clayrae

20 pounds to go!

I have been working on losing weight over the past couple of years. I have lost nearly 30 pounds with changes in my diet and semi-regular exercise. There are a few habits that I have picked up that I will post here. Maybe they can help someone else.

I now always eat breakfast. I like bagels with cream cheese. I have switched to mini bagels (100 calories) which satisfy the BREAD! craving. I use 1/3 llght Neufchâtel cheese, because I like the way it tastes. (Light cream cheese tastes oddly sweet to me.)

Here is the trick with the cream cheese: I could eat the whole brick. When I am rushing out the door in the morning the last thing I want to do is measure. So when I open the package I slice it into 8 one ounce servings and drop it into a storage container. Then I can just grab a chunk without thinking about it.

I wonder if they would sell us a case: click.

Must have been a lot of shopping today, because it was pretty well stocked last night around 8 when I was there buying wonton chips.

The bag is already gone.

Note to self: do not buy wonton chips.

The healthy eating plan resets to "clean slate" every Monday morning, right?

Oh, I am in as well. I seem to be paying for membership to a gym, but I only dimly remember what the gym actually looks like...

So the dinner on Feb 3 will be low fat/cal to accommodate our new virtuous ways?

description word and I know most pastry chefs will kill me for saying it, and its a word I just don't like the sound of....MOIST.

I second this. MOIST should be removed from the lexicon entirely. In relation to food or anything else. The word just makes me shudder...

6 pints of gelato from Capogiro

My mom kept her pans in the oven, and I keep mine in the oven as well.

BUT! I don't leave them in there when I am baking...I take them out and put them on the floor

They go back in when I'm finished with the oven.

How do you have enough room to keep the pans in there AND bake in there at the same time?!

At all the restaurants you mention, you can get dinner for around $30. So what you're really getting for $30.06 is free dessert. Fogo is an "all you can eat" restaurant. You could do some serious damage there. <not trying to be contrary>

I would take a free dessert at any of those places over "serious damage" at Fogo anyday.

Thats just me, to each his own.

Not to be contrary, but Fogo de Chão?!?

New Foodie please go back and spend your hard earned Restaurant Week dollars at Corduroy, Acadiana or Notti Bianche again (or Dino, or Circle Bistro, or Restaurant Kolumbia, or Rasika, or Café Atlantico!!) before you try this rapid fire meat on a stick…

You mean you're supposed to cook it?

I prefer angel hair for this.

Penne lasts longer.

Batter/dough of any kind. I'll make half a batch of brownie batter just to eat it raw.

And breadcrumbs browned in butter. Eaten with a spoon.

Oh, I don’t think having frozen/prepared “food” precludes you from being a foodie.

I like fish sticks dipped in ketchup. Gortons, in the yellow box, not Mrs. Pauls in the green box. I confess that the other day I couldn’t resist and bought, and ate, a Slim Jim in line at CVS.

When I was a kid my dad and I would eat condensed cream of mushroom soup, cold, out of the can. Usually while we watched Dr. Who on Sunday afternoons. I haven’t done that in years though…

My current favorite late night treat is toaster oven s’mores…graham crackers laid out on the toaster oven tray, sprinkled with chocolate chips out of the freezer, with half a marshmallow on top. In the toaster oven till they melt, eaten right off the tray...

I’ll also put in a defense of Café Deluxe. It’s a good place to take Grandmothers, or Fathers who don’t like “being in the city.” The menu is not overwhelming or “odd.”

I always get the Ahi Tuna Mignon W. Green Pepper Sauce & Potato Au Gratin. Unlike BlakeG I get the sauce and potatoes The tuna is always cooked how I like it (rare rare) and the potatoes are creamy and cheesy. Can’t argue with that.

I work Tuesday nights, so 12/19 wont work for me.

But I am interested in future potlucks/gatherings!

In not sure of the shelf life of truffle oil. I would hazard a guess that if it does not taste rancid, that it is probably still safe to eat. (Whether or not it still tastes like truffles is another matter.)

I keep all of my oils, except the extra virgin I use daily, in the fridge. This keeps the nut and sesame oils from going rancid, and extends the life and flavor of the truffle oil. The oils will solidify in the fridge, just let them stand at room temperature for a few minutes before you use them.

I’m by no means a truffle connoisseur but I’m enjoying the oil from Trader Joes, indulging my truffle tastes on my Trader Joe’s budget.

I can’t eat scrambled eggs anymore without a drizzle of black truffle oil.

Similar but (IMHO) better than My Food Diary. Recipe Calc

Free to try, $24 to own. Developed as a nutritional analyzer for recipes, you can also enter everything you eat in one day and get a complete nutritional breakdown for the whole day. It comes with the USDA food database already installed and lets you edit and add to the database till your heart’s content. (You can enter all the data from the nutritional labels on the foods you buy into the database.)

I have lost 30 pounds with this (and plenty of time in the gym.)

It’s perfect for the foodie who is also an information geek.

Just a heads up...

Truffle Oil is back at Trader Joes. Black and White, 8.5oz bottles for $8.99...

1 cup of sugar, plus 3/4 tsp of salt to only 2 cups of liquid is a pretty high sugar and salt concentration-- it's depressing the freezing point too far and won't work.

Ah HA! That makes sense. I was thinking it had to be something like that, but my kitchen science just isn't up to snuff. Thank you!

Its an electric Cuisinart with the bowl you stick in the freezer. The bowl was in the freezer for a few days, frozen solid. The machine performed exactly as it always has in the past.

I'm having a dinner party for 25 on Saturday. I thought I would start with the ice cream early in the week since it would keep in the freezer. I'm beginning to panic about the rest of the cooking now!!

Ice Cream will not freeze!! Help!

So. I am attempting to make Burnt Sugar Ice Cream. Recipe is 1 cup of sugar and ¾ tsp salt cooked in a dry pan until it melts and is well caramelized. Then you add one cup of heavy cream and stir until the caramel dissolves. Then one cup of milk, and heat till just boiling. In a separate bowl you wisk 6 egg yolks and then temper them with the hot milk. Put the whole mix back in the pot and cook till thickened.

I then put the mix in the fridge over night. And then into the Cuisinart ice cream maker (bowl frozen solid.) Let it mix for 40 minutes. And. Nothing. Not one single ice crystal.

Lots of very tasty, caramely, very smooth stuff. But not ice cream. Not at all.

This happened to the first batch, which I thought was an anomaly.

Now its happened in the second batch as well.

Does anyone have any thoughts about what is going on here??

for 25 on saturday

roasted shallot custard - caramelized fennel with celery root - forest mushroom terrine with truffle vinaigrette

butternut squash soup with brown butter and nutmeg crème fraiche

baby spinach, pine nut, and pomegranate salad

oven braised cornish hen with cider vinegar and warm vegetable sauce

maple walnut shortbread with burnt sugar ice cream

chocolate earl grey cake

ive made the burnt sugar ice cream three times now. either the sugar is too burnt or not burnt enough.

argh.

It means that the animals are raised humanely and (I think) slaughtered humanely. I'd rather eat a pig that was allowed to run around outside, and oink, and walllow (happy as a pig in...) than one raised in a cage and sent to a slaughterhouse. Polyface has been doing this kind of thing for years.

Yes, I understand (that was sarcasm there.)

What I am reacting to is the fact that it seems like we are trying to divorce ourselves from the fact that, if we are eating meat, we are eating a once living thing that is now dead. No matter how compassionate or caring or whatever it is, a spade is a spade…

I do support compassion and kindness and a good life for all things and all that stuff, but sometimes I think things are getting just a little bit out of control. "Animal compassionate" meat at Whole Foods.

How does chopping something’s head off and roasting it on a spit translate into “animal compassionate”?? (I’m a carnivore, just for the record) A good friend recently wrote the following on his blog which seems appropriate here:

Paper or Plastic by Soren Narnia.

My mom and her husband are going to see Wicked in NYC this weekend.

They called me up and asked me for restaurant suggestions, with the following qualifiers (ugh):

“Someplace close to the Gershwin Theater 222 West 51st Street, because we don’t want to travel far, and someplace at least a little vegetarian friendly, either for lunch or for dinner.”

Anyone have a suggestion for this challenge?

I am a fellow Takoma Park-er.

Thank you for the suggestion!