Asian Lettuce Wraps and Garlic Roasted Butternut Squash

Yesterday was a beautifully sunny day in the mid 70's and I was getting ready to go lay out by the pool.  We wanted to eat something light for lunch because it is hard to feel cute laying out in a swimsuit when you have eaten a big heavy lunch.  I pulled out a head of iceberg lettuce from our weekly farmer's market produce bag,  some spinach, cabbage, and assorted vegetables for the salads.  As I went to unwrap the beautiful head of iceberg lettuce, on the front it said "Have you tried our Asian Lettuce Wraps?" Well no, I hadn't, but they sounded good! So I went to dole.com to find the recipe but it was so hard to navigate and find the recipe on the ipad so I gave up.  I then preceded to read about 15 different asian lettuce wrap recipes, none of which I had all the ingredients for and I was not about to run to the grocery store again (we had already gone that morning).  So I decided to save the lettuce for Monday and pick up the extra ingredients on my way home from work.

So today, I was really craving those asian lettuce cups and thought to myself, I am just going to make up my own recipe of lettuce cups with stuff I already have, based on what I had read on all those different recipes.  So this is what I came up with:

*Disclaimer: I really just made it up as I went, so I apologize if you think "wtf is this?"

Coconut oil
1 pound ground beef
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
some mushrooms, diced
1/3 cup soy sauce
a splash of rice wine vinegar
ginger ( I just sprinkled in some powdered since I didn't have fresh, but I would definitely recommend fresh ginger for this)

1/4 a head of cabbage, diced up

Iceberg lettuce, rinsed, and pulled into separate leaves.  

Saute the onion and bell pepper in some coconut oil for 2-3 minutes.  Add the ground beef and cook until no longer pink.  Drain.  Add a little more coconut oil to the pan and put the meat mixture back in it.  Add the mushrooms, garlic, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, ginger and cook on medium low for 5 minutes.  

Scoop into lettuce leaves and eat it up. nom nom nom. I think it is good.  I am not sure. haha I kept asking Taylor what he thought about it and he said it was delish and proceeded to eat about 6 leaves full, but I couldn't tell if he actually liked it or was driven to binge due to the fact we had been fasting all day. So try it and tell me what you think! Or if you have a good asian lettuce wraps recipe you have tried and liked send it my way! 

As for the squash.  I had it so I made it like we would make roasted potatoes, carrots, or sweet potatoes.  

1 butternut squash, peeled and diced into cubes

1-2 cloves minced garlic

salt

pepper

olive oil

Preheat oven to 400.  Lather squash cubes in olive oil and sprinkle with S&P and garlic.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Delish!