UnFoodie Stuffs Portobello Mushrooms

By Karen

I’ve reached my goal with Weight Watchers®, but I’m still experimenting with low-points meals so I can maintain my new svelte look. Mushrooms have zero PointsPlus®.

So I bought a couple of big portabellas and improvised using what I had on hand, after checking out some recipes online. These turned out good enough to share, but I’ll change some things next time.

Marinade (optional step)

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• tablespoon of olive oil

First, I marinated the mushrooms for an hour before cooking, but you don’t have to. If you use balsamic vinegar, line your cooking pan with foil, or the bitchin’ mess of burned vinegar you’ll be scraping later will destroy your manicure.

You cook all the components separately, then assemble near the end. This prep is all easy and doesn’t take more than 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375°, then put in the mushrooms to pre-cook, gills side down, for about 10 minutes, or until you start smelling them. While that’s going on, you make the filling. Here is one of the mushrooms ready for the oven…

Recipes said to chop up the stems for the filling and throw away the gills, but I left the gills in because it seemed wasteful and I don’t mind eating them.

Dice and sauté in cooking spray any veggies for your filling, whatever you’d like. I used:

• The mushroom stems
• Onion
• Tomato
• Spinach
• Pinch of garlic powder (because I didn’t have fresh garlic)

(I don’t know why my pics are still coming out blurry. They always look fine on the camera screen. Grrrr….)

I felt like I needed some herb to spice it up, but wasn’t sure what to use, so my filling was kind of bland.

Once the veggies are soft, remove from the heat and add bread crumbs and cheese. I used:

• 1/4 cup panko crumbs
• 1/4 cup 2% shredded sharp cheddar

Take the mushrooms out of the oven, turn them gills-side up, and fill.

Put back in the oven about 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese melts.

Voila!

That’s the other change I’d make. I’d use full-fat cheese for a richer result. My cheese didn’t melt very well, and the crumbs didn’t brown. So I’d finish the shrooms under the broiler instead of baking longer.

But overall, was a tasty dish, and each mushroom was only 3 PointsPlus. I’ll definitely make it again.

If anybody’s got suggestions for seasonings or other improvements, I’m all ears.

UnFoodie Tries Collard Chips – Twice

By Karen

“At 20 calories per (1-1/2 cup) serving, these collard chips crush the potato variety on virtually all nutritional fronts.”

Reading that in the Wednesday food section of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, I was all over this recipe because, at 20 calories with no fat, 4 grams of carbs, and 2 grams each of fiber and protein, that’s a Weight Watchers® zero PointsPlus snack.

(FYI on “veggie chips” in the grocery store: Not so great. When you calculate the points, you’d do just as well to eat Baked! Lay’s® Potato Crisps.)

Making Collard Chips is incredibly easy. All you need is…

• 1 bunch collard green leaves (10-11 leaves)
• Cooking spray
• Sea salt, to taste

What could go wrong, right?

Well, I’m sharing my second attempt because the first one turned out so badly, I figured I must have screwed up. Fool me once…

Backstory: I never heard of collard greens until I moved to the South. Which is not to say I’m a greens snob. My Italian grandmother used to speak lovingly of dandelion greens, although I never actually saw her pick and eat any.

But dandelion greens are sheer lace next to collards, which are large, thick, and tough…

On the elitist foodie pyramid, collards must be the vegetable equivalent of roadkill.

The recipe says to preheat the oven to 375°. Wash the collards (it neglects to tell you to dry them, a CRUCIAL step), then remove the center stem and rip the leaves into “chip-size” pieces. Next, “coat” each piece with cooking spray.

I discovered the hard way that you don’t “coat” the leaves, but toss them with the merest spritz or they go soggy. The first time, I also over-salted. It doesn’t take much.

This time I tried adding some some onion powder for flavor. Big mistake: it burns.

So far, so good.

The recipe says to “mist a baking sheet with cooking spray.” But again, too much spray equals soggy mess. This time, I lined the sheet with foil and no spray. Arrange the collards in a single layer.

Is your mouth watering yet? (Sorry for the blurriness. Still getting the hang of the Nikon.)

Bake for 8-9 minutes “until slightly brown and crisp.” Go put a good movie into the DVD, pour your favorite beverage, and get ready to nosh.

Voila!

Would you serve these at your next party, let alone put them in your own mouth?

Bottom line: It doesn’t matter if you follow the recipe to the letter or not, the result is the same. If your house burned to the ground and scorched all the trees in your yard, collard chips are like what you’d find in your driveway the next day. Just add salt.

They turn surprisingly thin and delicate so they crumble in your mouth, but they still taste like torched weeds.

I’m still looking for that elusive low-point chip snack food. But I’ve learned one thing…

Any damned idiot can get a recipe published in the paper.

UnFoodie Discovers the Joy of Brining

By Karen

In spite of being a severely chicken-challenged cook, I eat a lot of it, mostly prepared from frozen bags. When I make it myself, it’s invariably dry and awful. But on a recent cruise vacation, I ate a melt-in-your-mouth chicken breast, and a fellow passenger suggested it had been brined.

That got me thinking…

I have this recipe for herb-brined, walnut-encrusted chicken that I mostly ignored (because I didn’t have the kosher salt; apple juice; ground coriander; fresh thyme, rosemary, and savory; and orange zest it required). But it gave me a basic plan of attack.

I bought 4 boneless thighs as a hedge against failure because they’re moister to begin with. I’ll tackle dry breasts another day.

Step 1: Make the brine.

Figuring sodium chloride is sodium chloride, into a saucepan I poured about 1/4 cup of sea salt into enough water to cover the chicken (4 cups maybe). Then I added a bunch of garlic powder. As an afterthought, I threw in dried rosemary and thyme, and some ground sage I’ve had for at least 20 years (it still had a smell, so, what the hell).

Heated the water just enough to dissolve the salt and garlic powder. Then I missed the instruction to cool it down with ice cubes before pouring it on the chicken. However, I did wonder if warm water would prematurely cook the chicken.

Step 2: Brine the chicken.

Laid the thighs flat in 2 Pyrex containers (with lids), then poured on the brine. The chicken edges did cook slightly. I put the covered containers in the fridge for about 5 hours. (Sorry the photo is blurry. New Nikon.)

As Emeril would say, this is when the chicken starts “getting happy.”

Step 3: Bread the chicken.

At dinnertime, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees, removed the chicken from the brine, rinsed in cold water, then patted dry with paper towels.

My wash was one egg white and a tablespoon of Hellmann’s Light Mayonnaise, which immediately clumped and took a lot of stirring to smooth out.

I probably could have done without the glumpy mayo.

After dipping, I slathered the chicken with panko breadcrumbs, about 3/4 cup.

Step 4: Bake the chicken.

The breaded chicken went on a Pam-sprayed sheet to bake for 20 minutes.

The crumbs didn’t stick great, but well enough.

Here’s the (blurry) finished product. (I need more practice with the Nikon’s “food” setting.)

Half-cup of rice, with 0-point tomatoes and a pickle on the side, Weight Watchers-style.

Oh. My. God. It was a TOTAL success. So moist, I vowed on the spot to NEVER cook chicken again without first brining it. It wasn’t salty, and it held the spices’ flavors, which turned out to be DELICIOUS, ancient sage notwithstanding.

I had enough for 4 meals, and reheating it in the microwave or on the stovetop didn’t dry it out. Every piece stayed moist and tasty.

Consider me a brining convert.

Weight Watchers® “Almost-After” Pics

By Karen

In case you’re new here, I’ve been on the Weight Watchers PointsPlus plan since May 28, 2012 – 38 weeks. I’ve lost 45 lbs. and a few readers have asked for “after” pics, so here they are.

I’d still like to lose 5 more pounds and make it an even 50 (from 177 to 127), but that could take a while. I just came off an incredibly frustrating month-long plateau where pound 134 kept bouncing off and on and I couldn’t get past it, no matter how “good” I was.

But this week I finally broke through that wall and hit 132, so I’m feeling re-energized.

Without further ado, I’ll model for you some clothes I bought and wore just last summer. Seeing myself with them now, I can’t wrap my head around how big I’d let myself get…

As God is my witness, I’ll NEVER be mistaken for a shower curtain again!

Before losing 11” in the bust (don’t worry, I still have plenty – I’m Italian!), I was beginning to worry about buttoning this shirt.

I thought these shorts looked like clown clothes when I bought them — but they FIT!

I’m mortified that I actually walked around a cruise ship last spring in those clothes.

I call this my “Jared from Subway” shot.

Overall, I’ve lost about 34 inches. I’ve gone from size 18 and 2x to size 10-12 and medium/large (sizing is totally inconsistent).

As my sister says, “Valerie Bertinelli, eat your heart out.”

I don’t care what the foodies say. I’ve been on both sides of the fence now, and there’s no food delicious enough to EVER make being overweight (and the lack of attractive clothes and the way you ironically become invisible to people) worth it.

UnFoodie’s Take on “The Taste”

By Karen

It’s official: Anthony Bourdain is “the Mick Jagger of food.” Just ask Nigella Lawson, who anointed him on their new ABC cooking competition, The Taste.

Eat your heart out, Tom Colicchio.

The 2-hour premiere felt more like 8 after the 567^th commercial. It featured many filmed-at-puree-speed montages of hopefuls flaming out and judges’ hands hovering over the NO button. And then judges Bourdain, Lawson, Ludo LeFebvre, and Brian Malarkey each FAILED to pick 4 contestants for their teams.

WTF? There are MORE scenes of soul-crushing rejection to come?

A good many of the hapless saps, thinking this was their shot at fame, said they’d been fired or quit jobs to compete. In fact, one of those cooks unfortunately told the judges she now runs a bakery. After everyone rejected her (Oh, horrors, a PASTRY CHEF!), Tony called her “bleeping delusional” to think she’s a cook.

If she saw her treatment last night, today she may be “bleeping suicidal.”

Another woman with the tragic backstory of a sick husband and a foreclosure made the fatal error of preparing kugel with adobo (whatever that is) and jalapenos. Bourdain shot her down by claiming she lost him because he’s a “traditionalist” on Jewish classics. Nobody else came to her rescue.

At the other end of the bizarro spectrum, Ludo offered a job to one reject. He couldn’t bring himself to mentor her for the brief span of the show, but he’d take her on as a PAID employee after one bite of her food.

Yeah, that makes sense.

One would assume there was much more logic to the judges’ decisions than we saw. Too often, they loved the food but rejected the cook, while claiming they’d kick themselves later.

WTF?

But someone (Ludo?) said something about there being so many more contestants to try, he didn’t want to pick hastily. So did cooks who went last have a better shot?

Bourdain’s team ended up with three women…

• 26-year-old Mia, a home cook with a crush on him (Ottavia, keep an eye on that one)
• Diane from NY whom Ludo rejected for putting too much tzatziki (whatever that is) on his spoon
• 28-year-old Ninamarie, a Bourdain fan from California, who made sea bass with butterscotch (Tony’s penance for booting Dale off Top Chef over butterscotch scallops?)

The question next week is, will Tony pick a guy, or stick with women of his wife’s generation?

In addition to determining cooks’ fates based on blind one-bite tastings, the judges apparently are vying to beat each other by having the last cook standing.

The biggest mistake I saw was cooks (mostly the pros, it seemed) trying to squeeze meat, seafood, AND sides onto one spoon. When they got shot down for muddled or indistinguishable flavors, they had only themselves to blame.

You had to feel proud of that little trailer girl from Mississippi, Lauren, who made Nigella’s team with a flourless chocolate cake, the only one who dared to do a dessert.

And Nigella’s a breath of fresh air. Gratuitous cleavage notwithstanding, she’s not trying to swim with the sharks. I don’t think she descended once into foodie snobbism. Ludo was the worst for nitpicking, but he probably thinks it’s expected because he’s French and they have such high standards.

I’m sad to say Bourdain was a close second.

Kudos to the cool head in ABC makeup who kept Tony out of the hair gel for the separately-filmed talking spots. His hair looked great, compared to that spikey wet-dog-with-mange look he usually goes for.

In case you missed it, Grub Street boiled the show down to 91 seconds. I may tape the rest of the season so I can FF through all the Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Olive Garden commercials.

Here’s a review in Time.

The (UK) Telegraph also weighed in.

Digital Spy provided detailed recaps on most of the contestants.

UnFoodie Makes a Hash of Quorn™

By Karen

My latest Weight Watchers®-friendly experiment with the non-meat substitute Quorn Grounds was inspired by the blogger Losing 100 Pounds, who posted her recipe for Vegan Hash, accompanied by brilliant photographs that put mine to shame.

WW sends mixed signals about potatoes, calling them a “Power Food,” but saddling them with more points than are usually worth it (4), so I substituted squash (0) for spuds.

Reducing it all to WW-speak, I think Losing 100’s recipe is roughly 6 points per serving without toppings, and mine is 4 points WITH toppings (using 2% cheese and light sour cream, not vegan versions).

Anyway, my recipe for 4 hearty servings is:

1 12 oz. package Quorn Grounds
1 pkg. taco seasoning (or any seasoning you prefer)
2/3 cup water (the seasoning calls for it)

You can use any veggies you like, but here’s what I did:

1 onion, diced
1 yellow squash (or any squash you prefer) cut into chunks
1 zucchini chunked
mushrooms chunked (as many as you like)

Toppings (all optional):

1/4 cup 2% cheese
1/4 cup salsa
1 tbsp. light sour cream

In a big skillet, cook all the veggies in Pam until tender.

Stir in Quorn, taco seasoning, and water. Cover and simmer until heated through.

Plate it, top with cheese (you can melt it in the microwave), then the salsa and sour cream.

It tastes better than this looks. And this recipe leaves me 3 nights of leftovers that become dinner in 5 minutes or less. Can’t beat it!

UnFoodie Discovers the Joy of Quorn™

By Karen

Before Christmas, the weather was crumby and I craved a big pot of chili, but I didn’t want to blow Weight Watchers® completely, and ground beef was a deal-breaker because WW severely punishes any red meat consumption.

I could have used 99% fat-free ground turkey to shave off one lousy WW point, or gone meatless. But I was craving MEAT, so I poked around Food Lion and found Quorn Grounds in the freezer section with the Boca Burgers and such.

Quorn Grounds are the brilliant brainchild of Quorn Foods, headquartered in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, England. They’re made of mycoprotein (the package says “myco” is Greek for “fungi”). They’re meatless, soy-free, and the closest non-meat thing to ground beef I’ve ever seen or tasted.

A 2/3-cup (3 oz.) serving has 2g fat, 9g carbs, 5g fiber, and 13g protein — all for 2 WW points.

Three ounces of of 90% lean ground beef will set you back 4 points, without the fiber.

So here’s my chili recipe. This makes 10 cups, but I like lots of leftovers:

1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 15 oz. cans tomato sauce
2 15 oz. cans kidney beans
1 packet Chili Seasoning (any kind you like)
1 12 oz. package Quorn grounds
1 large onion, diced
Squirt of Sriracha for more heat to taste (optional)

Brown the onions, then throw in everything else (including Quorn – no need to thaw). Simmer on the stove at low heat for as many hours as you like to concentrate the tomato flavor.

A hefty 2-cup serving is only 5 WW points. That leaves room to melt ¼ cup of 2% shredded cheddar on top (2 points) and glop on a tablespoon of light sour cream (0 points) for a very filling meal.

(PS: In case you’re curious, my diet came through the holidays unscathed, in spite of chocolate cheesecake, 3 slices of tiramisu, and much liquor. In fact, I continued to lose weight through it all and am now down a total of 41 lbs.)

UnFoodie Masters a Mean Frittata

By Karen

Breakfast is problematic for me because 1) I’m a Weight Watcher and don’t want to start the day blowing a lot of points, 2) I don’t want to put a lot of work into it, and 3) I get bored easily.

One recent Sunday morning, I was sick to death of eating one pale scrambled egg with 2 whites (3 points), when I got the brilliant idea to make a frittata. A big frittata I could eat all week.

I threw a mess of chopped veggies into a Pam-coated 9-inch cast-iron skillet. You can use whatever vegetables you like. This time, it was baby bello mushrooms, a zucchini, red onion, and red bell pepper.

While the veggies cooked, I preheated the oven to 350° and beat 6 whole eggs.

(Usually, I add ½ cup of 2% shredded cheddar to the eggs, but I was so busy taking pictures, I forgot the cheese. I did sprinkle it on top before reheating the leftovers later and it was almost just as good.)

I used the cast-iron skillet because once the veggies were cooked, I poured the egg on them and placed the whole thing in the oven, but you can use any kind of baking dish. I do anything I can to minimize dish-washing.

It bakes for about 20 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when it’s all puffy. Let it go flat again before you cut in to it.

I divided it into quarters, which makes for good-sized servings. If you include the cheese, each quarter is only 4 WW points.

I stack the extra pieces between waxed paper and store them in the fridge. They reheat great on a piece of foil in the toaster oven at 350° for 20 minutes. But you could microwave them. I prefer the way the oven browns the cheese.

So that only leaves 3 days of the week to improvise. If you’re looking for ideas, here are my usual options. If you have more, please share them!

• fruit alone – blueberries, strawberries, banana, apple, orange – 0 points
• ½ cup Kashi® Go Lean® cereal with ½ container of plain Dannon Oikos® Greek yogurt (blech! — but flavor adds a point) topped with fruit – 3 points
• ¼-cup (dry) steel-cut oatmeal with ½ tsp. Smart Balance® butter spread – 4 points
• 2 whole-grain Eggo waffles with fresh fruit on top (no syrup) – 5 points
• 2 tbsp. Better’n Peanut Butter on a thin sandwich roll – 5 points
• 16 Wheat Thins with 2 tbsp. Sabra hummus – 5 points
• 1 oz. smoked salmon on a thin bagel with 1 oz. light cream cheese, onions, and capers – 6 points

UnFoodie Conquers Cauliflower

By Karen

Weight Watchers punishes you with points pretty severely for eating  white starchy carbs and fat (even “good” fats – a teaspoon of olive or canola oil are 1 point, and so is butter), so I’ve basically given up former mainstays of my diet — potatoes, rice, and anything fried in oil or butter.

At Thanksgiving, mashed potatoes and stuffing have always been my favorite things. Just pass me the gravy, and keep that dry-as-dust turkey breast. So to appease the WW gods this year, I decided to find out if I could make cauliflower replace mashed potatoes, or if it’s simply an urban myth circulated by carb-starved stick figures.

As a veggie, I’ve been OK with cauliflower, although you’d never catch me going out of my way to eat it if anything else is available. It’s so bland and white, it seems a nutritional non-entity (although I’m sure it has many fine qualities).

Here’s what I used:

• 1 head of cauliflower
• 5 cloves of garlic, peeled and diced
• 1 cup 2% shredded cheese (any kind is OK, but I used sharp cheddar)
• 1/2 cup of water from boiling the cauliflower
• some spritzes of butter spray (I used I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!®)
• salt to taste

First, I made a total mess separating the florets from the stems, but it turns out you don’t have to be too picky about that because, once boiled, you really can’t tell the difference between them.

You should have seen the floor.

I dumped the florets into a big pot with enough water to submerge them about 2 inches and threw in the garlic. Once the water started boiling, I salted it.

See what I mean about how boring it looks? Like a pot full of albino brains.

The cauliflower needs to boil like crazy for 10-12 minutes, until it breaks apart when you stick a fork in it. I reserved a cup of the boiling water before dumping the cooked cauliflower into a colander.

Before beginning to mash, I added about ½ cup of the water, salted again, and gave everything a good spritzing of butter spray. Then I added the cheese.

At this point, my almost-new Cuisinart blender turned into a doorstop and dashed any hopes of puréeing, but using a whisk and a big spoon I managed to mash out the lumps.

Here’s my masterpiece, topped with more shredded cheddar and red pepper flakes.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was mashed potatoes, right?

This total dish is only 8 WW points (all coming from the cheese), so a generous 1-cup serving is about 2 points.

You know what? It tastes close enough to mashed potatoes to make me happy, and my family liked it. But, come to think of it, I don’t know if my mother had any — she’s never cooked cauliflower in her life. And it left me more room for stuffing!

(And for the record, my sister’s brined Trader Joe’s turkey cooked in a bag was NOT dry at all. A win-win all around.)

UnFoodie Discovers Pasta Zero

By Karen

After 6 months on Weight Watchers (how that’s going is another post), I’m forever on the prowl for new eats with low points. That’s how I found Pasta Zero by nasoya®.

(Can I hear MorganLF gagging all the way from New Jersey?)

OK, the only resemblance Pasta Zero has to actual spaghetti is its shape. If you bite into it expecting Italian, it probably will gag you.

The noodles are made from potato starch, konjac flour (??), and chickpea flour, and they reek of rotting fish when you first open the package.

But you can eat the WHOLE 8-oz. package (totally doable, even though it claims to be 2 servings) for only 1 WW point. (One cup of naked cooked spaghetti is 5 — even whole-grain.)

Last week I prepared PZ. The smell comes from the liquid you have to drain and rinse from the noodles. The noodles themselves seem odorless.

First, I sautéed lots of onions and mushrooms in Pam, then threw in the noodles to dry them out and heat them. They’re already cooked.

Since I was in the mood for Italian, I threw in ½ cup of Ragu Tomato & Basil sauce (yes, I’m that lazy) and topped it with crumbled goat cheese.

This hefty plate of food was only 4 points.

The noodles are soft, but so firm, they’re hard to break with your teeth.

This was the first time I’ve ever had goat cheese, and I’m trying to figure out the big foodie attraction. It’s like a pricier, flat-tasting feta that refuses to melt.

Although the recipe on the package is “Spaghetti with Marinara Sauce,” Pasta Zero seems Asian. Next time I’m going to try teriyaki or oyster-flavored sauce with smoked oysters.

In researching this post, I found similar noodles online called Miracle Noodles.

A woman reviewed shirataki noodles for Slate and couldn’t stomach them.

But a guy at Natural News loves them.

I think it’s all about expectations, and my years of watching Anthony Bourdain slurp noodles have served me well. I approached Pasta Zero prepared to suspend disbelief. If you can get past the smell, they have unlimited potential for deliciousness.