VIDEO: Zoodles with Creamy (Vegan) 'Alfredo'

This is a great recipe for anyone looking for a plant based menu item that is high in protein. Also safe/appropriate for bariatric patients on the soft solid stage. You won't miss the cream and cheese!! ENJOY!

 

It's cucumber season, and man oh man do I have cucumbers!! We've never had such a large harvest, in more ways then one! The cucumbers themselves got away from us and are much to big to be delicious raw, BUT, they make great pickles! 40 jars later, I have pickles for days ...or months and still have a mountain of cucumbers to go. The limiting step in the process is the jars. I can't find glass jars fast enough.While I'm taking a break from pickling, I thought I would share the recipe for these refrigerator pickles with you. No need to boil the jars to seal the lids, just mix up everything, put it in the jars and store in the refrigerator. Because they are pickled they will be good for years as long as they stay cold. And don't forget, pickled and fermented foods are great for GI health ;)

For one jar (12-16oz)
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp whole mustard seeds
1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
1.5 tsp kosher or sea salt
2 sprigs dill
1 large cucumber, sliced into chips (you can also do spears but you won't fit as much into the jar)

1. Combine all the ingredients except for the cucumber and dill in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Once the brine boils turn heat off and let come back to room temperature. 
2. Meanwhile, slice up cucumber and place cucumber and dill sprigs in the jar.
3. When the brine has cooled, pour over cucumbers. Cover all the vegetables. If you don't have enough liquid, top off with a little more vinegar. 
4. Close lid and place in refrigerator. Let pickles sit in brine for 72 hours before taste testing. 
ENJOY!!

VIDEO: ROAST CHICKEN

 Fool-proof recipe for perfectly moist, crispy skin, roasted chicken every time! Fabulous idea for dinner parties or a casual night at home, one chicken is enough for 4 people. Enjoy the video antics and the chicken :)

VIDEO: Coconut Curry Shrimp

This recipe is a definite crowd favorite at parties as an appetizer or can be made as a fast and simple weekday dinner entree. It is also suitable for anyone who has had bariatric surgery and is at the soft solid or solid food/regular diet stages. 

ENJOY!!

High Protein (AND Vegan!) Creamy Tomato Soup

This Creamy Tomato Soup is high protein AND vegan! It was created to be an example of a puree stage food for bariatric patients but it is delicious for everyone! In the process of making this we realized it can be enjoyed hot, warm, or cold like a creamy gazpacho. ENJOY!!

 

VIDEO: Hummus a Pantry Staple!

The first video in a 10-segment series with my good friend and fellow bariatric dietitian Vivianne Donahue. Stay tuned for more healthy, EASY, tasty recipes. Great for weight management, or those having bariatric surgery, and we also have four vegan recipes in the series!!

 

"The Range" Restaurant Review

When your friends are in town and want to meet for lunch what is a girl to do during these COVID times? My answer was shower up, find an outfit that can get sopping with sweat sitting outside on a high 80s degree day and grab my cutest mask. Off I went to Hingham (MA) to meet the girls at a driving range complete with a local favorite restaurant, The Range Bar & Grille.

I have no qualms about sitting outside COVID or not. I much prefer it to the over air conditioned, dark dining rooms at most establishments. This place did a great job of keeping people separated and keeping the service level up. The dining area was well stocked with giant umbrellas and while our table was more like an outdoor booth we still had plenty of shade. It would have been nice to have a cushion under our bottoms but we understood why they had been removed.

It was a 'ladies who lunch' event so obviously we ordered a bottle of prosecco to start. The only option was Chloe, it was a little flat in flavor department, but it was cold and refreshing, and beggers can't be choosers right?!


Our food order came. A strawberry and goat cheese salad with added salmon ($13+$11), a turkey club wrap with sweet potato fries ($12) and a 'veggie sandwich' with sweet potato fries ($14). The portions were very large, in my opinion definitely enough food for two lunches. The serving of salmon was a dinner portion size but had good flavor and the salad was light, crisp and fresh. The turkey club adorned some excellent additions like avocado which are not usually seen in a club sandwich. The veggie sandwich was a portobello mushroom cap with cheese and pesto on top of a Beyond Meat patty with normal vegetable accouterments. It had a good amount of flavor, but the patty was unnecessary and made the sandwich to heavy. I would have given people the option of the mushroom cap or the patty but not both. The sweet potato fries were a big hit among all three of us. They did not appear to be frozen, prepackaged fries, and they were wide which is much more to my liking as opposed to the shoe string varieties.

All in all, I would go back here. It was a nice quiet location, the food was good and it was sold at reasonable price. And hey if you get bored of your dining companions you can always watch the peeps at the driving range smashing balls around!

Spicy Vegetable Juice

I wasn't sure I would enjoy this beverage with a hint of cayenne but it has become a great addition to my afternoon beverages. My brother in law has been making it for his breakfast based off a recipe from Dr. Gregor. The creator toted it as a metabolic booster, and let's be honest the jury is out on that, BUT it is a great way to get in extra vegetables, especially this time of year when you might have to much produce kicking around that is bound to go bad before you can roast and eat it. If you are having the girls over for brunch or cocktails this would also double as a great Bloody Mary mix :)




1/3 of a Beet
1 cup Greens (kale, spinach, arugula etc)
1 TB Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground Turmeric
1/2 Lemon
1 Grapefruit, peeled
2 stalks Celery
1 Carrot
2 Scallions, roots removed
2 cloves Garlic, peeled
1 cup Tomato juice, low sodium (we used Trader Joe's Garden Patch juice)

1. Toss it all in the blender whole and zap it until it liquefies!

Hello Again Old Friend

Hello again old friend. It's been a terribly long time since we have interacted, 2.25 years to be exact. My husband has been telling me for quite some time that I needed to keep this blog going, but a recent binge watching of Sex & City rekindled my interest. As I watched Carrie write her columns and filter through thoughts in her mind, I remembered how much I liked bringing this blog to my patients and friends on a weekly or sometimes even daily basis.  I can't interact with the audience of my books like I can with people here and for that I am very excited.

You might notice that the interface looks a little different. I just hope that you all will still have access to the vast library of recipes we built up together. To get things started again I thought I would once again share one of the recipes my friends ask for most frequently, that of the roast chicken. Roast chicken is a dinner staple that so many people love, yet are scared to cook. They fear the chicken being underdone, raw and riddled with salmonella, so they overcook it and dry it out. The key to a perfect chicken comes from three things:

1. Size - 3.5-4# bird
2. Heat - 450 degrees
3. Cooking time - 55 minutes

You have to trust that this equation will yield perfect results every time. A 3.5-4# chicken is actually on the smaller side and you will most likely find it with an 'all natural' tag on it. One chicken will be enough for 3-4 people, if you have a larger group for dinner I would cook 2. It is a wonderful item to impress guests of a dinner party with, and since you have almost an hour of cooking time without needing to pay attention to the bird you can go back to hanging out with your guests. 

Preparation:

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
2. Set up a roasting pan or Pyrex dish with a roasting rack inside it.
3. Rinse the chicken, inside and out (make sure to remove the bag of organs if it had one), and using paper towels dry off the bird inside and out as well. Place in pan on roasting rack.
4. Now we need to liberally salt and pepper the bird. And I do mean LIBERALLY - don't be shy here (notice in the picture that you can still see the salt and pepper after the bird is done cooking). You are going to give a good coating of salt and pepper all over the outside of the bird, top and bottom, and throw some into the cavity. You should be able to see the salt and pepper on the skin but its not going to be encrusted if that makes sense. 
5. The final step is to cross the chicken's legs and secure them. It doesn't matter which direction you cross them but for the ease of writing I will do it this way. Take a paring knife and cut a slit through the flap of skin next to the left drumstick. Holding the tip of the left drumstick in the center of the bird, pull the right drumstick over the top of the left and stick the end of it through the hole you made on the left side. All done! Legs are crossed!
6. Place chicken in oven. Set timer for 55 minutes and leave it. Do not open the door to check on it. When the timer goes off, removed chicken from oven and let rest for 5 minutes before carving. 

The great Thomas Keller of The French Laundry in Napa, California, suggests serving roast chicken with lemon wedges and stone ground mustard. These are delightful additions to your meal.

ENJOY!!