Hooray! Yet another article about the end-all, be-all method to finally, yes finally (!) lose weight!
Ugh.
Strangely enough, the tips in an article by Sally Squires of the Washington Post are absolutely normal, and if I'm going to poke fun at anything at all, it's the fact that the logic behind the Energy Density method is absolutely sound.
Basically, you replace food with a high energy density with foods that have low energy-density. It sounds fancy. It sounds scientific and complicated. Energy density? Do we need to carry around little notebooks with an entire database of foods and their energy densities?!?!
No. Energy density is just a fancy way of saying "caloric bang for your buck." You want to eat foods that give you less caloric bang for your buck, and remove foods that have a higher number of calories for the volume of food you eat. For example, an apple is low density. Mashed potatoes with butter that's the same size as that apple is high density.
It's not rocket science, but if you need more concrete to-dos, here's a list from the article:
Add fruits and vegetables to cut calories
Get more fiber
Add a course to your meal like salad to cut down on a higher density main course
Sip on soup
Cut out fat where you won't be sacrificing too much flavor
A few weeks ago, my friends and I got together after work to play board games (yes yes I know - how very, um, exciting), and a friend and I were charged with providing food. We were meeting rather late, so there was no need to go with full dinner fare. I decided on a few Mediterranean dips and a salad because really now, is there anything better than ripping a pita loaf into shreds when you're caught up in the excitement of Jenga?!?! Tzatziki is one of my favorites, and though I do believe it's used more as a sauce or condiment in Greek cuisine, I love scooping it up with pita bread. My Sarah-ized version is written out after the jump:
Despite the fact that is summer, and the temperatures are going to climb back into the 90's by the middle of the week (at least here in Philadelphia), I have soup on the brain. Since I'm also obsessed with the summer crop of Jersey tomatoes that are rolling into the stores and farmers' markets around here, I thought I would share my very favorite Roasted Tomato Basil soup recipe.
Sadly, I have absolutely no claim on this one, it belongs to the Barefoot Contessa. I tend to have difficulties with many of her recipes (I can't handle the idea of putting a large pat of butter on the inside of a hamburger patty), but this one is foolproof and bowl-lickingly good.
I have about a bazillion (yeah, so I exaggerated when I said "gazillion") cherries sitting on my countertop, and I have no idea what to do with them besides wash them and just eat them straight out of the bowl. I have used dried cherries in baking and during the autumn, and lately, I have been throwing frozen cherries into my morning smoothies. However, I have never used fresh cherries in cooking.
The reason I have yet to cook with fresh cherries, I think, is that the idea of standing in my kitchen squirting cherry red juice all over my kitchen floor and my clothes, possibly knicking my fingers on a fruit knife, and basically staining my fingers a lovely shade of red for days to come -- pitting fresh cherries -- does not appeal to me. If I'm going to go to all that effort to take out the stones, I'd just as soon pop that cherry into my mouth standing right there.
So Slashfoodies, I am asking for your help. Share with me, your favorite recipe using fresh cherries that will most definitely make my time and sanity pitting cherries in the kitchen worthwhile, will you? Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert -- anything!
All across the country, zucchini and other summer squashes are taking over garden patches. They double in size overnight, leaving home cooks pondering new ways to use them up so that their families don't say to them, "You mean we're having squash? Again?"
The following recipe has captured my attention as a terrific way to use a lot of your zucchini. It fancies up your basic grilled squash, and, coupled with a protein and a grain salad, would make a terrific meal. The grilling of the squash could be done outside, on a stove-top grill pan or even on a large George Foreman.
I eat a lot of tofu, not because I'm vegan/vegetarian and have to eat some sort of protein, but because tofu tastes good to me. (My being Asian and eating tofu all my life might have something to do with this, too.)
Now, it is just way too easy to pick up several blocks of tofu from the market for ninety-nine cents each, sometimes less when it's on sale, but if you have some time on your hands, you can make tofu at home, per the above video above from Cool Hunting. All you need is 150 g of dried soybeans, calcium sulfate, and the foresight to start soaking the dried soybeans the night before.
Several months ago, I discovered the deliciousness that is fruit spread with really good quality ricotta cheese. I discovered this by accident, during a tipsy evening with a friend when I inadvertently dipped an apple slice into the bowl of cheese. One taste and for the rest of the evening it was all we ate until the cheese was all gone.
One caveat is that this doesn't work with that grainy ricotta you get from the grocery store. You need to find the stuff that is available at cheese and specialty shops. Here in Philly, I get it at Claudio's, a cheese shop located in the Italian Market. It is super-creamy (I imagine it has a much higher fat content than regular ricotta) and when combined with fruit, becomes special in a way I am not totally able to articulate.
Last night I cut a pineapple up into spears and took it, along with a small container of this special ricotta, to a dinner with friends. It was one of several dessert options and yet was one of the favorites, because it was a change from the sweet (but delicious) baked goods. You can use your imagination to determine what other fruit might go well with it, I haven't tried it, but have a suspicion it would be fantastic with peaches and nectarines.
One of the things with which I have fallen in love in recent history is squash blossoms. When I first encountered these, I was slightly turned off by the idea of eating such giant flowers, even though I wasn't unfamiliar with edible flowers. It's just that the edible flowers I've eaten in the past have been small things that have been tossed in with salads.
For some reason, this picture of squash blossoms over on food blog Big City, Little Kitchen makes me want to sit out on a sunny deck with a glass of lightly chilled wine and a plate of these things, as prepared in the recipe for Fried Squash Blossoms in the post. The cool thing is that the recipe, though uses the standard stuffing of ricotta cheese, uses cornmeal as the breading.
Late last year, a TV production company filmed a new reality program in England. Nine volunteers set up camp in the Paignton Zoo in Devon, next to the ape house and for 12 days, ate like the apes did. This meant that they consumed nearly 11 pounds of fruits and vegetables a day as part of a three-day rotating diet that was designed by a nutritionist. They also were given small amounts of honey and nuts, and during the second week ate some cooked fish.
On average, each of the participants lost 10 pounds and experienced significant reductions in blood pressure and cholesterol. The majority of the participants signed up because they were experiencing health concerns and needed to do something drastic in order to improve their health.
I realize that this is sort of old news, but I just heard about it and I found it intriguing. I'm also very curious if this will become one of the many reality TV shows exported to the United States. Americans are willing to try a variety of drastic measures to lose weight. Will eating like an ape be one of them?
On Sunday, in honor of the movie Ratatouille, Sarah posted a nice round up of ratatouille recipes from around the web. The next day, Deb from Smitten Kitchen, posted her own recipe for the dish, this one inspired directly by the ratatouille that Remy the rat created onscreen. Deb's version called to me, since it used the same layer technique that those Pixar magicians had made look so appealing.
I deviated from Deb's recipe in three minor ways. I used a chopped fresh tomato instead of sauce (I had one that was on it's way out that needed to be cooked), I skipped the red pepper (because I forgot to buy one) and I used a deep pie plate (instead of her oval baking dish). With the help of my mandoline, I thin-sliced green and yellow zucchini and a petite eggplant. The layering was fun, like creating an edible sculpture. I used some toothpicks to keep the parchment paper in place, because the heat of the oven threatened to blow it around if I left it unsecured. After an 45 minutes at 375 degrees, the veggies were cooked but not limp, and the chopped tomatoes had relaxed into fresh, garlicky sauce. It turned out to be some of the best ratatouille I've ever had, thanks to Remy (aka Thomas Keller) and Deb.
Every once in a while, I actually do get into the kitchen and cook something for myself. I say "myself" because it's not that cooking is a rare occurrence for me. I cook for friends, family, dinner parties, etc. However, I very rarely cook for myself. It's just too much of a hassle. During the work week, I get home so late that by the time I have a moment to eat dinner, I'm too exhausted to cook and it's too late for take-out. Solo suppers are hard to come by. Solo suppers made at home are even more difficult.
Pasta is most people's go-to on late work nights. My current favorite is a pasta-ized version of one of my favorite salads, the Greek Salad. The ingredients of Greek Salad are very summery and can be found fresh at the farmers' market (I'm lucky that one of the largest farmers' markets in LA is about two blocks from my office). The only things I have to get elsewhere are feta cheese and olives, but these are things I always have on hand anyway, along with an endless supply of dried pasta in the pantry.
At the start of every summer, I do this. I tell myself I am going to make all kinds of new foods with the summer's produce bounty, particularly vegetables that I have never cooked myself before. Like a high school girl on summer vacation between sophomore and junior year, I want to flirt with all different kinds of vegetables that I find randomly at the farmers' markets!
Um, never mind about that "high school girl on summer vacation" part. I took college prep classes during the summers...
Anyway, at the start, I always tell myself I want to expand my cooking horizons by challenging myself with something new in the kitchen every day, or even every week, and I always end up having one long torrid affair with one vegetable every summer. One summer I was enamored of zucchini. The summer before that, I was having a hot fling with every kind of tomato I could get my hands on. This year, I've been seeing eggplant. A lot. In fact, you might call us "an item."
When first I saw this photo of a dish prepared by SingleGuyChef, I thought I was looking at very squarely cut slices of some flat fish that had been crusted withherbs and spices and stacked with...American cheese? The I actually read the title of the post and saw that this gorgeous stack is actually alternating slices of grilled mango, zucchini, a seaweed salad, and firm tofu that has been seared, then brushed with a reduced Thai BBQ sauce and broiled.
I can't say that I would have put a seaweed salad together with the other ingredients, but the stacked presentation sure is pretty.
Wondering What Kim Ate? Wondering why Kim ate something so wintry? I'll tell you. Food blogger Kim writes the food blog What Kim Ate from New Zealand, so while we may be eating salad and cold soups here in the northern hemisphere, Kim and her partner Thomas are savoring the flavors of the opposite season. This is a simple soup made from pumpkin, potatoes and vegetable stock. As cooked, it's vegan, but with the garnish of what looks like either sour cream or creme fraiche, it's vegetarian. There are some cheese and corn scones to make the soup a meal.
It's pretty common to use citrus fruit flavors in cakes and muffins. Most commonly, we use lemon, followed in popularity by orange; sometimes we use lime when we start to get really tropical, but very rarely do I ever see grapefruit!
Certainly, people eat fresh grapefruits, drink juice, or drink it in some other flavor format, but in a muffin? Apparently, it isn't a bad idea, since the Wandering Eater baked Vanilla-Crusted Grapefruit Cranberry Muffins for a birthday. The cranberries were frozen, and the grapefruit flavor came from the zest, no juice.
Hooray! Yet another article about the end-all, be-all method to finally, yes finally (!) lose weight!
Late last year
On Sunday, in honor of the movie Ratatouille, Sarah 
What Can I Get You Folks? - Eating Out for Thanksgiving
In Defense of Guy Fieri
'Top Chef Vegas' - And Then There Were Five
