Bacon Black Bean Wrap

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

Git along, little doggies, here’s a hearty breakfast that’ll stick to your ribs!

It’s been a few years since I’ve been camping, but boy howdy, do I love it. I collect camping gear and hoard it in our basement, a kind of funky mix between hi-tech and vintage (I need my state of the art inflatable sleeping bag mattress, but also my vintage foldable picnic table and Coleman camping stove!)

We have two dogs who have never been camping with us, although I took one on an overnight to see how he would do. After jumping out of the car, immediately running into the woods, he came back filthy and, little did we know until much later, covered in ticks. Then he kept me up all night barking at deer (hopefully) outside the tent. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing experience, but the optimist in me really wants to try again! Being outside in nature, especially when you live in a congested city, makes it all worthwhile. Except for the ticks!

When you sleep outside or in a tent, sleeping bag mattress or not, breakfast tastes even better. A camping staple, the humble can of black beans can do no wrong, in my opinion. Just open a can and cook them over the open flames. Want to add a dried chili for flavor? Go right ahead. If you are like me, you’ll pre-cook your bacon so you don’t have a mess to clean up, which makes this wrap the easiest, most delicious meal ever. No waste, no plates needed, just pure flatbread fabulousness.

Flatout flatbreads make excellent traveling companions when camping in the great wilderness. Even the bag they come in can be used to pack out litter or dirty utensils from a campsite, once you eat all the flatbread.

This summer, get outside for a camping trip or two. Grab a couple cans of black beans, some flatbread, and ~~leave your dogs at home~~ bring your dogs so everyone can enjoy themselves! Oh and p.s. don’t forget the tick repellent.

-Amy at Flatout

Veggie Miso Grain Bowl

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

I love, love looooove to roast vegetables, especially hearty green ones like broccoli, brussels, and asparagus. The key is that the oven needs to be at a fairly high temperature, such as 425°F, to really caramelize them and get that concentrated flavor to come out. Under ordinary circumstances, a little squirt of fresh lemon juice, some salt and pepper, and you’re good to go. But if you want to mix it up, as we all want to every once in awhile, and you happen to have a bit of miso in your pantry, then by all means, make this umami packed flatbread bowl filled with lentils, quinoa, sunflower seeds, and roasted broccoli. The die hard meat lovers in your family will never miss a thing when miso is part of a salad.

I find myself buying broccoli at the store more than most other vegetables; it’s sort of my staple, go-to vegetable, but sometimes I get tired of just steaming it. Roasting really changes it up! I don’t have to worry about over-steaming and getting mushy florets when I roast; when the stem of the broccoli is fork tender, it’s done, and I take it out of the oven.

Don’t shy away from the broccoli stems, either! Roasted, they take on a wonderful, meaty texture in this hearty flatbread salad.

Flatout flatbreads can be baked into shapes to hold anything, sweet or savory. All you have to do it press a flatbread around a bake-able shape, like a rinsed out, empty tin can, and place it in the oven at 375°F for a couple minutes.

These flatbreads make especially handy little edible bowls when you’ve got a crowd to feed; bake up a bunch ahead of time and fill them up just before serving. And make a couple extra than what you need, just in case you drop one. If you have extras, they make a great fruit bowl for breakfast in the morning. My favorite part about these cute little bowls is that there’ll be one less round of dishes to wash when everyone’s done! You can thank me later, hostess with the mostest!

-Amy at Flatout

Ratatouille Flatbread

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

Everyone has their own dietary tastes, and sharing house space with another person can sometimes make that a challenge. Not everyone likes and enjoys all foods equally, in other words, and by “all foods,” I mean vegetables. Maybe there’s someone like that in your household, too, and you can relate? A diet rich in fruits and vegetables is an important part of an overall healthy lifestyle. How can we eat more vegetables? One way is ratatouille, the vegetable world’s secret weapon.

Nope, Ratatouille isn’t just a cute movie about a cartoon rodent, it’s a very old dish from southern France, a coarse vegetable stew traditionally made by peasants and farmers. Like all traditional dishes, there are many, many ways to cook it, but most recipes call for cooking the vegetables separately then blending them together later, so that each vegetable tastes unique.

Super fun to say, ratatouille is even more fun to eat. In the summer time, I like to grill slices of zucchini, eggplant, onion, peppers and tomatoes to char them up a bit before chopping them up and combining them into a beautiful vegetable mélange. However, I’ve found that roasting everything at a high temperature does much the same thing. Roasting caramelizes them, concentrating their flavors and making those vegetables richer for it. Even in the early months of spring, you can make this hearty vegetable flatbread; it’s low in calories and big in flavor, and can be made from the comfort of your own kitchen. And it’s so delightful, even sworn meat eaters may enjoy it.

Eggplants and zucchini tend to get slimy if they’re sautéed in the pan, so to avoid this, roasting in the oven is key. And the really nice thing about ratatouille is that it can be eaten hot or cold, so you can make this flatbread pizza and use any leftovers as a dip, omelet filling, or a meal on a bed of couscous later on, once your flatbread is long gone. It’s such a delicious way to eat your veggies. Topped with some salty, crumbly feta cheese is my personal favorite way to enjoy it, but maybe that’s because I’m a complete feta freak.

Make some ratatouille today, slather it on a flatbread, crumble a little feta cheese over it, and watch your non-vegetable lover devour it. It’s that good!

-Amy at Flatout

Sardine Flatbread

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

Grocery stores are my favorite places to visit. Even when I travel to simply another place in the country, you can be sure I’ll hit up a g-store to see what is being eaten regionally by the locals. That’s how I discovered pickled green beans, in New Orleans and chocolate covered dried cherries in Traverse City! Every grocery store is a microcosm of what that area’s customer wants, so it’s a mini lesson in anthropology for me, and I find every trip to be a completely fascinating culinary adventure.

A couple years ago I visited Panama with my best friend, and the grocery stores were fabulous. Not only were there two different kinds of passion fruits, (my favorite fruit in the world, and super hard to get where I live and super expensive when I find them) a dozen different varieties of bananas, but the stores were set up in a completely unique way. Sometimes one product would be displayed on an entire shelf unit, so there’s be nothing but one kind of mayonnaise taking up a ton of space, and then the next brand of mayonnaise, etc. Visually it was very much like pop art, so I took a lot of pictures, despite the weird looks I got from fellow shoppers. I could have spent hours in those grocery stores, just looking at all the different foodstuffs they offered. I did get to take home a few bottles of aji chombo, a habanero hot sauce that was delicious, and some passion fruit flavored Kool-Aid, too. Why don’t they have that here? It was a great flavor!

Anyways, in my city the grocery stores can be pretty wonderful, especially the smaller, locally owned ones that cater to their immediate communities. For example, up the street is a store in a neighborhood with a large Russian and central European population, so the food there can be very interesting: lots of cherry products, exotic mineral waters, sausages, and shelf upon shelf of dozens of different tinned sardines and sprats. Which, of course, I had to try. I picked the prettiest can of sardines on the shelf to take home and make something with. Flatbread came to mind, of course!

And in case you’re like me and have no idea what a sprat is, it’s another kind of fish, similar to the herring, and it’s often passed off as sardines when canned. Regardless, sardines (and sprats) are high in omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, and vitamin D, and are overlooked sources of deliciousness. This flatbread recipe uses sardines (or smoked sardines, if you prefer, for even more flavor) topped with onion, peppers, and arugula. I can see why these little canned beauties are so popular: after making this, there will always be a can of sardines in the house.

Step outside of the box, and try a sardine flatbread this week, you’ll be happy you did.

-Amy at Flatout

Chicken Quinoa Meatball Wrap

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

When I was a child, my mom and dad threw parties. Real adult parties with balloons, decorations, cocktails, buffet style food, and my mom’s “specialty,” sandwich loaf. What is sandwich loaf, you ask? Well, allow me to explain: picture a loaf of bread sliced three times horizontally, then layered with egg salad, ham salad (there’s not enough room in this post to explain ham salad!) and tuna salad, reassembled, and sliced into pieces. Yes, that was sandwich loaf. Basically, each cross sectioned slice would have all three salads represented, separated by bread. Watching her make it several times a year burned it into my memory forever.

By now you can probably tell that I grew up on the tail end of the weird food buffet era known as the Seventies. Definitely not the prim and proper Fifties, sort of like the Sixties, but with more bell bottoms. We’d dust off the bar in the basement, unpack the chafing dishes, light the Sterno and marvel at its eerie blue glow. Another one of her favorite things to make for parties was Swedish meatballs. The meatballs were served heated up in a sauce that was, and I am not joking here, equal parts Concord grape jelly and yellow mustard. To my kid brain, this seemed more of a food dare than something to serve at a party to guests, but maybe adults were into that kind of thing. I stayed away from the meatballs, and any meatball, for that matter, for quite some time.

But I learned to love them eventually, once my tastebuds developed a bit. Meatballs of any kind and from any culture make pretty wonderful comfort food, (I’m looking at you, spaghetti and meatballs!) but they don’t always have to be made of mystery meat. They can be light and fresh, too, without a speck of grape jelly or mustard anywhere!

Take this new flatbread recipe, for example. This nice little flatbread wrap packs a protein punch from lean ground chicken and quinoa, an ancient whole grain. Spice up the meatball mix any way you like, then roll those babies up, cook them, and tuck them into a refreshing salad filled flatbread for a sandwich, not a sandwich loaf, that’s anything but same old, same old.

-Amy at Flatout

Crunchy Chopped Salad Wrap with Shrimp

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

After a few cold, gray months with (or without) snow, the weather really starts to get to me. Everyone around the city is pale like the sky, and when the sun does come out, it almost hurts the eyes. I know I’m not alone; I see people looking up at the brightness, squinting like hibernating bears at that bright foreign object above them. After a couple weeks or more without sun, you’re just not used to it. Thank goodness spring is coming!

If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere chronically sunny, then you have no idea, but the midwest can be tough in the winter. Here in our house, we veg out more, we sleep later, and our diets can reflect all those bad habits too. This winter, however, I’ve tried to combat it. I bought one of those LED sun lamps, so we can use it for about half an hour a day, to get more light. I’m trying to eat better than I normally would. And you know what? That really has helped. Eating fresh food I make at home, where I can control the portions, the salts, the fats, and the sugars is so rewarding in the long run.

So let’s talk about food! This flatbread wrap is one of my winter blues favorites. It’s a chopped salad with shrimp and lots of crispy, crunchy herbs and vegetables.

This makes the perfect work lunch too. This flatbread wrap keeps me awake, sunny, and light on your feet, ready to seize the day. And I can’t think of a better tasting way to do it, either.

-Amy at Flatout

Grilled Cheesy Bean Burrito

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

For the busy athlete, it may be tempting to run through the drive-thru to quickly re-fuel, yet many times fast food may be lacking the nutrients you need to perform at your best. For the athlete with diabetes, it’s essential to consume both protein and carbohydrate after a workout. This combination not only replenishes energy stores that were burned up during exercise, but also helps to stabilize blood sugar levels to prevent crashes or spikes later in the day. This Grilled Cheesy Bean Burrito is the perfect solution since it can be made in advance, eaten on the go, and is packed full of the carbs and protein you need to refuel your muscles while promoting healthy blood sugar levels. By swapping a standard tortilla rich in simple carbohydrates with a fiber rich, higher protein Flatout Flatbread, you can enjoy the taste you love while boosting your nutrition and stabilizing blood sugar levels.

I consider myself fortunate that my parents didn’t raise me with a lot of fast food around. But I also realize that part of that reason was because there weren’t nearly as many options for fast food as there are now. Both my parents worked and were really busy, so it would have been a reasonable option, I suppose, if there were as many ultra-cheap fast food choices back then as there today. Mostly my mom or dad cooked, thankfully, and fast food was reserved for occasional road trips or very special occasions.

We did, however, have TV dinners. They were considered a very high-tech convenience. And how I hated them! Indistinguishable from the next, they were served hot from the oven in sectioned off foil trays, each compartment holding some kind of gross, mushy brown thing. Even dessert was mushy and brown. Everything in the tray had sort of a chemical aftertaste, too. What they lacked in taste and charm, they made up for in convenience, I suppose, but still, I’m happy those days are over.

It wasn’t until college that I tasted my first fast food style bean burrito. You could have one for 69 cents, well under a dollar, so many late night dinners were made up of bean burritos. Turns out I could have done a lot worse; I was still leery of “processed meat” from the TV dinners, and I was trying to be a vegetarian, so the lowly bean was good enough for me.

Indeed, beans are a smart choice for most people, and are excellent sources of protein and fiber.

This flatbread recipe harkens back to the good old college days where, like so many students, I was broke as a joke and hungry all the time. And they’re just as handy now when I don’t feel like running to the store and shopping, or when my monthly budget is tight. Beans are an inexpensive and healthy choice, depending on how they’re prepared. The beauty of this recipe is in the chopped white onions sprinkled in the burrito. It’s simple, quick, and immensely delicious, to boot. Just grab your flatbread, your hot sauce, and some fat-free refried beans and you’re almost there! There’s no need to run out to grab a bag of fast food, you can make a delicious inexpensive meal at home.

Vivà the bean!

-Amy at Flatout

Baked Chicken Shawarma Wrap

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

Sometimes chicken gets a bum rap. Everyone eats it, everyone likes it, but some people don’t even call it “chicken” anymore, they’ve taken to calling it “protein.” Well, chicken is protein, that much is true, but it seems sort of clinical and detached to call an animal “protein” instead of what it is, a chicken. Maybe it’s because we are so used to buying packages of chicken parts in the store, with no real thought given to the whole animal, and we’ve forgotten that in addition to the breasts we’ve come to consider lean protein, there’s other delicious and flavorful parts of the bird that are going by the wayside.

I’ve made the switch recently to buying whole chickens at the store instead of just their parts. I taught myself how to cut up a chicken for cooking, (thanks YouTube!) although mostly I roast my birds whole. I cover them with chopped garlic and herbs, stuff a single lemon inside the body, and salt and pepper the whole shebang before sticking it in the oven. The house smells so great when it’s cooking! Our small family gets two nice meals out of one chicken, more if we use flatbread, then I make stock from the carcass so the whole animal is used. It makes phenomenal soup later on! Plus I really and truly believe that whole farm chickens are way more flavorful (and less expensive!) than the bulk chicken breasts lining the shelves.

Of course, we flatbread lovers know how to make short work of a rotisserie chicken, so I’m not alone in my love of the whole bird. You can use any type of chicken for this flatbread recipe, but boneless skinless breasts have the lowest SmartPoints value. So now that you know how to cut up a whole chicken, the sky is the limit! This flatbread recipe for baked chicken shawarma uses lots of herbs and spices for a flavorful and beautiful wrap that’s easy to throw together with a little time for roasting. Get to cooking, flatbreaders!

-Amy at Flatout

Smoked Trout Breakfast Wrap

By Rob Carroll on May 15, 2017 in

Smoked trout with eggs: a classic combination perfectly suited for special breakfasts and brunches, or if you just feel like going the extra mile ahead of a grueling work week.

In my city, there’s a tiny little place on the very outskirts of the city limits that smokes their own fish. It’s just a little house on the side of the road, next to a huge drawbridge, and it takes forever for me to get there, but it’s so, so worth it.

It’s not very well known by everyone, but to some it’s famous, as evidenced by all the celebrity photographs, newspaper articles, and James Beard awards. When you walk in you’re greeted by the mouth watering smell of a dozen or so different kinds of smoked fish lining the glass butcher cases, and they only take cash, so come prepared!

The place is so small they don’t have any seating, except for a couple picnic tables outside overlooking the river and the smokehouse. When the weather is nice, the tables come in handy, but most people just grab stuff to go or even eat in their cars. Many a visit was spent eating bits of fish out of a paper bag in my car while the radio played. Too many to count.

Because is there anything more delectable than a good piece of smoked fish? I think not. This flatbread recipe uses smoked trout, but really, any smoked fish is good fish, so use your favorite, if you have one. Hopefully you have a good source for fish where you live, but if not, I’ll be happy to give you directions to mine!

-Amy at Flatout

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Suggested Products Archives: Light - Sundried Tomato

Bacon Black Bean Wrap

Veggie Miso Grain Bowl

Ratatouille Flatbread

Sardine Flatbread

Chicken Quinoa Meatball Wrap

Crunchy Chopped Salad Wrap with Shrimp

Grilled Cheesy Bean Burrito

Baked Chicken Shawarma Wrap

Smoked Trout Breakfast Wrap

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