Top Secret Recipes Treasury II by Todd Wilbur
SUMMARY: I love Top Secret Recipes! And this book has some great low fat versions of restaurant meals!
This book actually contains recipes from several other of Todd Wilber’s Top Secret Recipe books: Top Secret Recipes Lite, Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes, and Top Secret Recipes: Sodas, Smoothies, Spirits & Shakes.
This book has lite and low fat versions of recipes from restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King, Applebees, Arbys, Red Lobster, Chi Chis and many others.
While some of the recipes are only lightly modified to make them lite, or low fat. For instance, the Whopper recipe has you using super lean ground beef (93% lean) and fat free mayonnaise. I usually add a slice of Fat Free american cheese to it, though the book doesn’t mention it.
I really like this cookbook and plan to make many more of the recipes from it.
If you like restaurant type food but want to eat lite & low fat, I highly recommend this book!
Read more…
Our freezer has gotten pretty empty. I have been waiting for either Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine meals to go on sale. Friday, I walked over to Target which is near my work. I wanted to pick up something for lunch. They had a bunch of Lean Cuisine meals on sale for $2, including the Lean Cuisine panini bread meals. They even had a few of the Lean Cuisine flatbread melts on clearance for $1.44! I wanted to load up on them. Unfortunatly I had swimming immediately after work, and karate class after that. I considered leaving them in the freezers at work, and bringing them home the following week, but it was a clean out weekend, and they would have thrown them away (nevermind they were new and unopened). I decided that I would try the Target near my home. So Saturday I went to the Target near my home only to find they DID NOT have the Lean Cuisine’s on sale. Grumble.
But yesterday, the new ads came out. I found that the local grocery store had Lean Cuisine meals on sale for $2. And another grocery store had Healthy Choice meals on sale for $2.50. $2.50 is an okay price, but $2 is much better.
So yesterday afternoon, I went to the Wegmans, and bought 50 Lean Cuisine meals ($100) and brought them home. I still have plenty of room in our freezer, so I plan to go back and buy more. Unfortunatly, the Lean Cuisine panini meals were on sale for $2.50, not $2. But tomorrow, I am back at work. I am going to check out the Target by my work and see if they still have the Lean Cuisine panini and flatbread meals marked down. If so, I will pick some of them up.
I grew up in the Seattle area. There are a small local chain of restaurants named Dick’s Drive-in. A very small chain of about 5 restaurants. They are a local landmark. Whenever I would go there, I would order like 3 Dick’s Deluxe cheeseburgers, and a shake, They were very good. Now that I live in New York, I don’t get to eat there very often.
The other day, I had a craving for a Dick’s Deluxe, and set about to recreate it here as best as I could. And also to try to make a low fat version of it. The results were pretty good. Not as good as the real thing, but if I hadn’t made it low fat, I could have probably gotten closer. This is what I came up with:
Ingredients:
1/4 pound lean ground beef
Hamburger bun
Kraft Free Mayo
1 slice fat free American cheese
2 hamburger pickle chips
Lettuce (iceberg)
Directions:
Divide the ground beef into two roughly equal parts. Make them into hamburger patties. Grill patties in a skillets. While patties are cooking, spread approximately 2 teaspoons of fat free mayo on the bottom bun. Chop the two pickle chips into small pieces, and sprinkle on the mayo. Cover the mayo with lettuce.
When the patties are done cooking, stack the two patties, and place the fat free cheese slice on top. Place these on the lettuce, and cover with the top bun.
Enjoy!
Whenever I go to a Chinese restaurant I order Egg Drop Soup. I have tried other soups, but I always return to the Egg Drop Soup. Yum!
I was at my aikido class the other night when one of the students brought in his Chinese dinner and started eat while the rest of us were working out on the mat. The smell of the food had the rest of us drooling. I had a craving for Egg Drop Soup. I don’t even know if he had any there. I started working out in my head the recipe for a low fat version.
Ingredients:
4 cups chicken broth
1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1/4 tsp ginger
dash pepper
2 Tbsp corn starch
1/2 cup Egg Beaters
Directions:
In a medium sauce pan, heat the chicken broth to boiling. Remove a 4 tablespoons of the chicken broth to a small cup. Add the soy sauce, ginger and pepper to the sauce pan.
Add the cornstarch to the small cup and stir to blend the cornstarch/chicken broth mixture into a slurry. Add this to the sauce pan and stir until mixture is thickened.
Remove the sauce pan from the heat. Slowly pour in the Egg Beaters while gently stirring.
I was on my way home from karate class and trying to figure out what to make for dinner. It popped into my head that burritos would be pretty easy and fast to make. I stopped at the grocery store, and picked up the required ingredients. I already turkey in the fridge. It was leftover from Thanksgiving, but we had vacuum packed it and froze it. It was thawed now though. I couldn’t find the recipe that I had used before. Oh well. I started searching the net for a similar recipe. It took me a while, but I found one that was close. I had to modify it quite a bit though. It turned out pretty good. This more of a traditional burrito and not anything like what you will get at a Taco Bell.
Ingredients:
6 oz cooked and shredded chicken or turkey
1 cup canned black beans, drained
1/2 cup Pace Pico De Gallo (or salsa of choice)
2 large flour tortillas
1/2 cup fat free cheddar cheese, grated
2 Tbsp fat free sour cream
2 Tbsp guacamole
Directions:
In a small bowl, combine beans and pico de gallo. Place half chicken on half of one tortilla. Spread half the beans and pico de gallo mixture over the chicken. Sprinkle with half the cheese.
Do the same with the second tortilla.
Roll tortillas up and place in a baking dish seam side down.
Bake at 375°F 10 minutes.
Serve with dollop of sour cream and guacamole.