Vegetable fried cauliflower rice with egg
Usually I do not go to this much trouble on Sunday but the idea of a plain scrambled egg was just too boring! So kicking off International Week I made an Asian inspired fried rice using my recently acquired cauliflower rice (Trader Joe’s), a bunch of vegetables, a slice of deli ham, and an egg cooked like a pancake and then sliced up. I made a tasty sauce with soy sauce, fish sauce, water, rice vinegar, Splenda, and pepper flakes.
Seared scallops, broccoli with lemon zest, and new potatoes
Well, here it is August and we are no closer to getting through with this pandemic than we were three months ago. Maybe conditions are worse. But we have to eat and I am going to cook my way through this and lose weight at the same time. I am giving myself a little pat on the back because as of this week I have lost 50 lbs!
John made some delectable seared scallops for our Saturday night dinner. No fried scallops this time but seared ones are almost as good. Our portion size was a little larger because John wanted to use up the remnants of a bag. We plan on going to Costco for some new ones next week.
For my part I steamed the potatoes and served them with a squeeze of lemon. I also did a quick sauté on the broccoli and made the florets fancy with a little faux butter and some lemon zest.
Pigeon peas ala Chana dal with spinach and peanuts
When we went to India Bazaar we got a very large bag of dried pigeon peas (toor dal). There are not too many toor dal recipes so we decided to prepare them much the same as we do Chana dal which uses dried chickpeas. However, as we came to find out, pigeon peas do not hold on to their texture in the Instant Pot even though we hadn’t soaked them. So we ended up with tasty mush.
Not to be deterred we added a bunch of spinach and a handful of peanuts to give the dish some crunch. I also extended my half cup of rice with half cup cauliflower rice which has some crunch as well. We ended up enjoying our dinner but I do not think we will cook pigeon peas ala Chana dal again!
Sous vide chicken breast with parsley sauce, zucchini, and potatoes
Tonight’s chicken dinner was enhanced with the parsley sauce we made for the sea bass the other night. It is great when you can use a sauce for more than one dinner. The chicken itself is a little bland so having a sauce really stepped up this dinner. The zucchini are the first ones from our daughter’s garden and the combo of the onions, mushrooms, and olive oil gave the vegetables some extra sweetness. Even though we only had about 5oz. of potatoes between the two of us, they rounded out the dinner nicely.
Pasta puttanesca
This is without a doubt one of my favorite vegan dishes! I ate lightly all day so that I could have three ounces of whole grain spaghetti with the yummy, salty tomato sauce laden with chile flakes, olives, and capers. I did not use oil in making the sauce so I drizzled some over the top. I left my plate completely vegan while John shaved some cotija on his. (He says that it tastes like ricotta salata!)
YUM!
Chilean sea bass with new potatoes, Vichy carrots, and parsley sauce
This was a stellar dinner. We bought these Chilean sea bass individually frozen fillets from Costco and they were great. It is on the expensive side since the per meal cost of the fish is about $13 for the two of us but if we had this in a restaurant it would cost $80 or more. Oh, the advantages of having to eat at home during the pandemic! Cook the fish in the oven at 400F for about 13 minutes. The fish was seasoned with salt plus enhanced with paprika, bay leaves, garlic powder, and lemon zest.
The sides were 4 oz. steamed new potatoes each and Vichy carrots, a recipe I found on NYTime Cooking. Basically it is cook the carrots in a little water for about 15 minutes. Into the dry pan (since the water has evaporated) add olive oil (I used spray), some finely diced shallot (I used onion), a teaspoon of honey (I used brown sugar), and thyme. Cook another two minutes.
The parsley sauce was a whizzed-together bunch of parsley leaves and tender stems, 1/4 cup minus one tablespoon water, one tablespoon olive oil, one tablespoon lemon juice, and one eighth teaspoon xanthan gum powder. The original recipe calls for one quarter cup oil but I did not want that much oil so I substituted oil with water but kept the viscosity using xanthan gum.
This dinner was so good that it was impossible to not keep saying “yum” while eating.
If there is any upside to this pandemic it is that it has been a great boon to my diet. Hopefully this week I will pass the 50 lbs. lost mark. Not being able to travel or eat out means that all our meals are under our control and there is much less temptation. And speaking of temptation, John and I have crafted a pretty tempting menu for this week.
This dinner was a reprise of Sunday’s family lunch. Since this pork is a fattier cut than most of “the other white meat,” I had to keep my portion small. I did not fold up my taco but ate it open faced which made it last longer and kept me at a pace where I would not have to sit around watching John eat! I made some yogurt crema to go with the taco and also had taco fixings of salsa, cabbage, and cilantro. Texas caviar is a combination of black-eyed peas and black beans with myriad crunchy raw vegetables and a low calorie dressing.
Pulled pork taco and Texas caviar
We finish off last week on Saturday with a tasty shrimp stir fry and start off the new week on Sunday with Breakfast for Dinner.
Shrimp stir fry with leeks, bok choy , carrots, celery, serrano chile, broccoli, snow peas, and rice
Spinach, ham and egg scramble served on top of a flax, whole wheat, and oat pita plus iced tea
Salmon, rice, snow peas
We are eating more salmon to help support our HDL with omega-3 fatty acids. Tonight’s salmon was quickly pan fried in a spray of olive oil. It took less than 10 minutes to cook. Along with snow peas and rice we made a curry yogurt sauce with chopped cucumber. A squirt of sriracha pepped the sauce up.
I think I have finally figured out that when you eat in a healthy manner, you not only look better but you feel better too. And really, isn’t living a long active life what we all want?
Omnivore 