Thursday, September 5, 2013

Giving up meat, poultry and bread: Diet food never tasted this good

Thin Icelandic flounder fillets ($7.99 a pound at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack), coated in a homemade mixture of spices, take about 12 minutes to cook in a 375-degree oven. I enjoyed them with boiled sweet potatoes that I mashed with extra-virgin olive oil, a little salt, cinnamon and other seasoning. I finished the meal with an organic spring-mix salad.
Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Spaghetti ($1.39) in canned Trader Joe's Marinara Sauce with anchovies, sardines and canned Kirkland Signature Organic Diced Tomatoes (about 75 cents a can at Costco Wholesale).


By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR


When you give up meat, poultry, bread and pizza to lose weight -- as I have -- then everything else is diet food.

Of course, I've never been a big fan of cake, pastry and pies. My idea of a sweet ending to a meal is fresh fruit and a great cheese.

My diet foods include wild-caught seafood, organic salad mixes, reduced-fat cheese, greens, vegetables, fresh fruit, whole-wheat pasta, brown rice and tofu.

Instead of butter, I use lots of extra-virgin olive oil in cooking and salads.

Salt-free, raw almonds I roast at home and dust with cinnamon are my main snack, but I also rely on snack bars from Kashi, Kirkland Signature and others to help me skip lunch. 



Lundberg Wild Blend Rice from Costco stands in for bread in this Jamaican breakfast of ackee and salt fish (ShopRite is a good source for dried cod at $6.99 a pound).


An open-face, egg-white omelet with Campari tomato halves gets its gooey richness from reduced-fat Jarlsberg Swiss Cheese and Kirkland Signature refrigerated Basil Pesto. All the ingredients come from Costco.

45-pound weight loss

I've had a weight problem since I was 13, and I've taken off and put on so much weight my clothes have needle tracks from being altered repeatedly.

In 2010, I started using a trainer at the gym who said that if I really wanted to lose weight, I should give up bread and pizza.

Earlier in 2010, I gave up meat and poultry, and immediately lost 4 pounds.

But the no-bread, no-pizza diet, which I observe to this day, knocked off more than 40 pounds.

Last week, I gave away a half-dozen pairs of shorts with 40- and 42-inch waists.

We grow lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and black figs in our garden.

Sweet fig halves from our garden top a salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix and Sunset-brand Gourmet Cucumbers, dressed simply in extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and eaten at the end of the meal.
An occasional guilty pleasure is the heel from a Balthazar baguette, still only $2 at the bakery on South Dean Street in Englewood.
A platter of escoveitch fish using porgy from H Mart in Englewood ($2.49 a pound). The fish is pan fried, then doused in a spicy sauce of vinegar, whole pimento, carrot, sweet pepper and onion.

Porgy with steamed broccoli.

Leftovers for breakfast: A frittata with pesto and smoked wild salmon, left; wild coho salmon with pesto and organic diced tomatoes; and whole-what pasta with anchovies and sardines. Most of the ingredients can be found at Costco Wholesale.

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2 comments:

  1. A healthy diet can include a moderate amount of alcohol (men should drink less than two standard drinks per day and women less than one standard drink per day). One standard drink is 375 ml mid-strength beer, 100 ml wine or 30 ml spirits. Alcohol should not be given to children.
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  2. wow amazing, it looks like I have to try this amazing recipe

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