Grilling chicken with rosemary and lemon is such a classic, you can;t go wrong making it this Labor Day. And here’s a new take on it that involves grillings leeks to give the chicken an added flavor dimension.
Rosemary, lemon and chicken are a natural, and tasty combination.
Shrimp is always a nice change-of-pace to build a meal around. I’m always looking for new recipes that include shrimp, such as one with fennel and cucumbers I wrote about. So I was attracted to this recipe I found on CookingLight.com for steamed shrimp and watermelon salad.
A wonderfully simple shrimp, fennel and cucumber salad
I always enjoy watching Giadi De Laurentiis’ cooking shows, even though she often uses more fat or salt than I can eat on my restricted diet. But this recipe for stuffed zucchini and peppers caught my eye because it uses ground turkey instead of ground beef.
True, it calls for dark meat turkey, which is the highest inf at of any turkey meat. But you can easily substitute lean to extra lean ground turkey to cut the fat substantially.
I normally grill zucchini but I may try stuffing them next.
Having ketchup in here surprised me too, I’d say use it or not to your taste and if you do use it, use a salt-free, low-sugar variety.
So, the ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, grated
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
1 large egg
3 tablespoons ketchup
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup grated Pecorino Romano
1/4 cup dried plain bread crumbs
1 pound ground turkey, preferably dark meat
2 zucchini, ends removed, halved lengthwise and crosswise
If, like most of us, you’re doing more homecooking during the Coronavirus pandemic, you’re liekly running out of new recipes at this point to give some variety to your daily meals.
The American Heart Associaiotn has a free cookbook available, Cooking in Color,that could help with that dilemma.
Among the recipes in the book, which you can grab as a PDF by clicking here, are:
Fruit Kebabs
Tomato and Ricotta Toast
Teriyaki Salmon with Cauliflower Rice
Couscous-Stuffed Portobello Mushroom Caps
Grilled Cuban Mojo Pork Tenderloin with Plantains
Orange-Glazed Turkey with Potatoes and Carrots
Of course, you’re still on your own trying to find the ingredients you need amidst increasing sparse food stroe shelves but hopefully this book will give you some ideas to vary your menu.
The trick to keep salads from getting boring for those of us who eat a lot of them is to mix up the variety of items to add to the basic lettuce. This salad, using bibb lettuce along with radicchio, and asparagus, popped up recently in a Cooking Lightemail I receive and I thought it sounded worth sharing.
Ingredients are simple and easy to prepare (leave out the salt as we usually advise):
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons honey
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (who needs this)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 cups thinly sliced radicchio
1 cup diagonally sliced asparagus
1 head Bibb lettuce, leaves separated and torn (about 6 oz.)
I keep on eye on the New York Times for recipe ideas, but usually what they feature has too much salt, fat or sugar for my needs. Such was the case when I recently received a Times email entitled 72 Recipes You Should Make This Fall.
The Times suggests serving this chicken over polenta, I’d do it with a side of green beans or asparagus.
Looking through them, I didn’t see many heart-health choices until I came across this chicken braised in two vinegars recipe. The Times uses thighs, high in fat, so I’d substitute breasts and leave off the salt mentioned as something you can add for serving.
Pasta is always a favorite for me, although these days I eat only multigrain pasta because of my heart issues. I normally make my own tomato sauce to avoid high-salt processed alternatives. But occasionally, I’ll try something without a traditional tomato sauce, like this fun-sounding dish, Sicilian Swordfish Pasta With Eggplant and Tomatoes.
Rigatoni with swordfish, eggplant and tomatoes.
Swordfish is a relatively healthy fish when it comes to the type of fat it contains, but eating large amounts of it could cause other problems since it’s a fish that can contain high levels of mercury (sorry, every food seems to have its ups and downs healthwise doesn’t it).
The recipe is fairly simple to make.
Step 1: Fry the Eggplant
Step 2: Infuse Oil With Garlic
Step 3: Add Swordfish and Cook
Step 4: Add Tomatoes, Wine, and Herbs
Step 5: Add Eggplant, Then Finish
For all the details, simply click here to go to the site where I found this recipe.
One of our many no salt, no sugar recipes. We cut the salt and sugar to a minimum, along with the fat.
That meal included low-salt turkey, green beans in a balsamic/olive oil glaze and asparagus roasted with low-salt panko breadcrumbs and low-fat cheese.
Cooking Light often has great recipes, some of which I’ve shared on my recipe page. It’s daily e-mails try, as do many others, to come up with the most provocative subject lines imaginable to get us all to open the newsletters. Recently that included trying to piggyback on the popularity of NBC’s This is Us series.
I found the whole thing goofy enough to blog about it, so indulge me.
The Jan. 27 Cooking Light newsletter came with the subject line “Can Your Crock Pot Really Catch on Fire?” This just after the This is Us episode where a faulty pot burns down a house (if you’re a fan, as I am, you know the rest. I hate that neighbor now, don’t you?)
Clean eating crock pot chicken is a favorite of mine. My wiring is fine.
I chuckled at the topic line not only because I saw it as Cooking Light shamelessly putting out some clickbait tied to This is Us but also because I can just imagine the poor reporter who was assigned that story having to call around to get comments for it.
Zucchini is one of my favorite vegetables to grill. Normally I just spray on some olive oil and some Italian spices and leave it at that, eating it as a side dish for such main courses as swordfish, tilapia, salmon and Fourth of July cookout favorites.
Zucchini on the gas grill, basted with olive oil and Italian spices.
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 