LINGUINE WITH GARLICKY KALE AND WHITE BEANS

Looking for a quick meal to whip up after a busy Monday at work? Looking for another vegetarian dish to add to your recipe collection? This pasta dish is loaded with garlicky flavor, contains only eight ingredients (most of which you probably already have), and is ready in under 20 minutes!

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces uncooked linguine or whole wheat spaghetti
• 3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh garlic
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 (8-ounce) package pre-chopped kale
• 1 (15-ounce) can unsalted cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
• 3/4 tsp. black pepper, divided (1/2 + 1/4)
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:

1. Cook pasta according to directions on package until al dente, leaving out salt and fat.
2. Drain pasta, using a colander, reserving 1/4 cup cooking liquid.
3. In a large skillet, over medium heat, heat oil and garlic.When garlic begins to sizzle, add 1/2 cup water and kale; cover and cook 5 minutes or until kale is tender, stirring occasionally.
4. Add beans, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and salt; cook 1 minute or until thoroughly heated, stirring occasionally.
5. Add pasta and reserved 1/4 cup cooking liquid to pan; toss to coat. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper over pasta. Serve immediately.

{Original recipe from Cooking Light Magazine's April 2014 issue.}

How to Chop Fresh Garlic

The Howcast YouTube channel is a wonderful place to discover instructional videos. Here, they show us how to easily chop garlic (unlike the previous video on garlic that was posted on how to mince). Fresh garlic is not only so delicious but very beneficial for many health reasons! Start practicing your knife skills and add some fresh garlic to your meal!

Growing Greens: How to Raise Spinach

The YouTube channel, Gardenerd, goes over how to grow your own spinach. This is the first of many videos I will be posting on growing your own food at home. Growing your own fruits and vegetables is an affordable way to eat healthy!

How to Wash and Prepare Spinach

Chris from the YouTube channel 'foodfaq' provided this wonderful video on how to properly wash and prepare spinach. At the end he also gives an awesome tip on how to bring life back to your spinach if you have some sitting in your refrigerator that has started to wilt.

Watercress 101

How to shop for, store for maximum life, and trim watercress. This peppery little plant is highly nutritious!

How to Trim Green Beans

This short video shows how to easily trim green beans. This really only takes a few seconds to do and is a necessary step prior to cooking fresh green beans.

How to Deseed a Jalapeno

The Munchie Musings YouTube channel shows us here in this video how to easily deseed a jalapeno without getting the juices all over your hands. If you've never worked with jalapenos before, the juices are very potent. Getting the juice onto your hands and then accidentally transferring them to your face or eyes can be a horrible experience. Even just having a fresh hangnail on one of your fingers can be pretty painful from the jalapeno juices getting into it. Personally, I'm a big fan of plastic kitchen gloves when working with produce like this or with meat.

Food Art - How to Make a Panda Sushi Roll

How cool is this?! I found this posted on Google+ and just had to share it. I personally haven't attempted to make sushi yet...even after 15 years. One day I will mark it off my bucket list. For anyone who is experienced or at least willing to try, here is the cutest "how to" for making a panda sushi roll.

Sweet Potatoes: History & Nutrition

Sweet potatoes are sweeter, less starchy, and WAY MORE nutritious than its regular potato counterpart. In fact, sweet potatoes aren't even a potato at all; they are in the Morning Glory family and are actually more closely related to roadside shrubs and LSD than they are related to regular potatoes. WHO KNEW?!?!

This 6-minute video is incredibly informative and gives you a short history of the sweet potato as well as some amazing tips on how to prepare and cook them.

Tips About Eggplant

Tiffany Vickers Davis from Cooking Light talks about ways to prepare and cook eggplant and how to steer clear of ending up with a bitter and/or mushy dish in the video below.

Eggplant is a very diet-friendly plant at just 38 calories per one cup and it is extremely versatile. Though originally most popular in Mediterranean and Asian cultures, eggplant can be incorporated into just about every type of food culture on the planet. It can be baked, cooked, broiled, grilled, fried, added to soup, or even stuffed with meat, cheese, or other vegetables.

It is a great source of soluble fiber which helps keep your digestive tract and cardiovascular system healthy. Just one cup of eggplant is about ten percent of your daily recommended requirement for fiber. It also contains a myriad of nutrients including but not limited to potassium, iron, zinc, and B-vitamins which all help keep your heart, muscles, skin, and nervous system healthy as well as helping control your metabolism.

Eggplant, like other naturally blue and purple foods, are full of anthocyanins which are plant-based nutrients that are antioxidants that actually help protect the body's cells from damage from free radicals.

When purchasing an eggplant, it should have glossy, bright purple skin and be firm and heavy. Some species may even be light purple or white. Watch out for brown streaks and wrinkled skin as these are signs that the eggplant is no longer ripe.

How To Cut An Onion Fast

A great video from Weelicious where she shows us how to easily chop an onion. Comes in handy when you're bawling your eyes out!

Brussel Sprouts 101 - How To Buy, Store, Prep and Cook Brussel Sprouts

Dani Spies shows us what to look for when purchasing brussel sprouts as well as how we should store them for maximum freshness and how to wash them. She also provides us with a super simple yet tasty recipe to follow towards the end. Brussel sprouts get a bum rap and are so under-appreciated...don't knock 'em until you try 'em!

How To Deseed, Cut, Chop, Dice, Slice, and Peel Tomatoes

Such a great and informative video! 'Monkey See' shows us all the basic techniques for tomatoes including how to properly cut open an Italian (great for homemade sauces and salsas) and Hot House tomato (great diced for taco night) and how to de-seed them (the insides can be used in homemade salsas), how to chop and dice tomatoes, how to slice a Beafy tomato (perfect for meaty hamburgers and sandwiches), and how to peel tomatoes (stewed tomatoes, soups, stews, etc.). 

When I first started, I just took the entire tomato and chopped it. I didn't pay attention to what type of tomato I was buying and I wasn't de-seeding them either. I always ended up with soggy tomato pieces. I finally figured out why - when you take the seedy part out the tomato becomes so much easier to chop and dice and it keeps it's structure better. Learning what types of tomatoes go best with what recipes and other food items can become so helpful to understand.

Working with Fresh Thyme

Cooking Light chefs show us how to work with fresh thyme including how to properly remove the leaves from the stems, working with thyme's varying woodiness within the stems, and chopping it up. Remember to always wash and dry fresh herbs prior to working with them.

How to Prepare Fennel

Cooking Light shows us what fennel is and how to prepare it for roasted fennel wedges or cutting it up fresh for a recipe or salad. The stalks are very tough so besides using them to lightly flavor a soup - they have to be removed before serving - they can basically just be thrown away (or composted for us green-friendly peeps). But the fawns can be used to beautifully garnish a finished dish!

Some Great Tips for Peeling a Hard-Boiled Egg

Cooking Light provides a great video that shows us how to easily peel a hard-boiled egg.

How to Mince Cilantro

Geobeats on YouTube has provided this very informative video on how to mince fresh cilantro.

How to Mince Parsley

This is an awesome video done by Howcast that shows how to prepare and mince fresh parsley.

How to Choose a Ripe Avocado

Here is a great video from 'Your Produce Guy' that helps show how to tell if an avocado is ripe or not and also explains what you can do to help an avocado ripen.

How to Cut and Deseed an Avocado

Another great video that not only shows an easy way to cut and deseed an avocado, but also shows how to use fresh lemon juice to prevent the avocado from oxidizing and turning brown.