How to diet fast 1 week

(I had to miss Phase One Fridays yesterday so I could post my tribute to Lis, but there are so many Thanksgiving recipes I want to share before the big day that I decided just this once we could have Phase One Saturday; this recipe is something I think everyone would love for Thanksgiving!)

Even though there's a great list of Low-Glycemic Thanksgiving Recipes in the recipe index, every year I have fun testing new ideas that might make it onto the Thanksgiving table.  Last year my favorite new Thanksgiving recipe was probably 100% Whole Wheat Stuffing "Muffins" with Sausage and Parmesan, a dish I worked on for several tries until I got it just right.  It's too early to tell what's  going to be my favorite from Thanksgiving 2011, but I know that this Blanched Broccoli Salad with Feta and Fried Almonds is something I'll be making over and over.  If you like broccoli, Feta, and almonds, be sure to try this dish even if you don't make it for Thanksgiving.

I often make Egg Muffins, but this recipe for Baked Mini-Frittatas with Mushrooms, Cottage Cheese, and Feta is different, something I'd eat with a fork, maybe with a dollop of light sour cream.  For the mini-frittatas I used Jumbo Muffin Cups, and the recipe has lots of mushrooms and cheese, for a baked egg dish that's a fairly dense in texture.  I love starting the week out with Meatless Monday for so many reasons, and one of them is how it encourages simple meals when you've had a weekend that was slightly indulgent, and I'd love this for a meatless breakfast, lunch of dinner.

Twice-Baked Spaghetti Squash with Kale, Feta, and Mozzarella is delicious for a side dish or a Meatless main dish.

I don't have any kind of clever creative story about how I came up with this Twice-Baked Spaghetti Squash with Kale, Feta, and Mozzarella except for the fact that my local store had organic kale on sale for $.99 a bunch (!), and I went a little crazy buying kale.  So then I had to start thinking of ways to use it, and I had a big spaghetti squash on the counter staring me in the face.  Most definitely this is a riff on the Twice-Baked Spaghetti Squash with Pesto and Parmesan that's been so popular on the blog, but the generous amount of kale makes this feel like a more substantial dish, to me at least.  I'd love this for a low-carb side dish but it would also be great for a meatless main dish.

When he was staying at my house, my brother Rand came home one day with a garbanzo salad from the market.  The salad was okay but not anything that was especially memorable, but doctoring up that salad to give it a bit more wow was what inspired this Roasted Garbanzo and Vegetable Salad with Garlic, Feta, Olives, and Basil.  And everything about the salad I came up with was perfect (if I do say so myself), including the way I roasted the garbanzos, red bell peppers, and red onions with garlic to add more flavor, the savory saltiness from the Feta and olives, and extra punch from sliced fresh basil added at the end.  I'm growing basil in the window of that new kitchen I keep promising to show you, but if you don't have basil I think chopped parsley would be delicious as well.

I admit I was a little skeptical the first time I tried cooking eggs in the slow cooker.  But that experiment was such a success, and it taught me two things about slow-cooked eggs.  First, the finished dish will be a little softer than something similar that's cooked using higher heat on the stove (which actually makes it perfect to store in the fridge and reheat later.)  And second, the long slow cooking time infuses the eggs with the flavors from the other ingredients in a way that produces delightful results.  This Slow Cooker Frittata with Artichoke Hearts, Roasted Red Pepper, and Feta would be a lovely dish to put in the slow cooker for a mid-day brunch, and I think it would be just as good for a light dinner. 

(For Phase One Fridays I feature Phase One Recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites.  This is one of the recipes I got infatuated with after I discovered my now-favorite turkey breakfast sausage, and I loved this combination.)

I love eggs for breakfast, especially things like egg muffins and breakfast casseroles that keep in the fridge and are easy to pop into the microwave for a quick breakfast.  Technically this recipe is probably a breakfast casserole, but I didn't call it that because my breakfast casseroles are mostly eggs, baked with other ingredients mixed in.  This dish is turkey breakfast sausage, sauteed mushrooms, and Feta cheese baked with just a little egg to hold it together, so that the emphasis is on the other ingredients and not so much on the eggs.  (And if you want to see why I updated the photo in 2011, scroll down past the step-by-step photos to see the original picture!)

I mentioned last week how I love the idea of Sneak Some Zucchini on to Your Neighbor's Porch Day, but I am puzzled as to why the holiday comes so early in the gardening season.  In Utah, zucchini grows at least until the end of September, and those last few weeks of the summer are when you're most likely to wander out to the garden and find a giant zucchini staring you in the face.  For a few weeks now I've been experimenting with the monster zucchini a good friend has been giving me, and this Three Cheese Zucchini Frittata was one of the happy results.  Besides using Mozzarella, Feta, and Parmesan cheese, I have a couple of other tricks here that made this one of the best tasting zucchini + egg dishes I've ever had.