Spaghetti with Meat Sauce... my all time favorite.

There are a lot of dishes which I describe as "one of my favorites" but my homemade spaghetti with meat sauce really is my absolute favorite dinner.   Its kind of high in sodium and I need to experiment with some lower sodium tomato sauce, but I enjoy this dinner so much that I could not hold off making this much longer.   Its been almost two months since I made spaghetti.  Plus, I was not really feeling very adventurous this evening and didn't feel like taking the time to review recipes to come up with something more interesting. 

I did cut the amount of ground beef I use in the spaghetti by 1/3 (from 3/4 lb to 1/2 lb), and I have been using 90% lean meat for awhile now.   With less meat, the numbers on spaghetti are not too bad if I don't stuff myself.     I added up the nutritional data on all the ingredients and came up with 520 calories per serving, 10g of fat, 3.5g of sat fat, 69mg of cholesterol, and 865mg of sodium (ouch).

This is another dish that you want to plan for if you are trying to reduce sodium, so that you can make sure you don't take in too much sodium at breakfast or lunch.

I usually have garlic bread and a salad to go with the spaghetti, but I had to cut those items from the menu to keep this meal within my daily budget for calories and sodium.   I did miss that buttery, salty, garlic bread.   But, at least for now, I feel even better knowing that I am eating healthier.

Dinner was certainly delicious and I enjoyed every bite.

Red Curried Tofu

As I start on the 3rd week of my serious effort at reducing the amount of sodium, cholesterol, saturated fat, and calories in my diet, I have a new found appreciation for fruits, vegetables, and vegetarian cooking.    My wife and I were both vegetarians when we met and we maintained a vegetarian diet for a few years after we got married.   I started eating meat again when I felt like I wasn't getting enough nutrition from my vegetarian diet.

So, its been nice to revisit vegetarian cuisine again after many years and after my skills in the kitchen have improved.   I am enjoying the food more than I did those many years ago and I really appreciate being able to eat a delicious and satisfying dinner without blowing my calorie or sodium budget.

On Sunday night for dinner I made Red Curried Tofu.    I tend to think of Thai food when I think of Red Curried Tofu, but this dish has more of an Indian flavor.   I added the tofu into the pan at the same time I started the peppers and onions so that the tofu would be well cooked and even a little browned.   I served the Red Curried Tofu over rice.  This dish was delicious and very filling and really healthy.

photo:  Randy Mayor; Lydia DeGaris-Pursell

 To go along with this dish I made Indian Spiced green beans based on a Cooking Light recipe for Indian Spiced Okra.   I did steam the green beans before I stir fried them just because I really like my green beans very soft.   I also used half the amount of salt recommended in the recipe for the okra.

Both the tofu dish and the green beans made great left overs and we really enjoyed both dishes.

The tofu dish and green beans combined had over 700mg of sodium, but I planned for this and made sure I did not take in too much sodium for breakfast and lunch.    Total calories for this meal is around 400 calories and I left the table feeling full.

Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin (Reduced Sodium Version)

Over the weekend, I decided to give up on my plan to not repeat any dinners for 3 months.   After a couple of meals that didn't turn out so good recently, I decided to call upon one of my favorite dishes to maintain my high average customer (wife and daughter) satisfaction rating.   Tonight for dinner I made Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin. 

Photo: Randy Mayor; Styling: Rose Nguyen

This dish has turned out perfectly every time I have made it and its one of my daughter's favorites.   Since it is always a challenge to find things that she likes to eat, I didn't want to wait for another 3 weeks of my "no repeats" project before I made this dish again. 

The last time I made this dish was about 7 weeks ago, on March 4.     Now what is different this time is that I cut the salt used in the rub by half.   This reduces the amount of sodium per 3oz serving from 352mg to 200mg.   Which I think is pretty good.

To go along with the pork, I made steamed broccoli and roasted small red potatoes.   For the potatoes, I tossed 2lbs of potatoes with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a little less than 1/8th teaspoon of salt (about 1000mg), and some dried thyme and then roasted them in the oven for about 40 minutes at 350.     I got about 7 servings out of the potatoes.  

Here's the nutritional breakdown of the Pork Tenderloin with reduced sodium:

Pork Tenderloin

Calories	187
Total Fat	8.8g
Saturated Fat	2.4g
Polyunsaturated Fat	1g
Monounsaturated Fat	4.6g
Cholesterol	79mg
Sodium	200mg
Total Carbohydrates	0.1g
Protein	26g

For the whole meal (per plate) with 3oz Pork Tenderloin, 4oz of potatoes, 3oz of broccoli

Calories	329
Total Fat	11g
Saturated Fat	3g
Polyunsaturated Fat	1g
Monounsaturated Fat	4.6g
Cholesterol	79mg
Sodium	365mg
Total Carbohydrates	26g
Protein	31g

I think that's a pretty delicious and healthy meal.  

Halibut Meunière with Orzo and Sauteed Zucchini

From what I have read it looks like working more fish rich in Omega 3 into my diet would be good for my heart and my brain.   I like seafood a lot and try to cook fish for dinner about once every two weeks or so.    I recently discovered that shrimp is relatively high in cholesterol and this was a surprise.   Well, I don't mind cooking less shrimp and more fish like Halibut.   Salmon season will be starting in less than two weeks and I am looking forward to fresh wild salmon!

Halibut season is already here and I decided to make a new recipe tonight, Halibut Meuniere.   This recipe had many positive reviews on myrecipes.com, but my wife and I did not like this dish.   I don't think there was anything wrong with the flavors but several other things seemed to go wrong prior to serving this dish.

Photo: Randy Mayor, Styling: Cindy Barr

First of all, the Whole Foods I shop at in Campbell, CA is very small and sometimes they run out of things.   The only fresh halibut left by the time I got to the store today were a few end pieces which were probably too thin for this dish to turn out well.    They were too thin for me to cut the skin off and I think this recipe would work better without skin on the fish.

The second issue was that I used a new frying pan.   I could not get my usual pan clean after I used it last time and my wife bought me a new pan.   This pan has a heavier handle and it tilts back a little leaving the part of the pan on the far side of the handle lifted off the burner a tad.   So, the stuff on that side of the pan did not get cooked as well.   So some pieces were not cooked as well as others.

The third issue is that the burner on my electric range top is not level and so the oil or in this case the butter in the pan flows to one side of the pan.   I hate that.   And the problem was worse because of the tilting pan.

I cooked about 24 ounces of halibut and we ate half of it, but I threw the rest out and will have to come up with a plan B for tomorrow nights dinner.  At least this was a healthy dish... low fat, low sodium.

On a more positive note, the orzo turned out fine.   I cook the orzo according to the instructions on the package, and then after I cook and drain the orzo, I add about a tablespoon of butter for every 6 ounces (dry) of orzo and about 1/8 teaspoon of salt, and 2 or 3 tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley.

The zucchini I sautee in olive oil and I sprinkle some salt on the zucchini while it is being sauteed.

The orzo and zucchini were good, and I have enough left over that I can use them as left overs for whatever I come up with as the main dish for tomorrow night.

Sweet Potato and Cashew Korma over Coconut Rice

I tried a new dish tonight, Sweet Potato and Cashew Korma over Coconut Rice.   This is a vegetarian dish and although you wouldn't know it from the title, tofu is a main ingredient.   The cashews have a very small role.   It should really be called Sweet Potato and Tofu Korma over Coconut Rice.

photo by Randy Mayor

This is an Indian inspired dish and I knew my wife would probably like this a lot, which she did.   It is not really at the top of my list as far as Indian dishes go.   I really liked the Tandoori chicken I made a few weeks ago much better.

This is supposed to be left overs for tomorrow night as well, but I might find something else to eat tomorrow night.   I don't know, maybe I will give it another try.   Some dishes actually taste better as left overs and this dish is super healthy.

I mostly followed the recipe except that I did stir fry the Tofu in some peanut oil before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.   The recipe said to cook the other ingredients and then put the tofu in raw before serving.   That did not seem like it would turn out well to me.   Raw tofu is just not very good in my opinion.    Anyway, I liked the tofu in this dish having cooked it separately.

This is the first time I have made coconut rice.   This is just Indian basmati rice made in the usual way but with the addition of coconut milk along with water.   Normally, the amount of water I use is 2x the amount of rice.   To make the coconut rice its 2 3/4 cups of water and 1 cup of coconut milk with 1 1/2 cups of rice.   I was worried that would be way to much liquid and that the rice would be soggy, but it was perfect actually.

This was a pretty good meal for my diet and today was a good day as far as my diet goes.

Here are my stats for today (including breakfast, lunch, and dinner)

1.  6g of dietary fiber at breakfast... my goal is 5g minimum
2.  1850 calories for the day... my goal is 2100 maximum
3.  38g of dietary fiber for the whole day... goal is minimum 38g
4.  7% of calories from saturated fat... goal is 7% max
5.  0g trans fat... goal is 0g
6.  150mg of cholesterol, goal is 300mg maximum
7.  1852mg of sodium... goal is 1500mg max, but 1800mg is pretty good!

Lemon Oregano Lamb Chops

Tonight for dinner, I made Lemon Oregano Lamb Chops.   I usually make these on the stove, but the weather was so nice, I decided to grill them.   They turned out great.   A few weeks ago, I started banking all the coals around the outer edges of the grill and cooking the meat in the center of the grill.   This method continues to result in juicy, perfectly cooked meat which is not charred on the outside.

Per the recipe, I marinated the lamb chops in fresh minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and dried oregano.   They my smelled wonderful when they were on the grill and they tasted even better..

As sides for this meal, I served zucchini sauteed in olive oil and baked potato. 

My 9 year old daughter does not like lamb chops or meat marinated in garlic and lemon juice, so I grilled a pork chop for her.   I sprinkled a little salt and pepper on the  pork chop before grilling but used no marinade or other seasonings.   I also baked her a sweet potato instead of a regular potato.   She ate about 1/3 of a pork chop, a small sweet potato, and about a 1/4 cup of the sauteed zucchini.   

DIET UPDATE:

For myself, since I am trying to cut down on calories and sodium ( and fat and cholesterol), I used only 2 teaspoons of margarine and 3 teaspoons of sour cream on my baked potato.   Overall, my dinner was 544 calories, and under 200mg of sodium.   For the day, my sodium intake was 1,680mg which lowest daily intake of sodium since I started keeping track and about about half of what I was taking in most days.    For the whole day I consumed a little less than 2,000 calories which is my goal.   This included a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a salad with ranch dressing, shrimp, and kidney beans for lunch, and the lamb chops, potato, and zucchini for dinner and a snack or two throughout the day.   If I stay under 2,000 calories per day, I will lose about 1 pound per week.

Tomorrow night is left over lamb chops and then Wednesday night, I am thinking about a veggie lasagna, vegetarian chili, or chicken biryani.

Chili-Glazed Tofu

Chili-Glazed Tofu is a delicious vegetarian dish, that before tonight, I have not made for several months.   Many months ago, this was my go-to vegetarian dish but I think I made it too frequently and got tired of it.   I definitely enjoyed it for dinner tonight and it tasted better than I remember.

The only problem with this dish is the high sodium.   I started a diet yesterday to lose some weight and I really want to get the sodium down as well.   This dish has about 1,000mg of sodium per serving!   This is mainly due to the soy sauce.    Even reduced sodium soy sauce has close to 800mg of sodium per tablespoon!

I did use 25% less soy sauce than the recipe called for which helped a little, and next time I make this I will try to use half the soy sauce.   It is a really delicious, low calorie, filling, and vegetarian dinner and I would like to keep this dinner in my menu rotation.

In general, I am surprised at how much sodium is in many of the foods I eat.   I mean those foods have a lot of sodium if I am going to try to keep my daily intake below 1,500mg.   I was shocked to discover that a slice of white bread has almost 200mg of sodium per slice!   I am thinking about buying a bread machine so that I can make my own reduced sodium bread.

Tomorrow I am planning to make Lemon Oregano Lamb Chops

Pizza Night

My 9 year old daughter informed me that she was making pizza for all of us for dinner tonight.    We would each have a personal pizza.   I ordered a veggie pizza.

My wife took our daughter grocery shopping for the ingredients.   They bought pizza dough, Ragu pizza sauce, a 5 cheese mix for the topping, olives, bell pepper, onion, and mushrooms.

Even though we don't have a pizza stone, the pizza did turn out well.   My daughter did a great job spreading the dough and making the pizzas.    Pizza fresh and hot right out of the oven is always delicious.   I was surprised at how much I liked the Ragu pizza sauce.   My daughter also made me a salad to go with the pizza.

On a more serious note, I have recently discovered that my blood pressure is creeping up, and although I have been making pretty healthy dinners (for the most part), I need to start watching the sodium more closely and lose some weight.   Pizza was not a good start to watching sodium as each personal pizza had over 900mg of sodium.   The recommended daily intake according to the American Heart Association is 1500mg per day, which I find to be a very challenging limit.

In order to lose some weight over the next few months, I will be trying to keep my daily caloric intake to under 2,000 calories, higher if I start exercising regularly.   I have been tracking my food, calories, and nutrients on my iPhone using an app from MyNetDiary off and on for a few months now and I have found that the 2,000 calorie limit is reasonable if I watch what I am eating and don't eat out for lunch (that means taking left overs for lunch).

A few months ago I started making extra quantities of my healthy dinners and freezing them for lunches.   This worked out great, but I got out of the habit of doing this.    I have noticed in the past then when I don't eat out for lunch and bring my lunch to work, I start to lose a little weight.

Chicken with Creamy Herb Sauce

I tried a new recipe tonight, Chicken with Creamy Herb Sauce.    I found this recipe on myrecipes.com.    It was rated as a 5 star recipe, but when I looked more closely, I saw that only one person had reviewed the recipe.   The numbers of stars don't mean much if there are not many reviewers. 

I decided to go ahead with the recipe anyway since it looked like it could be good and it three of my favorite ingredients are in the title:  Chicken, Fresh Herbs, and Creamy Sauce.   The sauce is basically buttermilk and mayonnaise with fresh herbs and roasted garlic.   The best part of the sauce was the roasted garlic and fresh herbs.    The buttermilk made the sauce taste a little like ranch dressing.   It was interesting, but I probably won't repeat this recipe.   The chicken was just ok. 

I also made fettuccine and steamed broccoli and served the chicken and broccoli over the fettuccine with the sauce over the top.   The concept was good, the flavors not quite right.   The left overs are supposed to be dinner tomorrow (Friday) night.

Spicy Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

In one week, I will have recorded two months of meals I have made for my family.   After I hit the one month mark, I realized that it would not be too difficult to go two months without repeating the same meal over the two month period.   Now, I am shooting for three months.   My goal is to use a unique recipe every time I cook, over a three month period starting from when I started this blog.

So, far I have cooked 32 meals and we have either gone out to dinner or ordered take out 3 times.   Since I generally cook 4 dinners per week, in 3 months, on May 16, I will have made 53 meals (assuming we do not go out to dinner on a night I would normally cook).    Even if we do go out once or twice, it will still be over 50 different main dishes.

In order to meet this goal, I am going to have to try several new recipes.   Tonight was a new recipe and it turned out great, although it did not make enough for left overs for tomorrow night.

Tonight I made Spicy Thai Coconut Chicken Soup.   This is a Cooking Light recipe from myrecipes.com and it is very easy to make.   Chop up some bell pepper and mushrooms, mince some garlic and fresh ginger, stir fry, throw in coconut milk, chili paste, fish sauce, and chicken broth and simmer for a bit.   Then throw in some roasted chicken breast and then put green onion and chopped fresh cilantro on top.   Squeeze a couple of limes and put the juice in.   That's it.   It is super good. 

The recipe is supposed to make 4 servings, but each serving is only 1 and 1/3 cup.   My wife and I had close to 2 cups each for dinner along with some fresh spring rolls I picked up from Thai Orchid in Campbell, California.   So, like I said earlier, there was not enough for leftovers for dinner tomorrow night.   I might cook something else tomorrow night or it might be an "on your own" night. 

I was going to make the spring rolls myself, but Whole Foods in Campbell did not have any rice paper for the rolls.   The rools look like they might be pretty easy to make.   If they turned out looking anything like the spring rolls from Thai Orchid, they would be impressive.   Spring Rolls are definitely going on my "learn how to make" list.   The peanut sauce from Thai Orchid was also really good.   Peanut sauce makes these rolls great, so if I decide to make the rolls at some point, I will also need to make the peanut sauce!

Carolina Pulled Pork Barbeque

Today was my second attempt at making Carolina Pulled Pork Barbeque.   My mother-in-law is from Gastonia, North Carolina and she makes this dish sometimes when we are visiting and my wife and I both love it.   Its the best pulled pork barbeque we have ever had.

Last time we were visiting my wife's family, my mother-in-law gave me the recipe.   I tried making it in January but it was a poor imitation of my mother-in-law's barbeque, and I have been wanting make a second attempt at this.  

Now, it is often the case that when I get recipes from people who have been making something for a long time, the recipe they give me isn't exactly what they do.   Sometimes it is because the recipe was written years ago and after making the dish from memory for years, the recipe naturally evolves but the written recipe is never updated.   Then, when I ask for the recipe, the old written recipe is pulled from a yellowed card stuffed into a decades-old cookbook.

Over the past couple of days, I scoured myrecipes.com for pulled pork barbeque recipes.    Most of these are recipes contributed by visitors to the website.  I probably looked at over 50 pulled pork recipes and there were another 50 or so that I didn't get to.   Most of these used an off-the-shelf barbeque sauce or such a simple version of the sauce that I could tell there was no way the sauce would turn out to be anything like the Carolina BBQ my mother-in-law makes.

There were 4 or 5 recipes which looked promising.   I put the ingredients for each recipe into a spreadsheet along with my mother-in-law's recipe and compared the various recipes.   I came up with a variation of my mother-in-law's recipe which I felt would be a closer match to the taste I was trying to achieve.   The changes I made were primarily in the area of increasing the amount of water, decreasing the amount of dry mustard, adding dijon mustard, garlic powder, onion powder, and cumin.   I thought it would be good to reduce the amount of vinegar, but I wasn't sure, so I left it at one cup of apple cider vinegar.   (the last time I made it, I used 1 cup of white vinegar and the pork was waaaaay to vinegary). 

Instead of using my mother-in-law's method of cooking the pork in the oven, I cooked the pork slowly in the sauce for 4 or 5 hours in a crock pot.

It turned out great.   My wife and I both loved it.   I would say it was still not quite as good as my mother-in-law's Pulled Pork BBQ, but it was pretty good.   The pork still had a little more of a vinegar taste than I would like, so next time I will use a little less vinegar.

My daughter actually prefers the barbeque from a very good local restaurant called Blue Rock BBQ.    So, I stopped by there in the afternoon and picked up a little Blue Rock for her.    I prefer the homemade barbeque we had tonight over Blue Rock, although,  my wife and I did use Blue Rock BBQ sauce on our pulled pork when we made our sandwiches.  

Blackened Halibut Baja Tacos

I love fish tacos and Cooking Light has several great fish taco recipes.   Saturday night is the night I usually try a new recipe and tonight I made Blackened Halibut Baja Tacos based on Cooking Light's Blackened Tilapia Baja Taco recipe on myrecipes.com.    I don't really like to use tilapia because its almost always farm raised and I try to avoid farm raised fish.    Fresh halibut season just started and the fresh, wild caught halibut was wonderful.   This was my favorite meal since the Putanesca I made about a week and a half ago. 

The spice rub on the fish consists of cumin, paprika, garlic powder, salt, brown sugar, red pepper and oregano.  I will have to go back and compare this to the pork tenderloin spice rub I use which is very similar in the ingredients used but a much different flavor.     We finished every bite of fish. 

The jalapeno sauce for these tacos is made of fresh cilantro (hard to go wrong when something starts with fresh cilantro), sour cream, lime juice and jalapeno.    The sauce was so good, that during dinner I was really wishing I had made extra sauce to pour over my taco.

My wife really liked this dinner as well, so this is definitely something I will make again in the future.  

Grilled Chicken with Cucumber Melon Salsa

It was a beautiful spring day in San Jose today.   We started the day off with a little rain.   After the rain, the warm, slightly humid air smelled wonderful.    I decided to grill outside since the weather was so nice and made one of my favorite Cooking Light recipes-  Grilled Chicken with Cucumber Melon Salsa.  

This is one of the first Cooking Light recipes I ever made and I was really surprised by how good this dish was the first time I tried it.   This recipe is all about the salsa.   Its a combination of fresh herbs, spicy jalapeno, and fruit.   Its a combination I had never tried before I made this recipe and such a delight when you try this for the very first time.   Cooking Light uses this spicy pepper, fruit, fresh herb idea in many different salsa recipes.  

Dinner turned out great.   Again, I used my new grilling method of stacking the charcoal around the outer edges of the grill it worked great.   We have plenty left for left overs tomorrow night.

Moroccan-Style Beef with Chickpeas

A few minutes before I needed to leave work to go to the grocery store, I logged onto myrecipes.com to get some ideas for dinner.   I was hungry and immediately decided to make the Cooking Light recipe featured on the myrecipes.com home page today.    The recipe is Morrocan-Style Lamb with Chickpeas.   My wife does not like the ground lamb called for in the recipe, and I was in the mood for something chunkier, so I substituted chopped sirloin steak for the ground lamb.

Overall the flavors were good and my wife really liked this dish.   I served the dish over the couscous with arugula as suggested in the Cooking Light recipe.   Overall, I was a bit disappointed.  The flavors are very similar to some other "Cooking Light" recipes which I like a little better.   Maybe, the cinnamon and nutmeg were just not that appealing to me this evening.   It was good, just not great.   I will probably not eat the left overs tomorrow night.