Scrambled eggs and veg patty on pita with onions and mushrooms plus a mixed green salad
First let me report that John had an omelet AGAIN! I made some scrambled eggs and a veggie patty which I topped with sautéed onions and mushrooms and served atop a split half of a pita. My green salad featured arugula and tomatoes with a salsa dressing.
I enjoy these easy Breakfast For Dinner meals. They are no stress and I only have to worry about what I want to eat!
Since this is a short post I will include a picture of a great salad that I made for lunch the other day. I usually like to eat a sandwich and I really do not like making a salad but I am trying to limit carbs at breakfast and lunch. So here’s a picture of my lunch from Saturday.
Kale and romaine salad with chicken, tomatoes, and mushrooms and a non-fat salad dressing
This week’s winner is Algeria for visiting Dininglite.blog more than any other country! To celebrate their mistakes on finding their way to my blog, we are making a vegetable tagine. Along with chickpeas and some standard root vegetables, our tagine will feature harissa, a little cinnamon and coriander plus a touch of turmeric.
For our Leftovers For Dinner (LFD) meal we used the tiny bit of koshari we had left over from Monday. Obviously we were going to have to figure out some way to stretch this into a whole dinner. I started out by sautéing some mushrooms, onions, and garlic. That is always a great beginning to any dish! Then I added some cut up turkey sausage which needed using and a can of drained chickpeas. Chickpeas are a great canned vegetable that you should keep extras of. Next came the koshari remnants and the end of a package of kale. Just enough chicken stock and a dash of sriracha brought the whole dish together.
Just a reminder, the pictured food in my blog is my actual dinner plate and I eat all of it every day. In addition to my dinner I eat breakfast and lunch plus enjoy half a bag of popcorn during our faux cocktail hour (no cocktails.) So what I am saying is that it is totally possible to eat a wide variety of delicious dinners and still lose weight. Not depriving yourself is really key if you want to be successful in changing to a healthier lifestyle. I lost 62 pounds in a little over a year and have now maintained my weight loss for 3 months.
Tonight we made chicken parmesan. John did a great job pounding out and cooking the chicken and cooking the pasta. I made the tomato sauce and the broccoli. Making my own sauce means I know exactly what goes into it and I am not sabotaged by added sugars and starches. Broccoli is part of the dinner because vegetables take up room on the plate and fill you up!
I have had pasta three times this week! It has been a good week.
Orecchiette with mushrooms, onions, garlic, and broccolini
If you are like me and could sit down to at least 8 ounces of pasta and wish you could have more then you need to find a way to make a little pasta go a long way. I stretch my pasta calories by adding a lot of vegetables to 2 or 3 ounces of pasta. This yummy dish is less than 3 ounces of orecchiette and contains 1 teaspoon of oil. I use a lot of mushrooms cut fairly chunky, half of a large onion, chopped, 2 or 3 minced garlic cloves, and a bunch of broccolini, stems and all.
Here is how our process goes – John salts a pot of water and puts it on to boil. While that is going on I cut up the vegetables and start to saute the mushrooms in a spray of olive oil, then I add the onions, and finally the garlic being careful not to let the garlic get dark. By this time the water is boiling and John puts the orecchiette on to cook. It takes about 10 minutes. At the five minute mark I put the chopped broccolini stems in to cook with the mushroom mixture along with a little pasta water. At the one minute mark I add the broccolini tops. John drains the pasta but reserves a half cup or so of the pasta water. He dumps the pasta into the vegetables and I stir it around adding one teaspoon of olive oil and some of the pasta water to make a sauce.
That is about 20 minutes total and you end up having a giant bowl of pasta that is delicious and filling.
Sheet pan shawarma with cod, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and red onion
This is a very easy and tasty dinner that uses only one pan. The important step is not to overcook the fish. Give the vegetables about a 20 minute head start and then add the fish. Depending on how thick your fish is you will need to adjust its cook time. Our 3/4 inch pieces of cod cooked for 8 minutes and I would say that 7 minutes probably would have been optimal.
Oven roasted cod shawarma with vegetables. Serves 2
For the fish (two 5 oz. portions)
Zest of one lemon
2 tsp olive oil
¼ tsp garlic powder
1 tsp kosher salt (or to taste)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
¼ tsp turmeric
Pinch of cinnamon
For the vegetables
Season with salt, garlic powder, and coriander (sprinkle over)
3 carrots cut in 3 inch lengths approx. ¾ inch diameter
1 large red onion, quartered (or in eighths)
10 new potatoes, halved
¼ head of cabbage sliced in 4 pieces through root
Combine the zest and the fish spices with the olive oil. Coat the fish with the resulting paste. Marinate for ½ hour while you prepare the vegetables.
Heat the oven to 425F. Line a sheet pan with aluminum foil and spray with olive oil spray.
Cut the vegetables and spray them on one side with olive oil and sprinkle on vegetable seasonings. Place the vegetables ONLY on the sprayed sheet pan with the olive oil side up. Bake for 20 minutes.
Add the cod after the 20 minutes have elapsed and place on top of cabbage slices or just on the sheet pan. Cook for 7-8 minutes (the timing really depends on how thick your fish is.)
Rhode Island clam chowder is similar to New England clam chowder but is brothier. I used only 2 tablespoons of cream in a fairly large pot of soup. You may be thinking that this is the poor relation of its creamier cousin but it is full of flavor and a healthier choice. I make it with minced canned clams and bottled clam juice so it is a snap to make. Recipe below.
When she saw that I was making clam chowder, our wonderful baker daughter made us a loaf of sourdough bread to have with it. Just the smell of baking bread makes me ecstatic. The sesame seeds on the crust are so delicious. Needless to say we ate almost the whole loaf and I will pay for it at the scale. Sigh.
Sourdough bread with sesame seeds
CLAM CHOWDER WITH CROUTON. Serves 3-4 Adapted from a recipe by Gabrielle Hamilton
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
2 ribs of celery, minced
2 leeks, dark, woody green parts removed, ¼” coins
10 ounces golden new potatoes, medium dice
2 sprigs thyme, picked
2 sprigs tarragon
6 ounces dry white wine
2 bottles/16 ounces clam juice
Juice from 2 cans chopped clams (~8 oz.)
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons heavy cream
12 ounces chopped clams (2 cans, reserved liquid, see above)
3-4 slices hearty bread, toasted
Step 1
In the Dutch oven, heat the olive oil, and add onion, celery, leeks, potatoes, tarragon, and thyme, stirring to coat. Season with salt, and cook over low heat until the vegetables have just started to soften, taking care not to brown, about 5 minutes. Deglaze with white wine and then add the clam juice and reserved clam liquid. Simmer until potatoes are al dente.
Step 2
Stir in the cream, and simmer until vegetables are cooked through, taking care not to boil. Add the chopped clams, and season to taste with salt and ground black pepper. Remove from heat.
Step 3
Toast the bread until golden, and place each piece in a bowl. Add a ladleful of chowder around the toast. Add another ladleful partially covering the toast and serve.
Egypt was the big winner last week with 1600 views of my blog. No doubt most of these were by mistake and I am really sorry-not-sorry that all these Egyptians ended up on my site when they were looking for something else. Nonetheless, Egypt was the winner and as a prize I created one of their comfort food dishes, koshari.
Koshari with kale
Koshari is a lot like the Indian dish mujadara which you probably have never heard of either. Our daughter used to order it all the time in Mountain View at the Mediterranean Grill House. It is a strange gemisch of rice, lentils, pasta, and chickpeas with some tomato sauce and fried onions. The major spice is ground coriander. Koshari is vegan and ours turned out quite tasty.
Since I am always trying to cut back on the calories in a dish, I sautéed the onions until they were caramelized in about 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil instead of frying them. I also added kale so our dinner would seem healthier. John, who was in charge of the lentils and rice upped the amount of coriander he used which made them really delicious. I added sriracha to the tomato sauce for more zing. You use a lot of pots and pans to make koshari. I have a 5-burner stovetop and every burner was in use. If you would like to try making it, this is the recipe I used. Koshari is especially useful in using up leftover rice or lentils.
Kale, broccoli, onions, crumbled veggie patty, cabbage, and mushrooms with paprika scrambled eggs
I really like eggs. I could eat them for a lunch. I could eat them in a bunch. I could eat them for a dinner. I like eggs. They are a winner.
Seriously, eggs are a very versatile component in any meal, not just breakfast. You can hard boil them for an egg salad lunch sandwich. You can put them in a Chinese fried rice for dinner. Eggs and vegetables were my choice for BFD (Breakfast For Dinner) this week. I sprinkled them with a bit of paprika for a different flavor and put them in the center of a ring of sautéed vegetables. It’s important to keep your dinners visually interesting as well as tasty.
For the zillionth time in a row, John had an omelet for his BFD. He makes it with ham, scallions, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese.
For some unknown reason I am getting a lot of views from countries around the world. I have no delusion that people from the Middle East and Asia are eagerly awaiting my post each day. I am sure that it must be some sort of bot that has gotten hooked on Dining Lite. However, since this week Egypt had the most views with over 500 on one day, I decided to thank all those people in Egypt by making an Egyptian dish on Monday.
Omnivore 