International Low Fat Cuisine

from Vietnam and Italy- by route of the Costco magazine rack. :)

Actually, the caesar salad wasn't super low fat, but it was tasty! I did do the Menu 2 recipe using the Lemon-Grilled Chicken Breasts: the Hearts of Romaine Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken. It was a pretty quick recipe. I bought the hearts of romaine lettuce in a big bag from Costco- which I've not bought there before. It was a pretty good deal for 5 "hearts." The recipe calls for 2.

As for changes to the recipe, I used pasteurized egg whites instead of coddling the whole egg. (I didn't adjust the points, though it might have shaved off a little bit calorie wise? Probably put on again by my delicious President's Choice croutons?) I also- kind of embarrassing!- used lime instead of lemon, because I forgot that I used my last lemons for recipes the day before. It seemed to work just fine anyway. Garlic is the predominant flavour, so there was no telltale lime taste. Anyway, it tasted like an old-fashioned, home style caesar salad. I liked it, though dh thought it was a little garlicky. He's not crazy about garlic ( or a lot of things ). If you don't like garlic, you might want to cut back to 1 clove instead of 2. I liked the garlic kick.

The other recipe that I tried this weekend ( also from the August Cooking Light ) was Vietnamese Summer Rolls. I did a post on making rice paper rolls a while back- I'd done a Thai class with a gf. Anyway, I was totally jazzed to see a recipe in Cooking Light for these. They were really good. My only change to the recipe was that I didn't have bean sprouts- the 2 grocery stores I went to on Saturday were out-- bummer, since I love bean sprouts in these. This recipe, btw, doesn't call for any blanching of the bean sprouts, which we did at the Thai restaurant.** The picture I took of the rolls (which cracked me up, so I kept it) also includes my skim milk strawberry/ banana smoothie, my lunch on Sunday. It was a nice lunch, before a trip to the mall with my girls. :)

The nice thing about the rice paper rolling, is you could add any fresh veggie mixture and protein in them and they look so cute and taste so fresh. I also love avocado in them, too ( as I've gone on about before. ) I was thinking I might try some various lunch ideas with them- prepare the filling in the evening and roll the wrap in the am. I think they'd hold up a few hours anyway? Anyway, my lunches are usually pretty BORING, if I even make them at all (don't tell Blendergirl- she of the amazing packed lunches), so rice paper wraps would definitely be an enjoyable change ( from soup or a bagel *yawn*!)

In other weight loss news, I seem to be shedding some of my late summer gain. I did an extreme boot camp session after work today. There were only four of us, so we got a fair amount of instructor attention. (No hiding in the back of the room with shoddy technique!)