I have always wanted to try mussels. There have been plenty of times when I have seen photographs of dishes made with mussels, and they just looked so delicious. But I have never gotten around to making any of them. But I found a low fat recipe that looked intriguing, so I decided to make it. It turned out pretty good. It wasn’t hard, and didn’t take a long time to make. But when it came to eat, it was really messy. It was good, but I doubt I will make it again. I still have a pound of mussels in the fridge. I will have to find another recipe for them.
Mussels Marinara With Linguine
Ingredients:
1/2 pound linguine
1 pound mussels
2 cups pasta sauce (low fat, chunky)
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
basil
Directions:
Throw away any cracked or open mussels (they are bad). Rinse the mussels in cold water, then scrub with a brush.
Bring a large pot of water to boiling. Break the noodles in half, drop into boiling water. Cook for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile in a large skillet, mix pasta sauce, mussels, and cayenne pepper. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or until mussels have opened. Discard any mussels that do not open.
Drain pasta, and divide between four serving bowls. Spoon pasta sauce and mussels over the pasta. Sprinkle with basil.
Among the bunch of Healthy Choice Cafe Selections that I bought, I bought a small handfull of Traditional Turkey Breast meal. First, I liked the low 4 grams of fat. But they were normally $2.79, on sale for $1.69, and many of the other meals were regularly $2.69, marked down to $1.69. So I save $1.10 on these as opposed to $1.00 on most of the others. So it seemd like I was getting a better deal.
I had Healthy Choice Traditional Turkey Breast (with gravy & dressing) for lunch. I comes with vegetable medley (corn, peas and carrots…though I don’t remember any carrots…they are on the box though), and cherry crisp for dessert. The meal has 300 calories with 4 grams of fat, or 40 calories with of fat. The fat calories are about 13% or total calories. That is really good. It still counts as 6 Weight Watchers points.
It took 4 minutes of microwave time, with stirring in the middle. The turkey is pretty good. There is a little stuffing. You need to follow the directions of spooning the gravy of the stuffing, or, the stuff with be a dry block. I liked the peas and corn. That is probably the best tasting of the Healthy Choice vegetables sides. The cherry crisp was also pretty good. I will definatly be eating more of these.
When I bought the 58 Healthy Choice Cafe Selections, plus 10 more later, I didn’t think I grabbed any with more than 6 grams of fat. But this morning when I was grabbing food to take to work, I grabbed this. I was surpised to see it had 8 grams of fat. Oh well. I bought it, I am going to eat it.
So I ate the Healthy Choice Garlic Parmesan Chicken for breakfast. It included grilled chicken breast with seasoned pasta & vegetables (carrots, broccoli, red pepper), in a creamy caesar sauce. There was no dessert. It has 310 calories, with 80 calories coming from the 8 grams of fat. Thats almost 26% of the calories coming from the fat. Pretty high! This counts for 6 Weight Watchers points. It took 4 1/2 minutes of microwave time, and had to be stirred in the middle of cooking.
I like the texture. The taste was good, but not great. Considering the high percentage of fat calories, I will probably pass on this one next time.
Last night, my wife made Honey Teriyaki Salmon. It was pretty good. Personally, my favorite way to have salmon is baked with just a little butter (or low fat buttery spray), and some lemon juice. Hard to beat. Many other recipes overpower the salmon flavor.
I knew we had a big chunk of salmon on the freezer that I have vacuum packed with the food sealer. I hated to use it for a recipe that might suck. But my wife used these other salmon filets that I had forgotten about. The local grocery store had some frozen salmon filets on sale, and I bought a couple bags. It was a great price. The filets were all individually wrapped. But when we tried the salmon filets, they were relatively bland. She used these. What a great idea. For just baking with the butter, and lemon juice, they lacked flavor. But with another recipe that had more flavor, they were a great choice. So they worked great for this recipe.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp ginger, fresh, peeled, chopped
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 crushed garlic clove
4 (1/4 lb) salmon fillets (without skin)
Directions:
1. Mix soy sauce, ginger, honey, lemon juice, and garlic in a bowl and whisk until the honey dissolves. Pour the mixture (teriyaki sauce) into a large zip-lock bag. Place the salmon into bag with the mixture, squeeze out the air, and seal the bag. Flip the bag over several times so salmon is completely covered with teriyaki sauce. Place the bag in the refrigerator to marinate for at least 6 hrs or up to 24 hrs. Flip the bag occasionally.
2. Take the salmon out of the bag, and pour the rest of the teriyaki sauce into a bowl and set aside.
3. Spray nonstick skillet with cooking spray and set over medium heat. Place the salmon into the skillet and cook for five minutes. Flip the salmon, brush with teriyaki sauce and cook until just opaque in the center about 5 minutes more. Serve.
I weighed in this morning at 169.2. It has been about four years since I weighed this low. I don’t want to get below the 170’s. When I was in high school, I was tall and skinny, and weighed about 150. When I got into college, and got into karate, I started putting on weight. I got up into the 170s. That was cool, the because 170 pounds was often the dividing line between light weight division, and heavy weight division. I liked being in the heavy weight division.
When I started dabbling in bodybuilding, I managed to get my weight up to 190 very briefly, but then my weight started dropping again. I think I was in the 170s for a long time.
When I got married, and moved to Rochester, my weight crept up to 230. But when I started doing karate again, I got it down to 210, and it stayed there for a long time.
About 4 years ago, I made an effort to get my weight down for a karate tournament, and lost almost 30 pounds in two months. I did this by eating low fat/no fat. I was in the low 180s for the tournament. My weight continued to fall until it was in the high 160s. So I started eating a little more fat, and my weight came back up. I was fluctuated a lot. Then when I wasn’t paying attention, it crept back up to about 200.
I started paying more attention, and got it back down into the mid-180’s, and managed to keep it there.
But when I start running, and eating low fat again, my weight started dropping. It has been staying in the mid to low 170’s. But this morning I weighed in at 169.2. I thought I would drop below 170, since I weighed in last night before bed at 171.2.
I need to eat more. Not eat more fat, jut eat more low-fat food. I want to keep my weight up, but drop the body fat.