denny, who'd roast big pieces of it on a cookie sheet and then mash it with lots of butter, salt, and pepper. Of course that tasted great, but when I make this roasted butternut squash tossed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and just a touch of rosemary, I don't miss the butter at all. I first tried this recipe back in 2006, and I've made it many times since so I decided it was time to finally update this post with better photos. This recipe is about as easy as they come, especially if you use those pre-cut squash cubes that start to show up at this time of year. If you're cutting your own squash (which is the way I like to do it) you might want to read How to Peel and Cut Up a Butternut Squash before you start.

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A Shiny New Look for Kalyn's Kitchen (and Much Thanks to Jennette and Rand!)

Surprise, it's a brand new look!
For months now behind-the-scenes tinkering has been going on around here as I worked with Jennette from Make My Blog Pretty and my brother Rand to create a new look for Kalyn's Kitchen. Jennette did the website design and Rand did the graphics to create an updated blog I hope you're going to love as much as I do. Later tonight the switcheroo will take place, as I'm biting my fingernails and probably refreshing the page multiple times a minute.

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Crockpot Recipe for Double Lentil, Sausage, Brown Rice, and Spinach Soup

A few weeks ago I made this soup on a day when my brother Rand happened to be in Utah visiting for my dad's 85th birthday party. Rand always likes to try out my leftover cooking experiments when he's visiting, and he loved this soup so much that when he went back home he asked if he could have the recipe *before* it was posted on the blog. I'm always in debt to Rand for the beautiful headers and graphics he creates for the blog, so of course I was only too happy to send off the recipe by e-mail. Rand made the soup for friends in L.A. who also want the recipe now, so I decided I better hurry and get it posted!

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Friday Favorites: Five Favorite Recipes Using Leftover Turkey

I hope all my U.S. readers had a lovely Thanksgiving day spent relaxing with family and friends with plenty of tasty food. If you cooked a turkey for the big day, chances are you now have leftover turkey that you'd like to turn into something that's a slightly different take on the turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes you had today. A few years ago I picked my Top Ten List of Leftover Turkey Recipes. Since then I've posted more ideas for leftover turkey, and when I decided to narrow it down to five favorites, I was surprised at how hard it was! But after giving it some thought, here are my five picks, starting with this Leftover Turkey (or Chicken) Casserole with Brown Rice, Mushrooms, Sour Cream, Cheese, and Thyme.

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Recipe for Coconut-Lime Turkey (or Chicken) and Rice Soup

In the crazy world of food blogging, if you want to be able to offer readers a new idea for leftover Thanksgiving turkey, you have to cook a turkey, try the recipe, and add it to your Thanksgiving Recipes before Thanksgiving so it will be there after turkey day when people are searching for recipes. I'm not complaining; it's actually kind of fun to stretch out the Thanksgiving food a bit longer. This year I cooked a turkey breast in the crockpot to get leftover turkey and then I had turkey with gravy and Whole Wheat Stuffing Muffins with my dad for lunch one day.

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Recipe for Low-Sugar Spiced Pumpkin Mini Cheesecakes

Low-Sugar Spiced Pumpkin Mini-Cheesecakes for portion control!

I'm back sharing South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving Recipes, after an unexpected day off from the internet yesterday when a bad winter storm knocked out power to my house for about 18 hours. I stayed at my sister Sandee's house last night (thanks Sandee!) and luckily I had an iPhone so I didn't feel completely cut off from the world. I was sad that I had to wait a day to share this great recipe for Low-Sugar Spiced Pumpkin Mini-Cheesecakes, because I worked hard testing several different versions before I got one that I loved, and I'm guessing people who are at least aiming for portion control on Thanksgiving will like this idea of pumpkin cheesecake in a single-serving version.

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Friday Favorites: Favorite Thanksgiving Side Dishes

Okay, it's now officially less than a week until Thanksgiving. I bet I'm not the only one who hasn't completely decided what they'll be cooking that day, right? I've been narrowing it down by sharing some of my favorite Thanksgiving Recipes, starting with Five Thanksgiving Favorites and Favorite Green Vegetables for Thanksgiving, and this week I'm picking five more favorite Thanksgiving side dishes, starting with the Whole Wheat and Mushroom Stuffing above that I've made many times since I first posted it.

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Recipe for Green Apple, Celery, and Walnut Salad with Lemon-Mustard Vinaigrette

We're still counting down to Thanksgiving, and here's another recommendation for our list of diet-friendly Thanksgiving Recipes for anyone who's trying to maintain some semblance of control on the big over-eating day. This recipe is kind of a kicked-up version of the traditional Waldorf Salad you often see on Thanksgiving menus, and after I was completely through making it, taking photos, and eating a big bowl of it for lunch, I had the thought that it would have been nice to toss in a few dried cranberries if you had some. Actually, I didn't have any, so maybe I'm glad I didn't think of it sooner, but I do recommend that variation if you're making this for Thanksgiving.

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Recipe for Baked Artichoke Hearts Au Gratin with Green Onion, Parmesan, and Romano

There's just a little over a week until you have to settle on the side dishes you're cooking for Thanksgiving dinner, and to make it even harder to decide, here's another option I'm adding to our list of South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving Recipes. I tested several versions of this Baked Artichoke Hearts Au Gratin on my favorite contractors who are working on the new shed, and they agreed that this version was the one that's a keeper. I used a combination of Parmesan and Pecorino-Romano cheese, but even if you only had Parmesan, I'm sure this would be delicious.

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Recipe for Lebanese Lentil Salad with Garlic, Cumin, Mint, and Parsley

I'm still experimenting with new ideas for South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving Recipes, but you can't eat nothing but Thanksgiving side dishes every day even if you're blogging about them, and this Lebanese Lentil Salad is something I'd happily eat all year round. I served this as a side dish with the Pan-Fried and Roasted Pork Chops with Apricot-Mustard Sauce, and I think it would also make a great take-to-work lunch salad. The recipe was adapted from Garlicky Lebanese Lentil Salad in Saveur October 2010, but after I made their version the first time, I changed the proportions a bit for a result with less oil and more lemon to fit my lemon-loving tastebuds.

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Recipe for 100% Whole Wheat Stuffing "Muffins" with Sausage and Parmesan

We're still mainly focusing on South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving Recipes around here, and this recipe for whole wheat stuffing "muffins" took me three tries to get it right, so my house has been smelling like Thanksgiving for days. The final keeper version has a little Parmesan cheese added to the mixture for flavor and to help the "muffins" hold together. Of course, these aren't really muffins, but I love the idea of baking the stuffing in muffin cups so all the edges are nice and crispy. It also helps with portion control, which may or may not be something you care about for Thanksgiving! I did use 100% whole wheat bread and reduced-fat sausage to make the stuffing from scratch, something that makes these stuffing muffins a very flavorful and more healthful option.

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Recipe for Twice-Baked Sweet Potato Cups with Sour Cream, Chipotle, and Lime

Here's another low-glycemic option to add to our Thanksgiving Recipes, and these sweet potato cups with sour cream, Chipotle, and lime are another example of how I prefer sweet potatoes (sometimes called yams) with savory flavors rather than the traditional "candied" sweet potatoes that some people make for Thanksgiving. It's important to find straight-sided sweet potatoes for this twice-baked sweet potato recipe, where the cups are made of pieces of sweet potato standing on end. The recipe may seem a little labor intensive if you're preparing a big Thanksgiving dinner, but you can make this earlier in the day and do the final baking part right before you serve them. Using a ziploc bag (or a real pastry bag) to squeeze the filling into the sweet potato cups also makes it quick and easy, and makes the cups look pretty.

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Recipe for Pan-Fried and Roasted Pork Chops with Apricot-Dijon Sauce

I still have more South Beach Diet Friendly Thanksgiving Recipes to share before the big day gets here, but let's take a break from Thanksgiving and talk about my new favorite recipe for pork chops with a slightly sweet apricot-mustard sauce. This recipe uses those sugar-free apricot preserves I loved in the recipe for Apricot-Glazed Carrots with Ginger and Curry, so if you bought apricot preserves to make the carrots, you're set. You could even serve the carrots with these pork chops if you'd like a double dose of apricot deliciousness, but I ate this with a warm lentil salad on the side. I think this type of quick recipe is the perfect thing to cook after a busy day at work, and if you like pork chops this might become a favorite at your house as well.

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Friday Favorites: Five Favorite Recipes for Roasted Winter Squash

Last month I realized I'd never be able to spotlight all my favorite recipes by featuring them one at a time, so I decided that once in a while I'd do Friday Favorites, where I spotlight five favorite recipes around a common theme. One of my most-loved fall foods is winter squash, and I think roasting is the perfect way to cook winter squash, so today I'm sharing five recipes for roasted butternut or buttercup squash. You can use other types of squash as well, but if you like winter squash do try one of recipes, starting with the Agave and Balsamic Glazed and Roasted Buttercup Squash above, which I loved when I tested the recipe.

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Recipe for Apricot-Glazed Carrots with Ginger and Curry (with or without cilantro)

Here's another great side dish option that I'm adding to our growing list of South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving Recipes. This recipe wowed me so much that I know I'll make it all during the year whenever I want a carrot dish that's a little fancier than usual. I took the leftovers from this when I went to make lunch for my dad, who's definitely not a fan of most vegetables, and he loved this flavorful recipe for carrots. The secret ingredient here that makes this work for South Beach Dieters is the sugar-free apricot preserves, but if you're not limiting your sugar, just make it with regular apricot jam. There's plenty of flavor here without the cilantro if you're not a cilantro fan, but cilantro lovers will enjoy the cilantro with the other flavors here.

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Recipe for Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Mushrooms with Thyme and Parsley

Let's start out this month of South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving Recipes with this easy and tasty recipe for Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Mushrooms with Thyme and Parsley. The truth is I didn't even think I liked sweet potatoes until a few years ago when I realized they didn't have to be topped with marshmallows and brown sugar, so when this recipe appeared in Bon Appetit in October 2003 I doubt I even noticed it. Fast forward 7 years, and I ate more than half of it for a snack when I tested the recipe! I did change it up a bit after thinking about what ingredients most people have on hand and what's available in November, but the final version is a keeper.

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Low-Glycemic Holiday Recipes for a South Beach Diet Thanksgiving 2010

It's a shock to realize this is the fifth year I've put together a list of South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving recipe ideas. I understand how holiday meals can be a challenge for dieters, and I'm here to help! I do feel like it's okay to indulge a bit during the holidays, but if you don't want to completely blow your diet, or have health issues where you need to follow a low glycemic eating plan, these recipes will insure that you still have tasty choices for holiday dinners.  All the new recipes from this month will get added to my master list of South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving Recipes.  Meanwhile, let's get started with recipes I've posted throughout 2010 that might make good options for your Thanksgiving table.

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South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up for October 2010 (Low-Glycemic Recipes)

Kalyn's favorite Phase One Recipes for October 2010 was
Thai-Inspired Turkey Mini-Meatball Lettuce Wraps.

Today's the day we start counting down to Thanksgiving, right? Just like I've done every year since 2006, I'll be sharing South Beach Diet Friendly Thanksgiving recipes during November. But before we start that turkey-day countdown, let's see the Phase One Recipes I've posted or spotted on other blogs during October. I'm not sure if many people start a diet in November or December, but I do know people come back to the monthly Phase One Recipes Round-Ups over and over, and I love knowing they're useful. If you can't imagine doing full-out Phase One during the holidays, you can always use these recipes to do what my brother Rand and I jokingly call Phase 1.5, when we mostly eat phase one foods, with a few indulgences.

(You can use the label Low-Glycemic Recipe Round-Ups to see all the posts like this one.)

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Five Fun Things on Friday (10-29-10)

What does The Oprah Winfrey Show have to do with this enormous can of whole green chiles from my pantry? Keep reading to find out, because I promise it's one of the most fun things I've ever shared on Friday!

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Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Mount Olive Roasted Red Peppers

I love roasted red peppers as a pantry ingredient. Of course you can roast your own red peppers, and the freshly roasted peppers are fantastic when you have the time. But when you don't have that much time, using roasted red peppers in a jar is quick and the jarred peppers are amazingly flavorful. My normal grocery store carries two brands of jarred red peppers, but these Mount Olive Roasted Red Peppers are so much cheaper than the other brand and so consistently good that I decided it's time for me to add them to my list of Kalyn's Kitchen Picks, where I rave about products that I love enough that I'd happily buy them over and over.

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Recipe for Spicy Lime Coleslaw

I think I made this Spicy Lime Coleslaw at least three times before it ever occurred to me that it might be a recipe people would like to see on the blog. It started as just a variation of Spicy Mexican Slaw with Lime and Cilantro, but I didn't have cilantro so I just left it out. The next time I made this as a quick side dish for dinner, I had a bag of shredded carrots in the fridge so I threw some of those in with the cabbage, green onions, and spicy lime dressing. I loved this combination with the carrots so much, I almost didn't miss the cilantro. And I know there are some people who (gasp) don't like cilantro, so they'd never show the slightest interest in a recipe with cilantro in the title. This spicy lime coleslaw is just for you if you're one of those cilantro-averse people, but even if you like cilantro I bet you'll love this version of the salad as well.

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Recipe for Low-Sugar and Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins with Pecans

This week I got an e-mail from a reader named Sommer asking if I had a South Beach Diet Friendly recipe for pumpkin bread or pumpkin muffins. I can't always take recipe requests but Sommer's timing was great, because I'd recently written about Pumpkin Recipes for Cupcakes, Cookies, Cakes, Bread, and Muffins at BlogHer.com, and I'd been thinking about making pumpkin muffins or bread ever since. The muffins I came up with were adapted from a recipe in The Splenda World of Sweetness, a cookbook my blogging friend Amy Sherman sent me years ago, and happily they were a success from the first batch, which is pretty rare for me when it comes to baking!  (Edit:  Although the muffins were delicious with Splenda, now I would probably use Stevia in the Raw Granulated Sweetener.)

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Friday Favorites: Five Favorite Bean Soups or Stews for Autumn

For this week's edition of Friday Favorites I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the favorite soups or stews I've made with dried beans, starting with this Pinto Bean and Ground Beef Stew with Cumin and Cilantro. This stew made in the pressure cooker may look like chili, but there's no chile powder in the recipe. There are instructions for making this with canned pinto beans and cooking on the stovetop too, if you're not yet converted to the joys of the pressure cooker.

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Recipe for Ginger-Cilantro Rice with Green Onion and Sesame

I love recipe suggestions from readers, even if I don't have time to try more than a small percentage of the ones people send me. A few months ago a reader who signed her e-mail "Denise in Florida" suggested I might like the recipe for Ginger-Cilantro Rice on Epicurious.com. I did like the sound of rice cooked with ginger and then tossed with a dressing of pureed ginger, cilantro, green onions, olive oil, sesame oil, and rice vinegar. Denise advised me to reduce the amount of oil, and I read the comments on Epicurious and tried a few different versions until I came up with the one that seemed right to me. My version has (gasp!) less cilantro and more green onion, and I changed the proportions of the other seasonings as well, but the the recipe I ended up with is something that's going to be a regular side dish around here. Thanks Denise for the suggestion to give this a try!

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Recipe for Low-Sugar (or sugar-free) Teriyaki Chicken

(Updated and added to Recipe Favorites October 2010.) When my friend Bonnie told me she made the Teriyaki Chicken from the blog for her family and they loved it I first thought "I'm glad they liked it," followed by "That recipe really needs new photos!" So over the weekend I made Teriyaki Chicken and took a trip down memory lane, remembering a friend who moved to Hawaii and introduced me to some interesting foods when she came back to Utah. This simple way of making Teriyaki Chicken was her recipe, and it's been so good that I've never imagined any other way of making this dish.

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Recipe for Brown Rice and Green Garbanzo Salad with Carrots, Parsley, and Pine Nuts

Earlier this morning it didn't seem like the universe wanted me to share this recipe for Brown Rice and Green Garbanzo Salad with Carrots, Parsley, and Pine Nuts. I got up early and turned on the computer like I do most days, and I'd just started checking e-mail when my power went off. It didn't seem windy so I wondered what was up, but within about 5 minutes the power came back on. This time I'd made it through about 10 e-mails when the power went off again. It stayed off long enough for me to read the newspaper, eat an apple, make the bed, and get dressed, so I decided to make an early morning Costco run, and happily the power was back when I got back home. I saw power trucks and workers all along the street between my house and Costco, and had to restrain myself from getting out of the car, rushing over to the workers, and saying "Thank you for fixing it!"

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Friday Night Photos: Fall Colors in the Garden and Still a Few Veggies (2010 Garden Update #16 )

It's looking like fall, and the garden is winding down at my house. The weather in Utah has been glorious so far this fall, and the last few days I've been outside trimming the perennials, pulling a few weeds, and making an attempt to clean up the garden beds. I'm enjoying the fall garden colors, and although during the summer I don't love these vines that creep over into my garden from the neighbors yard, they're beautiful right now.

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Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Jimmy Dean Low-Fat and Pre-Cooked Turkey Link Sausage

I've tried a few different brands of turkey breakfast sausage, but never found one that really wowed me until I tried this Jimmy Dean Low-Fat and Pre-Cooked Turkey Link Sausage that I found at Costco. Actually I spotted this a few months ago, but it came in a package with 48 links of sausage, and I wasn't sure I'd like it enough to buy that much. Then one day I was at Costco when they were giving samples of the sausage. I took one bite and a box of sausage flew into my cart.

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