South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Up: May 2008

Photo of Haricot Vert with Shallots
by Smitten Kitchen

Once again, it's time for an end-of-month round-up of tasty South Beach Diet phase one recipes I've posted on Kalyn's Kitchen or managed to find on other food blogs during the month. I'm always surprised at how many tasty phase one recipes I see. I sometimes find recipes where just a slight change can make the recipe suitable for phase one, so those changes are noted. Today is the first day of summer vacation, and I'm actually starting phase one myself today, since I've been doing some definite over-indulging during the last few months of school. (The way you can get back in the groove by doing phase one for a few weeks is one reason why I love the South Beach diet.)

Please Give Generously to Help a Fellow Food Blogger

(Note from Kalyn: I'm posting this to help publicize a wonderful fundraiser being organized on behalf of Briana Brownlow from Figs With Bri. Bri is undergoing cancer treatment, and the goal of this loving effort is to raise $12,000 to help with costs for one year. Fundraising activities are being coordinated by Jai and Bee from Jugalbandi, Manisha from Indian Food Rocks, Garrett from Vanilla Garlic, and Shankari from Stream of Consciousness. Below is their message outlining several ways you can participate in this campaign. Please make a donation, and keep Bri in your thoughts and prayers.)

Whole Wheat Sesame Noodles with Spicy Peanut Sauce

The last few days of school are pretty tough on teachers, so I wanted to get this posted in case I end up spending the next few nights on the couch instead of blogging. Luckily I've got some of these delicious sesame noodles in the fridge to get me through it! When I read on Everything Rachel Ray about how Madeline used whole wheat spaghetti to make spicy sesame noodles, I told her I would be making this dish. I love Madeline's blog, even though I think this may be only the second time I've ever made a Rachel Ray recipe. I know the uber-successful and bubbly Ms. Ray has her critics, but personally I think RR deserves a lot of credit for inspiring a whole generation of young women to cook at home. So hat's off to Rachel for this quick, easy, and absolutely delicious recipe, and I do see why Madeline says this is one of her favorites.

Chicken Pesto Salad with Roasted Red Pepper and Peas

I think the most creative way of cooking is when you use leftovers that have been hanging out in the fridge and turn them into a new dish you really enjoy. Maybe this love of a leftover challenge is one reason I'm also prone to reinventing my favorite recipes, with slight variations based on the things I have on hand. This salad is a reincarnation of the Leftover Chicken Pesto Salad I made last year, but this time I added a jar of roasted red peppers and a bit of lemon juice to brighten the flavor. Both these salads were a great way to use rotisserie chicken, especially if you also have leftover pesto or homemade pesto in the freezer.

Recipe Favorites: Grilled Lime and Chipotle Pork Chops

(Updated May 2008) It's Memorial Day Weekend in the U.S. which is the unofficial start of grilling season! Last night my friends Robin and Ann came for dinner and I made these delicious grilled pork chops, using a recipe I first posted in 2005 (before I entered the digital camera age!) My friends are pretty tolerant about letting me run into my office and snap a few photos, so I'm updating the recipe with a photo. (The photos were taken in a hurry when I was really more interested in enjoying dinner, but I hope you can still tell how delicious these pork chops were!) The marinade includes my beloved trio of ingredients, lime, cilantro, and Chipotle chile powder, so it's definitely one of my Recipe Favorites too.

Recipe Favorites: Mushroom and Feta Breakfast Casserole

(Updated May 2008) Mushroom and Feta breakfast casserole is something I've been making for years, and mushrooms and feta cheese are probably all you have to hear to know this is absolutely one of my Recipe Favorites. Earlier today I made this casserole you see in the (updated) photo because I had a guest for breakfast! Genie from The Inadvertent Gardener stopped for a night as she makes her way across the country headed for California. I met Genie last year at the 2007 BlogHer Conference, and it was fun sharing dinner at The Red Iguana and a quick breakfast with her before she got back on the road.

Wilted Spinach Salad with Edamame, Red Onion, and Black Sesame Seeds

It's nice that spinach is one of the most nutritious foods, because there are so many interesting ways to eat it. I'd probably like just about any salad that had spinach, but this one has edamame and black sesame seeds, two ingredients I'm really loving lately. If you haven't tried black sesame seeds, go to the nearest Asian market and get a big package of them, then have fun sprinkling them on everything. (I store them in the freezer, which is also a good idea for regular sesame seeds.)

Recipe Favorites: Rosemary Mustard Grilled Chicken

(Updated May 2008) Saturday night I had a wedding shower for my beautiful niece Kristen and I made this rosemary mustard grilled chicken, the same grilled chicken I've made for so many other family wedding showers. This is my *signature* grilled chicken recipe, something I've been making for years, so it's certainly time to make it a Recipe Favorite on the blog (not to mention a new photo!)

Warm Weather At Last - 2008 Garden Update #4

In late April when I posted my last Garden Update, I was excited to have vegetables planted so early in the season. Turns out I was overly optimistic about the weather, and I lost five of my tomatoes, plus a few cucumbers, squash, and peppers. About three-fourths of the plants did survive the freezing weather though, so I'll probably continue to be an early-season planter, especially since my garden has a fence on three sides and this is the first year I've ever had major frost damage. The healthy celebrity tomato plant above didn't seem bothered at all by the 26 degree temperatures, even though a plant right next to one this was completely dead.

Utah Blogging Friends

(This started out years ago as list of all the food blogs in Utah.  Then the number of blogs exploded, so now it has turned into a list of Utah blogging friends.  To see a more frequently updated list of Utah food blogs, check The Hive blog.)

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Oso Fresh Food Storage Containers

The first time I saw this brand of Oso Fresh Fresher Food Containers in a big set at Costco, I was intrigued but highly skeptical. Made by a company called Lifestyle Innovations, the containers are EPA-registered and FDA-approved polypropylene food storage containers which have microscopic silver particles in the plastic. The silver particles reduce the growth of bacteria, so the containers keep food fresher three or four times longer than other containers.

Mango Lassi Recipe

Last summer I added *drinks* to a category in the recipe archives for Kalyn's Kitchen. Even though I mostly drink (far too much) Diet Coke with Lime and (not nearly enough) water, I figured that some day I'd want to post a drink recipe. Big drum roll for this Mango Lassi recipe, which came from The South Beach Diet Taste of Summer Cookbook, and was so delicious and refreshing when I was hot and dirty after working in the garden. Lately there's been a lot of gardening and not much cooking going on around here, which is another reason I'm posting a drink recipe! There should be a fun garden update coming this weekend.

Grilled Halloumi Salad Recipe with Chicken, Mini-Peppers, and Lemon

I've always been passionately interested in trying new foods, and when I started reading food blogs my list of things to try got a lot longer. Several years ago I heard about Halloumi cheese, and I was eager to taste this type of salty goat and sheeps milk cheese that can be grilled or fried. Unfortunately I couldn't seem to find Halloumi in Salt Lake, so I just put it on my "try when traveling" list.

Remembering My Mother (and hearing her words come out of my mouth!)

My mother died in 1998, so Mother's Day brings me a lot of memories. My family had ten kids, and because I was the oldest I had frequent opportunities to practice mothering, and for years I said I was never going to have kids myself. Then when I was old enough to realize how much kids can add to your life, circumstances never did cooperate for me to be a mother. Instead I became a teacher, a job where you get to do some of the most intense part-time mothering imaginable.

Grilled Pork Chops Recipe with Soy Sauce, Cumin, Lime, and Oregano

May is National Barbecue Month in the U.S., and I'm always happy when it's time to start cooking things on the grill. I decided to break out my grill a few weeks ago with this new recipe for pork chops spiced with cumin, lime, and oregano, but by the time I'd marinated the pork chops for a few hours, the weather in Salt Lake was so cold I ended up cooking them on my stove-top grill pan instead. Now the weather is finally cooperating, so planting things in the garden and grilling are on the agenda for today!

Stir-Fried Tofu Recipe with Scallions, Garlic, Ginger, and Soy Sauce

I've enjoyed tofu many times when I've had it in restaurants, but when I wrote a post recently for BlogHer.com about Tackling Tofu, I confessed I'd never cooked it at home. I've been determined to try it though, and last weekend I made this delicious stir-fried tofu using my new wok, and a recipe I adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, a book I just couldn't resist at Costco! Tofu is so fantastically South Beach Diet friendly, and this was so delicious, I can see there will be a lot more tofu dishes in my future.

Recipe for Farro with Mushrooms, Thyme, and Balsamic Vinegar

I'm accumulating a lot of cookbooks, and sometimes I just don't get around to trying anything from them, even when the recipes look great. That's been the case with Lorna Sass' great book, Whole Grains, Every Day Every Way. I've been reading this informative book for months, but this is the first thing I've cooked from it. The book has gotten me interested in many grains I'm not familiar with like farro, spelt, amaranth, and millet. I wanted to try farro for months, but I couldn't find it anywhere in Salt Lake, not even Whole Foods! Then my generous brother Rand got some at the Ferry Building in San Francisco and sent it to me. (I loved the flavor of farro when I tried this recipe, and once I had my hands on some, I did find the same brand of Organic Italian Farro by Giancomo Santoleri at Amazon.com, hooray!) You can also make this recipe with brown rice or barley if you don't find any farro where you are.

PastaQueen's Book Tour Starts Here!

Losing weight is not easy. Everyone who's struggled to lose a few extra pounds knows that. But what's really hard is losing a significant amount of weight, and making a lifestyle change that keeps it off. Jennette Fulda (aka PastaQueen) is a young woman who's used the South Beach Diet and exercise to lose more than half her body weight, documenting her progress with the charmingly engaging blog Half of Me and inspiring readers who are struggling with their own weight loss efforts.

Shrimp and Avocado Salad with Edamame, Cilantro, Chipotle, and Lime

In Utah the gardener's rule is don't plant your tomatoes until after Mother's Day. I've tempted fate for years by planting earlier, and since my garden has a nice tall fence on three sides, I've been able to get away with it. Of course, when you break rules you get caught eventually, and after temperatures below freezing two nights in a row, I'm mourning the loss of about half the tomato plants I showed in the last garden update, plus a few other things I had planted during the week. (Yes, I know I should have used Wall-of-Water!) Luckily all the herbs are fine, and a few brave seeds are coming up despite the cold.

After such a sad couple of days in the garden, I needed something seriously comforting to eat today. I had shrimp and edamame in the freezer and combined them with avocados, cilantro, and a Chipotle-lime dressing to make a great salad that took my mind off the garden, at least for a while. I loved the crunch of the edamame in this, but if you don't have those in your freezer, this would still be a great salad without them.

Kalyn's Kitchen Picks: Spike Seasoning

(Updated May 2008) Recently I created an archives page for all the posts I've written for Kalyn's Kitchen Picks and was surprised to realize I'd never written an official pick for Spike Seasoning. I did find a post back in 2005 where I'd written about Spike, so I'm just updating that post here instead of cluttering up the interwebs! Truly my love for Spike has not wavered during that time, despite some of the anti-Spike comments (which are still there from the original post.) Spike has been sold for more than 50 years, so I think it's safe to say I'm not the only one who likes it!