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.

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

Beef Vegetable Barley Soup for cold winter dinners

My Homemade (no knead) Focaccia rocks with soup or stew or pasta

I've been making soup every week, and we never get bored with it.  Soup has many virtues:  cheap, easy, tasty, nutritious.  I found a good deal on "petite sirloin" at the supermarket, and used two of them, about a pound as the basis of a beef-vegetable-barley soup.
 Cut the meat into small bite-sized pieces, and brown well in canola oil.  I added a bit of onion and 3 cloves of smashed garlic and browned that, too. Add water and/or broth and cook until meat is tender.  Doesn't take long with sirloin.  Before cooking the meat add a soup bone, thyme, marjoram and a large bay leaf to the cooking liquid. 


When the meat is tender, add more onion, carrots, celery, and a 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes.  I think some mushrooms would also go well.  Cook the veggies until almost tender and then add 3/4 cup barley.  My barley took longer to cook than the package indicated, so make sure to cook it long enough.  Add more water or broth (vegetable broth will do) if you are getting stew rather than soup.  Salt and pepper if you've used low-salt broth.  (I do).  Maybe a bit of paprika.  More spices?   Is the meat tender?   Correct seasonings, as they say.  I sprinkled some fresh parsley on it before serving, because we eat with our eyes first.


We ate this with a salad and multi-grain rolls.  Southern corn bread would work, as would garlic bread.  This is a cheap meal that offers a lot of nutrition.  We had chocolate chip cookies for dessert. 


Being snowed in, I find I'm watching a lot of TV.  The Good Wife, Big Love, and PBS are my current faves.   And the food show.  Guy Fieri really rocks. I loved his tailgaiting football eats show this week.


Tonight we're eating the remainder of the beef-barley soup.  With garlic bread.  And more salad.  And maybe a banana caflouti. 

We have a movie and the rest of The # 1 Ladies Detective Agency to watch. 

I'm saving $30 as we speak by washing some sweaters instead of sending them out at $5 bucks a pop.


Tomorrow we're having a gourmet diet recipe.  I know that sounds like an oxymoron.  It's a chicken pie that calls for a mashed potato topping instead of crust.  The potatoes are mashed with low-fat sour cream and chives.  I've made it before and you have no clue that this is a reduced calorie meal.  I think perhaps some cranberries would work as a side.  And the rest of the caflouti for dessert.  The pie calls for chicken breast,  shallots, mushrooms, carrots, celery and peas and parsley.  Low fat broth and white wine make the sauce.  Some herbs like thyme and tarragon, a spoonful of sherry and a sprinkle of nutmeg are added before baking.  This is Gourmet, remember.


Stay warm and dry and get creative if you are stuck in the house with weird or incomplete ingredients.  You may astonish yourself with the yummy eats you can concoct.