I like to write and I like to cook. I am not a chef and I have no formal culinary training. This is not intended as an instructional cooking blog. It's just an account of my personal experiences with my health recovery, weight loss, and food.
All my hero chefs claim that mastering cooking is mastering cooking eggs. Folklore tells us that scientific studies are constantly back and forth about eggs and whether or not they're healthy. This was true a few decades ago. However, aside from the occasional salmonella recall, the verdict seems to be that eggs are not bad for you. In fact studies are showing that eating eggs contributes to weight loss and are good for people with diabetes. This is great news to me because I love eggs and just about in every form they're cooked, which seems to be countless ways.
While there is some risk of salmonella with eggs, there are some precautions you should take. One is to wash your hands immediately after handling raw eggs. Eating raw or soft cooked eggs with a runny yolk may have some more risk than hard cooked eggs or scrambled. I love soft cooked eggs, so I hazard a bit of a risk, but aside from risking possible salmonella, the soft cooked eggs are quite healthy.
As another precaution try cracking your eggs on a flat surface, like a clean plate, instead of on the edge of a pan or bowl. The less of the outer shell you crack into the egg, the better and there's less risk of breaking the yolks. Breaking the yolk is the last thing you want to do when making soft cooked eggs so really focus on your egg breaking technique, each break is practice, and don't half-ass it. I cook eggs all the time and still run into some trouble, they're just so delicate. So, when I do make a successful egg dish, I feel quite accomplished. The first time I had a poached egg was just a couple of years ago at Uncle John's Pancake House in Toledo. My mom never cooked them for me when I was a kid and for whatever other reasons they just didn't arrive on my plate. I heard of them, but I had no idea what they were or even what they looked like. But when I tried them, I immediately fell in love with them.
Apparently poaching comes from the French word for pocket, which is kind of what happens when you cook the egg and the white becomes a pocket around the yolk. Some recipes call for a precise amount of water in a specific sized pan. Well, I've found that you probably want three to four inches of water to work. Any deeper than that and you may have problems. I recommend a larger pan for more eggs. This is just to keep the whites from combining.
This sauce pan, filled to just over half way, works pretty good for me for two eggs. I haven't tried more than two at a time yet.
Place the water on a high heat. When bubbles begin to break the surface add 1 teaspoon of vinegar and a teaspoon of kosher salt. Regular-ass white vinegar is the only kind I've ever used so, I don't know if other kinds of vinegar work the same or not. My books don't mention it. Maybe it's common knowledge and I'm just ignorant of it or something. The hell if I know.
Crack your eggs into small bowls, this is so you can pour the eggs into the pan as close to the surface of the water as possible. I've used small bowls and even saucers before, but these neat little Glad storage containers work very nicely.
Drop the eggs into the water as close to the surface as possible, one at a time. The vinegar is supposed to keep the egg white from going everywhere, but I probably need more work on this part because they usually look like the photo above. I tweak them a little with my slotted spoon just to keep them from combining, but you don't want to mess around with them too long or the yok will harden and you don't want that. When they look like this remove from the heat, put a lid on the pan, and wait three minutes.
When the three minutes are up, gently remove the eggs, one at a time from the water with a slotted spoon and try to drain as much water as possible. I put them on toasted English muffins, but they can go on toast and are recommended for salads, though I never tried them that way. I tried them over Ramen noodles once.
I use Thomas' Light Multi-Grain English Muffins because Mens' Health Magazine and the Eat This, Not That! people have rated them the healthiest breakfast bread.
I break open both yolks and spread it over the egg and muffin, then sprinkle some kosher salt and fresh ground pepper over it and enjoy!
My inspirational hero for this entry is The Mighty Stephen Hawking. He is an innovator of theoretical physics and cosmology, most noted is his work in quantum gravity and black holes. He is also a popularizer of science. One of his many books, A Brief History of Time, is best known world wide for putting modern cosmology in layman's terms. He's published several other books, appeared in several documentary movies, and created and appeared in television shows about the science of the universe. He's also appeared on shows like Star Trek: The Generation, The Simpsons, and Futurama, because the writers of these shows are huge fans of Hawking. Most of this he achieved while suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for forty-seven years. This disease has slowly debilitated his physical body and he became known for an electronic synthesizer he uses to speak. He has used a small handpiece to operate his synthesizer, but no longer can, so he uses a device that follows his eye movements. At this point he's almost completely paralyzed, but has a new groundbreaking cosmology book about to be released called The Grand Design.
Losing 18 pounds in the past two months is a very satisfying achievement for me. When I started all of this I promised myself I would buckle down and be more strict about my diet, but the funny thing is I haven't needed to be very strict. I don't know how many diets I tried that involved strict eating routines. Don't get me wrong, there are certain guidelines I'm following. One is drinking more water and unsweetened green tea. I don't gulp water down like its going out of style I just constantly have a cup of ice water at hand and drink from that, then refill it when it's done. Then I try to get four cups of green tea in a day, which is supposed to be good for just about everything. What this does for me is keeps my soda intake low. Diet soda isn't all that bad to drink but it isn't quite the fat fighter that plain water and green tea are. The only meal that I try to strictly adhere to is breakfast. I just try to eat something as soon as I get up, which is usually two eggs either over easy or poached and whole wheat toast.
The rest of the day depends on when I get hungry. I loosely try to follow a three meal, three snack structure. I try to keep the meals light, which usually come from the recipes I post here. The snacks are also light, about 100 to 200 calorie snacks. The one thing I try to do is not let myself get too hungry. When I get too hungry I'm prone to cravings and binges. I used to think that being hungry was good when dieting and just part of the process, actually no. Everything I read about weight loss says that letting yourself get hungry is not a good thing. I know it's anecdotal but I had a roommate that ate almost all day long and lost over a hundred pounds to get down to the ideal weight for his height and structure. His trick of course was eating healthy food and plenty of exercise. Another thing I do is not to let the rules make me miserable. I've always had a hard time adhering to rules and the more they were imposed upon me the more I resented them. So I permit myself to cheat occasionally. This may mean drinking the occasional soda or having some sort of junk food. However, I try not to over do it. If I have a soda, it will be just one glass instead of the whole two liter or a six pack. If I have pizza I'll try to have two or three slices rather than a whole large pizza. If I have chips, I try to have a handful or two rather than the whole bag. This is really the way I used to eat. I try to keep it healthy but there are just certain things I won't turn down: steak (which isn't too bad if you don't eat much with it); sushi (which isn't really fattening); pizza (see above); and free booze. Fortunately I don't come across these things too readily anyway so it's easy to only have them occasionally.
Since I'm not much of a rules person this seems to work for me and the main thing that helps is, if I deviate a little I always try to return healthy eating. I don't know how many times in the past I've cheated a little and then gave up the diet. Well, if I'm really going to lose weight I have to change my eating habits for life and that means that when I do cheat I just gotta bounce back. It sounds simple but it is more difficult in practice. Sesame-Peanut Noodles I found this recipe in Ted Allen's cookbook The Food You Want to Eat. It's healthy, light, and quite tasty.
INGREDIENTS
Here are the ingredients I used to make the recipe.
Kosher salt 1/4 cup sesame seeds 1/4 cup peanut butter 1/4 cup toasted sesame oil 1/3 cup roasted peanuts 1/3 cup soy sauce 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon of mirin (Japanese cooking wine) or Sherry 2 medium garlic cloves 1/4 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes 1 English cucumber peeled 1 pound soba noodles 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 3 green onions, green parts only, sliced 1/4 inch thick on an angle
Bring a large pot of salted water (1 teaspoon of salt per quart of water) to a boil. Meanwhile, toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat. Stir this frequently until the seeds turn golden brown, about five minutes.
In a food processor, combine peanut butter, sesame oil, peanuts, soy sauce, vinegar, sherry, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Process to a puree, then stir in half the toasted sesame seeds. I couldn't find mirin and I don't have sherry. So I left that out of the mix, but I'm sure it wasn't a huge loss.
Cut the peeled English cucumber in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds with spoon. Slice the halves crosswise, about a 1/4 inch thick, set aside. Frankly, I didn't find much of a difference in the flavor of an English cucumber and a regular-ass cucumber.
Here is another one of my kitchen helpers. He's ten and his favorite job is tasting cucumbers. It's good to see he likes something other than his usual diet of pb & j and boxed mac and cheese.
When the water comes to a boil, add the noodles and cook until tender, about 4 to 5 minutes. Drain very well, shake the colander until it stops dripping and dump the noodles into a large bowl. Add the peanut mixture, cilantro (I used dry cilantro rather than fresh.), and black pepper. Toss to coat. Turn out on a large platter. Arrange the cucumber around the edge of the platter. Sprinkle the green onions on top, and sprinkle the remaining sesame seeds on last. Serve warm or at room temperature.
It's not on a platter but I was the only one eating it when it was done so a single plate it is.
It's nutty goodness with noodles!
My inspirational hero of the day is Ted Allen. I first saw him as the food guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. His latest claim to fame is the show Chopped on Food Network. However, my favorite show of his is Food Detectives, imagine Mythbusters but with food. That's right you may notice a pattern with my heroes being linked to science. I think science is the best thing humans got going for them. And check it out! He's wearing a CBGB apron that is totally awesome!
II went to the cardiologist this past Monday. You may already know that I suffered from heart failure a few years ago. I also have high blood pressure and an enlarged heart. So my GP thought it a good idea to see a cardiologist to see how my heart is doing. The cardiologist was very impressed with the recent improvements in things medically with me and he's started some tests to have a look at things for himself. He had some blood drawn and an EKG done. Next Thursday I'm supposed to go in for a stress test and eventually they want to do an ultrasound to look at my heart.
However, the really good news is, they weighed me and I lost another ten pounds. That makes for a total of eighteen pounds in just about two months. So, I'm pretty happy about that and I hope to keep losing more weight. For my height and frame I still have about two hundred pounds to go.
Avo Olive Nori Ingredients
Here are the ingredients I used for the dish.
1 large ripe avocado 1 small tomato 3/4 cup pitted olives 1 teaspoon soy sauce 1 tablespoon lemon juice bean sprouts nori sheets
Split avocado witha knife and discard the seed. Spoon the flesh from the peel, cut it into small pieces, and place it in a large bowl. You'll want room for mixing. Pour the lemon juice over the avocados to prevent oxidizing. Dice the tomatoes and olives and place them in the bowl with the avocado. Then add the soy sauce and stir for about ten seconds or so. Place a nori sheet onto a clean, dry cutting board. Nori is the same seaweed sheets they use to roll sushi. You should be able to find this stuff any where sushi fixin's are sold. This can be rolled with a bamboo sushi rolling mat, but I did it just fine with my bare hands. Besides, I don't have one of those mats so I didn't have a choice.
Here is the avocado olive mixture.
Take a cup of the mixture and place a half cup of it onto the nori sheet and spread it to the sidest. Leave about an inch at the top and bottom. See photo. Place a handful of beansprouts on top of the mixture. The original recipe that I took this from called for sunflower sprouts. I changed it to bean sprouts because I think the only way you can get sunflower sprouts is to grow them yourself and most people won't do that. So I figure bean sprouts should be fine because, even if I am wrong and some store out there carries the sunflower sprouts, the bean sprouts are easier to find, even if you have to buy them in a can!
It rolled quite well when I spread the mixture like this.
Now roll it very carefully because the nori can tear easily. The mixture is about enough to make three or four rolls depending on how you spread it.
At this point it looks like a big green cigar.
Slice the roll into about five to six pieces. When cutting into the roll gently saw into it. Cutting down hard into the roll as if it were a salami or something, will pinch the roll and just be a mess.
Place the rolls on a plate and enjoy.
It looks like sushi, but there is not rice, so it's not.
My inspirational hero of the day is Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and futurist. He is a popularizer of science as well as an advocate for the ethical use of science. I first heard of him as a guest on the wildly woo-woo late night radio show, Coast to Coast with Art Bell. He was quite a breath of fresh air among the usual line up of charlatans and pseudo-scientists on the show. Although he works on the fringes of science and ponders some things that may be far out, he bases everything in solid real science. I admire his persistence in popularizing science to make it more understandable and accessible to the layperson in a time when we surprisingly need him and others like him to combat the harm pseudo-science and superstition can do.
Not only do I want to share my cooking experiences in Cookin' with Plaid, but I also want to share milestones in the progress of my self improvement project, and I'm definitely losing more weight! Unfortunately, I still outweigh my bathroom scale's max. capacity of 330 lbs. and I haven't been weighed since I went to the doctor. However, I have another indicator of weight loss. Some of the following story I wrote about in my first entry of this blog. It was about how a debacle with my pants really got me motivated on my weight loss program. However, I assure you most of the following is new. It just rings a few bells.
Over a year ago, I ballooned to a size that limited me to one pair of Levi's 505, with a waist of 54. Actually, they got to a point where I could fasten the top button and bring the zipper up to within an inch of the top. Absolutely humiliating, but the truth. I think it was last November or December that my roommate in Columbus offered to get me more jeans as an early X-mas gift. I told him that our best bet would be to go on the internet and order them rather than running all over the city of Columbus on some wild goose chase for jeans.
I went to the Levi's website assuming that I could find every kind of Levi's made in every size they made. The largest size I could find were 54 waist in any style. I guess the assumption would be that Levi's "Loose Fitting" 560s are the logical choice for a fat bastard like me, but those jeans are actually made for people with protruding asses. Despite the fact that I'm morbidly obese, I still have a flat cracker ass. If anything, I'm a muffin top. My fat bulges out from about where the top of my ass is all the way around and then droops as if my legs were in some sort of baking cup and the rest expanded from there. So the jeans fit strangely on my strange body shape and tend to slip off my ass even if they're snug. I know it barely makes sense, but try telling that to my almost amorphous body. So I ordered the straight fitting Levi's 505 with the 54 waist.
I guess the jeans I had been wearing stretched or something (despite the fact that Levi's are more notorious for shrinking), because when the TWO pairs of jeans my roomie so generously bought me came in the mail, they didn't fit. They really didn't fit. I couldn't fasten the button at all. I had a good four inch gap that I could not bridge, much less zip them up. Even back then I was trying to lose weight (Although it wasn't working very well. I was still dealing with some health problems that seem to be better now. I was also battling with a bout of my depression and feeling very self destructive at the time.) So, I sucked it up and hoped that I would fit in them after some progress with my weight loss program.
Yet, just over a month ago, I developed the rogue-ish tear that I spoke of in the first entry of this blog that inspired this whole project. Mind you, even after I had a large tear in the back of my pants with a patch sewn on it, I still couldn't zip my pants all the way up. The first week of August my roomie, a couple of our friends, and I traveled together to Indianapolis, Indiana to attend Gen Con Game Fair. The trip lasted from Wednesday until Sunday of that week. Early in that trip my patch came apart again. It didn't fall off completely but the stitching along one of the long sides came undone. The only repair I could think of at the time was to buy a box of safety pins at the hotel gift shop and pin the patch to my pants. It wasn't a very good repair and started to look mangled too. Mind you, I didn't go to this convention with money that I should have used for pants. I worked the con for Mayfair Games and they covered the hotel and admission costs, even some food costs. The rest of the expenses were provided by my generous friends. Speaking of generous friends, on the way home one of them gave me some money and told me to get some pants without holes in them.
Just a couple of days after my return from Gen Con I tracked down some Levi's at XL Casual Male that were 60 waist, but 560s. Now while I was at Gen Con I noticed that I could start zipping my pants up all of the way. I didn't know if this was weight loss or maybe the tear in my pants provided some give. So I got the larger pants thinking that if I got the same size I'd be screwed like the jeans my Columbus roomie bought for me. I went to the store and tried on the jeans and they fit rather comfortably. I could sit down in them comfortably too. See, because of my drooping gut my waist expands a few inches when I sit down. (Yep, this is the gross stuff that makes you hate fat people!) So I happily bought them. When I wore them out for a real test drive I didn't notice until then, I was swimming in these jeans. It's all I can do to keep them from falling down when I walk. But when you're fat, too big is always better than too small.
So this odd dilemma got me thinking about the 2 pairs of jeans that didn't fit me last November. I figured I could try them on to at least gauge my progress even if they didn't fit. I was happy to find that they not only fastened but I could zip them up and sit in them. Mind you, they're a bit snug and I haven't washed them yet so I'm sure I'll lose an inch to shrinkage, but this also tells me I lost about four inches! It just feels great to makes some progress and to know that if I keep this up, I'll have more than one pair of pants to wear. Stay tuned for more milestones to come!
Guacamole!
"Then there are foods that sound too humorous to eat. Did you ever hear of something too funny to eat? Guacamole! It sounds like something you wear to a dance. May I borrow your green guacamole?"
--George Carlin
Carlin at Carnigie Hall
1982
As funny as it may seem to comic genius George Carlin, guacamole is primarily made of avocados, considered one of the super foods by the likes of Men's Health Magazine and other sources.Although avocados have some fat content to them, it's the good fats, like in olive oil. I've been eating a lot of foods with olive oil and I'm losing weight. Now I can't say much for the pre-packaged guacamole you buy in stores, except read the labels closely and use your best judgment, but when you make it from fresh veggies and spices you have a great dip or sandwich spread that's much healthier than most. Only hummus or salsa can beat this stuff and that's saying a lot.
Ingredients
3 avocados
lime juice (I get the lime juice in the plastic lime shaped bottle)
1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 roma tomatoes, diced
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic
AVOCADOS
Much of what I mentioned in my Avocado Kale Salad recipe goes for avocados in this recipe. This time I got some perfectly ripe avocados and I took more photos.
Cut into the avocado from the top until you feel the pit and cut all the way around the pit.
Then, you separate the two halves and get one half with a pit. If it's ripe enough you can gently take the pit out with a spoon without taking too much avocado flesh with it.
Now when they're really rip you should be able to maneuver the spoon between the flesh and the skin of the avocado and work around until you take out all of the flesh at once. When you put it into the bowl, liberally squeeze some lime juice over the avocado to prevent oxidation (or browning). You should be able to repeat the same thing with the next avocado.
Now set aside your lime coated avocado and dice your tomatoes and onions.
SPICES
Now place your avocado into a large bowl separate from the lime juice, but save the lime juice. Before you add your onions and tomatoes add the salt, cumin,and cayenne. Take a hand potato masher and mash it up. I haven't tried an electric mixer. So if you do, let me know how it came out. Mash it up into a gooey mush with as few lumps as possible.
To the left is a 14 oz bag of cumin powder my roomie had lying around his kitchen. This is the most cumin powder I've seen in someone's kitchen. The 3 oz. jar to the right is the biggest container I've seen prior to the other one and that one was a cheapie at just over two bucks.
THE FINISH
After you have a good green mush add your tomatoes, onions, cilantro, garlic, and a teaspoon or two of that leftover lime juice you saved. Then stir it to a nice consistency. I used dried cilantro from the jar rather than fresh and it turned out just fine.
Another Kitchen Outlaw tactic I use is a jar of minced garlic. It saves time and keeps from having fresh garlic around to spoil. Fresh garlic is still the best but this isn't so bad.
Here's the finished product. I let it marinade in the fridge for at least two hours before eating.
Men's Health Magazine says this is the best kind of tortilla chip you can buy for the low calories and low fat.So this should be pretty good for dipping. Pita chips work well too.
I was 12 years old when I saw the HBO comedy special Carlin at Carnegie Hall and never laughed so hard at a comedian before. Even then, I knew the guy wasn't just a master of using filthy words but a true genius. I was lucky enough to see him live in concert before he died. It is amazing how he could breach topics both mundane and heavily political and make them equally funny.
A few things about me and this blog before I start with the first recipe. I hope to prevent mistakes about what to expect when reading Cookin' with Plaid. The first warning about me is I'm not a gourmet, nor am I fixated on authenticity. For those of you who have known me for years, know there was a time in my life when I was more like that, but I'm older and poorer and learned to be much more pragmatic about things. However, this doesn't mean I don't get fancy at all. Nor does it mean I refuse to use the authentic. That would just be stupid. I just do the best I can to make healthy food enjoyable to eat. Sometimes that means I have to make it affordable, I can't enjoy it if I can't buy it.
A further caveat, I think shopping with politics is a dead end street because I think could probably find something wrong with just about every food company in existence. I'm not going to live in a cave and hunt and gather in the woods for my daily food just because food companies won't be as perfect as I want them to. Actually I gave up radical politics years ago, I'm a confirmed city dweller and while history is interesting and quaint, I love technology too much to live in the past. So if you have a beef with modern technology or a certain company and are protesting it for some reason, good for you, but, generally, I don't boycott.
One more thing, as if that weren't enough, I plan to be intentionally anecdotal. As I write about my recipes and cooking, I'll include a lot of personal thoughts, ideas, and experiences. There's plenty of places to go for the straight dope on recipes. This blog is not a recipe encyclopedia. So, if you don't enjoy my beating around the bush, stop reading this now.
Tabbouleh! As dark and terrible as it ended, some good things came from my former marriage, (They had to I'm not that much of a masochist!) and one of them was my ex-wife introducing me to tabbouleh. According to Wikipedia, Lebanese tabbouleh emphasizes parsley and that's the way I like it. Before tabbouleh parsley was just a weird green thing on my plate at certain restaurants. I ate it occasionally and didn't think much of it either way, but I had no idea what a dynamite salad it makes. I found quite a few recipes on the internet and tried to get the one's closest to the tabbouleh I ate at Ferdo's or Tiger Bakery in Toledo. I got a few together and tried them out as they were written, then I tweaked them to my personal taste, budget, and ease of preparation. I also figured out what it takes to make a big ass bowl. So be warned this is for a big ass bowl of tabbouleh, like the kind of bowl tossed salad is kept.
Tabbouleh in a big-ass salad bowl!
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup of bulgur (cracked wheat) 3 roma tomatoes, diced 2 cucumbers, diced 4-6 green onions, chopped 2 bunches of curley parsley, chopped 1/3 cup of lemon juice 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
Preparing the Bulgur Apparently my home town Toledo, Ohio has a significant Lebanese population, so Lebanese foods are pretty easy to find, I used to get all of my stuff from the Tiger Bakery or Kroger. However, when I moved to Columbus a couple of years ago, and then, not too long after that, Cleveland, I found certain ingredients difficult to find. They're weren't completely absent, just not as convenient to find as it was in Toledo. So if you're gonna look for bulgur (cracked wheat) you may have some difficulty. Fortunately, they carry it in the "Mediterranean Foods" section of the Dave's Supermarket near my pad in Cleveland Heights. (Cleveland doesn't have a Kroger and I miss it so.) They have Ziyad brand burghul (another name for bulgar, but also conveniently label it "cracked wheat.") The package displays very clear instructions on how to prepare the bulgur and a decent recipe for tabbouleh as well. You may have to get your bulgur from Whole Foods or some other kind of health food store where they have it in bulk, It may be cheaper that way.
It's probably best to start making the tabbouleh with the bulgur because part of the preparation is having it sit for a half hour. First clean it by immersing the bulgur in cold water and changing the water a couple of times. The bulgur comes in tiny pieces and I suggest using a screen strainer to drain the water. A colander's holes are sometimes big enough for the bulgur to slip through. You might even lose some in your screen strainer but probably not as much. Then put it in a bowl and cover it with boiling water and set aside for at least 30 minutes.
THE VEGGIES:
I like clean veggies but I hate it when they're too wet. So when I thoroughly rinse the curly parsley I dry them by placing them between two towels, rolling them up like sushi and setting aside while I chop tomatoes.
Although the recipe calls for regular-ass tomatoes, I saw this nifty video on youtube that showed how roma tomatoes are better for dicing. You start by cutting off the ends and basically coring the gelatinous inner parts out. I also use the more solid parts of the core and scrape away the jelly stuff. The rhine and these more solid parts are easier to cut for dicing.
Just cut off the ends to the tomato, slip your knife in an cut out the core.
Here's the roma without the core.
Now it's time to dice them into d6!
Just throw your diced tomatoes into the salad bowl and chop some green onions. This makes enough salad that 4 to 6 chopped green onions should be good, they're no too strong and you can pretty much use the whole bunch as packaged in the produce department. I chop them into tiny little rings and throw them in with my tomatoes. Go ahead and stir it a little if you want. I like stirring as I go.
After all of that dicing and chopping the parsley should be dry. I unroll it slowly, then tear it by hand into pieces about the size of my index finger tip and throw it into my little food processor.
I picked up this little food processor on clearance sale at Kroger for ten bucks four years ago and I use the hell out of it.
I chop up the parsely in the processor for probably thirty seconds or so. Just as long as it takes to get the consistency I want. I like it chopped rather finely. Another preference I have is curly parsley. Most recipes call for the flat kind. I used curly parsley once because that was all I had. As it turned out I liked the curly better. When you're done chopping the parsley throw it in the bowl. DRESSING Most recipes insist on fresh lemons for their recipes. This is fine, but I hate juicing by hand. Since I figured that I was going to be making a lot of dishes with lemon juice (especially lots of tabbouleh) it wouldn't hurt to buy a bottle of Giant Eagle Brand lemon juice,
It's gourmet chef heresy, but I'm the kitchen outlaw and these work just fine for me.
Yes, that's Crisco Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It's not too pricey and tastes just fine to me. If you just have to have oil made from olives hand pressed by a cyclops on a remote Greek island that's your business!
Just add 1/3 cup each of the lemon juice and olive oil, then add pepper and salt. Okay, this is where I get a little fancy because I use fresh ground pepper and kosher salt. Actually, the ground pepper is from one of those disposable pepper grinders and I don't know why kosher salt is considered fancy, its not expensive at all and highly recommended by one of my hero chef's from Food Network's Good EatsAlton Brown. Go ahead and give it a stir!
THE FINISH!
When you return to the bulgur it should look like there's a lot more than when you started. With clean hands, scoop up some bulgur, squeeze it over the sink to release as much water as you can and throw it in your bowl. It gets your hands messy, but you really don't want soggy bulgur.
Now stir all the ingredients to spread them evenly as you can throughout the mixture. Cover your bowl and place in refrigerator to marinade for at least two hours. You may notice the salad gets a bit watery as it sets. I've seen this happen with every batch I've made and even with the tabbouleh in the delis and stores, so it's nothing new. You may want to drain a little, but it doesn't hurt not too. Stirring it before you serves it helps too. Tabbouleh is pretty resilient and tastes fresh even after a few days in the fridge. However, if your as big of a fan as I am it won't need to last that long.
You may notice that I don't include mint in my recipe. This may be another heresy committed by the kitchen outlaw, but I found that mint is expensive, it bruises and spoils easy, and doesn't contribute a whole lot to the flavor. I made several batches of tabbouleh without mint and I don't miss it.
One of my hero celebrity chefs, I love how Alton Brown combines cooking, science, history, and sketch comedy into his show Good Eats on the Food Network.
Positive and numerous responses to my posts on Facebook about my adventures in cooking inspired this blog. While many of the entries I make will be about cooking, recipes, and such, I think of it more as a very personal project about my recovery after almost a decade of health troubles. I struggled with stroke, heart attack, heart failure, depression, mental breakdown, arthritis, back injury, obesity, high blood pressure, and a few other things throughout my thirties. As of writing this entry I am just over a month away from turning 40. I thought I was looking at an early death. My back and hip pain coupled with serious fatigue made me think I faced a wheelchair or one of those Rascal scooters at least. My regrets in life became apparent and I thought a lot about what I would have done with my life if I had more time. However, just a month ago, I started getting better.
It probably had a lot to do with the hole in my pants. They had a small tear in the rear, but the hole went from being a rogue-ish rip to a complete ass blowout. They were the only pair of pants I owned that fit me. I didn't have the money to buy new ones at the time. Fortunately, my room mate quickly sewed a patch over the hole that night. Yet, I knew the patch wouldn't last. Not as a slight to her sewing skills but to the simple fact that my heavy weight makes for quite a bit of abuse on clothes, chairs, beds, etc. What pissed me off is I have two brand new pairs of jeans that I never wore because I'm too big for them. I ordered the biggest size I could find at the time and they were the same size as my current jeans. I guess my jeans stretched as I grew in size. Although I couldn't get the zipper all the way up on them. So, this made me decide to start eating healthier and seriously commit to losing weight. I know a million other things should have but I got some serious problems when it comes to things I should do.
Not too long after that, I made my first visit to my doctor in Cleveland (I moved here in February). We had a long discussion about my health history, my current status, and trying to make a better future. It lasted almost two hours. He had me take a blood test before I left. A couple of weeks later I received the results of the test in the mail and the results were very good considering what I was used to. My sodium, potassium, and sugar levels were good. I tested negative for hypothyroidism, which is a condition my mother has. Best of all, my heart failure is in check. The only bad thing is my cholestrol levels are high. Overall, this is great news. I hadn't heard such good news about my health since I started having these problems.
My next doctor visit was very positive. We discussed many things I could do to keep improving my health. A week from next Monday I have an appointment with a cardiologist and I'm going to get his opinion on what I can do for exercise. Another huge hurdle was I lost 8 pounds since my last visit to the doctor (I went from 373 to 365). Between problems with water retention and heart failure and my back and hip pain preventing me from moving around much, I hadn't lost weight in years. However, some improvements in my diet helped.
Not only that, but just less than a month ago, I noticed that a great deal of my back pain went away. I can stand and walk longer than I have in years. A few weeks ago, a friend wanted to take me on a tour of his neighborhood "Little Italy" here in Cleveland. I told him I would try walking a block. I did it with very little back pain and I didn't get nearly as tired as I'm used to. I haven't walked a block in years.
This thing started with healthy eating. I don't have much income so I started cooking my own dishes. My mom told me she saw on TV Dr. Oz say that parsley helps fight water retention, which is cool because I love tabouli (Lebanese parsley salad). However, it is exremely expensive to buy prepared. I decided to make it myself and as it turns out I can make a lot of tabouli for less than the price of one of those 8 oz. tubs you can buy at the grocery store. When I made my first batch it turned out so well I posted on Facebook about it and got some great feedback. Every time I tried new dishes I'd get the same kind of comments. Well, I find this very encouraging too. As a result, this blog is a tool for this same kind of motivation.
I'm not a formally trained cook but I come from a family that loves to cook. From helping my mom and my Nana in the kitchen at a very young age to having to fend for myself as a latchkey kid, I have cooked in one way or another almost all my life. I also learned quite a bit about cooking during my twenty year stint as a vegetarian. I see this as more of a way of sharing my experiences with food and better health so I welcome anyone's tips and advice. I will be somewhat confessional and frank in things I write about. I try to be open minded but I have some strong opinions about some things that may appear here. I don't mind some disagreement, but if you want to get nasty reserve your comments for somewhere else. I don't have a set posting schedule for this blog but I will try to post at least two times a week.
Bruce Lee has been a hero of mine since I was a kid. His life was short but amazing and he's a hell of an inspiration. I may not quite reach this physique but I'll settle for an approximation.
