How Low Can You Go - Limbo Low Limbo High

Sometimes when I am working on these recipes I feel that I am dancing the Limbo.  For example, I read Clean Eating Magazine which has very interesting recipes, but they are not always low in calories.  My daughter recently made Moroccan Chickpea Salad from the March 2011 issue of Clean Eating Magazine which has 254 calories in a 1 cup serving.  Well I don't know about you but a 1 cup serving would not even begin to fill me up, so I decided to see "How Low I Can Go" revamping this one.

As you look over the ingredients, you will notice that I am chopping the vegetables. Chopping softer vegetables like these is an easy job if you own an onion chopper like the one below.  It not only chops onions, it does a great job on garlic, cucumbers, radishes and baby carrots.  Just don't use it on tomatoes or lettuce. 

Ingredients for about 3 large servings:
Salad
2- 3 green leaf lettuce leaves chopped
1/2 cup baby carrots chopped
3 green onions, thinly sliced
3 radishes chopped
1 kirby cucumber chopped
2 handfuls grape tomatoes
1/2 cup canned chick peas
Sprinkling of fat free feta cheese
For the Dressing mix together the following
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp lite salt
1/8 tsp fresh ground black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper

Assemble the salad ingredients in a large bowl and pour the dressing over.

                              

Calories per serving about 125 based on the following calorie count:   
1/2 cup chick peas 100
1 1/2 tbsp oil 150 calories
4oz grape tomatoes 30
4 oz baby carrots 40
1 oz fat free feta cheese 60

Eat Your Greens

We have been all told to "Eat Our Greens", but frankly eating them is ugh.  Finding a good recipe is difficult.  My son, the Vegetarian, loves Swiss Chard.  He told me he sautees the Swiss Chard in garlic and oil and then drizzles some lemon juice on it.  I followed his directions and well frankly - yuk!  I did not like it.  Then, I found this recipe in the March 19 Wall Street Journal and decided to give eating exotic greens another try.  But there were some obstacles, I did not have Wild Halibut,  I could not find Sorrel in the stores and I don't like steamed fish.  But that did not stop me from trying to make a healthy adaptation of this recipe.  My recipe serves 2, and since I like alot of sauce on my foods, I did not halve the sauce recipe.

I started with 2 six-ounce Haddock fillets.  I soaked the fish in an egg white bath.  Meanwhile, I poured 1/3 cup of cornmeal (I prefer yellow) into a plastic bag with a few shakes of Lemon Pepper seasoning and dredged the fish fillets in the cornmeal.  I heated up my skillet and sprayed it with Pam cooking spray.   I added the 2 fillets to the hot pan and then drizzled 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil into the pan and let it run under the fillets to give them a bit of a crunch.  I turned once and then added the second 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan following the same procedure.  This way I sauteed the fish without using alot of oil.  I turned the oven on to 350 degrees and while the fillets were cooking lined a small aluminum baking dish with foil and sprayed it.  I transferred the fillets to the baking dish and placed them in the oven while I prepared the sauce.

For the sauce I decided to be brave and bought about 3/4 pound of Swiss Chard.  I cleaned it and cut it into 3/4-inch strips.  Since I have started this blog, I have been treating myself to some new cooking utensils.  So I pulled out my brand new Calphalon  21/2 quart saute pan (Bed Bath and Beyond had a $39.95 special - plus I used my 20% off coupon).  I sprayed the pan with Pam spray and about 10 sprays of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Spray for the buttery flavor.  I added the garlic, thyme (dried of course) and Swiss Chard, let it cook until the garlic was translucent.  Next I added the wine and covered the pan and let it simmer for a few minutes.  After that I added 1/2 cup of bottled clam juice (available in Shop-Rite and other local supermarkets) and let the it cook for another 4-5 minutes.  At this point I turned off the oven so that the fish would not over cook.  Instead of 1/2 cup of heavy cream (100 calories and  40 mg of cholesterol per serving), I used 1/2 cup of Fat Free Half and Half (20 calories 0 mg of cholesterol per serving) to turn the sauce into a something that my cardiologist would approve of.  I followed the remaining directions substituting I Can't Believe It's Not Butter for the remaining 1 1/2 tablespoon of butter.  If you would rather use butter, then Land O' Lakes Light Whipped Butter has only 45 calories per tablespoon vs the 100 calories in every tablespoon of butter.  Whatever you decide to do, this recipe is a definite keeper and changed my mind about "Eating my Greens".

Matt Dillon's Steamed Wild Halibut With Sorrel Sauce | Slow Food Fast - WSJ.com

An Apple a Day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away is a very old saying and now we are finding out that it may be true.  There was a very interesting article in the March 6th edition of The Sunday New York Times Magazine.  It is called "Death Takes a Rain Check". It is about an 87 year old billionaire's quest to live until he is 125.  David Murdock, a self made billionaire, "saw the light" about twenty five years ago when his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1983.  While he was seeking treatments that might save her life he started to research what the  impact of diet/food choices might have in surviving debilitating illnesses.  In the years since his wife's death, Murdock has set up a research facility and one of the projects is to study the extent to which quercetin, found in the skins of apples, can have an anti-inflammatory effect on the body.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06murdock-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Here is a very  easy way to get your apple a day and use up all the fruit you have in your refrigerator that is past it's prime.

Into a large 6 quart pot add:
4 apples cored and cut into eighths (use any apple you prefer)
2  ripe pears cored and cut into eighths
1-2 cups of raisins
2 TB honey
8 cups of water (enough water to cover the fruit)
You can also add any other fruit that you choose such as red grapes or strawberries.
Cover, bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour.  Once it has cooled transfer to storage containers and refrigerate. 

Yields about 12 servings at 100 to 150 calories per serving (depending on how many raisins you add).

There's Gold in ThemThar Hills

Not sure how many of you saw this article in last Sunday's NY Times, but apparently the 21st Century  "Gold Rush" is in Blogs.  Heather Armstrong, the "Queen of the Mommy Bloggers", makes $30,000 to $50,000 a month on her blog and highly successful bloggers can gross $1 million according to the article.

That is really good money, but considering that I sometimes have problems navigating the NY Times Web site I don't think I will be one of the the high rollers in blogs.  Even though I am internet savvy,  I must admit I do get tangled up in web searches.

For example, I clicked on the article because I wanted to see the reader comments.  It took three tries before I found them.  Now I ask you, is it me or is the NY Times web site poorly designed?  Why are the comments on a separate web page, not right after the article?  Also, if I want to include a web link in this blog, I can't just copy and paste it into my blog.  I must first put the link into a Facebook private group I created and then copy and paste the link from Facebook to this blog.  Convoluted right?

Anyway, not to digress, after I read the article, I decided to go to my blog (which I admit is not as flashy as other blogs especially not as glitzy as http://dooce.com/about) and register for Google Ads to see how much money I can make.  Well since last week, I had 8 hits and made $0 dollars!  Great start. So my dear readers, enjoy the article and if you can figure out how to make $ from blogs, please feel free to add your comments on my blog.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/magazine/27armstrong-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=mommy+blog&st=cse

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/queens-of-the-mom-blog-kingdom/?scp=2&sq=mommy+blog&st=cse

The Best Meatballs Ever

Last week was the last "Cooking With Dexter" column in the NY Times.  The recipe was for Spaghetti and Meatballs.  I decided to see if  I could take the challenge to make a lower calorie/lower fat version that still tasted good.  Well, not only did I succeed, but these were the best tasting meatballs I have ever made!  And better yet, the lower fat version cuts about 200 calories per serving. 

Here is what I did to make the meatballs.  In a bowl, I combined the fat free half and half, bread crumbs and egg white.  I added about a TB of dried onion flakes, a TB of dried parsley and a TB of dried basil and 1TB of Parmesan cheese.  I added the dried spices because the mixture of bread crumbs, egg white and fat free half and half looked watery, so I wanted to thicken it up before I worked in the ground beef.  I also added the same spices as the original recipe as follows - 1 tsp dried oregano, dash crushed red pepper flakes, 1/4 tsp black pepper and 1/2 tsp lite salt.  After I kneaded in the beef, I sprayed my skillet with Pam and added in the small meatballs and started to fry them.  I added 1 TB of oil as needed.  After the meatballs were browned, I put them on an aluminum foil lined roasting pan that I also sprayed with Pam and put them into a 350 degree oven to bake while I cooked two ounces of whole wheat spaghetti per person.  I put about 1/2 jar of my favorite Mariana sauce in a small pot to heat.  I had about 1/4 cup of left over wine in the frig so I added that to the sauce. When I added my pasta to the boiling water, I transferred the meatballs to the hot Marinara sauce.  After the spaghetti was drained, I topped it with the meatball Mariana sauce. 

Mangi! Enjoy the great taste without the additional calories or fat!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/magazine/20Food-t-000.html?_r=1

Serves 6                                      Serves 2

Original Recipe Lower Fat Recipe 2 cups bread crumbs 800 1/3 cup unsalted seasoned bread crumbs 110 3 oz heavy cream 293 3 oz fat free half and half  50 3 slices bacon 138 no bacon 8 oz ground chuck 568 10 oz lean ground beef 380 8 oz ground veal 328 egg white 0 8 oz ground pork 600 1TB Parmesan cheese 20 4 tb oils  400 1 tb oil 100 calories per serving  521 330

A Special Valentine's Day treat

For Valentine’s Day I wanted to cook and write about this wonderful recipe for Oysters. As you know Oysters are a natural aphrodisiac and if you did not know that Oysters are a natural aphrodisiac-well you do know now.  It is called “Oyster-Oyster Stew” and it was published in the NY Times on January 7, 1997.  I have made it many times, my old low-fat way with skim milk and I wanted to try it with fat-free half and half.  It also uses Pernod or Ricard , a  licorice flavored liqueur.   Well Cupid is not on my side.  First of all the Pernod and Ricard are both really expensive.  I was told that I can substitute an Anisette liqueur, if I intend to use the liqueur only for cooking, which is sweeter and lower in alcohol than other anise-flavored liqueurs and has the flavor of black licorice.  But I also can’t find oysters.  I do remember buying them, already shucked, in the fish department of my local supermarket, but they do not have them….so I will continue my hunt for the 2 main ingredients and will update this blog once I have all the ingredients.  Meanwhile if you have any suggestions on where I can get shucked oysters, please let me know.

Oyster-Oyster Stew - Recipes - The New York Times

An update on why we can't find Oysters

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12sat4.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=oysters&st=cse

Hot Soup for a Cold Winter's Day

Well it is about time that the Government agrees with me.  On Monday, the Dietary Guidelines were published.  Basically we are to eat less and cut our sodium intake.  Much easier said than done.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/business/01food.html?_r=1&hp

I tried to apply the Government’s new dietary guidelines to a recipe that I saw Rachael Ray make last week, Curry Beef Noodle Bowls.  When I went on-line to print out the recipe there were 12 reviews, mostly favorable with some suggestions for replacing the beef with chicken or Tofu marinated in basil and fish sauce then grilled on a Panini grill.  I didn’t have Tofu but I did have left over rotisserie chicken.  Normally I make my Lazy Woman’s Chicken Soup with left over rotisserie chicken, but I decided to try this instead and am I glad I did.  It was fantastic. But there were problems with the recipe.  First of all Fish Sauce has between 1,000 and 1,300 milligrams of  sodium in a tablespoon, an entire day’s sodium in just one dish.  Secondly, one pound of pasta to serve 4 is way too much pasta.  And, last but not least, two cups of chicken stock makes for a dry curry.  Also, skip the shallots fried in ½ cup of oil, for crunchiness use bean sprouts instead.   

Thai it You'll Like It Hot Curry Beef Noodle Bowls

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/thai-it-youll-like-it-hot-curry-beef-noodle-bowls-green-melon-with-lime-and-lemon-sorbet-recipe/index.html

So, here is how I changed the dish.  First of all, I did not use fried, crispy shallots.  I wanted to use crispy bean sprouts, but due to the terrible weather we have been having in New York, I was unable to find any, so I skipped them. Instead of a pound of pasta, I used about 5 ounces cooked rather soft.  My head spun around on my neck in the supermarket when I saw the amount of sodium in 1 tablespoon of Fish Sauce.  But not to worry, I went to my local gourmet shop and there I found KAME Fish Sauce, which has only 380 mg of sodium in a tablespoon.   If you don't want to use Fish Sauce, use House of Tsang Soy Sauce instead.  I also found Patak's Curry Paste.  I bought the mild curry paste and used only 2 tablespoons.  The dish was really hot enough, so taste it before you add three tablespoons of the Curry Paste.  

 

I followed the recipe, using only 1 TB of oil for sauteing the garlic, mushrooms and red pepper.  I substituted a  small Jalapeno pepper for the red hot chile pepper.  I removed the seeds from the Jalapeno pepper and did not cut it up so that I could remove it before serving.  I removed the skin and deboned the left over chicken, cut the chicken up into small bite size pieces and added it to the vegetable mixture to heat up.   When I added the low sodium chicken stock, I realized that 2 cups was not enough so I used 4 cups instead.  Once everything was cooked, I drained the pasta and put it directly into the soup broth and let it cook for another two minutes so that the pasta picked up the flavors of the broth and added the juice of one lime.  This was a delicious, fairly low sodium way to use up left over chicken.  

 

By my calculations,  I saved about 1,000 mg of sodium per serving by doing a little leg work and shopping around for a lower sodium fish sauce.  I also saved about 200 calories per serving by cutting down on the pasta and I can't even calculate how much I saved by not frying the shallots in 1/2 cup of oil.