Thursday, January 8, 2009

400 Calories or Less

In an ongoing quest to work through some of our leftovers and aging pantry/freezer items, tonight was another quest to see what I could quickly throw together after work.



I started with a simple salad. I marinated some leftover tofu in some of the Seggiano vegan pesto we had left over in the fridge. I topped the salad with a few pecan halves and sliced shallots.



For the main course I carmelized some shallots with a little garlic in a tiny amount of olive oil. I sliced up some crimini mushrooms, cooked them down a bit, then used the juice they released to steam some chicken breasts. On any normal day I may have hit that sauce with a touch of butter to thicken it up, but not today. I just added a little white wine to finish off the very simple sauce.

Since I don't live in some magical part of the world this dish was notably lacking some desperately needed fresh herbs, specifically thyme and sage. I didn't bother using their dried counterparts. I just wasn't in the mood.

Along with the chicken I repurposed some of the goat cheese, cranberry, and apricot raviolis as well as the remaining butternut squash from last night.

Jen ran the tape and figured out that the whole dinner was only 376 calories. None too shabby. We figured out that if we had cocaine instead of dessert it would serve a dual purpose: 1.) It has 0 calories (I think). 2.) It would curb our appetite thus resulting in an ingestion of fewer calories overall. It's a pretty sound plan.

I think we're really getting the hang of this healthy cooking thing. Now we just need a supplier.

1 comment:

Sandy said...

The idea of you two eating low calorie meals is fairly ludicrous! I hope you had some unhealthy, fattening dessert later.