‘I’m a Cookbook Author, and This Is My Favorite 5-Ingredient Healthy Dinner’

Photo: Stocksy/Harald Walker
This isn’t your standard New Year’s plan. No restrictive diets, no weekly weigh-ins, no “whole new you” for this new year—because, hey, you’re pretty great already. These four expert-led plans—designed to help you move your body, eat more veggies, get a better night’s sleep, or show yourself some loving care—are all about developing healthy habits that better align with your goals.

It's a complete healthy eating fallacy that you have to be the queen (or king) of meal prep in order to ensure all your meals are nutrient-rich. Can it help? Absolutely. But it's not always realistic—which is why it's so helpful to have a go-to dinner recipe up your sleeve that comes together in mere minutes. For healthy food blogger and Healthier Together author Liz Moody, that meal is kale quesadillas.

As part of Well+Good’s 2021 ReNew Year program, Moody is providing tips all month long for how to eat more plants—easy dinner ideas included. "This is one of my go-to meals for when I just can’t," Moody says. "It’s super delicious and comforting, filled with veggies to give you the strength you need to tackle times like these, and it takes truly 10 minutes to make with zero chopping required."

 

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Here's a run-down of what's in it: tortillas (Moody likes Siete Foods' almond flour tortillas, $5), cheese (or vegan cheese), and kale. If you have garlic powder, onion powder, and sea salt on hand, even better. ⁣"The garlic and onion powder add a dose of delicious umami with no chopping necessary, and shoving it all in a quesadilla makes it super crave-worthy," Moody says.

Something Moody says to keep in mind when cooking this simple dinner: kale wilts and shrinks a lot when it's cooked, so you may want to add more to the skillet than you think you'll need. "The benefit to using kale this way is that you get more bang for your veggie buck," Moody says, referring to its high fiber content. If you have any kale leftover, serve it on the side for even more fiber.

Check out the recipe below, straight from Moody:

Liz Moody's kale quesadilla recipe

Serves 1

Ingredients:
Avocado or olive oil
2 tortillas
1 bunch of kale, washed
1/2 cup cheese or vegan cheese
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp onion powder
1/2 Tbsp sea salt

1. Grab a bunch of washed kale, tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces, and add them to a skillet over medium heat with a drizzle of avocado or olive oil.

2. Cook until it loses about half its volume and begins to brown, then toss with garlic and onion powder and remove from heat. ⁣

3. Wipe out the pan and make a quesadilla, heating up one of the tortillas topped with the cheese. Add the cooked kale on top of the cheese before topping it off with the other tortilla. Flip to toast the other side after about 60 seconds. Once the cheese is melted, it's ready to eat.

4. If you have any leftover cooked kale, serve it on the side. Enjoy!

Get more plant-based recipe ideas in Well+Good's Cook With Us Facebook group.

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