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Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments
Welcome to French Food
Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food
and because I live in rural
France the stress will be upon French food. There are numerous posts
concerning life in France and, certainly,
opinions
about anything that strikes my fancy.
If
you have some good recipes or if you want to rave
about any great French
restaurants this
is the place to do it.
I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France!
Click
Here to send me a comment
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Low Calorie Dishes
I'm happy to say that I've been lucky enough to come
through my strokes with no discernable damage; so far at least. The
cardiologist gave me a clean bill of health yesterday. I'll still.
however, watch my diet carefully. I've managed to lose around 15 pounds
and an back at the weight I was at in my prime. I'd like to keep it that
way.
Thus, I've worked up a few low calorie dishes that
also happen to taste good. They're pretty easy to prepare as well so are
suitable for quick meals. Here they are:
- Mussel Pasta
Clean the mussels (about 1 to 11/2 pounds per person) then cook as for
Moules Mariniere .
That is you sauté finely chopped onion & celery in a bit of butter in a
deep pot. When they are soft add some wine & bring to a boil. Add the
mussels & cook at high heat until the mussels open. Shake every so
often. This should take about 5 minutes.
Drain the cooked mussels over a sieve into another bowl. Put all of the
juices from the mussels back into the pot and boil gently to reduce to
about 1/3 of the original volume. While is is happening & once the
mussels have cooled remove the 'mussels' from their shells. Keep as much
of the onion & celery as possible.
When the juice has reduced enough thicken it with roux or
cornflower. Boil up a pot of water for your pasta; then cook the pasta
until al dente. Add the mussel meat back into the reduced hot
mussel juice, then add the cooked pasta. Stir well & serve immediately
with parmesan cheese to sprinkle over.
Not only is this a delicious pasta its both low calorie & low fat.
Alcohol is eliminated by boiling the wine. If you want to be healthier
yet use whole wheat pasta.
- Tuna sandwich filling
Nothing too innovative about this, but its a great quick lunch. Take a
can of water packed tuna, open it & pour off the water. In a bowl put in
the tuna, some chopped onion or shallot, chopped Cornichons (or if you
can't find those use sweet gherkins) and some chopped celery. Add some
ground cumin, salt & pepper and just enough low fat mayonnaise to bind
the mixture. Spread the mixture over bread slices (your choice of bread
type) or for an even healthier disc spread the mixture on Swedish rye
crackers.
This both quick and nutritious. You can make a batch as it keeps well in
the fridge for a day or so.
- Fried apple & banana dessert
Dead simple, delicious and very low calorie. Allow one apple per person
& 1/2 a banana. Peel, core and cut the apples into a dice of 1/4 - 1/2
inch chunks. Peel & slice the banana thinly. In a frying pan on high
heat melt about one teaspoon of butter per apple. When the butter is
foaming add the apples and toss well to coat with the melted butter.
Sprinkle over a generous amount of ground cinnamon. Stir & toss the
apples until they just begin to brown at the edges then add the banana
slices. Continue cooking until the bananas start to brown.
Depending upon how "good" you want to be you can serve the mixture over
plain yogurt, sour cream or vanilla ice cream. For an extra kick
sprinkle over a bit of ground walnut.
This is very low calorie and very low fat and very delicious.
Those three are a start. I'm working on some more
recipes and would welcome any suggestion or contributions.
Should you try any of these please let me know
what you think of them.
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