Salade Niçsoise, a dieter's dream

Tastes and colors both terrific!

Tonight, on a 90 degree day in New England, we ate a cold supper of Salade Niçoise.  I had ambition to grill some tuna, but the store didn't have any, which made me think it was probably twenty dollars a pound and this would be neither a cheap nor a frugal meal.  So I bought some nice Italian tuna in oil--it has a great flavor and I drain as much of the oil off as I can.
Procedure:  line a big platter with lettuce leaves.  In the middle, put two cans of Italian-style tuna in oil, well drained.  Surround the tuna with vegetables dress is an oil and vinegar dressing.  We had:  green beans, tomatoes, red pepper, olives, artichoke hearts and garbanzo beans.  And two hard-cooked eggs.  Potatoes are traditional, but I must have put them in the wrong grocery cart.
I served this with bread sticks, and we had guilt-free seconds and there is enough left for lunch.  All in all, a satisfying find.
 From it's name, I assume the salad comes from Nice.  We ate it many years ago on the Rivera, and it was a crazy lunch with a whole bottle of wine (yikes) and many female topless diners.  Well, you know.  France is France.

I lost another pound and must behave this week because we're having a dinner party on Saturday with a high carb salad/veg and homemade chocolate ice cream.  
We've been eating fruit salad with oranges, cherries, raspberries, and peaches and I can't tell you how good it is.  Everything on sale, of course. 
The lettuces in the garden will soon be eating size and we are already munching on the fresh herbs.  Tomatoes and cukes coming along.  Flowers pretty.  Mosquitoes hungry and plentiful.  Our little Eden does have its varmints.


Aloha! 


The Cheeseparer 

Rethinking Diets

The weight loss has been minimal.  Probably too much wine and then there's the dark chocolate after dinner.  Significant Other has lost 5 pounds, but I'm only down 2.  We had steak (leftover) and eggs for breakfast with slices oranges and blueberries.  Truly delicious, but diet?  Who knows?  Ate the first lettuces from the garden that reseeded themselves this spring.  Do not decline what nature offers. Free lettuce?  Yes! 

I'm still not ready for the spray on "I can't believe it's not butter."  I sure as hell can believe it's not.  There is a time in life when one becomes too old to believe all the lies we hear daily. 


The sun rose bright and shiny this morning, for the first time in literally weeks.  Even bad news on the scale cannot impinge on my good mood.  We'll definitely go for a walk.  I have the season's first mosquito bite and am hoping it's not one of those toxic mosquitoes bearing awful diseases.  Sprayed myself thoroughly to work in the yard, but he found a spot under the watchband.  Go figure. 


We have yummy (for them) stuff to feed the Highland cattle.  No calves this spring.  Boo hoo!  I do believe the old cows "cowed" the young bulls.  


Here is a spring tonic:  find a friend with some rhubarb and bum a few sticks.  Chop up, cook with a little sugar, a very small amount of water, and any other red fruits you can find.  Strawberries and blueberries and even raspberries are on sale here this week.  A few frozen cranberries add pop.  Some grated orange rind does likewise.  Cook until all the fruits are soft and if you added too much water, thicken with a bit of cornstarch stirred into cold water and added to the fruit.  Let cool, chill and serve for dessert.  Good over cottage cheese.   A spoonful or two even works on shredded wheat.   Or on ice cream, but we're into low-fat frozen yogurt these days.  


Onward, 


The CheeseParer

Good Diet Meals

What is a good diet meal?   For starters, it's a meal that doesn't leave you hungry when you get up from the table.  It doesn't break the bank, e.g. caviar on a baked potato.  It doesn't take all day to shop for and cook.  The ingredients will all come from your local suburban supermarket. It will be pleasing to the eye, because we eat first with our eyes.  This means some color pops out:  maybe the green of chopped parsley or cilantro or some sweet red pepper.  And, of course, it has to taste like something.  The problem with low fat diets is that low fat food has no mouth feel, and the "gum" the manufacturer puts in to replace it just doesn't do the trick.  The flavors become a bit "off."  The taste is somewhere beyond bland.  You can't put your finger on it, but it just doesn't taste very good.  No wonder you don't want seconds, but wait!  At  10:00 p.m., you'll be raiding the fridge or the pantry for something that DOES taste good.


This week, my significant other and I have both lost a few pounds.  Here's what we ate:
Sautëed Scallops with Cherry Tomatoes, Green Onions and Parsley.  Yum!  Great color, great taste!  You could eat this without being on a diet.
Oven-Crisped chicken with honey-mustard sauce.  Another winner.   The crust was made from panko and shredded Parmesan, and the honey mustard sauce from low-fat Greek yogurt, mustard and honey.  We ate this two nights, and it was so filling we didn't eat the whole breast half.  Another winner! 
Great Salad that I took to a buffet:  Cucumber ribbons with tomatoes and ricotta salata!  Great taste, color and truly delicious.  Very little left over.  Yowza!
Tuna and  Bean Salad.  I believe this is a  South Beach Diet recipe.  Many of the recipes in this diet are really extraordinary.  I substituted cilantro for the watercress, which the store didn't have.  I also used oil-packed tuna instead of water-packed and drained it extra well.  The chopped roasted red pepper was home grilled under the broiler with two of its brethern.    We ate this two nights as well.
I've been making salads of baby romaine, white asparagus, grilled yellow and orange peppers, marinated mushrooms, olives, and a bit of ricotta salata (leftover from the cucumber salad) on top.  A drizzle of Italian dressing.  We're having blueberries for dessert tonight.  Last night we had low fat fruit-flavored yogurt.  I have a fab recipe for a pudding with low-fat ricotta, orange and lemon rind, orange juice and two eggs.  Low sugar.  It was delicious, in fact almost company worthy.       Tomorrow we're having classic shrimp scampi.  And salad of course.   These meals have been filling (plenty of meat or fish) with lots of other great flavors.  I am trying to reach for a piece of fruit when hunger strikes.  It's a real balancing game,
Even food magazines like Gourmet (the late) and Bon Appetit have diet meals.  For example, this month Bon Appetit has a wonder sounding onion fritatta.   The egg is your good friend, and eat the  yolk, too. 


Onward,


The Cheeseparer, who is trying to pare some poundage, too.

The Best Tacos You Will Ever Eat

Chop up half an onion, a little less if huge.  Cook it over med. heat in a big cast iron skillet.  When the onion begins to soften, add a pound of good quality 85% lean ground beef.  I always buy mine at the butcher counter.  When the meat is almost cooked, add a chopped (seeded if you don't want it too hot) jalapeno pepper.  Continue to cook and stir.  Add a sprinkling of hot pepper flakes, some chili powder.  I also add another sprinkle of Penzey's Southwest Seasoning.  Oh, an don't forget a teaspoon or so of cumin.  Very important.  Salt and pepper well, and continue to simmer to blend the flavors.  Add a can of rinsed and drained black beans or your favorite kind of beans.  Pinto.  Kidney.  Whatever. 


Chop up the following and put in small bowls:  scallion, tomatoes, lettuce, cilantro and avocado.   Into other bowls put grated cheddar or Mexican cheese (a mixture), sour cream, wedges of lime.   Nine "condiments" in all. 


For each person, cook a couple or more corn tortillas in a vegetable oil until slightly browned but still pliable.  Keep warm in oven while cooking the rest.  




Put the condiments on the table along with the fried tortillas in a basket.  You may also put hot sauce on the table or salsa.  Bring the hot skillet to the table and serve.  Everyone creates his/her own tacos.  They are utterly delicious.  I fold mine in half and eat it messily.  My significant other dumps everything onto his plate and has at it.  This is good stuff.

I also serve orange wedges with the meal.   Refreshing. 


I usually keep corn tortillas and all the spices around, along with scallions, lettuce, tomato, cheese and sour cream, so we just have to buy the meat, the cilantro and the avocado.  Serves 4, and doesn't break the bank.  Dieters can go easy on the cheese and sour cream.  Corn tortillas are low in carbs and high in fiber.  Of course, grilled steak added instead of ground beef will also be tasty, as would chicken or a grilled pork chop or two.  Taste for seasoning as you go along.  A couple of these babies and you won't be hungry for hours.  


I have never tasted any tacos this good at a Mexican restaurant, although the fish tacos at the Border Cafe in Cambridge, MA are close.  Ole! 

Eating Cheap while Dieting: A Dieter's Dilemna

So . . . the long New England winter and some company and a couple trips to the Big Apple to say nothing of Mother's Day have all added an unacceptable weight gain to the residents of this house, which includes a hugely plump (fat as mud) diabetic cat.  Only the "new" cat is slim, but he refuses to tell us his secret.  


I am not a low-fat diet person.  I never met a fat gram I didn't like.  Just about gagged yesterday when some diet site recommended spraying your breakfast English muffin with "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" spray.  I sure as hell could believe it's not butter.   So, except for extreme exercise and starvation and lots of rice cakes, the only diet I've ever lost weight on is low carb, i.e. Dr. Atkins.  Now, there's this to say about me and diets:  the moment I see no caffeine and no wine, I am out of there.   When the South Beat diet recommended "Fat Free Half and Half" I just about urped.  See, the other thing is that I am into real food, the unprocessed kind where the the label says, "all natural."  


Now all this quibbling would be fine if there were unlimited food resources, like $600  a month or more.  Hell, we could do Jennie Craig for $700.00 plus extras.   The challenge will be to eat meat, fruits and vegetables  (I do like my fruit) and not break the bank.  Yesterday's grocery bill at $150.00, was not a good start, but I got meat for two weeks and lots of very fine veggies and some (on special) scallops to start off with.  We have been eating all the rest of the "bad" food in the fridge: the sour cream strawberry cake, the spaghetti and meat balls, the bread, the muffins, etc. God, was the spaghetti and meat balls tasty.  I do miss pasta when dieting.     

My idea is to buy all the weekly produce and meat specials and to shop at two stores and plan my meals around these.  The bigger challenge will be to accommodate the summer guests while we continue our diet.  I do not intend to deprive myself of modest amounts of dark chocolate, either.    Due to all these accommodations to dieting  I don't expect to lose particularly quickly, but I will be happy with a pound  a week after the initial week.  The South Beach Diet has some dynamite recipes, and I have a couple of diet desserts that are low enough cal to have once in a while.   Not big on artificial sweeteners, and only low-fat ricotta.  We use 2% milk for the coffee.  So it should be doable and I will share the results.  What works, what doesn't, and how hard it will be.  

This noon I'm having lunch at Boston's infamous 99 Restaurant (the 9's) with a friend.  The 99 has some great luncheon steak tips and you can get double veg instead of veg and a starch.  A goodly enough portion that you won't start snacking at 4:00 pm.  We bought apples to eat with our evening cheese hors d'oeuvres and some colorful peppers to grill and eat with a bit of ricotta salata.  Peppers on sale,  apples on sale.  

Let's see how it goes.    


The Cheeseparer and hoping to be the pound parer

Egg and Sausage Strata - Cheap, Nutricious, Filling

The Internet has a gazillion recipes for these sausage and egg stratas, but I couldn't find this one, which was delicious.  These assemble ahead and bake later dishes are a godsend for a busy hostess, which was me, this weekend. This serves 8.


Egg and Sausage Strata

 1 lb. bulk sausage, pork or turkey.  I used Jimmy Dean.  Beware!  Some sausage now comes in 12 oz. rolls.  
6 slices bread with crusts removed.   A white bread with some "body" works best. 
2 cups milk.  Used whole milk but believe 2% would be fine, too.
6 large eggs
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 T. Dijon (or other) mustard
1 t. salt 
1/2 lb grated cheddar cheese (I bought pre-grated on sale)
8 oz. mushrooms sliced and sauteed 
1 medium white onion chopped


Spray or great a 9" x 12" rectangular baking dish.  Cut trimmed bread into cubes and line the dish. 

Cook sausage in a skillet, breaking it up.  Drain, if necessary and spread around on top of the bread cubes.
Saute onion and set aside.  In the same skillet, saute the mushrooms.  Add to the onions and mix.  Spread the onion/mushroom mixture over the sausage. 
Sprinkle the grated cheese on top of the mushroom/onion mixture.
Beat eggs, milk, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and salt together.  Pour over the casserole.  
Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.


I served this for Mother's Day brunch with sauteed cherry tomatoes and small, individual  pan fried ham steaks.  
You can freeze this after assembling and thaw before cooking.  You may also freeze after cooking and thaw and add a little milk before heating.  
I kept the assembled casserole covered tightly in the fridge for two days and it was fine. 
Omit the sausage or substitute a meatless product and you have a fine vegetarian entree.
 

Can Rotisserie Chicken Ever Be A Bargain?

You bet it can!  I bought one $6.99 for the breast meat to make sandwiches to eat on the ferry from New London to Orient Point.  Of course, two people would have never been able to buy a (decent) lunch for $6 .99.  I ate one lunch from the chicken (wings) before we left.  Two yummy sandwiches on whole grain bread with butter, lettuce and tomato.  Chips from the bag at home, a clementine and two slices of orange yogurt bread.  Water to drink  The best lunch!  3 meals so far. . . .


I had removed the remainder of the chicken from the bones and froze it.  After we returned, I thawed the chicken for. . .  ta da!!  Enchiladas verdes.  The supermarket had tomatillos!  They almost never, here in this part of New England, have tomatillos.  Made them from scratch, a labor of love, but all I had to buy was the tomatillos and a couple small (all they had) jalapenos.  Everything else was on hand, even the corn tortillas.  The recipe made two casseroles.  4 servings.  I ate another lunch from the thawed legs.   There were two enchiladas left and we ate them for lunch yesterday.  Add 'em up.  10 servings of good quality protein for $6.99.  How frugal is that?  And every meal yummy.  You can make some of the enchiladas just with the cheese for a vegetarian  child or guest.


Both the Globe and the Times have been emphasizing vegetarian selections in their food sections, but nothing sounds that great.  Maybe because I am not a huge fan of unrelieved starch.  Potato curry?  Not so intriguing.  Give me chicken, shrimp or even fish curry.  Curried chick peas are good.   I would eat curried potatoes as a side dish. 


Some days the supermarket has rotisserie chickens on sale for 5  bucks.  That would be 50 cents per serving.  Yowza! 

Here is a recipe similar to the one I used:  Food and Wine Mag Enchiladas Verdes  


We served them with avocado salad and refried beans (on sale for $1.00,) and extra cheese, sour cream, chopped tomatoes, scallions and cilantro on the side.  I had some Farmer's cheese in the freezer which I crumbled over the casserole.  Cheddar always works.  Did I mention the tomatoes and avocados were on sale?  Shop smart, shop well.  Experiment! 


Bon Appetit! 

Dolores Greshaw's Rhubarb Bread

We were in New York on Long Island last week, and the rhubarb was up and thriving in my friend's garden.  It is expensive in the stores, but maybe you, too, have a friend or some plants or can find it at a farmer's market. 


I like to use it in a compote of red fruits.  Yesterday I mixed it with cranberries and blueberries from the freezer.  Add sugar to taste, a bit of liquid (I used water and orange juice) a grating of orange rind, and simmer until the fruits are cooked.  We like it with a dollop of whipped cream.  This works well with any red berry, and especially currants.  Use your imagination. 


With the rest of the rhubarb, I made Dolores Greshaw's Rhubarb bread which is an old recipe I got from the Boston Globe, maybe even the Chicago Tribune.  My guess is the Globe.  I couldn't find the Greshaw recipe on the web, but here is one with the exact ingredients.  I think it makes a slightly larger loaf.  


Rhubarb Bread  


Enjoy!  Tonight I'm making Enchiladas Verdes.  The grocery had tomatillos on sale yesterday.  I had part of a roasted chicken in the freezer and some cheese and tortillas, so this is a cheap dinner for two nights.  I'll  let you know the outcome.    Enchiladas Verdes are one of my favorite Mexican foods.  Refried beans were also on sale, a dollar per can, such a deal.  Eating cheap  doesn't mean eating poorly.   Avocados were also on sale for a buck.  Ole!  


The Cheeseparer