Running Afoul of the Nutrional Nazis

Our supermarket had frozen WILD coho salmon on sale.  If you read this blog you know I'm crazy about wild salmon and dubious about farmed. 

I browsed through my recipes to see what I had, because grilling season is over here in Massachusetts.  We don't have the right set up for outdoor cooking in winter.

"Salmon with the taste of the fjiord" popped into view with a recipe for Russian potato salad.  Looked good, and I had everything except beets, dill and well, salmon. 

The recipe was yellow with age, maybe from the New York Times. by Marion Burros, whose name I recognized. 

So:  first the potato salad.  I had some nice fingerling potatoes and we bought some gorgeous organic beets.  The recipe also called for chopped apple (yum) and the dressing was sour cream, vinegar, horseradish, and seasonings.  After everything was cooked and together I took a taste.  Sour as lemon.  Then, I noticed there was no mayo.  No salt either, so I added those things and re-tasted.  A winner!

On to the salmon cakes.  I grilled the salmon indoors and one of the cats came to investigate.  Go away, kitty.  Since it wasn't shrimp, she did.  Everything was fine with the cakes, which had dill, capers (rinsed) red onion, rye bread crumbs and more horseradish.  Everything was fine until I tried to make cakes out of the salmon.  It continued to fall apart and this was not good.  The recipe called one one egg white.  I added a second and that didn't work either so I added the yolk as well.  Moderate success.  Fried them up and we sat down to eat.  Very tasty.

Then I realized that the lack of egg york, salt, and the recommendation for low fat sour cream which I ignored sounded like a recipe you maybe wouldn't want to try.  Even the New York Times fell for this back in the 80's when Molly O'Neil waved the flag for low-fat food for a while.  Then she went for ethnic food with 24 ingredients per recipe and I stopped reading the Sunday food column.  Alas, Craig Claiborne, where were you then?

 I tried to recall if Burros had been on a low-fat, low-salt, low-anything-that-tastes-good regime.  Maybe.

So the salmon cakes were good, if tricky to produce in one piece, and with the addition of whole egg.  

I'll probably make the potato salad again with salt and mayo.  On the whole, a good meal. With some doctoring. 

Broiled Stuffed Mushrooms

This recipe is from the original New York Times Cookbook.  Craig Claiborne should have been declared a national treasure.  I still make so many recipes from this book.

Broiled Stuffed Mushrooms

12 hors d’oeuvres

12 large mushrooms                                                    2 T. sherry

3 T. butter                                                                   salt and pepper to taste

1 small onion, chopped                                               marjoram, rosemary or oregano

1 cup fine soft bread crumbs

½ cup chopped cooked chicken

Ham or shrimp or ½ cup chopped nuts

or cooked bacon

1. Preheat broiler.  Remove and chop mushroom stems
2. In a skillet, heat 1 T. of the butter, add the onion and chopped mushroom  stems and cook about 2 minutes.  Add bread crumbs, meat or nuts, and enough sherry to moisten the mixture and seasonings.
3. Place the mushroom caps on a baking sheet and brush with the remaining butter, melted.  Broil, cap side down,  about 2 minutes.  Invert and stuff.  Brush with melted butter and broil 3 minutes longer. 

Yesterday I made them with  bacon, and used my own dried oregano as the spice.  You will notice that the ingredients are all common items from the pantry,  When the big mushrooms are on sale, this is about as cheap as an hors d'oeuvre can get.  It is not high cal either, compared to some.  

Always  tastes good.  Not so filling that guests don't want their dinner.  

Viva New York Times Cookbook.  Try the chili con carne.  One of the best.  The roast pork with  thyme is another all time winner.  My favorite frittata is also in the old edition.  When the revised book came out, they booted some of the recipes, including my frittata, but I cut out all the recipes that were excluded that were faves.  The muffin recipe always delivered great (small) muffins with little fat and sugar.  What has become of the humble muffin is a prime exhibit for why we are all fatter than formerly.  

Try the mushrooms;  you'll like them.  I had  really dry bread crumbs and used some extra sherry.  

Onward, 

Grapeshot 

Bird Watching 101

Thisbe watching birds.  A cat's most cherished activity.  Annie enjoys the same pursuit.  The birds seem oblivious to the presence of a cat just a few feet away.

I haven't been posting, alas and alack.  I've been writing.  I did yet another rewrite of Promiscuous Mode, and it is now (whole MS) with an agent, but no great hope.  I've done some more on In Flight and am almost 5000 words into a crime short story.  Sent another story into a contest.  So the writing goes apace.

Also cooking up a storm.  Big Valentine's Day menu which we ate on for days.  Then S.O.'s birthday dinner of stuffed cabbage.  Finished it last night.  Mega-yum.

I've also been working on a writing group's web site, dieting, working out, working on finances, yada yada.  The diet is just a calorie count diet, which means I have to enter every bite into this web site which helps figure out the calories.  It took a long time at first, but I'm kind of into the hang of it now.  Total loss:  3.5 pounds, but hey, that's something added to the 3.5 pounds I lost before the formal diet.

The thing about a simple calorie count is that no food is forbidden.  A lot of diets say that but weight watchers will penalize you a gazillion points for a tablespoon of butter, but you can eat a whole can of beans.  The more something is portrayed as forbidden, i.e., foodstuffs, the hungrier I get for it.

So I take my lumps with 1/4 cup peanuts and the St. Andre cheese and  eat less of something else.  I haven't been hungry, by the way, in spite of the fact that I'm trying to stay around 1200 calories on days when I don't work out.  Turns out I wasn't eating THAT MUCH to begin with. 

I made my mother's recipe of lemon squares to take to a friend's house.  They are so good I will post them here soon.  And I also made crepes with a sweetened cream cheese filling and a strawberry sauce to go on top.  This gave us dessert for  4 nights, 2 crepes each.  A lot of bang for the buck and also cheap.

Tomorrow I'm baking a chocolate/walnut pound cake to take to another event.  I would rather take a salad but it has to be something easily transportable.   Doesn't sound like a diet, does it?  Small portions are the key.

Tonight, we're back to chicken breast, and I'm doing the Boston Globe Saturday/Sunday recipe with  one main dish and then another made from the leftovers.  Not high cal and very tasty looking.  First Spanish, then Mexican. Spanish Style Chicken

Then you make the Mexican Recipe with the leftovers:
Chicken Chilaquiles

 Off to work on my short story.  It's a lot of fun, and I'm visiting Mattapoisett today for research.

Ta Ta

Grapeshot