I've cooked an omelet using this recipe from the Times a couple of times over the past few week and it's come out well. It's easy to make, and doesn't require ingredients that I don't already have in the kitchen. I cheat and use frozen spinach. I'll bet fresh spinach would taste better.
I made black bean soup following this recipe from the Times, and it came out quite well (even though I omitted the salt). Cilantro was the only ingredient I was not familiar with, and it was found alongside the parsley and lettuce in the vegetable section. It was $.99 for a bunch, so relatively inexpensive. Just be careful not to let the beans scorch, you have to stir it somewhat often.
Yesterday and tonight I poached salmon fillets for dinner. To make this, I did the following:
1. Took a frying pan and put a little bit of water into the bottom of it.
2. Brought this water to a boil.
3. Put the salmon in the water and covered it with a lid.
4. Waited until the salmon was done (flaked easily with a fork and was light pink).
I also made a side dish of pasta (small pasta works better, like orzo if you have it or elbow macaroni), and served it with lemon juice, which you can pour right over the fish and the pasta.
You could also, I suppose, use rice instead of pasta, although then I suppose the lemon juice wouldn't work so well.
It was quite easy to do and did not take long at all.
Go to this website for free coffee. There's no strings attached.
Update: They're out.
This website from the FDA has information on the peanut recall and a comprehensive list of every product affected.
Lately I've been experimenting with cooking tilapia. To do it, I put an inch or so layer of water in a frying pan, bring it to a boil, and then put a filet of tilapia in the water. I then return the water to a simmer (not a boil), cover it, and poach it for five minutes. Then, I flip the tilapia piece over and poach it (covered) for another five minutes. It's then pretty much done, and I usually eat it with rice and some vegetable. It makes my meals more interesting. My grandmother has suggested adding lemon to the water, and I also use pepper on the fish.
I got a Target ad in the mail that also had a recipe for a Shrimp Noodle Bowl. After reading the recipe and discovering that the most extensive cooking it involved was simmering and boiling, I decided to try it. I halved the recipe, since I like to use my medium saucepan for other things, and it came out pretty well. I tried the same recipe again tonight and modified it with a bit of onion. That worked well and made the soup a little bit less bland. Half the package of spaghetti is a lot of pasta, though, so you might want to use less if you would like your noodle bowl more soup-like. (I did)
With part of the rest of the onion I made some pickled cucumber. Maybe one day when I am feeling more ambitious, I'll try Caley's recipe.
I'm going to post my two cents on dieting for the Bigger Loser Competition. I agree with much of what Dorothy said on her blog.
With that being said, one good thing to do if you are dieting (or even just generally) is to watch the fat content of the food that you consume. Besides saving on fat (a good thing), you also save considerably on calories, without having to go crazy counting them. If you get low-fat varieties of items, you may not notice much of a taste difference, but the food will inherently have less calories.
For example:
Nabisco Chips Ahoy Regular Cookies have 160 calories and 8 grams of fat. Here is a link to the nutrition facts page at Nabisco.
However, Nabisco Chips Ahoy Low Fat Cookies have 140 calories and six grams of fat. Here is a link to the nutrition facts page at Nabisco.
Twenty calories may not seem like a lot, but if you eat other low-fat or non-fat items, it can add up to a significant amount of calories. If you ingest less calories, then you have to burn less calories.
Using low-fat or fat free salad dressing may save even more calories than low-fat chocolate chip cookies.
Some fat-free items don't taste very good; I won't buy fat free cream cheese because I think it tastes like paste. But, I don't mind low-fat or non-fat salad dressing.
Obviously, drinking water instead of soda is a good idea, but keep in mind that even though milk is healthy, it is also 110 calories per cup.
