This week I have two new entrees, a farro grain bowl with sheet pan roasted vegetables and a sort of salmon Niçoise salad.
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Breakfast for Dinner. 1/8/22
I went quite basic this week with my BFD consisting of two soft scrambled eggs, a veggie patty and a small salad. I usually make this on Sunday but we had been out car shopping (this is not a good time for car shopping due to supply chain problems and inflated prices but our lease is expiring), and ended up eating lunch around 4PM. Something light around 7:30 was all I could manage. I will tackle the Toor dal we were supposed to be eating tomorrow morning for dinner Sunday night.
Null soup. 1/7/22
Good for lunch, good for dinner, good for snack, null soup! I made a big pot of null soup the other day for times when I am too tired to make something nutritious and might slide into choices I wish I had not made. Why “null” soup? I named it that because it is a WW zero personal points meal in a bowl.
To make null soup go in your vegetables drawer in the refrigerator and pull out all the non-starchy vegetables you have. I believe my soup has mushrooms, onions, carrots, celery, broccolini, cabbage, and kale. First I sauté the mushrooms and onions in a little olive oil spray. Then I add chicken or vegetable broth. Then I chop and add the rest of the vegetables according to hardness. First the carrots, then celery, etc. until I add the kale last. I had some thyme twigs that I dropped in and finally some chicken breast meat from a rotisserie chicken. The whole thing takes only about 20 minutes.
Since I like a lot to eat in a serving I divided my pot into two containers but if you like your soup more brothy you could divide it into smaller portions and just add more broth when you reheat it. Make enough for several days and freeze it if you like. Null soup, nutritious, tasty, and an aid in “dining lite.”
Posted in American, Easy, Healthy tips, Indian, Kitchen tips, leftovers, Methods, soup
Tagged chicken
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Sesame salmon bowls. 1/6/22
Our daughter loves this dinner and asks for it at least once every two weeks. I got the original recipe from NYTimes Cooking but adapted it to makes it way less complicated and time consuming. Our recipe is make some rice, chop up, slice, or empty out of a bag vegetables, brine and cook the salmon ala an American Test Kitchen method, and make the sauce that is in the NYT recipe.
- INGREDIENTS
- 1.5 lbs. salmon fillet (in 4 pieces
- 2 tablespoons table salt for brining
- 1 quart water for brining
- Cooked rice
- Bag of cabbage slaw\
- Cucumber
- 1 large or 2 small avocados
- Furikake or sesame seeds for sprinkling
- FOR THE SAUCE
- 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
- 3 tablespoons white vinegar
- 2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil
- 1 scallion coarsely chopped
- 2 inch piece ginger, minced
- 1/4 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
THE METHOD
Make rice.
In one quart of water dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt and allow the fish to brine for 20 minutes. This will help to keep the albumin from rising to the surface. Then sprinkle coarse salt in your frying pan. Place the fish skin side down in the cold pan and turn the flame or element on low. Cook on low for 20 minutes and then flip and cook for an additional two minutes. Most importantly, don’t overcook!
Prepare the vegetables. Thinly slice the cucumber. Using a mandolin is an excellent tool for this. Put the cabbage slaw in a serving bowl. Take the pit out of the avocado and slice.
Combine all the sauce ingredients. It will not be emulsified. The sauce is really yummy and you might consider making a double recipe of it. That is what I do.
Put some rice down in a shallow bowl. Add the salmon, then vegetables, and top with sauce. Sprinkle with furikake or sesame seeds
Carba-nada fettuccine with mushrooms and kale. 1/5/22
I am so loving this carba-nada pasta. We have been eating the fusilli and have now tried the fettuccine. It cooks in about three minutes and you can have quite a bit since it has lower calories and carbs. In fact I considered not eating my whole bowlful because I was full. (I did, however, power through and eat the whole thing! Will I never learn!?)
I have recently been buying the shredded kale from Trader Joe’s. I really like it in salads, soups, and main dishes. The mouthfuls are smaller than with regular prepackaged kale and there are almost no annoying stems.
For WW folks, you can have 3 ounces for 4 PP. That is a far cry from the 9 PP that regular pasta would cost. Plus it tastes good! Today I made my null soup for lunch which is all vegetables and chicken breast meat in chicken stock. I added 1 ounce of the fettuccine which really bulked up the soup and added only 1PP which was negated by the ton of vegetables. Another win!
Posted in Easy, Healthy tips, Italian, Pasta, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian, WW points
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Light clam chowder. 1/4/22
Winter seems like the perfect time for hearty soups. I love clam chowder but not all the cream! The clam chowder we make gets its liquid from two bottles of clam juice and the liquid from two cans of minced clams. At the end of cooking only 2 tablespoons of heavy cream are added for creaminess. It is packed full of celery, leeks, and onions and has only 10 oz. of potatoes. John and I can split the whole pot and not feel guilty afterwards.
Posted in American, Healthy tips, pescatarian, Recipes, Shellfish, soup, Vegetables
Tagged clams
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Seared scallops, new potatoes, green beans. 1/3/22
John did a really nice job searing these scallops. They were the ends of two bags of scallops so they were a little small and mis-shaped. I picked out the smallest of the potatoes to mimic the size of the scallops. Since the potatoes were so small it only took about 15 minutes to cook them through. At this point John cooked the scallops while I cooked the green beans. I was not totally happy with the green beans because they looked great in the package but were actually tough and stringy. I added a little faux butter to help them along. The mustardy tartar sauce is from the salmon with sheet pan vegetables that I made about 10 days ago. It was really good with the potatoes.
Posted in American, Easy, Methods, pescatarian, Shellfish, Vegetables
Tagged scallops
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Curried vegetables with scrambled eggs. 1/2/22
When I was thinking about my BFD (Breakfast For Dinner) dish I decided that an egg or two on a plate with a piece of toast just was not going to do it for me. I need food that will take me a while to eat. But I did not want to do a regular stir-fry with soy sauce and other salty ingredients. I settled on using curry powder as my flavoring of the dish.
Since I did not want my dinner full of gritty, raw curry powder I took the time to bloom the spice in a little olive oil. In addition to the raw kale which I used as my bottom layer, I stir-fried onion, carrot, cabbage, broccolini, and mushrooms. I put the hot vegetables on top of the kale to wilt it a bit while I soft-scrambled a couple of eggs.
This concoction certainly took more time but was way more satisfying than just a simple egg on a plate. No doubt I will try making this again next Sunday but I will look into my spice cabinet for a new flavor combination.
Posted in Breakfast For Dinner (BFD), Easy, Eggs, Kitchen tips, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Tagged Curry, Eggs, kale
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Weekly Menu January 3 – 9, 2022
Getting back to basics this week. It is definitely time to stop celebrating. Thanksgiving, my birthday, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s have taken its toll. This week’s menu consists of three vegan/vegetarian meals, three seafood meals, and one chicken meal. I hope this helps with your menu planning!
Posted in Weekly menu
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Potstickers with bok choy in oyster sauce. 1/1/22
Happy New Year’s Day, 2022! I have now been writing this blog for over 10 years. During this time I have been at a good weight, at a bad weight, and at a good weight again. The cycles of dieting seem endless. I think I have it all taken care of and then it creeps up again. I am currently in the upward creep and I vow not to let it happen again.
I guess that is sort of a resolution. I am going to try to follow my healthy lifestyle again, participate in Dryuary (no alcohol for January), exercise, and eat more plant-based meals. Actually I have been exercising pretty regularly and eating plant-based meals two or three times a week so I just need to continue these good habits.
To celebrate the first day of the year and to bring ourselves good luck we made potstickers. (And by made I mean we took them out of a bag in the freezer and followed the directions on the package.) Potstickers are supposed to be reminiscent of gold ingots and the bok choy is supposed to look like paper money. So we have the whole financial outlook covered.
In other good luck news, Japanese people have a calendar where they rank the luckiest birthdays of the year down to the most unlucky. My birthday came in number 1!!! And John’s came in number 4!!! So this should be a financially sound and very lucky year for us. Now if only this pandemic would abate!
I hope you are resolute and lucky this year and thank you for following by blog.
Posted in Chinese, Easy, Holidays, Pork, Uncategorized, Vegetables
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Omnivore 