Yum!

I wanted to take a photo of a yummy dish we made this week, but it didn't last long enough!

I was rummaging through my basement trying to purge a bit on Monday and came across a McCormick spices recipe booklet that I picked up at a nutrition conference this year. I knew I kept it for a reason! They have some really yummy looking recipes! And lucky for you, they post them on their website, too!

Anyhow, so I was flipping through and came across this recipe for Moroccan Bean & Pepper Stew and decided to make it because I had almost all of the ingredients already in my kitchen.

We were missing the squash, so my husband was sent to get some. Sadly, there were no butternut squash available at the grocery store he went to, so we substituted acorn squash (and it was yummy!). We used a combo of green, red, orange and yellow peppers that we had left over from a quiche I made that morning (hurray for a productive morning!) We also added sweet potato because I have a hard time eating Moroccan-inspired food without those yummy orange yammies, and I tossed double the tomatoes in because I didn't bother reading that it called for 14 oz rather than the whole 28 oz can I used. OH - and on that note, make sure you buy the diced tomatoes with NO SALT ADDED. It's the same price where I shop. Also exciting: the tomatoes I bought were from Canada :) We also didn't have any fresh mint for a garnish, but I did have some dried, so I tossed it on there and it was DELICIOUS! Our version made 8 servings instead of 6, so for the last two servings we had to make more couscous.

From a nutrition standpoint this recipe is pretty good. It has 10 g of fibre per serving, which is a fair chunk (considering 21-38 grams of fibre are recommended for healthy adults). What could you do to improve it? Drop the sodium level down (as they recommend on the site). You could do this by using low sodium broth, using the NO SALT ADDED tomatoes that I suggested, and by omitting, or cutting down on the salt added. Rinsing the canned beans (garbanzo and kidney) would also help, though using dried beans would be the best solution. In fact, if you happen to make your own vegetable stock, you're really in business! See tomorrow's post for a bit on vegetable stock.