Monday, April 19, 2010

Food Fest

Oh Zucchini Parmesan, how I love you... or at least I will once you're done baking. I'm starving here.

I've actually been pretty good this weekend all told. I baked a cake, but even with that I was relatively saintly because we all just had one piece, and then I took the remainder (1/2 an 8" diameter single-layer round cake) to my mother's house so she could give it to her bridge ladies. It was an amazing cake: dark chocolate, with white chocolate glaze, and a red raspberry coulis, all made from scratch.

Oh drool. I'm amazed the second half of it made it out of the house, quite frankly.

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Outside of that little blip, I finally tried quinoa, which is pronounced KEEN-wa, and not qwin-OH-a, if you're pronunciationally challenged like I am. And it's good stuff! I've linked to the Wikipedia entry on it, but the short version is that quinoa is treated like a grain, like rice, barley, and so forth, but it's actually a seed and as a seed its protein punch and fat content (therefore its caloric hit) are all higher. All that said, it ends up being reasonable considering the nutritional value.

I opted for a savory preparation although I saw several recipes for more sweet dishes as well. I cooked it in chicken stock, along with a diced onion, 4 pressed garlic cloves, 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil, and about 2 tbsp julienned sun-dried tomatoes. It ended up tasting like a pomodoro pasta dish, if you're a fan of that sort of thing.

I am, for the record. And it was good.

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In addition to the successful quinoa experiment and the cake fest, I also did a pork tenderloin in the slow cooker. Now it's not like pork tenderloin needs the slow cooker for purposes of tenderization or anything, but holy cow it was good. The recipe I found had me cooking it in onion soup with wine (I used sherry), soy sauce, freshly ground pepper, and minced garlic. After only 4 hours on low it was done.

There's barely any left, and poor Choreboy hasn't even come home for dinner yet!

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Well, we'll see what the scale brings this week. I'm mixing it up a bit on my caloric distribution and trying to knock off this plateau-ish place where I've been hanging out for the past few weeks. If all else fails, there's always exercise. I'm just weighing my fear of re-injury on the one hand (hello, stress fractures!) and fear of complete boredom on the other (NO running, NO incline... holy cow, am I eighty?)... and between the two of them I'm what-iffing my exercise plan to death.

I need to cut that out.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am hoping to strive off your determination with the diet.... thanks for adding me..

Amanda said...

Hey there, TaDa! Welcome :) As for my determination, well, it's an ebbing and flowing kind of thing, but in general the scale moves in the right direction... just not as quickly as I'd like it to!

Jen said...

Being injured is frustrating. I'm trying not to push my knee too hard...good luck to us both.

Amanda said...

quinoa...gonna have t give it another go. I have it in the cupboard, it just scares me.

Lesley Speller said...

Okay, you must share your recipes for Zucchini Parmesan because that sounds just scrumptious! I love zucchini!

Heidi said...

You are so lucky that your husband will actually eat a wide variety of foods. The Zucchini Parmesan sound amazing but Patrick would never eat it.

I love the sound of all the dishes you've written about here. I always buy groceries in three-week periods with a list of all the meals I'll make from those groceries but I lost my list this week so I'm staring in my fridge wondering what I bought a cucumber for, or an orange or three apples...

Amanda said...

Thanks Jen... yes it's frustrating for sure. I have delusions of eventual athletic competence, and at this point I'm thinking that's all they'll be LOL.

Amanda, well, on quinoa scaring you... bear in mind that my husband looked at it and said "oh, you cooked up a bunch of tiny condoms!" Dude. But on the plus side, he liked it.

Lesley, the Zucchini Parmesan was something I just threw together :) I had three GINORMOUS zucchini (because, if you'll refer back, it was on sale for $.99/pound last week), and I had to use them before they died on me. So I washed them, then split them lengthwise. I used 2 tsp olive oil in total, just lightly brushing it over the zucchini halves, then I sprinkled sea salt and freshly ground pepper on top of them, then 1/4 cup of parmesan on top of *that*.

Put in a preheated oven at 350 for one hour, remove, dump marinara somewhere near the zucchini, and eat. Yay, food!

Heidi, you're right, I am lucky -- Choreboy will eat almost anything, and thank goodness for that! I hear you on the groceries. "Now why do I own this lemon..."

Anonymous said...

zuchinie parmeson... can i have the recipe...

tadalaura@tampabay.rr.com

thank you..