Fresh salad with chive flowers

Am still searching for vegetable recipes that are tasty and do not include butter, cream and/or cheese. Today's salad, made with fresh chive flowers from the garden, fits the bill. In addition to chives, the salad contains arugula, and fresh cilantro from the garden. Chive flowers are delicious.

Exercise

I had a private session with Josephine Connolly yesterday. My weight is still three pounds above my current goal. We agreed that I need to start thinking about losing another 10 to 15 lbs. In the meantime, I will enter my weight into an excel spreadsheet each day, so that I will be able to generate a graph for my next session. Have also agreed to start some strength training with weights to improve the muscles in my arms. I intend to follow the regime suggested by Vicky Hallet on June 2 in the Washington Post, to try to develop Michelle Obama arms. The exercises are:

Triceps kickback: Leaning slightly forward and holding a dumbbell, extend your arm straight behind you. Bend at the elbow and repeat.

-- Skull crusher (or French press): Lying on your back, hold your dumbbells straight up in the air, then lower your hands to near your ears while keeping your upper arms still.

-- Dip: Sit on a chair, then scoot your butt off while gripping the edge. Lower your tush a few inches and push yourself back up.

Your secret weapon for looking tops in a tank is creating what West calls "a rounded, coconut shoulder." (You know what she means.) For that, try these:

-- Overhead press: Holding dumbbells with bent elbows on either side of your chest (so your arms and head form a "W" shape), raise the weights to the ceiling.

-- Side raise and front raise: Like it sounds, you grip a dumbbell and -- with a straight arm -- lift it laterally or in front of you.

-- Reverse or rear fly: Hinge at the hip so your torso is pointed toward the floor, and hold the pair of dumbbells straight down. Then, raise the weights to the side (as if you're flapping your wings) with your elbows bent slightly.

So far I can only do 10 reps of each exercise with 5 lb weights. Hope to do more as the days progress.

A Simple Fish Chowder

Delicious supper tonight. A simple fish chowder. Made with 1 lb of tile fish cooked for 5 minutes in a vegetable broth, 1 lb of potatoes, a few chips of slab bacon to saute the onion, skim milk, a dab of homemade yogurt and fresh parsley from the garden. The chowder will be divided into 6 portions, three of which will be frozen.

Recipe for red cabbage

I haven't been cooking much recently and there has been a head of red cabbage in the refrigerator for several weeks waiting for me. Tonight I finally prepared my favorite red cabbage recipe. It comes from an old cookbook by Pierre Franey entitled: Low-Calorie Gourmet. My cookbook falls open to this recipe because I have made it so often.

It is as follows:

1 red cabbage cut as thinly as possible with a mandoline
1 large apple peeled and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon of butter
1 large onion chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon of dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 cup water

Melt butter in butter in a wide pan and saute onion for 1 minute. Then add the sliced apple and the cabbage and saute for 5 minutes stirring. Add the salt, pepper, and brown sugar. Add the water and vinegar and cook covered for 30 minutes with occasional stirring.
I find that the quality of the wine vinegar can make a difference in the final taste, as does the quality of the apple . The recipe makes 6 to 8 servings, depending on the amount of red cabbage used.

Homemade Yogurt and Peach Jam

The picture is of a serving of homemade yogurt made with 1% milk and a tablespoon of peach jam.

Salt Cod Bouillabaisse

A bit of a nutritional surprise this evening. Last night I prepared one of my favorite soups. It is a bouillabaisse that is made with dried salt cod. I prepared it with 1 pound of salt cod that had been soaked in water for two days, one pound of boiling potatoes, onions, leek, garlic and tomatoes and two tablespoons of olive oil. It was flavored with a large pinch of saffron. I divided the the soup into 6 portions and assumed that each was equivalent to 2 proteins, 1 carb and one fat and 1 vegetable. The soup shown in the photo was supper tonight. It also contains a few garlic croutons made with homemade bread. Along with a nice tossed salad this made a delicious, filling, wholesome, and low calorie (so I thought) supper. To my surprise, when I calculated the nutritional analysis of the soup (shown below), the caloric content was considerably higher than I expected. This is due to the fact that dried salt cod has 3 times as many calories as fresh cod! So,I am going to divide the remainder of the soup into 7 rather than 5 portions and will no longer consider this dish a low calorie fish dinner. However, I still think it is delicious and healthy since it is so low in saturated fat.
To see the details of the nutritional analysis click on the image to view an enlarged version.