What’s Cooking?

It’s been a few weeks since I spent some quality time in the kitchen. My freezer is empty, and the fridge is stacked with sad little containers: a wilted cup of sauteed cabbage, a re-used deli contained that holds about 2 ounces of dry-looking chicken breast, a Glad container with a breakfast-sized serving of pork chops that I think I made last weekend… maybe.

Between the half marathon two weeks ago and my crazy work schedule, I’ve been limping along with boring food that’s kind of cobbled together to make a proper Zone meal. And that just makes a foodie like me feel deprived. Dave and I call it “churchmouse syndrome,” i.e., there’s so little food around I feel like a poor churchmouse.

So today: HEB. And tonight: a fridge stocked with healthy deliciousness.

Here’s what’s on my cooking menu for the day; recipes and photos of successful dishes to come:

Beef Chili
Made with extra-lean ground beef and two secret ingredients (1 bottle of Shiner Bock Lite and a little cocoa powder)

Baked “Spaghetti” Carbonara
This is my experimental recipe for the day. I got a fresh shipment of tofu shirataki noodles this week, and found a Weight Watchers recipe for carbonara that uses turkey bacon. I’m going to noodle around (heh) with the recipe to make it Zone-friendly and see what happens. Cross your fingers.

Cauliflower Poppers
Caulifower oven-roasted with cumin and chili powder. Tastes great as-is, or can be mixed with some Greek yogurt to make a creamy side dish.

South Indian Curried Tofu
I was whining the other day about how I have a delicious recipe for curried chick peas that I really don’t want to make anymore because the serving size of chick peas on the Zone is just too small to make it worthwhile to me. And my genius friend — I’m pretty sure it was Stacey — said, “Duh. Make it with chicken or tofu.” Done.

Morroccan Meatball Stew
I have a sizeable collection of cookbooks because there’s always one recipe that jumps out during a browse-through of the book and requires me to purchase the damn thing just so I can have that one magical list of ingredients and instructions. This is one of those recipes: delicious little meatballs that taste great heated over a pile of julienned vegetables or cold as a snack with some fruit.

Mixmix Bibimbap
Dave and I were invited to participate in the taping of the TV show “Downtown” last May and during the course of the day, we ate a Koriente, a sweet little Asian restaurant just off the punk rock mecca of Red River Street. On their menu is a perfect Zone meal that is so tasty, it single-handedly makes the argument that eating healthy really can be delicious and fun and feel indulgent. Mixmix Bibimbap is a silly-to-say name for something pretty basic: small mounds of delicately julienned cold, raw vegetables — like carrots, cucumbers, red bell peppers, green cabbage, and red cabbage — mixed just before eating with warm chicken or beef and tossed with a light, spicy dressing. I skip the rice that comes with it and add some avocado for healthy fat. Is that not delicious-sounding? And look at it; so pretty!
In addition to these fancier contributions to my culinary adventures this week, I’ll also be prepping standard stuff that I always need on-hand to compose our meals: a head of cabbage, French-cut green beans, red grapes, strawberries, and chicken breast for breakfast.

Right now, I’m going to make a cup of tea and call my mom for a Sunday morning visit. Then… time to get cookin’…

What are you nourishing yourself with this week?