I Hate Going on a Diet

I hate going on a diet.

The thing is, I like food. I like to eat. It's not even that I have a sweet tooth and consume too many doughnuts or that I drink soda (haven't had one for decades).

I just like regular food. 

And unfortunately, last year I ate a lot more of it than usual. Stress eating. It was a difficult year.

I gained TEN pounds.

That's a lot.

My children tell me I am not allowed to use the word "fat" because of "shaming."

So I suppose plump and chubby are off limits too.

I am supposed to say that I don't like how I look.

OK.

I don't like how I look.

Unfortunately my son-in-law Greg said he read an article that said women who go on diets and lose weight tend to re-gain the weight plus more.

OY!

Just in time -- comes THIS: The JoyofKosher 28 Day Challenge.

This is a four week diet plan of the most scrumptious non-diet sounding, most gorgeous food you ever saw in a weight loss plan. 

Check out the photos. The first for Grilled Fennel with toasty, crunchy quinoa seeds. The second for an avocado and egg-filled portobello mushroom cap that is so easy I am going to make it when my cousins come to sleep over in a few weeks.

This is not your ordinary "diet food."

It's good food, coming to you via two good friends of mine: Jamie Geller, cookbook author and founder, JoyofKosher, and Tamar Genger, a registered dietitian and professor of nutrition.

Have a look, even if you aren't on a diet. Even if you aren't kosher.

Here's what it is: When you sign up you get the menu plan for 28 days, plus a shopping list, plus 75 recipes with vegetarian and gluten-free substitutes (in a downloadable pdf file), plus nutritional info, plus tips, plus a Facebook page where you can discuss food stuff with other people on the challenge, plus --- go ahead and click the link and you'll see it all. For $28.

It's not a crazy diet. Just a simple plan, great, healthy, delicious food, easy, doable recipes with lovely photos and so much more. 

Inspiring.

Sounds like a plan. I'm determined to like the way I look.

GRILLED FENNEL AND TOASTED QUINOA (from JoyofKosher 28 Day Challenge)

Servings 6

Fennel is high in potassium and loaded with other nutrients that have been found to improve bone health.

Ingredients:

2 fennel bulbs, sliced

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided

Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1⁄4 cup fresh herbs like basil, parsley, and thyme and some fennel fronds

Zest and juice of 1 lemon 1⁄4 cup raw quinoa

1. Trim fennel bulbs by removing stalks and fronds (set aside fronds to mix with herbs).

2. Cut off any hard inedible outer layers.
3. With your fennel bulb upright, cut 1⁄4-inch slices vertically.
4. Brush each side using 2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

5. Place slices on a medium hot grill, turning until you get a nice char on each side and fennel is tender to the touch. Alternatively, place on a baking pan and broil until charred.

6. Whisk together remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, herbs, and lemon juice and zest, adding salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle all over fennel.

7. Meanwhile, toast quinoa: Rinse well, drain, and pour into a medium sauté pan. Stir grains over medium-high heat. Watch as quinoa dries out and begins to brown and even pop—that’s how you know it is ready. Remove from heat and set aside until ready to use.

8. Sprinkle toasted quinoa over fennel and serve warm or at room temperature. Nutritional Information / Per Serving

110 calories, 7g fat, 0mg cholesterol, 67mg sodium, 10g carbohydrates, 3g fiber, 3g sugar, 2g protein 

Paula Shoyer’s Fruit Galette

Want to lose weight? Or at least not gain any?

People give you all sorts of advice. And there are zillions of diet plans and books out there. And after a day like yesterday, eating awful, salty, fattening foods while watching the Superbowl, I could sure use some help in this area, as I am sure zillions of others can.

So I think I will follow some advice I heard a few days ago that made such good sense I have to pass it on.

The advice was from, of all people, a professional baker: cookbook author, Paula Shoyer, who wrote “The Kosher Baker: Over 160 Dairy-free Recipes from Traditional to Trendy.” She was talking about desserts but the philosophy applies universally. Here’s what she said:

"Desserts need to be so good that you’re satisfied."

Food, anything you eat, needs to be so good that you’re satisfied. If it isn’t good you keep eating, even if you’re not hungry, because your mouth, tongue, brain are waiting for something the food isn’t giving you.

Food has to have the right balance of ingredients, the right taste and texture, it has to taste natural and satisfy all your senses and if it does, it is good and you feel fulfilled, gratified, content and without need for more because what you have already eaten is enough. It’s like a good book whose plot and characters keep you interested and the story moves along as it should until at last there’s a plausible and appropriate way to finish things and it’s time for The End and you don’t need more than the memory of the good read you just had.

Paula mentioned this fabulous bit of wisdom in the context of her children scoffing down an entire package of store-bought cookies. They would never have eaten as many of their Mom’s well-made, tasty, additive-free, home-made cookies. 

"They were still looking for that buzz," she said. Which they never got from the packaged cookies, which lacked that balance, that goodness, that special quality that would have satisfied.

So friends, eat well. Follow Paula’s advice. Don’t eat an entire bag of chips or cookies looking for the buzz. Make something homemade, judiciously seasoned, gently sugared, light on the fat and salt. Real stuff — butter and sugar but less of it, with just enough salt to bring out the best in the other ingredients, not to mask flavor of inferior goods. 

Like this fruit galette (btw, Shoyer uses margarine to keep her desserts pareve for use with meat meals, but you can use butter for dairy or vegetarian meals or if you aren’t kosher):

Paula Shoyer’s Fruit Galette

dough:

1-1/4 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons cold pareve margarine, (frozen for at least 30 minutes) cut into 6 pieces

1 large egg, separated

3 tablespoons ice water, divided

Filling:

3 cups fresh fruit (berries, plums, peaches or apricots cut into 1/2-inch pieces)

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon sugar for top of galette

To make the dough: place the flour, salt and margarine into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse 10 times or cut the margarine into the flour and salt by hand using two knives or a pastry cutter. Add the egg yolk and one tablespoon ice water. Pulse 5 times or mix gently by hand. Add another tablespoon ice water and pulse 5 times or mix again. Add the last tablespoon of water, a little at a time, pulsing or lightly mixing the dough for 10 to 15 seconds until it looks like clumps of couscous. The dough does not have to come completely together. Gather the dough into a ball. Take a large piece of plastic wrap and sprinkle some flour on top. Place the dough on the floured plastic, wrap the plastic around it and then flatten. Place the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place the rack on the lowest shelf of your oven.

Take a large piece of parchment and sprinkle it with some flour. Remove the dough from the plastic wrap and place it on top of the parchment. Sprinkle some flour on the dough and place a second piece of parchment on top. Roll out the dough until it is 12-13 inches wide, trying your best to keep the shape round. Peel back the top parchment and sprinkle some more flour once or twice while you are rolling. Place the dough round on a baking sheet.

To make the filling: place the fruit in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar and cornstarch. Sprinkle on top of the fruit and mix gently. Place the fruit in the center of the circle and spread it outward, leaving a 2 or 3 inch border on the outside. Take one small section of the dough border, about 2 inches and fold it over the fruit, leaving the fruit-filled center open. Pick up another 2 inch section of the border and repeat, pressing one section into the next to seal it, so you end up with dough pleats.

Beat the reserved egg white and brush it all over the dough. Sprinkle with the remaining teaspoon sugar. Bake for 30 minutes. Move the galette to the middle rack in the oven and bake another 10 minutes. Let cool for 20 minutes. Makes 8 servings

Roasted Salmon with Brown Rice Salad

Did anyone else gain 2 pounds overnight from Super Bowl food?

Two pounds!

Yes I realize it’s all salt. I can’t get my wedding band off even if I use lots of soap and that ring is usually a little large on my finger.

I have officially become my mother. Or maybe my grandmother. This is what happened to them when they ate salty foods.

For Super Bowl we always go to my brother’s house and Eileen, my sister-in-law, usually makes turkey breast. But she’s been busy lately so they served a full-deli: meats for sandwiches, potato salad plus 2 bags of potato chips (I’m not even counting the hors d’oeuvres a few hours before, including hot dog-in-blanket and Buffalo wings). 

So I spend an entire week trying to eat sensibly and maybe even lose a pound or four and then blow it all in one day on a plate of Lay’s because, they were right — you can’t eat just one.

Today: plain yogurt with dried apricots for breakfast. Not sure for lunch, maybe a hard cooked egg. Dinner? Fish. Maybe this recipe:

Roasted Salmon with Brown Rice Salad

1 cup brown rice

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 medium red onion, chopped

1/2 cup toasted chopped or slivered almonds

1 cup thawed frozen peas

6 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar

3 tablespoons orange juice

2 tablespoons plus 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

4 salmon filets, each about 6 ounces

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cook the rice, let it cool slightly and spoon into a bowl. Add the red onion, almonds and peas and toss ingredients to distribute them evenly. Combine the olive oil, sherry wine vinegar, orange juice, 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard, orange peel and salt and pepper to taste. Pour over the rice, toss and let rest for at least 15 minutes. Place the salmon filets in a baking dish and brush each piece with some of the remaining mustard. Roast for about 15 minutes or until cooked to desired doneness. Spoon equal amounts of the rice on 4 plates. Top each with a piece of salmon and serve. Makes 4 servings