Curried Chicken Salad

If you haven't guessed yet, I've been eating a lot of chicken salad. It's quick, high protein, I can sneak a few veggies into every serving, and it's highly portable for the days I'm running around the city doing errands and going to appointments. One half-cup of chicken salad, a dozen (1/2 serving) baked lentil chips, and a small clementine orange and I'm full for hours. I like to lower the fat a little by halving the mayo in the recipe with fat free plain Greek yogurt, but if you don't have any handy you can always make it up by using a bit less of the reduced fat mayo or a fat free mayo instead. (I don't personally like fat free mayo, but if you like it, knock yourself out!) I added some raisins for sweetness and finely minced carrot for moisture and color. You could always add a few toasted slivered almonds for some healthy fats and a little crunch, but I didn't have any in the pantry this time.

Curried Chicken Salad

1 Large Carrot, chopped finely
8 oz. Chicken Breast (cooked), chopped in small pieces (skin and fat removed)
1 Large Scallion/Green Onion, sliced thinly
2 T. Reduced Fat Mayo
2 T. Fat Free Plain Greek Yogurt
1-3 T. Curry Powder (sweet curry powder, not hot)
1/2 C. Sultanas or Raisins
Salt to taste

If you have a food processor, combine chunks of carrot and process until mostly chopped, add chicken and process further until both are to your desired consistency. If you don't have a food processor, proceed as detailed above (carrot chopped finely and chicken into small pieces.) Combine chicken-carrot mixture with all remaining ingredients in a large bowl and mix until completely combined. Adjust salt and curry powder to your taste. Refrigerate until serving.

Makes 4 servings.

Approximate Nutrition: Calories 171.4, Total Fat 4.1 g, Cholesterol 37.6 mg, Sodium 681.4 mg , Total Carbs 19.8 g, Dietary Fiber 2.4 g, Protein 15.3 g.

Reliable Chicken Salad

I heard from a friend this past Friday that the local grocery store runs a special on their precooked rotisserie chickens each Friday, marking them all down to $5. I had my wife go get one because it seemed like too good of a deal to pass up on, particularly on a weekend when I knew i wouldn't feel like cooking. But my intentions for a quick meal were thwarted on Friday night when we splurged on alare lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant and again on Saturday when I was in the mood for tofu and my wife wanted a bean & cheese burrito. And so that lovely rorisserie chicken just sat in the fridge looking tasty and forlorn until this evening when I realized that I could make chicken salad. Duh!

While I'm always game for new flavors and unique combinations, when I want something reliably tasty, I default to the Simple Is Better philosophy. This chicken salad falls into that category, with only 5 ingredients. I ran it through my mini food processor to get an almost baby food consistency (regular cooked chicken is still too tough for me to digest), but you don't really have to make it that way.

Reliable Chicken Salad

12 oz. Cooked Chicken, defatted and deboned
2 Large Carrots, chopped
2 Celery Stalks, chopped
1/2 t. Onion Powder
5 T. Low Fat Mayonnaise
Salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and process to your desired consistency. Spoon into a storage container and give it a good stir to ensure that all the mayo and onion powder is evenly distributed.

Makes 4 servings

Nutrition (from sparkrecipes.com recipe calculator): Calories 180.2, Total Fat 7.3 g, Cholesterol 58.8 mg, Sodium 290.4 mg, Total Carbs 7.5 g, Dietary Fiber 1.6 g, Protein: 20.2 g.

I've taken to using canning jars for storage containers. I have loads of them in the house and they're convenient.

PB2 Review & Coffee

By way of a mini update...I've been doing well, though the recent bitterly cold, grey, weather has really acted as a demotivator on leaving my house and getting to the gym. Today we are enjoying 50+F weather, but it's still yucky and grey and blah outside. Since it's warm, though, I'm going to put on some bright colored clothing, find some fun fast music on my ipod, and head out for a walk in about 10 minutes.

I've been pushing myself to stay on track with the water intake, vitamins, and protein and have been doing decently, though there is room for improvement. To that end, I've been drinking the Nectar Of The Gods: Coffee. Yes, yes, coffee has no nutrition. But I'm drinking decaf, so I can count it as a glass of "water" for the day and I've been turning it into Protein Coffee. What is protein coffee, you say? I'm glad you asked! It's a beverage phenomenon that I had not heard of prior to bariatric surgery and my stalking of various weight loss surgery message boards.

In essence, it's coffee with Things Added to it to make it high in protein. Things like protein mix. Some folks have all-out recipes for it and make a sort of warm coffee smoothie with stuff like sugar free flavor syrups, milk, protein powder, cocoa powder, etc. I haven't yet ventured into such high tech territory, but I have been adding a scoop of vanilla protein powder to my coffee with a dash of FF nondairy creamer in the mornings. It tastes a little like a vanilla latte and has been helping me get in my protein each day, since I suck at mornings and my appetite is basically nonexistent since surgery. I've been meaning to buy a tub of chocolate protein powder and I'm looking forward to a mocha in the mornings. I'll let you know how it tastes. ;-)

On to the review!

PB2 is another one of those things I had never heard of prior to the WLS message boards. It's essentially the byproduct of making peanut oil...as in, it's the flattened (pressed) remains of roasted peanuts after they squash them to extract the oil. Then they grind it up to a fine flour consistency, add a little sugar and salt for enhanced flavor, and sell it by the pound. It's roughly 85% fat free and around 45 calories per 2 T. serving. In other words: Much better for me than regular peanut butter. I bought some a week or so ago and my first foray into using it resulted in the Nutter Butter Smoothie.

Yesterday afternoon I had a mood for a peanut butter type snack and decided to test out the PB2 according to package directions. I put 2 T. in a small bowl and added a little water. The package says to add 1.5 T. water, but I didn't measure. I just added a little and then mixed, then added a little, then mixed...until it formed a peanut butter-like paste, which I spread on apple slices.

The Verdict: It needs fat. (kidding...sorta) It tastes peanutty, but it's a bit sweeter than regular peanut butter (I only ever buy the natural peanut butter, though, so it may be similar in flavor to something like Skippy, that has added sugar) and has a slightly...floury...taste. I'd say it tasted a little chalky, but the flavor wasn't quite so pronounced and the word "chalky" has a definite pejorative connotation that doesn't really fit. The peanut flavor is less prominent than in regular peanut butter, but I expect that's due to the absence of fat. The consistency was similar to a smooth homogenized peanut butter, but a bit less sticky and it worked well for scooping up with apple slices.

I don't know that I'll be using it as a spread very often (though it's better than no peanut butter when the craving strikes), but considering that real peanut butter is just too high in fat and calories to justify eating on regular basis, I can see PB2 sticking around in my kitchen. I wonder how it would be for a peanut dipping sauce for some baked tofu nuggets? Something along the lines of a Thai peanut sauce....hhm.... wanders off to contemplate the possibilities

Apple Pear Sauce

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been having a hard time with eating over the past day or so. I learned the hard way that although fresh apples (peeled) are on the "approved foods" list from my surgeon for my current stage of diet, they are still well known for causing problems with digestion. Fun! *snort* Since I have been eating apples (and pears) for 2 weeks with no problems, I had just bought a nice selection of them when I went shopping this past Sunday. But given the events of the past few days I deiced that maybe I should try eating them cooked for a little while.

Now, I know that apple sauce - even the no sugar added type - is cheap and easy to find in any corner store these days, trust me when I tell you that home made is worth the 10 minutes of active work and 30 minutes of cook time. Trust me.

So, with my decision to cook the apples fresh in my heart, I went to my kitchen and was promptly reminded that I have pears, too! But only 2 of them. Not enough for a batch of pear sauce. A split second deliberation saw me tossing sliced pears into the pot with the apples. This inspired me to take the flavors in the direction of mulled cider and I dropped in some whole cloves, cinnamon, and a generous strip of orange zest. After all, if there's no added sugar, there should be added flavor some other way, right? Right.

I used a mix of apples that included Gala, Pink Lady, Macoun, and Honey Crisp and red d'Anjou pears. These are fruits that are best for eating out-of-hand - meaning that they are sweet and juicy and crisp - and I put in a little extra lemon juice to offset the sweetness a bit. That being said, if you're not adding sugar to your apple sauce, using naturally sweeter varieties will help give you the right flavor. You may have to taste and adjust your proportions of spices and lemon juice as you go, so I suggest starting out with a little less and adding it as needed until you get it how you like it. I left the skins on the fruit and pureed it after (I fished out the cinnamon and cloves stick first). I figure that there a good nutrients in the peel and if it's pureed, it won't cause digestive problems for me while I continue in my healing process.

Apple Pear Sauce

4-6 Apples
2-3 Pears
1-2 Cinnamon Stick
6-8 Whole Cloves
1 1" x 3" strip of Orange Zest
1/2 C. Water
Juice of 1/2 - 1 Lemon
Pinch of Salt

Core and slice the fruit and put in a medium-large sauce pan with half the orange zest, lemon juice, cloves, and cinnamon. Add water and salt, cover, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it all becomes very mushy and soft.

Taste for seasoning and add a little more orange zest, lemon juice, salt, cloves, and cinnamon as necessary. If you add flavoring, cook another 10-15 minutes to allow it to permeate the sauce. If your sauce is too watery for your preference, remove the lid part way through cooking and allow some of the moisture to evaporate.

When done, allow it to cool to room temperature and fish out the cloves and cinnamon. Puree the sauce until there are no lumps and all the skins are incorporated. You want a smooth consistency.

Makes approximately 12 2 oz. servings

 

Nutrition (from sparkrecipes.com calculator): Calories 83.0, Total Fat 0.3 g, Cholesterol 0 mg, Sodium 97.5 mg, Total Carbs 21.7 g, Dietary Fiber 4.2 g, Protein 0.3 g.

A Fish to Keep - Salmon Rillettes

As a child, I pooh-poohed all manner of fish. It smelled funny, it looked funny, it tasted funny, and the texture was....not beef. I have never been a picky eater, but up until my mid-20s the thought of voluntarily allowing anything past my lips that came from the ocean other than the occasional scallop or shrimp was just Not. On.

Since then, my palate has matured and my willingness to be adventuresome with things from the sea has greatly expanded. I ran into this particular recipe in a hand-me-down issue of Bon Apetit magazine (Sept. 2012, p16). I made a few minor adjustments for taste and fat and served it on cucumber slices for a lighter alternative to baguette. It's a delicious cold smoky salmon dip with just the right hint of onion from the chives and a powerful punch of protein. Apparently, this is a recipe that originally came from famous New York restaurant, Le Bernardin!

These incredibly rich smoky bites of heaven were the perfect way for my wife and I to ring in the New Year. Give them a try at your next gathering or special dinner. (Bonus: I'm only 3 weeks post-op and on soft solids and I was able to eat this with no problems and it's something my wife looooved!) Can't get better than a culinary win to start the year off right!

Salmon Rillettes

2 C. Dry White Wine
2 Small Shallots (about 1.5 T.), minced
1 lb. Salmon Filet, skinned and pin bones removed
3 oz. Smoked Salmon (lox), cut into 1/4" pieces
1/s C. Mayo (I halved this with Fat Free Plain Greek Yogurt to reduce the fat)
2-3 T. Fresh Chives, minced
1-2 T. Fresh Lemon Juice
S&P to taste

Bring wine and shallots to a simmer in a small sauce pan. Reduce heat to medium-low and add salmon filet. Poach gently until salmon is just barely opaque all the way through (roughly 5 minutes.) Using a fish spatula or slotted spoon, remove salmon from wine and drain on paper towels. Strain shallots out of the wine, reserving the shallots and discarding the wine. Place shallots and salmon in a bowl, cover and refridgerate until cold.

Add all remaining ingredients to the filet and shallots and stir gently to break up filet slightly. Avoid overmixing - you want the filet to retain some flakiness. Adjust seasoning, adding additional lemon and mayo, as desired. Serve on toasted baguette, slices of cucumber, or fold into an omelette.

Servings: 6-8 (the original recipe says 6, I say 8 - this dish is rich and very satisying)

Nutrition (according sparkrecipes.com) based on 8 servings and using Greek yogurt in place of half the mayo:  Calories 145.8, Total Fat 7.1 g, Cholesterol 45.2 g, Sodium 586.3 mg, Potassium 397 mg, Total Carbohydrate 2.2 g, Protein 17.3 g.

 

Happy New Year and blessings to you and your family for 2013!