This month’s Healthy Cravings was one of my favorites. Two teams faced off in a Top Chef/Chopped style cooking challenge that was judged by Holistic Healthy and Fitness Coach, Danny Collier. You can read a recent interview here.
We didn’t have a lot of time so as Danny began speaking to the rest of the crowd and sharing his story the two teams got their first peek at the ingredients they could choose from. There were several types of cooked and canned beans, grains, fresh and frozen veggies, fruit and spices.
The were given 20 minutes to prepare and entrée and either a dessert or a salad. Both teams went over time but check out what they created.
The winning dish was this Jerk Veggie creation served over quinoa. It was delicious.
Second place went to this asparagus salad served alongside black beans, faux cheese sauce and guacamole trio served with brown rice tortillas with a banana-date dessert. Here is a closer look at that salad, it had mixed greens, quinoa, and an assortment of veggies.
I couldn’t have my guests doing all the cooking so I made a couple of Shepherd’s Pies and my highly sought after gluten-free brownies.
Given the same ingredients what would you have made for the contest? I would have made Mexican food! I know big surprise!
Holly, looks so fun! Wish I hadn’t gotten sick the day before 🙁 I’m planning on coming this month. Are you or the creators of those dishes going to be posting the recipes for them?
(I already copied the Brownies recipe. I don’t have any of the others though.)
Hi Joye,
I don’t have all the recipes because many of the items were thrown together. The winning recipe was adapted from Quick-Fix Vegan, by Robin Robertson. I don’t share recipes from cookbooks and I was unable to find a link to share.
I’ll be sending an email out about they next Healthy Cravings today.
Holly,
Everything looks delicious – I’m particularly interested in that Asparagus Salad – I think I can re-create it based upon the photo. It looks as though it has a sauce on it… Is it Balsamic Vinegar only? And is there any Kalamata Olives in there or am I seeing something else that looks purple? Yum. We are having guests over for Mother’s Day and I’d DEFINITELY like to make a big bowl of that. I hope Asparagus is still in-season by then.
The salad was a basic garden salad plus quinoa and cooked asparagus. It had far-free balsamic Vinegarette dressing from Trader Joes. I didn’t provide olives but you could use them sparingly. The purple was from the lettuce.
Where are you located? I would love to come to this.
I’m in Arizona! We just had this month’s Healthy Cravings last night. It was a lot of fun but I still haven’t caught up on dishes. 🙂