Hope you enjoyed a happy hump day?  The weather was great in New York today.  There were a few things going on such as me becoming the Administrator of Spark Utica team.  Yeah!      If you haven’t looked at the SparkPeople site yet, please take a peek. It is a terrific site for fitness, motivation, healthy nutrition, recipes and so much more.  I’d love to have you join our group or one that is dear to your heart.

I finally received my  fresh olives today.  There was a great little sampler of dried olives in the package called Olivasecca.  

They are a treat! I’m not a real olive fan but these are wonderful.  They look like round, big raisins. The best way to describe the taste is like a black olive but with a much more delicate flavor that doesn’t stick around in your mouth for the rest of the night.  These are fantastic.  I hope my homemade olives turn out just as good.

Tonights eats….Ratatouille with Grilled Tuna Steaks.

I found this recipe at Ratatouille Recipe – French Vegetable Dish with Eggplant.  Of course it wasn’t followed exactly but as usual, our fridge was stacked with items that had to be used and I finally had time to engage in a lot of dicing, so this was going on the menu.

A TIME SAVER TIP:  When you have to chop items for a recipe, use a cheap paper plate to keep your ingredients on as you prepare them.  It saves on clean up and keeps your chopping board free so you can continue preparing other ingredients.

Using eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, and a plum tomato, this dish was the solution to my extra inventory woes.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 
• 1 medium eggplant, to about a 1” dice
• 1 plum tomato, 
• 1 medium zucchini, 1” dice
• 1 medium yellow squash, 1” dice
• ½ cup vegetable broth
• 1 Tbsp Herbes de Province
• salt and pepper to taste
• Fresh Basil Leaves

Heat a sauté pan over medium heat add olive oil.  When hot, add garlic, sauté for 2 minutes.  Add eggplant and broth and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes. Add tomato, zucchini and yellow squash and cook about 8-10 minutes more. 

Stir in the Herbs about 1 minute before finished cooking.  Add salt and pepper to taste.   Garnish with fresh basil leaves.  Serves 4.

Grilled Tuna:  We’ve done this before.  Simply add 1 TBS lemon to each tuna steak.  Tonight I also added 1 TBS soy sauce.  So simply add pepper before grilling.  Let sit 10 minutes while the grill heats up.  Cook on high and grill to your desired degree of doneness:  Med – Rare:  3 min. per side.  Medium to well:  4 -5 min per side. The times are for thick tuna steaks.

Tomorrow is the weekly CEimB post so make sure to tune in first thing in the morning and let me know if you think the recipe looks good.  If you made it then tell me what you thought about it.  If it just plain doesn’t appeal to you, let me know that too.   Have a great night!