Grillin and Chillin

Summer is upon us, and with that comes the time to fire up the old grill.  My tried and true items on the gill are chicken and corn.  For post-ops, the summer season is a great time.  Grilling was made for high protein low carb meals, plus being outside is a great way to get exercise.  Go for a walk or a run, play tennis or hit the pool.  

How to Grill Chicken:

I admit, I stole this from Bariatric Foodie, but I will repeat it for you here.  Marinate your chicken in greek yogurt.  I like to mix different marinades with the yogurt.  That's it.  That's the trick to perfectly tender chicken on the grill.  

How to Grill Corn:

Step one, get some butter.  Step two get some spices, I like simple salt and pepper.  Seasoned salt works well too.  Mix spices into butter.  Peel back the husks of the corn and remove the stringy bits.  Rub the corn with your compound butter (fancy name for butter with stuff in it).  Pull the husks back up over the buttered corn and warp in aluminum foil.  Cook the mess out of it.  The butter essentially steams the corn and leave the spices on the surface.  So tasty!

Happy Dining!

Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes

I had been craving really good pancakes for a while.  One morning I found a stash of my pumpkin ricotta pancakes in the freezer, so I defrosted them and served them up with some scrambled eggs.  Yuck.  The freezer had killed them... or else I had frozen my worst ones and that's what we were eating.  Craving definitely not satisfied.  I had some blueberries on hand at school one morning and tossed a few into my oatmeal.  Delish.  The decision was made, blueberry pancakes would be had... and soon.

I was really pleased with the end result.  Since a lot of carbs are not a post-op's friend I went super heavy with the blueberries to add bulk.  I used Heart Smart Bisquick, but I doubled the number of eggs and added ricotta to the mix to up the protein levels.  I use a sugar free syrup, but if sugar is not your enemy then definitely go for the real deal, but sparingly please.  If you make your pancakes my way the syrup should only be there to moisten them a bit and add a punch of sweetness, you have to get the sweetness into the pancake itself to really have an amazing breakfast. 

As with everything I cook, I have to give a lot of credit to the internet.  I never take a whole recipe from anyone, but I read lots and lots of people's versions and take my favorite bits.  Heavy kudos go out to Michelle over at eggface though, most of my ideas come from tweaking something I read on her blog.  

Ingredients:

2 cups Heart Smart Bisquick (reserve a half cup, you can use regular as well)

2 Eggs

1 Cup Ricotta Cheese (I use part skim, you can use whatever kind you like)

1 Tablespoon Vanilla

1 Teaspoon Pumpkin Pie Spice (I use this cause it is easier than owning cinnamon and nutmeg)

1 Cup Milk (I use skim, again your preference)

3 Tablespoons of Splenda (you can use sugar if you like)

Blueberries Galore!

Directions:

In a bowl combine the eggs, milk, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, Splenda and 1.5 cups of the Bisquick.  Add the ricotta and break it apart with a fork or a spoon.  Whisk the ricotta into the batter and make sure to get all the lumps.  Give the batter a taste and make sure it is sweet with a bit of a tang.  At this point you can make these your own.  I love a thick pancake, I like it to be so dense that you get a little layer of uncooked batter in the middle, so I would add in the remaining Bisquick until I had a mixture that was almost a solid.  If you like thinner pancakes you can add less of your reserve Bisquick.

Heat a skillet and add a pat of butter, add in about a fourth cup of your batter, then top with blueberries.  I like about 8 blueberries per pancake.  When you start to see the edges of the pancake form up then you flip it.  You don't get bubbles on top with the ricotta in there like you normally would, so take care not to burn your breakfast.  You don't need much time at all on the second side to get perfectly brown and delicious pancakes!

Happy Dining!

Beer and Food Weekend

This past weekend I took a trip to Asheville, North Carolina.  It was a wonderful weekend full of fantastic food. I am always looking for new and interesting places to eat, but I have to make it work with my extreme dietary restrictions.  I thought I would share with you the things that we enjoyed, both those I was proud for choosing and those that I was not so proud of.  If you are ever in western North Carolina you must must go to Asheville.  It, and the surrounding towns, are so friendly and fun.  There is great dining and lots to see and do.

The whole trip started with my amazing boyfriend cooking dinner for me.  He bought some oatmeal stout from Highland Brewing Company to go with the dinner.  It was delicious and brewed mere hours from Atlanta.  He has a coworker who telecommutes from Asheville who had offered us a place to stay and we decided to take him up on the offer.  It was great staying with people who live in the area, they showed us all the great spots.

Here are the places we went as well as some recommendations on some better food choices than I made.
Haus Heidelberg - Hendersonville, NC: Jager Schnitzel with Spatzle and Salad  
Just half an hour outside of Asheville.  The place is decked out with German trinkets and pictures.  They serve very authentic German dishes.  On thing I highly recommend to post ops who like to dine out is to find someone with whom you can share dishes.  This way you don't feel wasteful and you end up saving money in the end.  For post ops looking for some German deliciousness, I recommend eating the salad first.  The vegetables are marinated in yogurt dressing and are super tender.  There are probably much better options than schnitzel here, like a roasted pork dish, but the schnitzel is not very greasy so I didn't feel too bad about it.  Go light on the spatzle, skip all together if you are carb sensitive.

Highland Brewing Company - Asheville, NC: Beer and lots of it
We got to try to the Thunderstruck Coffee Porter and it was awesome and highly caffeneited.  The tour includes samples of each of the 5 beers that Highland is known for.  If you are sensitive to alcohol just have a few sips of each and don;t down the whole sample.  Be warned, the beers are a little higher gravity than some may be used to.  You can get pints for $3.50 before the tour if you like.  Pack a high protein snack so you don't get too intoxicated, I recommend peanuts.

Curate: Tapas
Tapas restaurants are great for post ops. They are meant for sharing so you can have a bite or two of a couple of different dishes and not feel like you are missing out.  Go easy on the breads that they serve, you don't want to fill up on that and make sure to order at least one high protein dish that you can feel good about.  Here is what we had:
Pan con Tomate (ciabatta bread with tomato bruschetta, warm and crisp bread literally melted in my mouth)
Tabla de Quesos (cheese plate, skip the bread with this just sample the delightful cheeses)
Patatas Bravas (fried potatoes with romesco sauce, go light but a few won't kill you)
Espinicas a la Catalana (sauteed spincah with apples, raisins and pines nuts - post op perfect)
Gambas al Ajillo (shrimp sauteed with garlic - more post op perfection)
Ensalta de Tomate a Ytun (tuna on a tomato salad, skip this it is canned tuna and not that great)

12 Bones : Ribs, Beef Brisket, Corn Pudding, Jalapeno Cheese Grits, Coleslaw, and Cornbread
First let me say that I did not eat all of that, I shared it.  The corn pudding was amazing, crispy in spots creamy all over and quite sweet.  Post ops you can try it, it didn't hurt me, but don't go crazy or you will regret it.  The grits are amazing and quite spicy, again go easy.  The coleslaw was my post op approved side, it didn't have mayo but was rather marinated in vinegar.  So good!  It was almost like eating pickled cabbage but much milder than kim chee would be traditionally.  The brisket was very lean so I focused on that.  Go light on the sauce as they do have a good bit of sugar, but the pineapple habanero ribs were to die for and the blueberry chipotle sauce was surprisingly spicy and blue.

Wedge Brewing Company: Beer, Peanuts and Fried Cauliflower (Gypsy Queen Food Truck)
We tried the Golem, the Russian Imperial Stout and the Iron Rail IPA.  The cauliflower was tender but not greasy.  This is a great place for a very chill drink, we played corn hole and chatted.  Dog friendly as well!

White Duck Tacos: Spicy Buffalo Chicken, Bangkok Shrimp, BBQ Carnitas and Lamb Gyro
Again, sharing is key.  Here is where I went wrong.  We had some chips and queso, and I just ate without thinking.  Then the tacos showed up and I had ordered too much.  I felt terrible about it and I didn't want to waste all those tacos.  So I ate a few bites of each taco and I got really sick.  For post ops, skip the chips.  Then order one taco with grilled meat, not fried, then eat the filling and not the corn tortilla shell.

Sunny Point Cafe: Esquites Scramble with Chipotle Grits and a Biscuit
Scrambled eggs, ricotta cheese, corn and jalapenos.  Delish!  Give away most of your biscuit, especially the sugary top part.  But do try a bite cause it was awesome!!!!  It was like a yeast roll meats a biscuit.  The grits were good, quite spicy.  Again go easy cause they are a carb.  Go nuts on the eggs though.  So yummy and packed with protein.  If you don't like spicy food I would recommend trying something different. There are lots of high protein alternatives.  If you want to be really good you can get a side salad instead of grits with no extra charge.  This is a true farm to table restaurant.  They literally have a little farm behind the premises.  Everything was fresh and awesome.  Bacon is normally a no-no due to fat content, but here it is also a no-no cause it is maple glazed.  I won't lie, I tried a bite, but I don't recommend that cause handing away the rest of that strip of bacon took a lot of will power.

Anyway, it was a great foodie weekend.  We walked miles around the downtown area. I especially enjoyed the local bookstores.  Asheville has a lot of local stores and there is a big push to buy local.  The downtown area has a very small town feel, but with lots of big city conveniences.  If you have not been, then you should definitely make a trip.

Lemon Chive Trout and Bok Choy

Challenge Accepted!  Make a trip to the farmer's market without looking up recipes ahead of time.  Purchase meat that still has it's face in addition to a vegetable and a fruit that you have never eaten before.  Prepare a meal from said purchases.  This challenge was not extended to me, however I was invited along for the journey.  The resulting meal was quite tasty, although I am not sure I will ever cook it the same way again.

Yet again I am lacking pictures of my culinary adventures.  I sincerely apologize for that, but I should be able to make it up to you when my co-chef posts about his challenge.

We were smart enough to have the farmer's market friendly employees clean our fish and remove the head for us.  Technically when we bought it the head was still on, just not when we took it out of the market.  This left the very interesting task of filleting the fish to us.  Dear reader, please hear me when I tell you that there is a reason the world has butchers.  That reason is so that someone can do this task for you.  I am glad that we undertook this assignment purely for the fact that I learned the lesson that just because you can do something does not mean that it is worth it.  We found some youtube videos and other internet instructions for filleting a fish and tried to follow them.  It is difficult work, especially if you do not have a boning knife.  Once you get the fillets cut off of the fish, then you have the super fun task of pulling out all of the tiny little bones.  I recommend needle nose pliers or tweezers for this task.  Getting the fish ready is definitely labor intensive, get someone else to do it unless you plan on roasting the fish whole.

Once you do remove your fish meat from the bones, the fun can begin.  We saute'd the fillets in a lemon chive butter.  It cooks very quickly, but the resulting dish is tender and delicious.  In addition to the trout we made ginger garlic bok choy.  If you have never had bok choy then please please try this.  It is like a cross between spinach and cabbage and the texture is wonderful.  I got thess recipes from the food network, but I modified it slightly so that the flavor profile would meld together.

Lemon Chive Trout with Ginger Garlic Bok Choy

Ingredients
2 lemons
5 Cloves of Garlic
1.5 Inch of Ginger
Bunch of Chives
1 Scallion
1 Head of Bok Choy
4 Trout Fillets
4 Tablespoons of Butter
2 Tablespoons of soy sauce

Grate the ginger
Grate the garlic
Chop the chives
Dice the scallions
Zest the Lemons

Mix all of these togther and separate into two prep bowls.  Into one prep bowl juice one of the lemons and then mix in 3 tablespoons of the butter, place this one in the fridge.  Set the other one aside.

Roughly chop the bok choy, stopping about 2 inches from the core.  Season the fish with salt and pepper.  In a large skillet (we used a wok), heat a little bit of olive oil and then saute your ingredients in the set aside prep bowl.  After 2 minutes add the bok choy and toss.  Then add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and let it cook while you prepare the fish.  Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn.  In another skillet place your remaining butter and a scoop of your combined butter (save some to top the cooked fish with).  Cook the fish for about 3-4 minutes on each side.  Flip with two spatulas, not tongs.  When done transfer to aplate, top with dots of your combined butter and a squeeze of lemon from your extra lemon.

Happy Dining!

Stuffed Turkey Burgers

The idea to make burgers was put into my head by the show How I Met Your Mother.  In one episode Marshall searches for the best burger in New York, and so I consequently wanted burgers.  I am trying to be more mindful of my spending and I wanted to make the burgers instead of going to find a pricet burger.  I have always been a fan of cheeseburgers, and I particularly love to up the cheese level of dishes.  A while back I stumbled upon a stuffed cheeseburger where you put cheese inside the burger and on top.  This definitely met my qualifications for upping the cheese level of a burger.  I decided to take it a step further this time and went searching for stuffed burger recipes.  I stumbled upon an awesome one by Sonny Anderson and after some modifications I achieved a delicious success.  So delicious in fact that I only remembered to take a picture of these delightful things after I had consumed them all.  To be fair to myself though, they weren't exactly pretty, just very very tasty.

Ingredients:
1 pound ground turkey
Pepper
Tony Cacheres (or salt, garlic powder and onion powder)
Hot Sauce
Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 Onion (Diced Finely)
1/2 Pint of Mushrooms (Diced Finely)
4 Strips of Bacon
Blue Cheese Crumbles

This will make 4 very larger burgers.  Add the pepper, hot sauce, Cajun seasoning and Worcestershire sauce to the ground turkey and use your hands to mix it together.  Don't work it too much, just enough to incorporate the ingredients.  I didn't measure when I did this, I just eyeballed a good coating of seasoning and a few big splashes of the sauces.  Let this mixture sit in the fridge for a while to let the flavors combine.

In a large skillet brown the bacon until it is crispy then remove it from the pan to a plate lined with paper towels to cool.  Add the onions to the bacon grease and saute until the soften then add the mushrooms.  Cook until the mushrooms are tender.  Remove from the hear and crumble in the bacon.  Allow the mixture to cool.

Take your turkey mixture from the fridge and cook a small piece to test your seasoning, add more salt (cajun seasoning) if needed.  Divide the turkey into 4 equal portions and then divide each portion in half.  On a large plate flatten one of your halves into a very thin pancake.  Add a palm full of your bacon mix to the center of your pancake and then sprinkle on some blue cheese crumbles.  Top with the other half of your turkey portion, I flattened them in my hand before topping them.  Push the edges together to seal up the burger and then set aside.  Repeat for the other three burgers.  Grill the burgers for about 4 to 5 minutes on each side.

We ate these without buns because I don't eat buns, but I think that if you can handle the carbs then a bun definitely will help this feel more like a burger.  I topped mine with a slice of cheddar cause I am weird like that, and I loved it.  The blue cheese really pops out of every bite and the bacon is subtle but present in the background.  I served these with oven baked zucchini chips (coat zucchini slices in egg wash and then Parmesan bread crumb mix and bake at 350 for 30 minutes).

Happy Dining!

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I was skeptical about this latest installment of the Mission Impossible tome.  The second and third movies were what I would call good not great.  They highly overused the masks that can make someone look identically to other people, when you have no way of knowing if the person on the screen is actually who they are pretending to be you definitely lose something in the film.

The premise of the Ghost Protocol follows the formula that Mission Impossible movies know and love.  A mission goes terribly awry and everyone is disavowed, then the real mission begins.  In this case the gang has to break in to the Kremlin in order to extract information about a terrorist.  While there the mission is sabatoged and they are blamed for an explosion and labeled as terrorists.  This is not new territory for the MI crew but it always makes for an interesting story.

All in all I would definitely recommend this movie as a weekend distraction.  The action is exciting, the movie is pretty fast paced.  Cruise does a pretty good job once again reprising his roll as Ethan Hunt, but Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg steal the show.  Pegg's computer man turned field agent is remarkably funny as he strikes an almost Mr. Bean-esque quality without taking it so far that you can't believe he was ever allowed to be a spy.  Renner plays an analyst who gets swept up into the mission, and he does so very well.  It is an MI film so you can expect Tom Cruise to dangle precariously from a high building, someone to hang from a wire dangerously close to the ground and someone to have a secret that the team does not know about.

If you are looking for an escape movie where things blow up and there are lots of hot people, then this film is for you.

Happy Viewing!

Shrimp and Grits

I was very kindly invited to spend Thanksgiving with my little brother's girlfriend's family this year.  With my parents overseas, I am always a bit of a Thanksgiving orphan.  It was nice to be welcomed into another family for the day, everyone was so kind and welcoming.  When I asked what I could bring I was told to be creative.  I decided to go with a traditional Southern dish, shrimp and grits.  But as usual, I put my own spin on it.  Be warned - this is not a healthy recipe.

I made WAY too much, as I had three pans about this size.  I took two pans to Thanksgiving and I have one left over for me to eat this week.  I was pretty pleased with the results.  My inspiration again comes from the ever lovely Paula Deen.  A coworker of mine often makes her tomato grits recipe for work functions, and it is always delicious.  I decided to make "Shrimp, Sausage and Tomato Grits" and it was very well received by all.  The recipe below is exactly what I made, it fed 18 people with some leftovers plus my extra pan... If you were making it as a main dish it would serve a lot less, but you might want to cut it in half.

Ingredients:

1 Pound Raw Shrimp

1 Pound Smoked Sausage

4 Cups of Quick Grits

4 Cups of Chicken Stock

2 Cups of Water

2 10 oz Cans of Rotel

3 Cups of Shredded Cheese

1/4 Cup of Parmesan Cheese

Tony Cachere's 

Put the chicken stock and water in a large pot and bring to a boil.  Add the grits slowly to the boiling stock and water stirring as you go.  (If you dump them all in at once you will get clumps of grits and no one likes that.)  Cover the grits for 3 minutes and then stir very well.  Repeat until the grits are cooked, you will want to taste them and make sure they are done.

Add the 2 cans of Rotel (or any can of tomatoes and peppers) to the grits and stir to combine.  Add in the cheese and stir to combine.  I used 2 cups of Colby Jack, but regular cheddar would be fine as well.  I used a cup of Habenero cheddar as well, but you will want to avoid this if you are not a fan of spicy food.  

Move the grits into a baking dish (or multiple dishes if you don't have a large dish).  Top the grits with a light sprinkle of cheese.  I used about a cup of Colby Jack in total.  Place casserole in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until the cheese starts to bubble and brown slightly.  

Slice your sausage into 1/4 inch slices and then quarter each slice.  Saute until the pieces start to brown.  Peel the shrimp and cut into 2 or 3 pieces depending on the size of the shrimp.  Sprinkle the shrimp lightly with the Tony's (or any seasoned salt you like) and then add the shrimp to the pan with the sausage.  Cook until the shrimp turn pink.  Remove the casserole from the oven and top the casserole with the shrimp and sausage mixture.  

Happy Dining!