So, I figure I could stand to lose a few (the definition of “few” being rather elastic), and I’m starting to edge myself away from the excesses of my recent cooking which tends to be less than healthy (for instance, oktoberfest? its like a carb and fat festival!).
What is stranger is that I’ve almost started to develop a strange (and novel, for me) affinity for certain healthy foods…last night my dinner was a salad of spinach, thinly sliced cucumber, paper-thin sliced celery, and faint drizzle of olive oil and pepper. Also a fresh thai birdseye chili minced up, which put some serious heat in it. I really liked it! Maybe I had one too many racks of pork ribs? :D My homemade pizzas have stopped including meat as a topping and now generally are topped with pineapple, mushrooms, olives, jalapenos, etc. Oh, and I’ve at least temporarily retired my 20oz beer mug…last night a 9oz pull was equally satisfying, if savored a bit slower.
Any of you guys have any specialties that you would consider particularly exemplary in health/nutrition?
I make a big batch of chicken/veg/orzo soup every week or so. Very healthy, very tasty, and you can freeze leftovers for a quick meal. And keep in mind that portion control and exercise are equally important to diet in terms of weight loss.
Of course…those two things have been added as well. Simple little things like using small salad plates instead of larger plates can help in small ways get you adapted to not filling (and emptying) a full dinner plate, and as mentioned, smaller glassware helps moderate calorically rich homebrew, too.
When I do smoke things like chicken or other meats I usually end up with a lot of it stored in the freezer, so a vegetable soup might be a good thing to use with the leftover roast chicken. The backbone and trimmings (from before the roast was cooked) makes a great stock to use as a base for a soup, so I may try that.
Nic, You’re pretty big into asian food, right? We have a stir fry at least once a week. Lots of veggies is key, with little chix or beef. Make the sauce yourself, I use fish sauce, rice wine, a little sesame oil, and thicken with corn starch.
Oh, yeah, totally agree there. I’ll pass on the fish sauce, just can’t get over the aroma and even when cooked in food and somewhat muted…it adds little to me, other than the faintly detectable aroma of…well I’ll leave my opinions of fish sauce there.
But some ginger, veggies, good soy, lots of chili peppers or chili sauce can make a great stir fry. If I’m going to add a starch, rice noodles are my favorite by far. I don’t know how they stack up but rice noodles seem a bit lighter and less starchy/carby than more normal wheat noodles. I also like jasmine rice, but rice noodles are easier to whip up.
I have to agree on the aroma of fish sauce. It is not very pleasant however it’s flavor contributions are very nice. I love asian sauces. I am a big schezuan fan. Big bold flavors with some heat. I could eat asian every week.
Hey Nic, try some of the Indian Veg dishes. Lots are very easy and fast and keep well. Te use of such things as spices, hot peppers, lentils and rice combined with quick pan breads make it both healthy and hearty.
An easy and healthy recipe for a nice honey-mustard dressing: Mix up a couple Tblspoons Honey into a 1/3-1/2 cup Spicy Brown mustard, add a touch of Olive oil and a splash of Balsamic Vinegar. Mix well and serve over a simple salad of Spinach and Sliced Portabello Mushrooms. A little crumbled up bacon makes it perfect - half a pice of bacon won’t hurt you any.
I have a bunch of healthy recipes I will try to post over the next few days. You can start by looking at page 2 for my Spicy Basil Chicken.
I’ve lost 20+ pounds since last year just by cutting my portions down considerably. I rarely take seconds. It is possible to drink beer and lose weight, but the calories have to get cut somewhere.
Love veggies- in fact if it wasn’t for my BBQ addiction I’d return to strict vegitarianism in a heartbeat.
As far as health food goes, would you consider sushi as healthy? I really wish I could make it at home. Love the stuff.
I am no health nut by any means. But I have made it a point to have much less red meat than I am used to. I have taken a liking to many asian meals that are mostly salads, fish, and what not. I wanted to get into making sushi at home but then I saw Bobby Flay throw down against a sushi joint…I wonder how I would do.
LOL I just had nigiri from the market. Not too bad. Filling.
Bought one of those rolling mats and have made maki (rolls). I’ve also made nigiri. The rice is easy to make and should be left out overnight to ferment a bit with the sugar and vinegar.
Kinda messy and sticky but fun and healthy to make.
Alton Brown had a Good Eats episode on making sushi. It wasn’t nigiri but rolls. Didn’t look too hard but it seemed you need some specialized equipment, like the mats, that I didn’t want to buy because I wouldn’t make it very often. Looked good though.
Sushi is pretty easy and much cheaper than eating it out. All you need are some bamboo mats and I have found a rice cooker to also be very helpful. Get a book or just search on-line and you’ll be making regular rolls and inside out rolls in no time. I make vegetarian rolls all the time to bring in for lunch at work. I think you could probably dip just about anything in Soy Sauce and Wasabi and it would taste good!
The challenge for us is buying sushi-grade fish in the landlocked midwest. Kansas City is big enough I’m sure it could be had but probably at a steep premium. Fish in general is quite costly. The cheapest fish around is either local catfish or frozen bags of tilapia filets.
Sushi rolls aren’t hard to make at all, I think, from my one experience doing so. However, if I did them again, I would leave out the nori…helps with rolling but if you aren’t doing fish sushi it leaves a wretched fishy stink. And wasabi isn’t much to my liking…I like my heat more in a birdseye chili sort of way than in a horseradish, mustardy sort of way. Here was my attempt, a korean bulgogi roll and a spam and pineapple roll!
Whole Foods normally has a good selection, but it is pricey. The good news is that in rolls, it tends to go further than with the nigiri rolls. Sometimes to spread the costs out, we’ll have roll your own sushi parties at our house. Just get a bunch of ingredients, veggies, sushi-grade fish, and shrimp. Do up some tempura with the shrimp and some of the veggies and make some Spicy Sauce so that people can put some on their fish if they want and let everyone go to town. When everyone pitches in for fish, it’s normally not too bad.
We have a couple of slabs of marble that we lay the rolls out on, then with a wax pen on the marble you can “label” what each roll is and let everyone take what they want. It’s a pretty fun way to do it!
Those rolls look and sound pretty tasty! Good work on the Pearl Sake too, good stuff!
But the hardest part for me is I’m a carnivore, I love meat! Reducing it has been difficult, but to counter that lately I’ve add
a ton more veges to my meals, trying to eat more seafood too. Today I just made some hummus, never been a big fan of it, but decided, hey, I need a healthier snack… turned out pretty good with the flatbread I got. next time I’ll change it up a bit and try a different version of it.
i hear this all the time “doc, i would love to lose weight but i dont have the time” i dont care. exercise for fitness. not weight loss. any weight loss from exercise can be considered a bonus. then i get what foods should i eat. again. i dont care. fix the portion control first. control the appetite. eat the kind of foods you like. just less. as far as meat goes. it has gotten a bad rap. true, beef/fat will raise your cholesterol but it raises hdl more than ldl and your ratio actually gets better. fix the weight first by appetite control. soon, your body will let you know what to eat. i had a patient who had borderline cholesterol. he became a vegan without weight change and his lipid profile is actually a little worse. his ldl dropped by a point or two and his hdl plummeted. bottom line, you drink what you enjoy in moderation (hopefully), eat in moderation.
