New Year, New Food

It's the new year! Time to put old things behind you and think about moving forward. For many that means new resolutions and promises to keep over the coming year. For my wife and I, this was no different. Our primary resolution was to eat healthier, expand our culinary horizions and try some different foods; to eat things that we don't normally eat.

I was greatly inspired by the cook, Nupur, over at One Hot Stove and her culinary marathon during the month of December. Why should we spend all this time looking at recipies, drooling over them, and bookmarking them if we're not going to give them a try. It seems pointless. So with her same courage, we are going to try and broaden our tastes, and eat new fruits, veggies and types of meals.

To start the project my wife and I poured over recipies for a few hours, looking for meals that were both healthy, and sounded delicious. We then dilligently arranged our picks into what we feel would be a good "meal plan" for the week and settled on the following:

Sunday - Greek Style Lamb Chops with Swiss Chard and Bacon
Monday - Stuffed Chicken Breast and Rice Pilaf
Tuesday - Barley Vegetable Soup
Wednesday - Meatloaf with Tomato, Zucchini and Mushroom Gratin
Thursday - Spicy Asian Marinated Beef and Asparagus Stir Fry with Rice
Friday - Roasted Chicken with Garlic Potatoes
Saturday - Shitake Chicken Stir Fry

We then made a corresponding grocery shopping list. The list was long, way long, but it was filled with items that we don't find in our fridge, cupboards or pantry that often. The grocery shop together was actually quite fun, and more like a scanvenger hunt, trying to find things like pearled barley, Asian five-spice, and swiss chard.

Tonight's menu was the Greek Style Lamb and Swiss Chard with Bacon. Both my wife and I are a sucker for Greek or Mediterranean food, but we're not much for thick leafy greens. I have to say that we were both very pleasantly surprised with how things turned out overall. I have never used the oven broiler alone to cook meat, but it did a perfect job on the lamb chops (minus the rolling smoke though the house from the melted fat). I'd definately recommend these recipes to anyone, and I'm sure that we'll eat both of these again, maybe soon.

Greek Style Lamb
Taken from the Weight Watchers TurnAround Program Cookbook. 4 servings.

4 lamb chops (bone in)
3/4 cup plain yogurt (fat free)
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and cut up
1/4 cup of fresh mint
3 scallions sliced
1 garlic clove
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
pepper to taste

1. Move oven rack to 3-4 inches below the broiler, and set the broiler to high for preheating.
2. Lay lamb chops out on a greased pan to come to room temp. Season with salt and pepper on both sides and place in the oven. Broil each side for roughly 5 minutes. This should keep the meat a nice medium. Broil for longer if you want the meat more well done.
3. In a blender, combine the yogurt, cucumber, mint, scallions, garlic, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and crushed red pepper.
4. Serve lamb chop with sauce from blender spooned on top.

Swiss Chard with Bacon
Taken from the Atkins for Life Kit. 4 servings.

5 slices of thick-cut bacon
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
3/4 lb. of Swiss Chard, washed and chopped into 1 inch strips
1/2 cup canned beans, pinto or navy
1/4 teaspoon of salt
pepper to taste

1. Cook bacon over medium heat in pan till crispy. Remove from pan.
2. In same pan, add garlic to bacon grease till it starts to brown.
3. Add in beans and swiss chard to pan. As the chard starts to wilt, add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Serve once beans have heated through.

I didn't make any modifications to the recipes, though next time I'll maybe add red pepper flake to the chard, and possibly a bit more salt. I'll also probably cut the amount of cucumber in the sauce for the lamb, as it was a bit too runny, even with the cucumbers being seeded. With each recipe making 4 servings, we had enough for lunch tomorrow, or possibly a late-night snack.

Try it! You might like it....or maybe you'll order pizza.