“Spring Clean Your Kitchen” (PLUS recipes) with Registered Dietitian Michelle DuDash

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While you’re spring cleaning your closets and garage this year, Registered Dietitian and Cookbook Author Michelle Dudash reminds us to remember the kitchen, too!

Michelle says:

1. First, be ruthless and get rid of foods you know you won’t eat.
   And don’t just give each shelf a look over, rather, completely clear each shelf and then one by one, add the foods back in that you are keeping. It’s okay if you don’t finish it all in one day; you can knock out a shelf of two on a rainy afternoon.
2. Place the most nutritious foods at eye level in your fridge and in clear containers.
   This is a great way to help reduce food waste, too.
   Try this POM Green Warrior Smoothie that uses grapes, spinach, and POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice, helping you get more fruit and vegetable servings.

Michelle is partnering with POM Wonderful to share how easy it is to get the benefits of antioxidants. POM powers antioxidant defenses and has more antioxidants than green tea and red wine on average. Every 8-ounce serving of POM is made by pressing two whole pomegranates, so you’re getting antioxidant benefits from the arils, pith, and skin. Plus, POM is free of fillers and has no added sugar, ever.

3. In your pantry, repurpose clear glass jars and fill with foods from half empty bags or boxes of food.

Put those beautiful healthy foods on display, like rice, oats, quinoa, and nuts, like pistachios. Wonderful Pistachios are one of the highest protein snack nuts. They’re a complete and good source of plant protein, providing all nine essential amino acids. And they’re a good source of fiber. About 90% of the fats found in pistachios are unsaturated. This trio of nutrients may help keep you fuller longer.

Try this easy Baked Chicken with Nutty Dukkah Crust made with pantry ingredients from Michelle’s new book The Low-Carb Mediterranean Cookbook. It’s easy to make this using Wonderful Pistachios No Shells, which are simple and convenient. They add plant protein and crunch to any dish.

Instead of big bins where foods can get lost in the shuffle, trying add a few extra portable shelves to your pantry.

To learn more, visit www.dishwithdudash.com.

POM Green Warrior Smoothie

Baked Chicken with Nutty Dukkah Crust
Dukkah, pronounced DOO-kah, is a seasoning blend originating in Egypt. I created the recipe to yield a couple extra tablespoons of seasoning to reserve for other recipes, because once you taste this, I know you’ll want to sprinkle it on everything from dips to snacks to fish to side dishes.
1⁄4 cup (31 g) shelled, roasted pistachios
2 tablespoons (18 g) toasted sesame seeds
1 1⁄4 teaspoons (2 g) coriander seeds
1⁄2 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 1⁄2 teaspoons ground cumin
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1 1⁄4 pounds (568 g) chicken thighs or breasts, pounded to 1⁄2 inch (1.3 cm) thick, cut into 5 servings
1 tablespoon (15 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C, or gas mark 6) convection. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Place the pistachios, sesame seeds, coriander, and peppercorns into a small food processor or personal-size blender. Process the ingredients until the pistachios are ground into small pieces, but not to a paste, a few seconds. Stir in the ground cumin and salt. Reserve 2 tablespoons (16 g) seasoning in a sealed container for use at a later time.
Coat the chicken completely in the remaining ground seasoning blend. Lay the chicken on the prepared baking sheet* and drizzle with the olive oil. Bake until cooked through, about 12 minutes.
Recipe Note
Alternatively, you may cook the seasoned chicken on the stovetop: Heat a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the oil and when it is hot, add the chicken and cook about halfway through on the first side, but before the seasonings burn, about 3 minutes. Turn and cook through, about 3 minutes.
TOTAL PREP AND COOK TIME: 30 MINUTES • YIELD: 5 SERVINGS
PER SERVING: 204 CALORIES, 3 G CARBOHYDRATE (1 G FIBER, 0 G ADDED SUGARS, 2 G NET CARBS), 27 G PROTEIN, 9 G FAT, 270 MG SODIUM.

Spring Salads + More Spring Cleaning Tips

Michelle Dudash, dietitian, author, and chef is back with a light and bright spring salad with homemade salad dressing. Plus, more organizing tips for your kitchen this spring.

Talking points:

1. Tabbouleh Salad with Chickpeas and Quinoa
   From Michelle’s new book The Low-Carb Mediterranean Cookbook. Made mostly with pantry ingredients. Delicious way to use up canned beans you may have stocked up on this past year.

Per serving: 105 calories, 3 g fiber, 9 g net carbs, 4 g protein.

2. Inspect your spice cabinet.
   The shelf life of spices can vary:
   1-3 years for ground and whole leafy herbs
   2-4 years for ground spices
   3-4 years for whole spices

Michelle says to give it a gentle whiff. If it spells like the spice, then it’s probably still good. If it smells like nothing or dusty, then it’s not doing your recipes any good, so toss it.

Foods that never go bad:
Salt, vanilla, and vinegar.

3. Make Michelle’s Italian Vinaigrette with simple ingredients

1 packet Dash Dinners Spice Kit Marinara
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Shake it all up in a jar. Pour over salad. No added sugar, no fillers, gluten-free.

Tabbouleh Salad with Chickpeas and Quinoa
Tabbouleh salad was always present at my grandma’s house while I was growing up, but it was different from what I see in stores today. Traditional tabbouleh is more of a green parsley salad with just small flecks of wheat bulgur, rather than the opposite ratio you find in grocery stores.
Since I rarely seem to have luck finding fine wheat bulgur in stores, I went straight to quinoa in this recipe.
1⁄4 cup (43 g) uncooked quinoa (makes 1 cup cooked and fluffed)
1⁄2 cup (120 ml) vegetable broth
1 (15-ounce [425 g]) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
2 bunches Italian flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked from stems (about 4 cups [240 g] lightly packed)
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped small
1⁄4 cup (40 g) finely diced onion
Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons [30 ml])
2 tablespoons (30 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Rinse the quinoa in a fine-mesh strainer, if you have one, and drain. Otherwise, skip this step. Bring the quinoa and broth to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Cook until tender, about
15 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes undisturbed. Spread out on a plate, running lines through it with a spoon to cool quickly.
In a bowl, combine the cooled quinoa, chickpeas, parsley, tomatoes, onion, lemon juice, oil, salt, and pepper. Serve chilled or at room temperature.
Suggestions and Variations
If you’re eating a big bowl of this like I do for a meal, try sprinkling on crumbled feta cheese for added flavor, protein, and calcium.
TOTAL PREP AND COOK TIME: 30 MINUTES • YIELD: 8 SERVINGS, 1⁄2 CUP (100 G) EACH
PER SERVING: 105 CALORIES, 12 G CARBOHYDRATE (3 G FIBER, 0 G ADDED SUGARS, 9 G NET CARBS), 4 G PROTEIN, 5 G FAT, 150 MG SODIUM.

Michelle’s Italian Vinaigrette

1 packet Dash Dinners Spice Kit Marinara
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Shake it all up in a jar. Pour over salad.