Mock-Egg Salad

I found this is a magazine when I was dieting in high school and remembered it after a recent disaster scrambling cottage cheese and eggs. The beauty of this recipe is that its so easy to keep in the fridge and take for a breakfast or lunch on the go.

At 1/2 cup a serving, these quantities make about 6 servings worth, but quantities can be adjusted as you like.

2 cups low fat cottage cheese
5 hard boiled eggs
1 tablespoon dijon mustard

Mix together.

Variations: I've added diced veggies for added crunch and also tried it with curry rather than mustard.

Curry Butter Shrimp

This was originally from Dana Carpender's 15 Minute Low Carb recipes, but we like love curry and garlic, so I significantly increased the seasonings for a bigger flavor kick. With as easy and as delicious as this is (and the local shrimp prices) we have this once a week and haven't tired of it yet! Its tasty enough for company, but very messy... serve with lots of napkins!

1 stick of butter
2 heaping tablespoons curry powder
2 heaping tablespoons chopped garlic
2 lbs large shrimp

Melt the butter in a large skillet. Stir in the curry & garlic. Add shrimp and cook for 5 minutes stirring constantly and making sure all the shrimp are coated with the curry butter.

Tuna Melt Burritos

This started out as a recipe from Dana Carpenter's 15 Min Low Carb Meals, but I left out the Rice Protein power she suggested since the South Beach diet doesn't advocate using protein power and mostly because I really didn't want to have a container of Rice Protein Powder gathering dust in my pantry. I also didn't have a food processor to prepare as she suggested so diced finely and gave it a mostly ineffectual whir through my blender.

For whatever reason, the mixture just would not hold together to cook as the fritters they were meant to be, but I managed to salvage the meal by tossing everything into a low carb tortilla that I happened to have on hand. The result was surprisingly tasty... especially for a recipe I thought I'd ruined.

Makes 3-4 Burritos

1 stalk celery, diced semi-fine
6 scallions, diced semi-fine
1/2 green pepper, diced semi-fine (though I wonder if a red pepper for a bit of colour wouldn't work better next time)
2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard
1 egg
2 6 ounce cans of albacore tuna, drained and large chunks broken up (non albacore would also work)

ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
low carb tortillas
low fat shredded cheddar to taste

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet. Combine celery, scallions, peppers, parsley, mustard, egg & tuna in a bowl until well mixed. Dump into the heated skillet and cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring frequently.

While tuna mixture is cooking, open tortillas on plates. Once cooked, divide the mixture between the tortillas and scatter a small handful of low fat shredded cheddar over each. Microwave each plate for 60-90 seconds (depending on how cold the cheese is). Rpll up into a burrito and serve.

All Chain Grocery Stores are NOT the Same

There's a Publix next to my apartment complex. The Kroger is about a 10 minute drive. I considered them pretty interchangable (beyond who had a better deal on diet coke that week) until I started cooking South Beach. Then I began to find out how very different they are.

Kroger has a much wider selection of house brand diary products than Publix. (And that adds up when you're buying ricotta cheese & non-fat yogurt weekly. The other interesting thing that I've noticed is that generic dairy products often have a slightly lower carb/sugar count, which is another point in their favor.) But Kroger milk seems to go sour faster than Publix brand. And Publix has a house brand bagged fresh spinach for weeks when the spinach at the international market doesn't look good to me. But Kroger carries low sodium albacore tuna in cans.. which Publix doesn't.

Moral of the story: Get familiar with each of the grocery stores in your area and know their strengths and weaknesses. I tend to plan menus so that I can do Kroger one week and Publix the next to take advantage of both stores, but your milage may vary.

International Groceries

I live in a wonderful culturally diverse area and am blessed with several International grocery stores/Farmers Markets. (if you're in the North Atlanta area, the Gwinnett International Farmers Market is my favorite. The West Side Market in Cleveland is also good as is Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati) If you can find one of these in your area... try it out! I genenerally do two grocery trips a week. The International market for vegetables, meat/seafood & spices/condiments and then my normal grocery for dairy products, cleaning supplies, etc.

With the International Market, I have the luxury of more types of vegetables than I've ever heard of, usually fresher than the grocery and 9 times out of 10, significantly cheaper. (My partner consistantly marvels that the prices are so cheap they're practically giving them away)

The International Market also has a good selection of meat, cheaper than the chain groceries. (We can get boneless chicken breasts for $1.79 a pound and boneless pork loin chops for $3.99 a pound) I tend not to buy beef at mine (I'm picky about quality of beef and unimpressed by the Gwinnett market's quality) but you may have better luck at an market in your area. (the West Side Market in Cleveland had wonderful beef)

The seafood selection is truly mind-boggling. I'm a bit conservative when it comes to seafood; shrimp, scallops, tuna steaks and mild white fish are about the extent of my cooking with seafood, but the prices are so astounding that we can have seafood at least one meal a week.

Spices are also plentiful and inexpensive. The market I shop at is a mix of Asian/Hispanic and Carribean cultures and the Hispanic section has a large selection of spices in cellophane packets for around $.99 each. I bought empty spice jars at a craft store to hold them in. (Although ziploc bags work just as well) If you're shopping at a chain grocery, basic spices are also cheaper in the hispanic foods aisle than in the baking isle.

There's also an endless variety of sauces, pastes etc to play with. I just needed to train myself to read ingredient labels & watch for which things have sugar/carbs in them. The down side is that Asian cooking tends to be high in sodium; something I try to watch, but may not bother you.

I also just recently discovered the pleasures of the Indian grocery on a chase for tahini. Spices galore, including some like asfoedia, I'd always thought were medicinal/magickal rather than culinary, Raita spices & a variety of curry blends that have given me plenty to experiment with and spicy diced chick peas that make a tasty substitute for croutons on a salad or roasted whole chick peas that make a nice snack for a crunchy craving.

Sadly, though, they also had frozen Roti bread and after seeing the 33 grams of carbs per pancake, dispelled my fantasy that something so un breadlike couldn't possibly be high carb. Which is a pity because one of the Indian restaurants we often socialize at had really amazing Roti Canai.

Staples in the Kitchen

Things I Hate: recipes that call for one specific ingredient that you never use again and recipes that leave my kitchen looking like a disaster area.

So most of these recipes will be relatively simple and use oils/spices/condiments that you can keep on hand and use repeatedly.

Staples in my Kitchen:
Diced Garlic in a Jar (I buy the large sized jars because I use it so often)
Chopped Ginger in a Jar (check the Asian foods section or better yet, an Asian Market)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I'm not a purist on olive oil. Whatever $5-ish brand is on sale works for me... )
Peanut Oil (I am enough of a purist to differentiate between Peanut, Canola & Olive Oils)
Canola Oil
Sesame Oil (see Ginger in a Jar. Note: It has a very strong taste. Use as a flavoring not a cooking oil.)
Soy Sauce
Curry
Lime Juice
Lemon Juice
Dijon Mustard (with the amounts of this I use, I just buy the generic brand, not Grey Poupon)
NonStick Cooking Spray: Garlic, Olive Oil and Butter flavors

My most recent discovery as a cooking staple has been Thai Chili Garlic paste. Its about $2 a jar at an Asian market and has no sugar & no carbs at all in it. It smells absolutely wonderful & tastes even better.

How this all came to be...

My excuse for not exercising & eating right had always been: no time. High Stress job, no convenient gym and no real motivation. I'd never been thin (I was a size 16 throughout college) but I'd always felt attractive...

Then I moved about 6 years ago. Hated the city, hated the job (high stress, underpaid and very under appreciated) Somehow I was a size 24 before I knew it. I was avoiding looking at the scale at the doctors office, shopping for clothes was a chore and I tried not to look in the mirror after a shower.

This past January I moved out of state to Atlanta to be with my partner after 3 years of long distance and job hunt in my new city. No 8 to 6 schedule, no stress and an exercise room and a pool in the new apartment complex. And a climate that was far too warm to hide in my bulky sweaters & turtlenecks half the year.

And somehow in my first three months here I managed to avoid the exercise room and actually gain weight... I pulled out my summer clothes and...they didn't fit.

Since I was job hunting and home during the day and exercising was merely a walk up to the exercise room, I decided I was out of excuses and it was time to get my act together. I was still eating like a college student who was walking miles a day around campus and my exercise had dropped to absolute zero.

I don't have a scale and don't intend to buy one. Watching my weight fluctuate pound by pound on a daily basis just drives me batty. I'll let my clothes (all 4 different sizes of them) tell me that I'm losing weight.

I went with the South Beach diet since it seemed the healthiest as a new way of eating. (Despite friends claiming Atkins was the best thing since sliced bread, it made absolutely no sense to me.) The problem was: I really didn't like many of the recipes they had on their website. So I set out to understand the diet and find/adapt recipes that I did like...

I decided I was succeeding when my partner was commenting: "wow.. this is really good!" when I served up dinner. So since so many people were asking about cookbooks/new recipes on the South Beach boards, I thought I'd start blogging my successes and failures in hopes someone else could make use of my experimentation.

Enjoy!