Awesome 5 Points Plus Stuffed Peppers

I made these with my diet in mind, but they don't taste low fat. They were awesome! Panko is a good low fat binder, and the chicken sausage and mushrooms added lots of flavor.

14 oz. sweet italian chicken sausage, raw in the casing (Sprouts has great ck sausage)
1/4 c. panko bread crumbs
1 egg
1/2 an onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup shredded or chopped cabbage
6 large mushroom caps, stems and caps, diced
1 large carrot, shredded fine
2 cups cooked jasmine rice
salt and pepper to taste

In large skillet, empty sausage casings, onions, and add half cabbage and half mushrooms. Saute til the meat is no longer pink. In a mixing bowl, mix bread crumbs, egg, other half of mushrooms and cabbage, salt, pepper, and garlic. Once meat mixture and cooked rice have cooled a bit, add to cold mixture and mix well. Stuff each pepper, pushing the mixture down with a spoon to ensure you fill each pepper all the way. Cap each pepper with foil and grill over low heat, about three minutes each side, until firm but not crunchy, with slight char marks on all sides.

4 Hour Body - New Diet, Fun Cooking Challenges

I'm sorry about the gaps in this post. Blogspot is doing that and I can't figure out how to make it stop:(

I have always sneered at fad diets and nutritional pseudo-science, but I recently came across a diet that piqued my interest. The 4 Hour Body Diet comes from a book of the same name that covers everything from weight loss, to weight gain, to incredible sex and all-around super-human-ness. In other words, it looks like a total load of crap at first glance. But the geekiness of it appeals to me. Tim Ferris goes into enough nutrition science to choke a horse, though I have no idea if any of it is valid because I am not a nutritionist. But it's something, and I'm out of patience with counting calories, going to the gym, and falling off the wagon over and over. The book claims you can lose 20 pounds in a month follwing this diet, which I know is not technically healthy. I don't care. I'm a bit of a person of extremes, which is why slow and steady has never worked out all that great for me. So I'm swingin' for the branches again. Whee! Here's how it works: 6 days a week you are allowed only veggies, lean protein, and legumes, but on day 7 you can eat cheese pizza all day and "drink a keg by yourself if the spirit moves you" as the author states. You can eat a lot of good food with meat, beans, and veggies, and it's a fun cooking challenge for me. You're allowed butter and oils in moderation, as well as nuts, and even red wine in moderation - another big deal item for me. So stay tuned! I will post my recipes, my weight loss (not my weight), and my cheat day gluttony. 4 Hour Diet here we go!

Day One:

You're supposed to start 5 days before your scheduled cheat day, so I should have started on Monday (my cheat day will be Saturday). I didn't have any food or any money on Monday though, so I had to eat the leftover chicken strips I had. I was able to scrounge up some grocery money by Wednesday, so Wednesday marked Day One. It started out well enough. I had juevos rancheros with pinto beans - delicious! Then a Nathan's hot dog, pork and beans, and corn for lunch. Kind of a mish mash of leftovers and not the best, but mostly allowed foods. I think corn is actually not, I have to check. I snacked on hummus and pb with celery throughout the afternoon, then went home. Here is where my dieting weakness begins. Work is structured, Not Work is generally chaos. I had a meeting that I had made weeks earlier at The Black Sheep Lodge. I had no money, and didn't want to pay for an expensive meal at Black Sheep, but I was hungry and didn't have time to go home and cook (Lesson One: Cook ahead). So I cratered and went to P Terry's for a burger and fries. Having already cheated, I went ahead and drank a couple of beers too. Day One, not so great. Still, I am kind of seeing this first week as a practice run and I'm working out the kinks.

Day Two:

Breakfast: Huevos rancheros, carrot sticks

Lunch: Romaine salad with cherry tomatoes, pan seared chicken breast, pepitas, almond slivers, and balsamic vinaigrette

Snacked on throughout the afternoon: Carrot sticks with pb, Topo Chico and pickled okra, half a boiled egg, a little pan seared beef liver, couple of cashews, a few berries from the gum bumelia tree outside. So far so good...

Dinner: Chopped steak and onions, refried beans, beer (oops!)

Volunteering at the Central Market Cooking School

I'm all about a job with perks. At my full time job, I get to harvest veggies in season from our beautiful show gardens. At my part time job, I get a free shift meal every shift of delicious, made from scratch Italian food. At my volunteer gig, I get credit towards taking cooking classes, I get to learn how to make all kinds of food, and then I get to take it home, including the butter and chocolate croissants and a whole quarter pound of ready-to-bake chocolate dough we made today. Sweet!

My Favorite Valentine's Day Meal, Revisited

I made this recipe, and blogged it, last year on Valentine's Day. It is so delicious, and I love taking such an earthy, under-appreciated root veggie and making it into something so romantic and pretty. I did a few things differently this time. I marinated the cubed beets in lemon juice, salt, and thyme (rather than lime juice). I also diced them tiny instead of cubing them. For the cream garnish, I used Fage yogurt blended with blood orange juice and white pepper and folded into a little olive oil. I also omitted the cream, because I totally forgot it. I left the skins on a few of the beets, and I am not sure I will do that again. When you are popping them in your mouth, the skin lends a nice roast-y taste, but it goes a little bitter in the puree. Snack on the little ones with the skin, and peel all the other ones for the soup. This year, I also made enough to share, which is the best way to make food taste better. Happy Valentine's Day y'all!

Jack Allen's and Austin Rocks

When I want to show someone Austin, my mind goes first to food. Recently, an old friend of mine came into town with his band, We Were Wolves. They played a great show, as always, but had to go back home almost immediately, as they all have jobs and responsibilities back in Beaumont, where they're from. I was disappointed. I wanted to take them to Hoovers for the ultimate hangover breakfast, or to Perla's for a high-living lunch, or to Jack Allen's for the most rock n' roll pork chop I have ever seen. Maybe next time. All this talk of food and music has me gearing up for SXSW though. I think I am going to volunteer this year. One day in music, one day in film, and one day for a caterer sounds about right. I love my home city:)

Pizza Night

Working the farmer's market, you get a lot of recommendations from other vendors to try so-and-so's such-and-such. I, for instance, pimp out the sauerkraut from Straight From the Vine to everyone who will listen, because it is about as close to heaven as pickled cabbage can get. More than one person has told me that Full Quiver has some of the best cheese they have ever tasted, so I finally grabbed some mozzarella Saturday. I made pizza dough last week and needed some of that stretchy, gooey stuff to go on top. I was not disappointed. It was creamy, flavorful, and just the right texture, plus I knew it was made right here in Central Texas. The rest of the pizza consisted of chicken, green olives, and mushrooms from Lewis the Mushroom Guy, also at the Barton Creek market. It was a big hit with my roommates and house guests, and a definite repeat.

El Meson

El Meson, my new favorite Mexican restaurant, is on South Lamar catty-corner from Olivia's. The interior is a clean, simple beautiful, with an open kitchen set against a backdrop of blue tile. The food is simply amazing, and the only thing more amazing is that it is priced like a regular Mexican restaurant, when it is clearly heads and tails above the rest. Everything is incredibly fresh. The flavors are bright and un-muddied, crafted by obviously very skilled hands and served with love. The house margarita is delectable - no hint of the unnatural, cloying sweetness of a mix; just lime, sugar, booze, and salt. They have traditional offerings (fantastic enchiladas), as well as unusual, such as the huitlacoche quesadillas, a delicate dish of fungus wrapped in creamy cheese and soft corn tortillas. Words don't really cut it. Check out the pictures to whet your appetite, and get down there yourself!