#EnduranceFoodies: Grilled Baby Bok Choy with Italian Sausage

Welcome back to #miacooks. I've been busy a lot and so #miacooks has gotten tired - not because I haven't been cooking, but because I've been repeating a lot of my favorite recipes. When the Endurance Foodie Challenge group invited me to participate, I was stoked. Time to try something new!

This is baby bok choy!

And it is the key ingredient of the Endurance Foodie Challenge this month! I haven't cooked with bok choy so I was looking for an excuse to give it a shot. Our famers market had it in spades about a month ago, so picking them up was no big deal.

I decided to avoid the asian flavors that people usually use bok choy for, and went for a grilled hearty salad of sorts. It doesn't hurt that the second challenge ingredient was fennel seeds.

I love a good grilled salad, so I chopped the bok choy in half and coated with some olive oil and seasoned with garlic powder, seasoned salt, pepper, and paprika.

We don't have a grill beyond the George Foreman in our tiny condo, so I fired that up and did about 3 minutes on each side (I know you don't have to flip anything in the foreman, but I do anyway.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I grabbed some pork sausage from the market (no additives! free range! no hormones!), diced up some bell peppers and onions and sauteed all of it. I prefer to saute the veggies first in a tiny bit of olive oil, put those aside, then cook the sausage and drain the excess fat from it, then combine until fully cooked.

To hit the fennel seed requirement, I added my favorite spice blend from Practical Paleo, which is the following:

1 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp ground sage
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp onion powder
1/4 tsp white pepper or 1 tsp black pepper
2 tsps dried parsley

I actually have all of the practical paleo spice blends pre-made in little tupperware containers. They're great for adding a kick of flavor to whatever you're making.

I love me some greens and try to shove them into anything I'm making, so I took some spinach that was beginning to peak, chopped it up, did a quick saute/wilt and threw that into the mix.

Here's the final "stuffing" for the bok choy:

Now, all you have to do is throw that over the bok choy and boom. Summer dinner!

Whoops! Forgot to mention...if you're interested in more recipes (and blogs much better than mine) check out the following:

Jason: cooktraineatrace.com

Donna: beatinglimitations.com

Victoria: obligatorytriblog.blogspot.com

Amanda: runtothefinish.com

Lindsay: cottercrunch.com

Courtenay (Will be posting on cooktraineatrace.com)

Adrienne: sixkickswitch.blogspot.com

Joanna: everydaynutrition.wordpress.com