Happy August Fool’s Day! What could be better to celebrate half way to autumn than a GBOF made with whole wheat penne and a ton of vegetables. Not having used up all our vegetables yesterday in the lentil stew, today’s dinner included onions, carrots, celery, snow peas, zucchini, garlic, broccolini, mushrooms, chiles and peppers. We used a little pasta water to make a sauce. We each had 3 ounces of pasta which is a lot for us! Yum!
Penne and vegetables
This is another one of those meals that you could make with or without meat. It was a giant bowl of food (GBOF) which is always good. Since the lentils take around a half an hour to cook, we added some sauteed turkey sausage and onions, carrots, garlic and celery when we put the lentils on to cook and then we added some more along with other vegetables with about 10 minutes until done. This way there is flavor in the lentils and the broth (we cooked it in chicken broth but this could be vegetable broth) and also fresh crisp flavors when it’s time to eat the stew. As far as what other vegetables to put in, that depends on what you’ve got left over in your refrigerator. I served this stew with a low calorie non-alcoholic O’Doul’s and it was very satisfying.
Lentils with smoked turkey sausage and vegetables
A typical Chicken Monday dinner. I set my eensy chicken breast on a nest of green beans and mushrooms. Having the gravy always makes this dinner better. Rutabagas, eats like a starch, counts like a vegetable.
Chicken breast with mushroom gravy, rutabagas and green beans
Here in St. George during the summer you have to get up pretty early to get your outdoor exercise in. All week long John and I have been out on the tennis court some days by 7 AM and other days at 8 AM. It makes for a long day and creates eating challenges. We can’t go play tennis without eating anything but by the time we are done and back home, we are hungry again and it’s only around 9 or 10. So we end up eating two breakfasts.
Here’s how my dining day went today.
7 AM – tea with a sandwich thin topped with one slice of non-fat cheese and sliced tomato (mini-pizza!)
10:30 AM – one egg and one additional white scrambled with no additional fat on a sandwich thin
2:30 PM – chipotle bean burger (no roll), grilled potato and homemade lowfat cole slaw
7:30 PM – one cup Go Lean, one cup blueberries and one half cup lowfat milk
I thought if we had our major meal mid-day it would put us in a better position to keep the raving munchies away. It worked!
Chipotle bean burger, grilled potato and lowfat cole slaw
John found some cedar planks at the grocery store and also wild salmon which was frozen but looked pretty good. Here’s the salmon ready to go on the grill.
Salmon on a cedar plank ready for the grill
I had started some farro about an hour before using the brown rice oven method (America’s Test Kitchen) which works just as well for farro as it does for brown rice. The hardest part of making the rice or farro this way is to remember to start it an hour or so before you want to serve dinner. The broccoli was simply cooked in a little water and served with a squirt of faux butter. I also prepared a yogurt dill sauce.
Cedar planked salmon with yogurt dill sauce, farro with green onion garnish and broccoli
John and I were interested in a GBOF (giant bowl of food.) We decided that the best way to stretch our food points and achieve our goal would be to make a little pasta, add a little tuna and pad that out with a lot of vegetables. Our sauce was basically the flavors from the vegetables with some chicken stock and pasta water. I looked in the vegetable drawers and used everything that could possibly go together – onions, mushrooms, carrots, celery, broccolini, pea pods, red bell pepper, pasilla pepper and serrano chile. I am sure I’ve missed something but you get the idea.
This dinner is easily made vegetarian by omitting the tuna and using vegetable broth or just pasta water.
Whole wheat pasta with tuna and vegetables
Jonathan likes to call this dinner first world dieting. Guilty as charged. Lobster tails are one of the more extravagant dinners that we have. But as I have said before, we don’t go out to eat very often. If we have one lunch out a week that’s a lot. Since we’ve been here in St. George (8 days), we haven’t eaten out at all.
John steamed the lobster tails for about 5 minutes. They were pretty small. After dinner he took the shells plus shells from shrimp we’ve had and kept in the freezer and made a seafood stock. We’ll be able to use that in our Mediterranean fish stew.
I was also steaming. But in a good way. I steamed tiny new potatoes for about 20 minutes. I like getting the really small ones because they cook quickly and I can eat a lot of them.
Here’s how I dealt with the collard greens. First I sauteed one slice of deli ham and some sliced garlic. The ham was a stand in for bacon.
Sauteed ham and garlic
Then I stripped the tough center rib out of the collard greens, rolled them up like a cigar and cut them in a chiffonade.
Chiffonade of collard greens
The collard greens cooked mostly just in the water that still clung to the leaves. They cook quickly. I think the whole dish took less than 10 minutes to cook. When the collard greens were wilted I sprinkled frozen corn over the top and added the ham and garlic back in. Another minute or two to warm everything through and, voila, a really tasty vegetable.
Lobster tails, new potatoes and collard greens with garlic, ham and corn
Tonight we had one of our few “meat” meals. By meat, I mean pork, beef or lamb. For most cuts of this trio the fat content is just too high. But pork tenderloin is more like chicken when it comes to fat. And just like chicken it is easy to overcook. Luckily I have John to take care of the meat. Armed with his excellent technique and probe thermometer, pork and chicken rarely come out overcooked. He started the tenderloin in the oven and then finished it on the grill outside. My portion size was three ounces.
Since I had forgotten to get either brown rice or farro started (they take an hour in the oven), we opted for couscous. I had a bunch of vegetables from my zucchini medley to add to the basic whole wheat couscous. The zucchini medley consisted of zucchini, mushrooms, onions, pasilla pepper, red bell pepper, celery, garlic and parsley. I made a lot of it. We ate it all.
By eating correctly since we had our celebration in Las Vegas, I have lost that transient weight I gained. I wish that I would just lose the other 20-25 lbs. and be done with this phase of the diet!
Pork tenderloin, couscous and zucchini medley
Happy Pioneer Day! If you don’t live in Utah you probably are not celebrating. Pioneer Day remembers the day that Brigham Young said “this is the place” and he and his followers stopped and settled. If you are not LDS and are in Utah, you think of this day as a day when the liquor stores are closed.
Having secured our wine supply yesterday, we were well set for Pioneer Day. We also had two left over portobello mushrooms from last week that needed eating. Costco is an excellent source for them. They are much cheaper than in the grocery store but you have to buy them four at a time. So, marinate and grill the mushrooms. Microwave and grill the split potato. Saute some green beans with the leftover bits and pieces of mushroom and green onion. The portobello was served on a sandwich thin with 1/2 oz. of goat cheese, a roasted red pepper, grilled onion and arugula.
Portobello burger, grilled potato and green beans
This morning after breakfast we made dinner. We were expecting some workmen to come in and start our renovation and wanted to get the whole dinner prep thing over with before they arrived. Solution – slow cooker! I started by browning the ground turkey. To make the dish vegetarian just omit the turkey. Next I sauteed our umami factor, a whole bunch of mushrooms. This was followed by onions and garlic. In the meantime John assembled the spices and his special cheesecloth sachet full of dried chili pods etc. After adding back the meat and the mushrooms to the onions, I added the spices, sauteed them for a bit and then added a large dollop of tomato paste. Into the slow cooker with this combination along with three kinds of beans, cilantro, serrano, jalapeno and bell peppers. Also diced tomatoes. I set it on high and after a few hours turned it to low.
When dinner time came, dinner was ready for us. We tweaked the seasoning and served the chili with an arugula salad.
Turkey, bean and mushroom chili
Omnivore 