Autumn Calabrese presents quick, calorie-light ways to flavor each 21 Day Fix container. She demos: mixing fresh herbs and spices into steamed vegetables (green); strawberries with lemon zest and a balsamic-glaze teaspoon (purple); chopped hard-boiled eggs mixed with 1 tsp Dijon and dill (red); red quinoa tossed with plain rice vinegar (yellow); dry-roasted cashews seasoned with cayenne and smoked paprika (blue); and dry-roasted pumpkin seeds with coffee grounds and cinnamon (orange). Practical notes include portion/count reminders and brief cook times.
Questions this video answers
About 5 calories in 1 teaspoon.
The balsamic glaze counts as one teaspoon.
Eight cashews.
About two minutes.
Chapters
Welcome back to another edition of Spicing up our Containers. You guys really loved the first one that I did, so I brought it back for another round. These are calorie free ways to spice up these containers. If you missed the first round, click here. Watch it. Learn how to spice up all these containers. We're doing it again. We're gonna start with our green. Work our way down and let's have some.
First container we're going to start with is our green container, which is our vegetable container. What I have here is a mixture of vegetables. There's a little tip for you guys right there. You don't have to fill the container with just one vegetable. Feel free to mix it up and have fun. In here there's yellow squash, cauliflower, carrots and asparagus and they're just steamed. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to add to this fresh herbs. You can pick any that you like, but I'm going to use chives and basil. Always good to keep fresh herbs on hand. You guys, I'm going to add in our chives. I'm going to chop up some basil leaves. Love fresh basil. It reminds me of my grandma's house when I was little. My grandma grew basil in the backyard and she would use it in her meatballs. Basil and chives. And then I'm also gonna just sprinkle on cumin and then chili powder. Put that lid on there nice and tight. Shake it up if there's any room to shake and then you're good to go. Smells so good. There it is, you guys.
Mmm. Great way to spice up your veggies in no time. Alright, let's move on. Next container. This one is so delicious, you guys. I love this. It's kind of a dessert. The purple container is our fruit. So what I have is strawberries, balsamic glaze and a lemon. That's what you'll need for this. I'm just cutting these in half.
This one is easy. All you gotta do is cut up strawberries. The balsamic is gonna count as a teaspoon. Alright, so we have our strawberries. Gonna shave a little lemon zest across the top. Don't get your knuckles on there. And then we're gonna drizzle. Drizzle balsamic glaze. This is thicker than balsamic vinaigrette, so you want to just shake it out slowly. If you want to make sure that it covers your strawberries and it's not all on top, put that lid on.
Shake it up a little. Let it coat everything. There you have it. Yummy. Dessert.
So good.
Alright, moving on to the red container. If you follow me on social media at all, you know I love eggs. I could literally eat eggs breakfast, lunch and dinner. This recipe is really fun. I have two eggs here, so they're hard boiled and I've chopped them up. I'm just gonna add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Dijon mustard has like 5 calories in 1 teaspoon, so it's not a lot. Basically a free food. And then chopped up dill. So we're just gonna hope I don't get my fingers in there. And then you just sprinkle the dill in and we're gonna mix it up. So in it goes. Mix this all up.
You guys can really use this for anything. You can put it on top of a sandwich, you can put it on top of your salad. You can serve it as a side dish. However you'd. That's how to spice up the red container. Next up is yellow. So what I have in here is red quinoa. Most people know quinoa to be white, which there is the white version. The red one I like a little better. It's a little crunchier, has a little bit more of a nutty flavor. This I can't even really call a recipe. This is so easy. You make your quinoa and all I'm gonna do is add rice vinegar to it. So rice vinegar comes one of two ways. It either comes seasoned or plain. I get mine plain, plain. I don't like anything extra added in, especially sugar, which they add to the seasoned one. So all I'm gonna do is drizzle the vinegar across the top of my quinoa and shake it up. But here's the fun part about it. It makes it taste more like sushi rice. I love sushi, but I don't always want the rice, especially because it's a little higher on the glycemic index. Quinoa lower. It's also a more complete protein. Simple, fast.
Really good. Next up is our blue container. This one's fun. I really like using dry roasted nuts. Great little treat. So what we're gonna do is I'm using cashews. I'm gonna just sprinkle them into the pan. This pan is already heated. Like I said, there's nothing in it because we're just dry roasting however many you want to put in there because you can store these later. But remember, eight cashews counts as your Blue container. You're not filling up that blue container. Cashews in the pan. I'm gonna add a little cayenne pepper. Just spri little bit. That's your heat. And then smoked paprika. This gives you a nice little smoky flavor to it. Gonna cook them for about two minutes. And as you cook them, the oil from the nuts will start to bind the seasoning onto the nuts. You need to keep a close eye on these because they can and will burn.
Alright, we're just gonna swoosh it around a little bit. They're just about finished. There it is, you guys. So they're roasted. The seasonings coated it like I said. Remember, you don't get to fill the blue container. You count eight. But you can store these in a dry, tight container and then you have them for next time. This is great because you know exactly what is on it. You can go to the store, obviously buy a bag of seasoned nuts, but a lot of times there's salt added to them. Other ingredients, you're not really sure what's in there. This is perfect. You know exactly what you're getting and it's delicious. All right. Last but not least is our orange container. Orange is used for dressings as well as seeds. Since we just dry roasted nuts, I'm gonna show you how we can also dry roast seeds. These are pumpkin seeds, so I'm gonna add them to my pan. There's nothing in it, but it is already heated. And then this is a little bit of a sweet take on it. So this is coffee grounds. Sprinkle some in. I know you're probably thinking I'm nuts, but I promise this is actually really good. And then cinnamon.
We're just gonna roast it down for about two minutes. It's the same thing where the oils from the seeds will bind the seasoning. Smells like fall, like autumn. Dry roasted for two minutes. There it is. You guys, you really gotta think outside of the container while staying inside of the container. Have fun with it. Don't be afraid to play with these, but it's really a fun, yummy, sweet treat.
Delicious. There it is. Another edition of spicing up your containers. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it encourages you to think outside of the box. If you have any fun recipes to make them different and make them more interesting, leave it below. Maybe I'll cook it next time. That's it. Thanks for joining me. Be sure to subscribe and I'll see you guys soon. Bye.
