I found some lemons in the fridge! I am reminded how I had long planned to do a lemon cleanse but I still haven’t been to it until now. Excess weight is something that millions of people all over the world are battling to get rid of and I’m one of those. More than vanity, the health considerations should be first and foremost in the list of reasons for wanting to lose weight. All of the people suffering from weight problems are likely to develop lifestyle diseases like hypertension and diabetes – these diseases are not easy to deal with especially with the onset of old age – and I’m not getting any younger. If you are to win the battle of the bulge and get back to a healthy weight and shape, you have to pay attention to two factors in your everyday life: diet and exercise.
Diet is one of the main reasons of weight gain. People simply love to eat – the most deliciously sinful foods are often the ones that contribute the most to weight gain. It’s a natural instinct. People have to eat in order to sustain their bodily functions and survive. But, it’s also a mind game. There are sensors that tell our brain to crave for certain types of food. These sensors also tell the brain to stop eating because you are already full. You can control the food that you eat once you understand how these sensors and your brain work.
One program that capitalizes on this aspect of diet and nutrition is the Sensa weight loss system. The sensa diet does not restrict or bar foods that you love from your everyday food list. What this system does is that it tells your brain that you have had enough of your favorite foods even if you have only had a minimal serving. Since you are taking in less of these foods, you are also taking in less calories. Your weight loss goals are therefore made more attainable without depriving you of good and tasty food and without requiring you to take diet pills that could have harmful side effects.
Not looking so yummy but try this!
To inspire you to somehow be in the mood to get healthy, here’s a recipe that hubby made me cook. It’s a simple tilapia dish that he requested the other day. Tilapia is a good source of protein which in turn is good for the muscles…accordingly there are 27 calories in 1 ounce of tilapia, Calorie breakdown: 16% fat, 0% carbs, 84% protein.
You will need:
2 small tilapia, scaled, gutted and cleaned 1 lemon, sliced
salt
Steamer
water
garlic , minced
butter, melted
1. Prepare steamer and make sure the water is starting to boil when you put in the fish.
2 .Clean fish well and make diagonal cuts.
3. Salt fish and coat well. Squeeze with lemon from the slices (you can also put some cooking wine). Put some lemon slices on top of fish.
4. Place fish into steamer and steam for 20 minutes or so.
5. Combine garlic and butter. Serve fish with garlic and butter combo, don’t forget your bowl of rice!
For the conscious you, leave out the butter…
The other part of the equation is exercise. The sedentary lifestyle of people today is also one of the pinpointed causes of weight gain and obesity. Even if you control your food intake with Sensa, it would boost your body’s fat burning mechanisms if you exercise regularly. It does not have to be anything strenuous. You simply have to get your heart rate up with a cardiovascular activity that you love. This could be jogging or running, aerobic dancing, swimming, biking, or engaging in a round of your favorite active sport.
Cutting down your caloric intake through the Sensa weight loss system and getting your body’s fat burning processes fired up will eventually bring you victory in your battle against the bulge. Trim down with diet and shape up with exercise – as simple as this sounds, the most important part of the equation remains to be your attitude.
When I was a child, fish is a regular feature on our dining table. Milkfish, Tilapia, red grouper and mackerel scad are the usual fare but there’d be a lot more served dry, with sauce, smoked and grilled. My favorite part of the Milkfish would be…the belly. Unfortunately, my older brother loves it too so we would often engage in a fork-war to get to them first. ^_^
Ikura/Salmon roe I bought from a store opposite our place.
But for most fish, I would always save the roe/eggs (not to be confused with milt) if they have those intact, my mom knew how I love them and she would often pick those with a lot of eggs just for me. Then, I never ate them raw…I could not and I think my mom wouldn’t allow it for fear of the unknown. We rarely eat raw food unless it’s sushi, not even ceviche nor kinilaw (cooked in vinegar alone not with fire). And because then I don’t really have a say on what food to serve, I can’t experiment. ^_^
Now that I am the diva of my own kitchen, raw food has become a regular. Aside from greens and other munch-ready vegetables, caviar and sushi ingredients, which I can make on my own now, found themselves in our kitchen.
So today’s dish is similar to a pasta dish, I think, I’ve already featured years ago sans salmon roe. This is almost the same as the simple carbonara recipe but instead of using bacon, we use salmon and we substituted the bacon fat with butter.
Roe and Salmon on pasta.
Ingredients:
Butter
1 medium Shallot, chopped
Spaghetti
Smoked Salmon, cut into strips
Ikura/Cured Salmon roe
1 Egg
a teaspoon Pepper
pinch of salt
Optional:
Parsley
Cooking cream
Procedure:
Cook Spaghetti per package directions but minus 1-2 minutes the usual cooking time.
In a pan, melt butter and saute shallots until translucent. Remove from heat and add smoked salmon (cook minimally and leave some for topping).
In a separate bowl, beat the egg, add pepper and salt.
Drain spaghetti and add to the butter, shallot, salmon in pan and on very low heat. Add egg mixture and stir immediately. Here, you can opt to add cooking cream or not. I prefer not to add it because of the egg which makes the pasta creamy already.
Remove the pan from stove and serve pasta on plates, top with remaining smoked salmon, salmon roe and parsley.
This is great with a glass of champagne or perhaps some bruschetta drizzled with olive oil. Perfect for a hurried lunch or dinner!
The week past was a a whirlwind, I was out of the house everyday despite allergy attacks. Despite being called Ferien (holidays), we were most busiest and wasn’t able to stay much at home. Some days you’d see us lugging our neck and shoulder-breakers around, shooting here and there. Some days I went with the dawty out as far as an hour away from home as she familiarize herself with what to do at the play rehearsals. Yes, I’m a stagemom once again. ^_^
In between, I rarely got the time to cook…which I’ve been missing out on a lot too. 🙁
So on Sunday we were finally able to have a peaceful lunch at home. I bought this salmon fillet Saturday (stores being closed on Sundays) on our way home from rehearsal. weew!
Salmon is what I consider the king of all fish. (lol) If there’s even such a thing. You know how I’d go and throw down the drain the hard-earned 2-kilos-lost-from-dieting if salmon is served…really don’t care.
There are quite a few recipes I enjoy with salmon and I love every bit of them. When in a hurry, this filet soy-butter, that’s simply soy sauce and butter is the easiest I can prepare.
Clean and prepare filets. In a small bowl, combine melted butter and soy sauce. Brush filets with soy-butter and sprinkle with pepper and lemon.
Place filets, skin side, on your grill pan. Grill for 6-8 minutes depending on thickness. Flip once. Brush with soy-butter again. You can try flaking it with a fork, salmon is done then. Serve with rice and miso soup and veggies.
Sometimes in my head I have too much to do, ideas bursting from here and there but I never got the time to actually bring them to fruition. Recipes for one are all listed down but remains there…sadly. So whenever I am alone to myself , which happens in the mornings – when I wake up or when the kids are all out, I’d get my me-time. That me-time is to contemplate on the day past, the plans for the day and of course what food to cook. I used to have a list of dishes that we enjoy – complete for the whole month and it did help me save time and money as I would buy ingredients per what is to be cooked. The 3oth and the 31st are always for special menus and what we all look forward to.
Growing up with rice as a staple food and eating it almost everyday made me curious about quinoa since I first chanced upon it in a store near our place. That was years before—I never got the courage since to buy and actually try it until I had to pair it with the fish bought two weeks ago (related entry below).
Knowing the health benefits of quinoa convinced me too…especially when I saw a recipe that includes sundried tomatoes. Another something wonderful I missed out on as a child. Totally makes me think, I come from a tropical country where fish is dried, mangoes, pineapples and other fruits are dried yet I’ve never had sundried tomatoes before…what was I eating?
I got them from the store sealed in a vacuum-tight plastic container and not from a jar with oil. It’s easier to use! teehee! For this particular dish, just take about 5 and chop them up to smaller pieces and set aside.
dig in!
I should have listen to mom-in-law when she told hubby to watch dad-in-law debone the trout we caught last time we went fishing. (oooppss, still haven’t blogged about that.) He’s been doing it for years so he definitely knows how. This endeavor was not my first time to debone a fish but I haven’t really been successful with the previous ones too. I anyway tried my best to cut fillets, I set aside the bones with flesh still intact and made soup.
Seared Trout Fillet on Quinoa
So for the fillet, you sprinkle them with salt and a pinch of white pepper. Sear on olive oil for around 5-8 minutes turning once.
For the quinoa, rinse a half a cup of them on cold running water to remove the bitter coverings (or whatever they’re called). Put them in a saucepan with boiling water and add some salt. Bring this to boil again and let simmer just as how rice is cooked, this should be about 8-10 minutes.
Serve quinoa on a plate and top with trout fillet and chopped tomatoes. There, a healthy meal served and this is usually on the end of the month if I follow my dish list.
“Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.” – Bobby Flay
My trinity ingredients for fish: butter, dill and lemon. I am most comfortable with that, a sidedish of baked potatoes and steaming rice would suffice whether the fish is seared, baked or pan-grilled.
Sometime ago when the trees where sprouting leaves I bought a Groupon deal for fresh fish market. I went to the market one lovely Wednesday afternoon only to learn that they are open only on Thursdays. I went back again in Summer but they are closed and I was told that they’ll be open again in September. I really looked forward to September then it hit me: that the deal will expire on the 9th, the last Thursday that I could go would be the 8th. So that Thursday I called and said that I’d be dropping by to use my deal. The kids and I went hurriedly but even though I’ve been there twice we got lost and we had to walk about 20 minutes. 🙁 When we came, all the fish were caught, I mean bought already. We were told to come back next week since a lot of buyers weren’t able to use theirs.
dot difference
So next week came and I saw to it that we would arrive earlier than we did the last time. Thank goodness there were still a lot of them fish when we arrived. I got us brook trouts and a red-spotted trout, much bigger than what we caught from the rivers of Fürth (story to follow). Sorry, I know fish aren’t the most photogenic subjects but I just have to show this, you could see the pinkish flesh of both.
lemon, potatoes, dill, trout
They’re surely bigger than a ruler size, head and tail not included…What I did for this dish was to stuff the fish belly with dill, sprinkle with salt and pepper, squeeze fresh lemon juice and put lemon slices on top. I put in whole, washed potatoes too and buttered everything generously. Got the ensemble baked and here’s what we got:
This is one of a regular on our table that my family loves. I routinely make this dish every week and at times for hubby’s packed lunch. He certainly needs all the protein so he can work well and not be sleepy by eating pizza and burger at the office. ^_^
Ingredients:
Tuna steaks
mangoes, diced
plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
red onion
chopped cilantro (can be substituted with parsley)
Juice of lime or lemon
Procedure:
Sear tuna steaks in a pan, making both sides golden.
Put chopped mangoes, tomatoes, onion and cilantro (or parsley) together in a bowl.
Squeeze with lime or lemon (your choice) and toss then allow to stand until ready to serve.
—
A healthy and yummy addition for fish and chicken but I prefer it well with tuna.
(With sauce tartare, tomato and lettuce plus a fly away cheese I put upside down, lol.)
There’s this Japanese cooking show that has inspired me to cook some dishes at home that can actually be bought from fast food joints. I was just too lazy to go out or just too in the mood that I made one immediately after watching from Dotchi Cooking show. This show is so interesting because the ingredients used come fresh from farms, from the sea and factories, especially for the show. Also, I get to see a lot of places and learn more about Japanese culture and language too. Nihon ga daisuki desu!
Two weeks ago I got lost in the city for 3 consecutive days…I don’t clearly recall where I was headed the first time lol…The 3rd time was when I was going to the University (19th district) and while inside the University to inquire about translation studies. The second time was when I was looking for a certain Japanese foodshop (1st district) to buy sizzling plates.
I have been in that shop only once, found it by accident then and I promised myself that I’d definitely be back…I did after 2 years and going about lost in the streets for an hour. Also, I wasn’t able to buy the sizzling plates since they were out of stock…I came home with some of the usual Japanese loot I need like mayonnaise, beni-shouga, wakame, nori, miso paste and tonkatsu sauce. Some rarity that can’t be bought in the Asian store near our place would be Kamaboko slices, Pocky chocosticks, frozen Unagi no kabayaki and a cute hello kitty bentou box. The little girl was surely happy when I gave it to her along with a pair of hoshi.
tail…
Well, I immediately thawed the eel so we can have it for dinner. I only need to cook rice and make some kabayaki sauce. The sauce is just like that of teriyaki only with less sugar. Given the circumstances, I would love to grill glazed eel too but as I’ve always complained, where we are is far from where the fishes are so I’d just be thankful to that Japanese shop. I would go back as often as I can even if I get lost in the way…
I always had trouble cooking fresh tuna. If I remember correctly, I only had one post about tuna that I cooked at home. I can never get its taste out even when grilled, fried or baked, I can always serve it raw as sashimi though. I long wanted to try a certain dish after my Zuni experience of the blackened tuna with mango-tomato…
(mango-tomato salsa)
The salsa recipe calls for:
1 mango, cubed
2 tomatoes, cubed
1 medium red onion, thinly cut into pieces
coriander (as much as you like)
half a lemon
salt
pepper
Combine the first 4 ingredients, squeeze the lemon in and then put salt, pepper here and there.
This dish is now a regular in our menu, easy to cook, healthy and tasty. Lazy fish-friday nights are perfect with this.
