{"id":29,"date":"2008-01-11T02:31:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-11T02:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/?p=29"},"modified":"2008-01-11T02:31:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-11T02:31:00","slug":"dinner-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/2008\/01\/dinner-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinner Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I got home from work tonight with no idea what I was going to make for dinner. Again my criteria is low fat, lean protein and good complex carbs\/vegetables these days. I really have a hard time planning and rarely follow recipes. I usually just forage around the kitchen for ingredients and try to throw something together. Tonight it turned out to be curried chicken salad. I didn’t set out to make this but it evolved as I was putting ingredients together.<\/p>\n

I started by chopping up some raw broccoli into small bits. I was thinking of making some kind of salad out of it. I grabbed a carrot out of the fridge and diced that up to. Ah, there’s garlic on my counter so I chopped up a clove of that and threw it in. I wanted some flavor so I went the fridge and found a jar of dijon mustard. In went a tablespoon. It needed some zing so I splashed in a tablespoon of rice vinegar. I also seasoned with some salt and pepper. I needed some complex carbohydrates. Fortunately I still had some cooked mixed grains that I have been using for everything lately. In went a half cup. I thought I had my salad all ready and I set my mind onto what kind of protein to serve with the salad. I had a chicken quarter leftover from the stewed chicken I talked about a few days ago. But how to serve it? Ah! Let’s just throw it into the salad. Tasted ok but it needed a tablespoon of mayo just to hold everything together. But . . it needed something else. Bingo! Madras curry powder. Last but not least was a bit of dried cranberries. Voila! The evolution of dinner.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s not all. While I was foraging around the kitchen I spotted an eggplant just begging to be used. Now, I love aubergines. I usually slather them well with olive oil. Not that olive oil is bad for you but I need to cut the fat calories down right now. So, how to make a non-fat eggplant dish? Would it taste ok? The answer is yes! I sliced them into thick slices, laid them on a sheet pan, seasoned them with salt, pepper, dried oregano and garlic powder. I then spooned a couple tablespoons of simple canned tomato sauce on top. This was baked in a hot 400 F oven for about 20 minutes until the eggplant was soft and well cooked and the tomato sauce had cooked and caramelized a bit. This was topped with just a touch of fresh grated parmigiano reggiano and melted for just a few minutes more in the oven. Just a touch was enough to flavor it nicely. I have to say it turned out full of flavor and delicious. Who said low fat lean cooking can’t taste good?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Oh, and I’ve lost 5 pounds so far in 2008!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got home from work tonight with no idea what I was going to make for dinner. Again my criteria is low fat, lean protein and good complex carbs\/vegetables these days. I really have a hard time planning and rarely follow recipes. I usually just forage around the kitchen for ingredients and try to throw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[61,60,62],"class_list":{"0":"post-29","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"tag-curried-chicken-salad","7":"tag-eggplant","8":"tag-leftovers","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greginnd.com\/gregcooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}