I Finished My Book!!!

I finally finished my most recent project and it is available for distribution. My Book, “An Introduction to Coffeepot Cooking: How I Lost 101 pounds with Portioned Controlled Meals”, is now available from Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

The focus is not on the food I ate, but the commitment that I made to my family to lose weight so I would avoid another premature death in the family. I would like to say that the entire process was driven by their love alone, but secondary influences included a stroke and a disc replacement surgery both caused by my being too fat for too many years. At $2.99 this little book will hopefully be a guide to others who are obese and need to shed a few pounds. It took me 65 years to recognize that there are no secrete diets, magic pills or special foods that will make you lose weight and become healthy.

My Ebook for Kindle

In writing this book, I came to understand that there were only three changes in my life that led to the loss of 101 pounds in a fairly painless manner spread over 2 years. Here’s the secrets if you want to call it that:

1. Eat less all day and for dinner.
2. Drink fewer calories whether it’s beer, wine, liquor, juice, soda or smoothies.
3. Exercise more, at least 20 minutes every day and an hour or more a few times a week. (the hour can include heavy yard work or work on your home.

Now that you know the secrets, I hope you still buy the book whether for yourself or a friend. I started this process while morbidly obese and out of shape and have encouraged others who were even fatter than me and in worse shape. Fortunately, I had daily encouragement from my family and weekly assessments with positive and sometimes critical reminders of the need. I also looked positively on the help I received from my Creator who reminded me with my minor stroke and the need for a disc replacement that I had to take care of my body and the gift of life if I wanted to keep enjoying myself for as long as possible.

For those who don’t have a Kindle reader, you can get a free one for your PC, laptop, tablet or iPad. computers and still buy the book. I will post follow-ups as the book becomes available for other electronic media and in print

Giambotta, Italian Stewed Chicken

Giambotta, Italian Stew?

I am indebted to Maria Pitella for reminding me of this meal and I never knew that Giambotta meant Italian Stew. My Mother-in-Law and her Brother were both born in Italy and my wife was a great Italian cook as were her Mother and Aunt. Now the family all favored every type of pasta with red sauce or very good meat as her Grandfather and Uncle had run a Butcher Shop. The red sauce would have seafood or three types of meat, veal, pork (or sausage) and beef (usually meatballs or Braciole).

My wife never made this stew and for good reason. She liked her chicken barbequed and beef, in any recipe including stew. On rainy days, you could almost count on beef stew and on the very rare occasions that she made this, I am not sure if she made it in an Italian style or an Irish style and she simply called it chicken stew. But this is the way Dolores made it with the principle difference being the inclusion of carrots and thickening the gravy with a rue.

Chicken Stew:

Ingredients:

1 potatoes peeled and diced
2 carrots coined
1 1 piece mild Italian sausage sliced into chunks
1 boneless chicken breasts sliced into strips
2 T cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 oz rum
1 small red bell peppers sliced
1 medium onions sliced
1 stalk celery cut into small pieces
1/4 tsp of oregano
1 Bay leaf

1 bullion and 12 oz. Water
cold rue (1 T butter 1 T flour )
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Mix a tablespoon of room temperature butter with a tablespoon of white flower until smooth set aside.
2. Precook the carrots for an hour in a foil covered coffeepot using about 1 tsp of salt with the cut up carrots and potatoes to the coffeepot and passing 8 cups water through the coffeemaker portion prior to covering with foil. Save and set aside.
3. Put everything else into the empty coffeepot and cook covered for about 2 hours.
4. Add the potatoes and carrots and run 12 oz of water through the coffeemaker.
5. Give the pot about 1 hour for the carrots and potatoes to get hot.
6. Decant the broth a little at a time into the rue until all the liquid is mixed with the rue. Return it to the pot. Serve when ready.

This was very good but more than a meal for one person but not quite enough for two unless I used more potatoes. That means I had leftovers because I didn’t plan ahead which I definitely try to avoid having around. The only way I am winning “The Battle of the Bulge” is by waging my constant “War Against Leftovers.” In this case I got rid of them by eating them as a snack the next day. They were quite good.

Even Better Bok Choy

Good, better, best.
Never let it rest.
Until your good is better
and your better is best.

Cooked Bok Choy

With all the Bok Choy in my garden, I had to keep searching for a low sodium way to prepare it or else keep giving it away. I found this recipe over at allrecipes.com and there are a few differences other than it calls for no salt at all. With a cooking time of 15 minutes, it is a lot longer than any of the other stir fry recipes I had seen. It also includes capers, vinegar and lemon juice to essentially give this bland vegetable some more flavor beyond the ginger and garlic. Well of course I wasn’t going to buy red wine vinegar just to test the recipe and with a lime tree outside my kitchen door, I thought it senseless to buy a lemon when I use lime for every recipe that calls for lemon and like the taste. So with these very minor changes, the Bok Choi turned out excellent and I will be eating more of it and testing other low sodium recipes with a little longer cooking time.

Ingredients:

6 big leaves bok choy
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup water
1 T capers
1 T minced garlic
1 T minced fresh ginger root
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 dash fresh lime juice, or to taste

Method:

1. Remove the leaves from the stems of the bok choy. Cut the stems into bite-sized chunks and shred the leaves.

2. Heat the olive oil in large skillet over medium heat and add the stems to the pan

3. Cook the bok choy stems in the oil until slightly tender, about 3 minutes.

4. Add the water and chopped leaves and cook until the water is gone or about 10 more minutes.

5. Stir in the capers, garlic, and ginger and cook 1 minute more.

6. Sprinkle the vinegar and lime juice over the bok choy and remove from heat;

7. Serve immediately.

I used this as a substitute for my mid day salad and am planning a smoked turkey and Bok Choy dinner now that I find I prefer the taste of well cooked bok choy.

Pollo en Escabeche – A Zesty Chicken Dinner

Pollo en Escabeche - A Zesty Chicken Dinner

In my last post on Pollo en Escabeche, I mentioned a Goya recipe that looked attractive and for the most part, I followed their recipe with only a few minor changes. What attracted my attention was that their meal was definitely served as a dinner and not just an appetizer. Well I just had to give it a try to see how their presentation compared to mine.

Ingredients:

1 chicken breast, skinned and deboned.
1 packets Sazón GOYA con Azafrán
1/2 cups Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 medium onions, thinly sliced and separated into rings
2 carrots, coined
2 T crushed garlic
1/2 tsp. Paprika
1 bay leaves
½ tsp thyme
3 whole cloves
1 thin slice scotch bonnet pepper
1 T Spanish olives
1 oz dark rum
2 oz Lime or Lemon Juice
2 oz Balsamic Vinegar

Method:

1. Wash chicken with lime and sprinkle evenly with Sazón.
2. Add oil to the coffeepot and add all ingredients except rum, vinegar and chicken.
3. Cook about 1 hour until onions are glazed add rum and chicken. Cook covered until done. Minimum of 2 hours but can be up to 8 hrs.
4. Add vinegar, stir and serve.
5. I served the chicken hot with brown rice and used the oil blend as gravy for the rice.

Actually, I think I like this better than the appetizer Pollo en Escabeche that I previously published. Even though it used the same ingredients, it just looks more like a dinner.

Bok Choy and Flowers

Flowers and Panas en Escabeche

Last week the winds brought down partially ripe breadfruit from a tree and I got 3 of them. Now breadfruit is one of those items that is best eaten in the green phase as when ripe, it gets a very sweet taste and has the consistency of custard  I am not fond of the ripe ones. Even green it is not a popular vegetable in the Virgin Islands but gets more popular in the Eastern Caribbean. When I was in St. Kitts last summer a friend prepared Breadfruit Plantains and they are fantastic.

They are essentially fried and when cooked for only five minutes they are according to my granddaughters who did not know I made a switch with regular white potatoes, the best French Fries they had ever eaten. When they are cooked for 15 minutes or so, they turn a golden brown and get very crispy like a potato chip. I like them both ways and have been know to over indulge since you start with a whole breadfruit weighing about four pounds and you can fry another batch ever 5 to 10 minutes.

Since I had three breadfruit to play with, I started searching for other recipes. It seems the first recipe I found was called “Soused Breadfruit” which I had never heard of nor could I find it anywhere on the web other than that one recipe. But in the West Indies, most souse recipes call for Vinegar and oil which is the basis for Puerto Rican Escabeche so I expanded my search for Panas en Escabeche.

Essentially, these is just like the Green Banana salad (Escabeche de Guineos) previously published. You dice the Breadfruit after pealing and discarding the seed. The breadfruit cubes are boiled for about 20- to 25 minutes which makes them soft to a fork. All of the other ingredients are added to the bowl and tossed.

This time I had green and red bell peppers so I used both. Also I had a cucumber that I wanted to use up so, I pealed it and sliced it very thin with a cheese slicer and added that to the salad. It was a pretty good salad  but not as good as “the Best French Fries ever.”

So what has this got to do with Bok Choy? My friend Gloria loves Bok Choy and at 90 pounds is not worried about salt and high blood pressure from traditional stir fried recipes which are really quite good.  Gloria Powell (www.antilleslilies.com) is a event florist on St, Croix heavily involved in working with tourists who want to get married in a St. Croix celebration.The solution, I made a trade of my excess arugula and Bok Choy for her gift of flowers. She also bought me a glass of wine.

Colorful Hash

Colorful Hash

I have been visiting over at Audrey Can Cook since January of this yer when she caught my attention with a recipe for blintzes. For those who don’t know, these crapes, when used as a dessert, are stuffed with a sweetened cheese filling. Now I am not big on desserts, but her focus is on small portions whether it’s a meal or a dessert so I keep going back.

In March, she had a very simple recipe for Hash and the only substitution I made was to use a yam instead of a white Irish Potato. Seems I didn’t have any potatoes on hand and didn’t feel like making a special trip to the store so I used ½ of a medium sized yam which is still larger than a normal potato. While this may not be traditional, the hash turned out excellent.

Ingredients:
1/2 Yam, cooked and cubed
1 carrot, coined
1T olive oil
1 piece Italian sausage remove meat from the casings
1 small onion, rough cut
1 bell pepper (red), diced
1 T garlic, minced
1/2 tsp cumin
salt & pepper to taste

Method:
1. Pre-Cook Carrots and Yam. (Put coined carrots and cubed yam in coffeepot with tsp salt. Run water through coffeemaker to heat up and let drip on yam and carrots. When done dripping, cover with foil and cook for about one hour. Drain and remove from pot and hold for later.
2. Cook meat, onions and garlic in 1T of olive oil about 1 hour
3. Add peppers to the pot and cook covered for one hour
4. Add cooked carrots and yams to the pot, cook covered for 2 more hours.
5. mix well and season to taste

As the picture shows, this was a colorful combination and the next time I cook it, I will stick with the yam. The other advice I would give for this simple flavorful meal, is to make sure you get the best sausage you can find. A lot of the flavor comes from the spices in the sausage and the fat gets adsorbed by the vegetables. So good sausage will give you a good hash.

Good Bok Choy

Bok Choy Bed

The Bok Choy in my garden is even healthier than my arugula which is so thick, I could harvest it with a Machete. To bad I’m not overly fond of Bok Choy because most recipes taste good but are heavily loaded with salt which I try to avoid. I started searching for low salt recipes and found a few and decided to move from the least complex to more sophisticated to see if I really liked any of them.

The following recipe was inspired by a recipe from steamykitchen.com where they start to build up the flavor with the addition of ginger and chicken broth with salt to taste.

Stir Fried Bok Choy

Ingredients:

4 large leaves

3 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 T crushed garlic, finely minced

1 T grated fresh ginger

1 tsp sesame seeds

4 tablespoons chicken broth

salt to taste

Method:

This is a typical stir fry with the oil, garlic, ginger and sesame seeds added to my fry pan and stir fried for a minute or two after the pan starts sizzling.

The stems are added to soften for a few minutes and then the broth and chopped leaves are added and stir fried until the leaves wilt.

Serve immediately and add salt to taste.

The Bok Choy still needed salt but at least I was in control.

Arugula Party Dip

I am not quite done with my detox but I am satisfied with the results as I am now about 5 pounds in 14 days with no suffering or exotic pills, packaged meals or special exercise. I am also nearing the completion of my book. For those who would like to follow my daily activities, I post on Facebook.

During my detox from Alcohol, I still eat and exercise and during those periods of procrastination from sitting at my desk, I seek out and cook, new meals. The only reason I don’t usually report on the recipes is that it takes even more time away from my primary goals. This recipe is simple and involves no cooking so as I return to normal on Wednesday, I am taking the time to post it.

For those who don’t know, arugula (rocket) is a peppery kind of lettuce which I happen to like. It is also another one of those green vegetables which is growing like a weed in my garden and as I was surfing the net, I stumbled upon a Spinach Dip Recipe at Eat at E’s. Since I don’t have spinach growing wild, I made note that I would probably try the recipe using Arugula.

Chef Enes said to let him know how it turns out because he likes Arugula but had worries that it might yellow with age. Well the dip never turned yellow because it was gone in two days and it was good. I am not sure if it was as good as the original as I left out the salt, was generous with the red pepper and cut back on the Mayonnaise and substituted Dijon mustard to reduce the fat content. I always modify recipes to reduce fat and salt. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t. This time it did.

I am glad I made the trip to Eat at E’s because his recipe inspired me to try this dip recipe which turned out quite well and added more flavor to my vegetable snacks.

Arugula Party Dip

Ingredients:

1/2 cup packed fresh devained arugula

Top of 2 green onion chopped

1/4 tsp pepper

2 T mayonnaise

2 T Dijon Mustard

2 T sour cream

1/2 tsp lime

sprinkle red pepper flakes on top

salt to taste

Method:

1. Place all ingredients in blender except for red pepper and salt.

2. Blend on low speed

3. Serve with fresh vegetable.

This is one of those recipes that should be prepare 5-6 hours in advance to smooth out the flavors.

Happy Easter – A week of Reflection!

This is my third detox from alcohol in the past two years. I normally only drink red wine and the amount is steady at just shy of one bottle a day. Occasionally on vacations, I start with a few mid day beers, which become institutionalized after vacation and lead to a weight gain. Allegedly, two glasses of wine is healthy and a bottle is not evil. However, mixing beer, wine and rum and drinking above the limits of two glasses a day will have definite long term effects other than just weight gain. Whenever I reach the point of accepting my bad Holiday Habits as the norm, it is time to break the habit with a detox. 

Daily reports are published at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Coffeepot-Cooking/

The first week report is acceptable, down 4 pounds and I intend to do better this week now that I am not tied to my desk and I intend to get caught up on my yard work. It will be hard to lose more than 4 pounds because that will drop me to 172 which is a very acceptable weight. Amazingly, I don’t find it hard to give up drinking and the change does not effect my sleep patterns as I have slept like a bear in hibernation all week.

The biggest issue is the lack of socialization for the week. Living alone, is not healthy and my normal workaround has been to enjoy a couple of glasses of red wine with a compatible group at the Palms Resort every evening. I have coffee there in the morning but then after that the next period of socialization is cocktail hour which I look forward to. When I detoxed in the winter my biggest issue was a feeling of deep loneliness. Well it is spring in St. Croix, so it is warm enough to go swimming and every afternoon, I have gone to the Palms for a swim and human interaction. The only thing I have missed is certain people.

Because it was Easter, there was an obvious workaround. John and Sally are religious in a very none judgmental sort of way. There religion is personal and so they don’t preach or promote. Still, Sally occasionally teases me about joining them. I called her and invited myself to an Easter Sunrise service and we had a pleasant morning before, during and after the service. There were many people I knew and it was a nondenominational sunrise service so other than John and Sally and a couple of other close friends, no one else knew that this was my first totally voluntary non-obligatory church attendance in my adult life.

Not sure if this will ever become a habit but am not entirely opposed to a sequel.

Temporary Suspension of New Recipes

I am about ¼ of the way through a 16 day detox where I skip all alcohol and eat healthier foods including lots of nuts, no sugar and more green vegetables. I wont be posting new recipes for the next two weeks but if anybody wants to see what it takes me to quit alcohol, eat healthier, lose 6-10 pounds, drop inches from my waist and relapse with occasional bad choices, you can follow my actions, ask questions and even criticism my bad choices as I track my daily activities at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Coffeepot-Cooking/388614061149768. I am already down an inch on my belly, and 3 pounds in the first three days and no, I don’t suffer. Tonight is fried chicken thighs and fried seasoned yams. Will be happy to hold even in weight tomorrow but plan on a 6-7 mile walk so I can afford the relapse. Also I have no set goals but somewhere around 172 or a permanent 8 pound loss would be nice.