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.
A month ago my weight was in the hight 160’s. I weighed myself the other day, and my weight had increased to 178 lbs. Ouch!!!! Yeah, I have been eating badly. I had taken a trip to Las Vegas, and ate at Jack In The Box multiple times. I love those Jumbo Jacks! *droool* And the Ciabatta breakfast sandwiches were awesome. And then there were the small mexican restaurants where ate these fabulous burritos and chimchangas! Yummy! And the all you can buffets! I can eat a lot…And that was all in EARLY December. Then come the holidays with catered lunch at work, and everyone bringing in snacks. And going with friends for lunch at Red Robin. And for some stupid reason I bought a bag of Butterfinger candy bars and a bag of M&Ms…stupid, stupid, stupid! I ate them all in like two days. If the junk is around, I will eat it.
But now that we are passed the holidays, I am going to make every effort to start eating low-fat again, and reasonable portions.
I am continuing to workout. After running the Las Vegas Marathon (I finished in 3:36:30) on December 2nd, I jumped right back into training for the Shamrock Marathon on March 16th. But just because I am running 30-35 miles a week, and doing martial arts classes, and spinning, etc, doesn’t allow me to eat anything I want. My weight still starts to creep up if I don’t keep an eye on it. So I am going to get back to work eating healthy again, and get this weight back off. I want to be below 170 when I run the marathon in March. I am going to need all the help I can get in my effort to break three and a half hours so I can qualify for the Boston Marathon.
For the most part I like Healthy Choice meals better than I do the Lean Cuisine meals. I will buy loads of them when they are on sale.
I love the Lean Cuisine Honey Balsamic Chicken. The Balsamic sauce has a nice bite to it.
Recently the Healthy Choice meals went on sale, and I bought a bunch of the Honey Balsamic Chicken meals. I have been very disappointed in them. The apple-cranberry crisp is decent. The broccoli is fair. But the Honey Balsamic Chicken itself is not too good. It’s not bad, but just isn’t good either. I like that they have one big chunk of chicken. But the sauce is just to watery and tasteless. With the Lean Cuisine, it is thick, dark, and sweet. I have had a couple of these from Healthy Choice now, and they were both like this. I doubt I will but more of this particullar Healthy Choice. There are many other flavors to choose from that are better.
So if you have a choice, and want to try the Honey Balsamic Chicken, go for the Lean Cuisine!
While trying to make a local dish called a “garbage plate”, I wworked on figuring out how to make low-fat home fries. They are actually very easy to make, and are pretty good.
Ingredients:
one potato per person
salt
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. While oven is heating up, peel potatoes. Cut into cubes about 1/2″-3/4″ square. On a baking sheet spread a layer of baking parchment. Spread the potato cubes on the parchment, and give them a very light spray with the vegetable oil. When oven comes to temp, bake the potatos for 10 minutes. Remove the tray, and turn the potato cubes over using a spatula. If you don’t get them all turned over, don’t worry about it too much. Give them another very light spray with the vegetable oil. Bake for another 10 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven. Sprinkle with salt to taste. Serve.