Man, I stink (and Chicken Adventures 1)

Well, some good job of updating I've done this past month. I've been cooking a lot, staying close to this Montignac plan as best I can, and overall doing not much in my unemployment-ness :p No excuses for not updating regularly but now I have so many pictures and posts floating around in my head, I have not much choice. So here we go.

First chicken adventure: Whole Grain fried chicken. I mixed whole wheat flour, flaxseed meal, and parmesean cheese for this breading. I wasn't thrilled with how it came out just b/c I like really crispy crunchy fried chicken.... but it wasn't bad, even if it doesn't really fit perfectly into the Montignac tenets b/c whole wheat flour has a glycemic index above 35.

So anyway, here's the breading:



And the chicken breaded:



And the finish product (ignore the brown rice, it didn't come out well ;))





Second chicken adventure: Garlic-y quinoa with grilled chicken. While looking for grains that have a glycemic index of below 35 that i can eat with meats, I decided to try quinoa. What I did here was saute it to toast it up, in a little garlic, then boil it per package directions.






I marinated the chicken in simple olive oil, a little red wine vinegar, lots of garlic, etc.:




finished meal (sorry for the blurriness, I suck):

I'm Back!

Sorry for not writing lately (if anyone cares? LOL)... had a nice food-filled stay at my parents' house.. put the diet on hold of course and filled up on take-out Chinese (the fried rice is just different!), homemade creplach (think Jewish meat-filled ravioli all made by hand), steak, smoked chicken wings (which are just simply divine), and a sublime birthday dinner of prime rib at my favorite group of restaurants.

Also made a Paula Deen recipe for chocolate chip pancakes - we added cocoa powder to it to double the chocolate and they were some of the best pancakes I've ever had - we were skeptical about whipping the egg whites but it really worked well.

Otherwise, ate a lot of blueberries and I do mean a LOT. I have a couple pictures from older meals that I need to get up and then I'll get right back into it here in LA. I will say that since I've been back, I've been behaving very well, so yay!

Update

Well, I haven't really made anything creative - I really haven't had time (though my dinner tonight might be photo-worthy). With the exception of this past Monday when I had a sandwich on a white roll and a milkshake (yes, very bad), I've been good. Bought some more healthy goodies like roasted soybeans to squash the craving for salty crunchy snacks (I don't really like the soybeans, so I don't eat that much hahahaha), Luna bars, which are made for women and apparently have a low glycemic index, some Organic Quinoa from TJ's, a "sprouted wheat berry flourless" bread at TJ's that's really not that bad, some Barilla Plus pasta (I hope it tastes good), etc.

As for the "diet," I am trying to understand the combining aspects. I got one of Montignac's newer editions from the library and will take it home when I see my parents. Yes, that's going to make things difficult - it will be white bread, potatoes, rice, Chinese food, dessert, and other such unhealthy stuff galore :( I'll try to do the best I can but it's going to make things difficult. So I figure I will use the week and a half to just let myself be spoiled and enjoy these things (some of which, like the Chinese fried rice and prime rib and stuff, I literally can't even get here so it's not like it will make me crave it forever), and then come back and really get in gear and do it right. One exciting thing is that this newer Montignac book has a really amazing-looking recipe for chocolate cake, the only ingredients are chocolate and eggs, so I can't wait to try this one!!!

Will keep you posted!

Homemade Tomato Sauce

Ever since Trader Joe's stopped carrying my beloved "Starter Sauce" in a box, I decided I'd try making my own sauce. Finally I did it! So I went to Whole Foods and took three kinds of Italian tomatoes - I mean real imported Italian tomatoes with nothing added except a little salt in one case. A box of Pomi chopped tomatoes (that I had already pureed), a 28oz can of whole peeled San Marzano plum tomatoes and a smaller can of San Marzano cherry tomatoes (by the way, I found out a little too late that these still had the skins on. whoops. If you use them - I got them at Whole Foods with a yellow label - check first LOL).

As to why real imported tomatoes, they have this intrinsic sweetness that allows the sauce to be made with no added sugar. It works especially well for salsas too but for pizza as well, because when the sauce is combined with the crust and cheese and toppings, the sauce's flavor still gets through. :D Considering how much sauce I got for about $5 worth of tomatoes, I'd say it's worth the extra money to get a really top-quality end product that can be used for a long time.

But first, I heated up some extra virgin olive oil in my biggest pot and lightly sauteed about a half an onion (I don't really like onion so I go small on them) and many cloves of garlic, on pretty low heat for a few minutes. BTW, using a very large pot is crucial, even if you aren't making that much sauce - when the sauce cooks down, it kind of bubbles and blubbers and well, spits. If the pot's full, it will bubble and blubber all over your stove (yes even on low heat) ;)



Then I added about half a can of tomato paste (get one that has ONLY tomatoes as an ingredient please) to thicken it all up and let that go for about a minute, then I dumped in all the various tomatoes. I decided to put all the seeds and juice in, I figured it'd just cook down and I was going to puree it anyway. Maybe that's wrong. HAHA. Also, with the can of San Marzano tomatoes (which I put in after the cherry tomatoes, aka after I realized they had their skins on and I had to turn off the heat and go through and try to get all the peel out LOL), I was more careful and looked at those one by one and what I did was take off that hard part where the stem was attached that you get in tomatoes - I figured it'd be hard to puree later so I might as well do it. As I put each one in I squeezed it to break it up a bit.


I didn't really pay attention to how long I cooked it for, although I guess it was only about an hour... but it seemed quite thick already and it had reduced a fair amount so I killed the heat and let it cool for another hour or so to make it easier to handle and to make sure it thickened well. You can see in this picture as compared to the one above that it is a good amount lower in the pot and it just looks a little darker and thicker even in a picture:


After it cooled for a while (to basically room temperature) I mixed in some fresh parsley (Italian flat-leaf, of course) and a good pinch of kosher salt and pureed it in the blender (b/c I like pureed sauces). And there you have it! You can see the flecks of parsley in the final product; I hope that adds a fresh-tasting touch. I'll probably use it a couple times before breaking it down into smaller containers and freezing. If there's any excess water it should float to the top and I can get rid of that so it won't really get grossly watery after freezing.

"Diet" - Day 1

So let's see... Breakfast consisted of a hard-boiled egg (minus yolk, ick), a slice of the whole wheat bread, a good slathering of almond butter, and some freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice (combined with a little orange) diluted with water. I had it the same time I normally do, and normally I get hungry around 10-10:30am at work and I made it all the way almost til lunch before I craved anything (had a couple almonds around 11:30). All in all not bad :D

Lunch: turkey sandwich in half of a 100% whole wheat pita, two slices of super sharp Vermont cheddar, carrots, a tomato, and sugar snap peas. This is actually about the same lunch I typically bring to work - except for the whole wheat pita. Not bad, a very small change and the whole wheat pita from TJ's tastes fine.

Fruit: some grapes and cherries.

Afternoon snack: handful of raw almonds and some raw sunflower seed kernels

Dinner: Fried chicken! Yeah, you read that right. Fried chicken. chicken breast pieces breaded in a breading of whole wheat flour, flaxseed meal, and parmesean cheese. It was actually really quite tasty.





*note* it seems that I'm not understanding this Montignac method that well - apparently certain combinations of food is also part of the whole thing. So I need to read more closely this weekend and I put a couple more of his books on hold so maybe it will help steer me in a better direction. of course, not liking fish and some of the other "staples" in his method is sort of a problem so I may not really be able to follow it that closely, but we'll see.