Coaching with Gretchen

Movement, Mindfulness & Self-Care Coaching with Gretchen Schock

Recipes

Chickpea Quesadilla

Recipes

Trying to eat a more plant-based diet?

This vegetation recipe can easily be converted to vegan and will easily satisfy your meat-loving friends and family.

My kids are not the most adventurous eaters. It’s often hard to incorporate plant-based recipes into their diet unless it looks exactly like the meat version. But the Chickpea Quesadillas were a huge hit! For the adults we served it with a side salad, for the kids, we added a cooked vegetable that they will tolerate.

Chickpea Quesadilla served with a side salad

4 servings

Ingredients:

  • 2 (15-ounce) cans garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 tablespoon avocado oil
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • 1 TB. minced garlic
  • ½ teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • salt and pepper
  • 4 tortillas
  • 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese per serving
  • 2 tablespoons of sour cream per serving
  • 3 tablespoons of salsa per serving

Directions:

  • Heat diced onion with oil in a pan until translucent.
  • Chop garbanzo beans in a food processor until mushy but not puréed if you do not have a food processor use a potato masher and a large bowl.
  • Add beans to onions in a pan on medium heat and stir consistently.
  • Add remaining spices to the bean mixture.
  • Season with salt and pepper and serve in a tortilla with 1/4 cup of shredded cheese per serving. Top with sour cream and salsa, and enjoy!

Easy, Low Calorie Curry Chickpea (without Coconut)

Recipes

Vegan/Vegetarian and Gluten-free. This easy curry chickpea dish is made without coconut so it’s perfect for someone who has an allergy or is wishing to lower the calories of a classic curry dish without loosing the flavor.

Easy Curry Chickpea recipe served with roasted root vegetables and roasted red potatoes

I paired the chickpeas with roasted red potatoes and roasted root vegetables. But it would be lovely served with rice and a side salad or with naan bread and raw veggies. It was a huge hit at my dinner table and I hope it is at yours as well.

Ingredients :

  • 2 teaspoons turmeric
  • 1 Tablespoon of minced garlic
  • 2 Tablespoons of lime juice
  • 1 teaspoon of dried cilantro
  • 1 Tablespoon curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon of ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
  • 2 cups almond milk
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 2 Tablespoons avocado oil
  • 3 cans of chickpeas (16-oz. can; drain and rinse before using)
  • salt and ground pepper to taste

Instructions :

  1. In a large pan, heat the avocado oil over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onion and stir frequently until the onion is translucent.
  2. Reduce the heat to medium. Add the chickpeas, which are drained, and stir.
  3. Add the turmeric, garlic, lime juice, cilantro, curry powder, ginger, and cayenne pepper. Stir to coat all the chickpeas.
  4. Add the almond milk and cherry tomatoes, stir well. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover. Allow to cook, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes.
  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste and allow to simmer for an additional 10 minutes. Serve hot, with roasted potatoes and veggies or over rice.

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Servings: 8 people

Blackberry Chicken Crockpot Recipe

Recipes

BBQ isn’t an option for me because of allergies. I created this recipe so that my family can still enjoy something that we love.

A few years ago I randomly developed an allergy to molasses. You might wonder, how in the world did you figure that out? It was actually easier than you might imagine. One of my wonderful yoga students made me molasses cookies as a gift. Which I had never had before and they were quite delicious. So I ate them, a lot of them. I started getting hives all over my mouth and down my neck. It looked horrid! I had eaten all of the cookies and didn’t make the connection quite yet to the cookies and hives. I dosed myself up with Benadryl and the hives slowly disappeared.

Shortly after the hives cleared up my wife and I went out to dinner at a BBQ place and within minutes of eating the BBQ, the hives around my mouth began appearing again. I googled the ingredients and the common link between the cookies and the sauce was molasses!

I made an appointment with an allergist who then tells me that it’s impossible to be allergic to molasses. Even though I showed him picture after picture that I had taken to document the hives and its development from my mouth to down my neck. After much time spent on the internet researching this for myself, it’s rare but you can in fact have a sulfite allergy. I’ve put myself through the test and tried eating bread, salad dressing, or desserts with molasses, or even with brown sugar, and within minutes the tiny bumps around my lips begin to form before turning into full-blown hives. So regardless of what that quack doctor said, I’m taking this knowledge and simply avoiding all foods that have molasses or brown sugar since that seems to be the ingredients that cause the hives.

Over the years I’ve had to make some adjustments to my diet, I read labels religiously and ask when I am at restaurants or over at friends’ houses what is in the dish. Molasses surprisingly pops up in a lot of foods that you would label as healthy. This tasty blackberry chicken crockpot recipe has a sweet and yet savory taste. My wife said it reminded her of traditional BBQ without it having the bbq ingredients that I’m allergic to (ie: molasses).

Blackberry chicken served over Korean white rice and a side of broccoli

Ingredients :
Two, 6-ounce containers of blackberries
4 chicken breasts
½ cup honey
½ cup low sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup sesame oil
2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
Black pepper to taste
Sesame seeds sprinkled on top after serving. 

Place all ingredients in the crockpot and set to low heat for 8 hours. Halfway through cooking time, stir and try to break apart the chicken and smush the blackberries.

You can serve the chicken over Korean sticky white rice, made to package directions, or served in a bun or without a carb at all!

Mushroom Risotto

Recipes

Vegetarian and Alcohol-Free!

Risotto is one of those “labors of love” dishes. It takes tending to while it cooks so you have to remain present in the task. I can do that on my yoga mat but in the kitchen it’s a whole other story!

Mushroom Risotto with green beans and alchol-free

I haven’t made risotto since I decided to quick drinking and began my journey of sobriety 8 years ago. Risotto is often made with white wine and that’s my kryptonite, white wine. But I actually don’t let alcohol into my home at all so cooking with it is not an option.

I keep seeing posts in my social media feed about folks doing a “Dry January”. I thought why not expand that into food as well so I created this delicious vegetarian mushroom risotto. I hope your family loves it as much as mine did.

Ingredients :

Place mushrooms and onion in food processor and chop. 

Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onion and mushroom and sauté over medium-high heat stirring constantly for 2 minutes. Add rice and stir until thoroughly mixed. Add one cup of water and 1 teaspoon of bouillon, keep the heat on medium-high and stir sporadically as the water is absorbed. Once it looks to be absorbed add another cup of water and another teaspoon of bouillon, keep repeating this step until 5 cups of water and 5 teaspoons of the vegetable paste have been added. Rice should be al dente.

Turn down heat and add cheeses, stir until melted. Salt and pepper to taste. 

I choose to serve the mushroom risotto with sautéed fresh green beans but any additional vegetable would be lovely.

Pomegranate Honey Glaze

Recipes

This light and versatile glaze will bring a pop of deliciousness to roasted vegetables and fish.

It’s winter right now and though the temperatures have been dropping in Maryland I’ve actually been craving summer dishes like grilled fish and light side dishes.

I typically try to eat “in season” so I combined the pomegranate and the veggies that I received in my Hungry Harvest box to make a summer style dish in the heart of winter. With the sweetness of the pomegranate paired with the dense texture of the wild swordfish, that I picked up at Costco this dinner was a huge hit!

For the veggies, I roasted butternut squash and brussel sprouts. I cut the squash into cubes and the brussel sprouts I cut into quarters and roasted for 40 minutes in a baking pan with a drizzle of light avocado oil and salt and pepper for 30 minutes at 450F.

The pomegranate and honey glaze doesn’t overpower the organic tastes provided by the food and instead enhances the senses bringing sweetness to your dish with just a hint of summer.

Pomegranate honey glaze poured over roasted vegetables and swordfish and a side of cous cous
Roasted brussel sprouts, butternut squash with swordfish drizzled with the pomegranate honey glaze and served with a side of cous cous.

Ingredients :

  • 1/3 cup pomegranate juice
  • 1/4 cup of honey
  • 1 TB balsamic vinegar
  • 1 pomegranate worth of seeds

Join the pomegranate juice, honey, and balsamic vinegar in a mixing bowl and whisk until honey is smooth. Add the pomegranate seeds and then scoop over vegetables or fish.

**Hungry Harvest is a vegetable and fruit delivery service. Get $10 off your first box!

Teriyaki Rice Bowl

Recipes

With Ground Turkey and Veggies

Gluten-free Entree

My kids, even though they are teenagers, are not adventurous eaters. Granted they are better than they use to be but their palettes are still limited. We have household standard meals that are served each week which include burgers, taco night, and some sort of pasta dish.

I share custody of my kids so on “non-boy weeks”, as my wife and I call it, I like to try new recipes. After we eat the dish we can then determine if it would pass the kid test. This dish is both sweet and savory and because the veggies are mixed into the meat and sauce I think many kids would like it, maybe even mine!

Teriyaki Rice Bowl with carrots, red bell peppers and broccoli served in a bowl with chopsticks.

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound ground turkey or chicken
  • 1 carrot, peeled and chopped into small pieces
  • 2 small to medium red bell peppers, chopped
  • 1 broccoli crown, chopped
  • 2 cups instant brown rice
  • 1 Tablespoon of oil, I use avocado oil

Sauce:

  • ½ cup low sodium, gluten-free soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 4 Tablespoons honey
  • 2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
  • 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
  • ½ teaspoon ground black pepper

Begin by prepping the veggies; rinsing, and chopping starting with the carrot. Using a large skillet place the chopped carrot in the skillet with a sprinkling of oil over medium heat as you continue to prep and prepare the other veggies as listed in the ingredients list above.

Fold in the ground turkey and the remaining veggies, cover the skillet, and keep the medium heat setting going. Check on the ingredients in the skillet every so often, stirring and breaking apart the ground turkey as you prepare the sauce.

Prepare the instant brown rice according to package directions. I made mine in the microwave so that I had fewer pots and pans to clean up afterward.

In a medium bowl combine all the sauce ingredients and whisk together until the honey is smooth and everything looks to be mixed together.

Uncover the skillet and break apart the meat and check that all of the meat is cooked through, no pink parts remain. Once the meat is cooked through add the sauce to the skillet and stir. Lower your heat setting to low and continue stirring for less than 5 minutes so that the meat absorbs the juices of the sauce. (You will still see some of the sauce at the bottom of the skillet.)

Scoop a serving of rice into a bowl and then top with the meat and veggies and sauce. ENJOY!