Today is an exploration of one of the more recent episodes of Good Eats: “Live and Let Diet”. This answers many questions from Good Eats fans about AB being ill/ not well… causing noticeable weight loss. Simply not true. 50 lbs down in 9 months sure ain’t bad… especially when you do it on a “steady diet of Good Eats” as AB did.
Now… if I can stick with this plan while completing this mission, I will be very shocked. But I’m certainly going to try. It might be a good combatant for all the heavy cream, butter… etc that Alton has me eating right now! Oh AB, how you confuse me… ‘here’s a book full of all my delicious recipes… now… don’t make them regularly.’ Oh sure, I know he never said make them all in one year… so I suppose I can’t blame him for my reckless decision.
He would never deprive us of his Good Eats… After all, his plan is “not about a diet in the modern American sense” (so, therefore… not about avoiding Good Eats). AB states that it is more about “taking it from the original meaning which comes from the Greek word Diaita meaning way of life.” In other words, taking these Good Eats and eating them with smarts.
He divides his eating plan into 4 lists:
Daily :
- Fruits
- Whole Grains
- Leafy Greens
- Nuts
- Carrots
- Green Tea
3 x a week:
- Oily Fish
- Yogurt
- Broccoli
- Sweet Potato
- Avocado
1 x a week:
- Red meat
- Pasta
- Dessert
- Alcohol (“That’s right kids, but one alcoholic beverage a week. I do make it a nice big one… a martini.” <– My drink of choice is AB’s too! Long live the dirty martini!)
NEVER (0 x a week):
- Fast Food
- Soda Pop (except club soda… that’s allowed)
- Processed meals/frozen dinners
- Canned soup
- “Diet” anything (Because after all, we’re not on a diet.)
And the big rule: Eat breakfast every day, no exceptions.
As I cook through your very own book, AB… I realize there are notable absences on this list, which appear in large amounts in The Book, such as:
- Poultry
- Eggs
- Butters and oils
- Potatoes
- White flour
- Milk (which he later says he doesn’t drink much of at all, but substitutes with Soymilk. Apparently, Soymilk includes much more protein. For AB, Milk brings up “personal demons” illustrated by a giant, sinister milk carton offering him some nice warm cookies. Haha. But what about for the rest of us? Can we drink milk? How often? Especially since, later in the episode, he says that Calcium is perhaps the most important chemical in losing and maintaining a healthy weight?!)
- … and I’m sure many more.
What about these Alton?! You can’t leave us hanging?! Afterall… a ‘diet’ in the American sense means that you need to tell us exactly what to eat… when to eat it… how to prepare it… and how often we’re allowed it!
He ends the episode with a nice dissertation on the key to making this work: discipline. “Discipline about what you put into the hole in your head.” By suggesting discipline, are you suggesting that we actually use… *gasp* common sense and self-restraint with unlisted foods?! You mean… I should know poultry dredged in white flour and pan fried in oil every day… isn’t the best plan? Even if you don’t say it? Bacon fried in butter every morning? Ok, ok… I guess I get it.
I may be using The Book for an unintended purpose. But, health is also about something called happiness… and to me, happiness is greatly helped by learning to cook an abundance of Good Eats, and sharing them with friends and family 
In conclusion, while AB’s plan isn’t fully comprehensive, it is a solid start and a great guide to transforming your general Diaiata, as he says. I think I’ll be well on my way!
[Hey, you! Have you signed the guestbook yet?!]
Today’s menu:
While I would advise against eating this raw, as I tried to do, apparently… this meatloaf, once cooked, is a complete departure 
from any and all meatloaf I had ever had. This recipe completely changed my opinion of meatloaf from “blech… why?” to “hell yeahhhh.”
Apparently Ben was excited to. I used my brand new probe thermometer to accurately read the internal temperature of the loaf. Fancy shiny new things If it’s possible to make cooking more fun, new supplies do it.
As for the Potatoes. Now, I have never been much of a fan of the potato in general. I have weird, very weird, dislikes when it comes to food. Eggs, blech. Potatoes, ew. Beans, double ew. For most of my life, I would only eat a potato if it had been somehow fried in oil (e.g.: latkes, potato chips, french fries… as long as they’re not too “potatoey”). However, I have come around in some ways. I will still throw Potato salad at you if you bring it near me… but I’ve come around in some ways. The Mashed Potato being one of them.
I would like to ignore all of the fantastically caloric aspects of these potatoes and just believe that they are wonderfully cooked and mashed potatoes. Buttermilk, heavy cream, garlic, kosher salt, 2 kinds of expertly mashed potatoes… oh man. This mission makes use of many high-calorie wonders. As alton said once:
Oh, hey, I said it was delicious. I didn’t say it was low-fat, okay?
Mel helped out with these… by helping, she knows she will get
to eat them haha. It’s quite a nice arrangement, I’m sure I get her wonderful help and presence in the kitchen, she gets good eats! Woo hoo!
All in all, the mashing and meat kneading resulted in a dazzling and 
hearty meal. AB stated:
When I was a kid, meatloaf was a necessary budget-stretcher and while it’s still a smart money play today, this is one I eat for the flavor.
Also, don’t forget to post yourself in the guestbook! I’m very anxious to know who all of these 100 hits a day are coming from…!
Click below, or on the “Guestbook” tab at the top of the blog to leave me messages! Upload your photo so I can see you / your food too! I would love to know who all these hits are coming from… Hooray!
Ok… so, in reality these recipes were completed and devoured about 3 weeks ago. Oy. Is it weird that the time consuming part of this mission has been the blogging? It’s somehow not the cooking/ shopping/ planning? I find that strange… but it is certainly true. I find myself with a back-up of recipes completed and no entries for them! Any suggestions from seasoned bloggers? I will be trying, as a new years resolution, to entry more…
Anyway… on to the good eats!
There is a long list of reasons that I would never become a vegetarian. A truly fantastic Steak, and McD’s Chicken Nuggets are at the top of that list… Not that they share anything in common, other than the fact that they are some kind of animal and make my mouth water in an unnatural way.
On tonight’s menu:
- Pan-Seared Rib Eye Steak
- Cognac Pan Sauce
- and… one that’s not in the book… but was included in the “Fungal Gourmet” episode: The Fungal Saute
All I can say, is this was one simply fantastic meal. I certainly learned a thing or two about cooking the perfect steak.
There was a major shopping win in this recipe. I found 2 fantastic, thick, beautiful rib-eyes at my new wonderful grocery store for FOUR dollars. I was pretty proud of that find, gotta say.
I will admit, that prior to this recipe’s completion, I had not prepared a steak anyplace but the grill. So, this was a welcome, and likely semi-permanent, change. I, frankly, see no reason to handle charcoal, lighter fluid, and sweat outside with this method in the wings…
Ah the pan sear. The smoke filled my entire apartment. And from what AB says, that’s a very good thing!
I also just simply love the fact that an absolutely fabulous steak is only approximately 5 minutes away from the time you puncture the plastic and take these beautiful hunks o’ meat out. Why not do this every night? I mean, $4, 5 minutes? Who needs to worry about little things like health… pft.
On keeping with the cheap theme… Why is Cognac so expensive? Now, I know AB uses it in several recipes in the book (as well as this fungal saute), and I’m SURE really good Cognac does make a sizable difference… but let’s face it, I knew I’d have to cut some corners somewhere. And here it is. I’m sorry, AB, if I disgrace you by using cheap, utterly disgusting whiskey/bourbon that only teenagers hiding out drinking in a barn in deep mountain Kentucky should posses… but, it was cheap. I’m not dropping 35 bucakroos on a liquor I’d only use for cooking. I will spend that money on plenty of other liquors I actually drink. I do like the irony of using the Harvard shot glass to dish it out. *giggle*
Also for this saute… I had to clarify butter. Never done that before… but hey, I actually succeeded! Looking at AB’s
directions for clarifying butter in the book… I got a little worried. I noticed as I was reading that I had adopted a very special facial expression. But, I eventually surrendered to the idea of taking it one step at a time, without truly understanding what I was doing at any point, and… voila! Success.
There was a general frenzy surrounding this particular night of cooking. I think it had something to do with the multitude of detailed directions and journey into the unknown of the butter… also, the timing-sensitivity of the steaks. 30 seconds! Flip! 30 seconds! Move to oven! 2 minutes! Flip! 2 minutes! Flip! Complicated by the fact that Ben and I like our meats cooked to different donenesses and the fact that my skillet only fit one steak at a time so the cooktimes were scattered… Let’s just say it was meaty, mushroomy madness, shall we? Phew.
All in all… cheap “cognac”, new techniques, and hoopla conquered! This meal was certainly good eats!
Holiday time in my family is considerably chaotic… what family’s isn’t, though, right? Well, we do Christmas and Hanukkah… Christmukkah… So that means lots of gatherings, and lots of parties, and LOTS of food! Seriously, I’m so full of food and sweets I almost can’t type this entry… annnnnnd it aint over yet!
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Hanukkah Party No. 1: 10-Minute Applesauce
Latkes and Dreidel with lovely friends! Of course, Latkes need two things to be at their very best: Sour Cream, and Applesauce. What’s that you say? Oh, AB has a recipe for Applesauce? That only takes 10 minutes? Woo hoo!
Cooking assistant Mel took the lead on this one as I fried many many Latkes and splashed myself with oil… Final product: Latkes, Applesauce, Sourcream, and some White Russians.
The problem I have with this mission so far is that my ability to eat canned or jarred foods is being slowly chipped away at… now Applesauce! I will have a very difficult time buying jarred Applesauce… 
apparently the spread was enjoyed by all: Mel, Ben, Jack, and Libby… taste testers!
And of course, no first-night-of-Hanukkah-midnight-latke-session would be complete without a drinking game centered around Dreidels we made earlier that night, out of clay. So here you have Dreidel of Death… a mix of circle of death and Dreidel!
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Hanukkah Party No. 2: Chocolate Lava Muffins
Any recipe including this much chocolate is a winner in my book. Just to be clear, I could have eaten this batter with a spoon, and been completely happy. It was exceptionally thick and scooped like ice cream, especially after we chilled it. But… Alton says to bake it, so, we baked it.
I think I was kind of put off by the fact that the muffins looked so “un-done”, that I kept baking them a bit past the time we should’ve. They were still mushy and cakey on the inside, but certainly not lava. They were delicious, warm and gooey… and the espresso sauce for the top… molto bene!
We drove them safely over to my Aunt and Uncle’s beautiful Gold Coast condo for a celebration! Here, they were certainly enjoyed…
Here we have Uncle Gregg holding some muffins… the muffins on their own… and Auntie Sheri with her lovely candles
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Event No 3… Family-ish Dinner: B & B Chicken and Vlad’s Very Garlicky Greens
Here is the introduction of a new cooking assistant! *sound trumpets* Mom! Here she is chopping some veggies for the B & B Chicken (Butterflied and Broiled, of course). And JJ, you were correct! Butterflying this bird was much easier than octo-secting the last one! Though, still not a walk in the park. 
Cooking in my mom’s kitchen has been pretty much blissful… you can catch a glimpse of all her beautiful appliances, cabinets, tiles, counters, etc… which, I might add, she put in all on her own! Such a beautiful space. And, cooking in it with her has been an even bigger treat!
New taste testers: Max (brother) and Melissa (his lovely girlfriend)! We enjoyed the two AB recipes along with a Mushroom Risotto I made for my Vegetarian Brother… which, I must admit, I had quite a bit of as well.
Delicious meal… I think I could eat those greens all day every day… I used Swiss Chard and Mustard Greens, rather than picking just one. Little variety!
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Holiday Dinner No. 4… Christmas Eve with the Jews!: City Ham, Marinated Broiled Artichokes, and Butternut Dumplings with Brown Butter and Sage
A record THREE recipes in one night! Woo hoo! It was a marathon… my feet still hurt…
The Ham, after 4 hours of ovening… pre crusting! I have to say, peeling layers and layers of fat off of this ham= one of the most disgusting experience I’ve ever had. Inside my head, I was vowing never to get lyposuction. *shudders*
Our puppy Lucy waits patiently for something, anything, to drop. I dropped quite a lot… unfortunately for her, it was mostly artichoke leaves. Ouch. And raw, not so yummy. I’ve done Artichokes before, but these ones were exceptionally spiny… ow! My fingers are still quite sore…
The dumplings were a joy to make. I would make that recipe again and again… not only is it just plain fun to make a few potatoes and a squash into beautifully boiled dumplings, they
taste amazing! After making these dumplings fresh… again… I’m not going to be buying as many of those pre-packaged Gnocchi.
The Ham… post-crusting of brown mustard, then dark brown sugar, spritz of bourbon, and finally packed handfuls of crushed gingersnap cookies. And, oh man, that smell… we couldn’t help stealing little bits as we finished the rest of the meal (as you can see from the “hole” in the top…)
As we finished the other two dishes…
we sat down at the table… for carving… 
and enjoyed!
It even ended in good eats for the dogs: Lucy and Maggie. Gotta do something with that bone
It’s become kind of a pattern now that I say… “Hm, I’m in the mood for such and such. I wonder if AB has a recipe in the book…” and usually, the answer has been yes. On a lazy, late-rising, Saturday morning last week, it was Pancakes.
This one let me knock out two recipes!
The Recipes for:
We decided to add chocolate and chopped almonds to the pancakes rather than the berries that AB recommended. While I love berry cakes… Ben does not, as much. So we opted for chocolate/ almond, which I have no problem with. For the record. My Gramps always made Blueberry Cakes for us in the mornings when we visited. So, I have a special thing for them. I will make them another time, since I have more Semi-Instant Pancake Mix!
I just don’t know how one can go wrong with pancakes, especially with wonderful things added into them… but, these were a perfect example of pancakes gone very right!
Oh my gosh… I swear, I wrote this entry more than a week ago… and have been too busy to finish it. Yikes. I apologize for my absence. But, in that absence I’ve cooked about 5 new recipes. So here go a string of entries in rapid (ish) succession.
So, post-Thanksgiving resulted in a completed recipe. A very successful one, I might add. But it was by no means the plan. The plan was this: After my family’s Thanksgiving dinner, 3 am black friday shopping extravaganza, 3-hour drive to other family, night in a hotel, and drive 3 hours back to the city the next morning… I was to meet my 
dear friend, Vanessa (left), at the train station downtown. We were to gather my other dear friend, Jessica, journey back to my apartment, set up card tables all pretty-like in my incomplete dining room, and make a feast for about 6 people. We had the Homemade Ravioli and Broiled Artichokes on the menu. Mmmm. Well, what we weren’t counting on is the viral plague. Not only had I come down with a sickness for the books (that still isn’t completely gone…), but so had Vanessa, and so had Jessica… who couldn’t even make it to my place, poor thing. So, needless to say, plan nixed.
Well… I thought I was just so smart with my plan B. I was all prepared to take my Mom’s Turkey leftovers and make some “Bird to the Last Drop” soup to cure us. I mean, come on! How perfect to have a recipe in the book meant for leftover turkey. Of course, I then realized that I was in Chicago, and my Mom’s leftovers were an hour north of Chicago. Fiddlesticks.
So Vanessa and I put our heads together, dragged our asses to Jewel and bought a pre-cooked chicken. We created the
Bird to the Last Drop soup not with turkey, but with its birdy cousin: chicken. Yes, Chicken soup after Thanksgiving. Sigh.
Now, I was planning on there being plenty of leftovers… there were not. We took down that whole pot of soup, as well as most of a gallon of apple cider.
“Turkey”, Long Grained Rice, Vegetable Broth, Thyme…. and I got to use my home-created Old Bay Seasoning again! Glad I saved the extra from the Catfish Au Lait. We were skeptical about the use of Vegetable Broth in our cure-all soup… but boiling the “Turkey” carcass in the broth created a kind of veggie-bird-broth hybrid.
This pot of soup was simply amazing. Something about that soup was just completely magical… Vanessa and I both agreed that there was just something about it that we couldn’t place. I finally decided that it almost had the aroma and tang of a very sweetcurry. It must have been the addition of the Old
Bay, something neither of us usually uses in our soups. This soup confirms my sneaking suspicion that AB is some sort of evil genius… now imagine if it’d been with actual Turkey!
Before I begin, I must take an oath… “I, Ashley, will never again eat canned, jarred, or any other type of pre-prepared-store-bought pasta sauce as long as I am able to chew.”
2 recipes in 1 dinner!:
Talk about a lot going on in the kitchen… The broiling tomatoes, the other components of the sauce, the salad, the pasta, the croutons, some garlic bread… my goodness. It was a whirlwind. I was only left with one severe burn…
I successfully broke in the broiler in my new apartment. According to AB, the broiler is the most underused appliance in the American kitchen… and I am a perfect example of this. Turns out, broilers get pretty darn hot… so hot in fact that the heat from a pan that has been, say, holding broiling tomatoes, goes completely through oven mitts. Also turns out, this transfer of heat from roasting pan, through mitt, to hand creates one pretty nasty, painful burn.
Eggs Boilin'
Fortunately, I had my eggs for the Caesar dressing in their ice-water bath in which I could plunge my singed hand. So that worked out nicely.
This sauce required “all-pantry” ingredients (Pantry Raid!), so no fresh tomatoes: canned whole tomatoes. I like AB’s justification for using canned tomatoes rather than fresh:
Oh, I know some of you are shocked that I would make tomato sauce with canned product, but riddle me this: If you had a nice fresh, ripe, tomato off the vine, full of summer goodness, rich with perfume- perfect- what’s the last thing you would do to it? If your answer isn’t “cook it,” then you don’t deserve that fat vermillion orb in the first place.
My pantry/refrigerator included almost everything for the sauce (white wine, sugar, red pepper flakes, oregano, basil, carrot, onion, celery, olive oil, garlic, capers, salt and pepper). However, there was one key ingredient that I lacked: sherry vinegar. Now, I don’t know where (on what planet/ in what grocery store) this stuff exists, but I couldn’t find it.
How, I ask you, out of THIS aisle of vinegars… this MASSIVE selection… AND after checking 2 other stores’ aisles… could I not find it?! I want to know.
I asked people, I googled on my phone, I called Ben from the store so he could google it on a people-size computer. No dice.
After 3 stores and much frustration I gave up and bought White Wine Vinegar and Sherry White Wine. I used equal parts of each and called it a day.
I don’t care… it tasted amazing. The sauce was a perfect mix of heat and sweet. It completely and utterly shattered my ability to enjoy a quick pasta dinner slathered in microwave-warmed sauce out of a jar.
The salad… I now understand what a disgrace the Caesar salad I purchase for lunch at the cafe in town is… no more of those! Also, homemade croutons… like a different food. I could eat those like potato chips.
Final dinner of awesomeness: 
I believe I might now be at peace with a grocery store. It would be difficult to explain what an accomplishment this really is. I’ve been shopping like a mad person for a place to shop at. I’ve been looking for that perfect place… a place that doesn’t make me crazy with lines of angry people, overpriced mediocre produce, an absence of ethnic foods/ spices, limited selections of meats, or is an hours drive away… I’ve been looking for a place that gives me new ideas about what to create and allows me to easily get what I need for Alton-creations.
To be clear about how many places I have tried:
- Jewel. 3 different ones. A car ride from my apartment… crowded as hell… crappy produce… a worker who didn’t know what leeks were when I asked for them… just, not the right place. I also always feel like I pay way too much for what I leave with… and I just feel very generic shopping there. I don’t know. Not right.
- Trader Joes. Now… there are some things I really like about Trader Joes. I like how I feel when I shop there… small, never crowded… What produce they do have is usually good quality but turns bad VERY quickly… which, for a girl shopping for one, is a pain. And I just can’t deal with the fact that they have no selection of meat beyond what is frozen. Yeah I can go somewhere else for that. But sometimes, two-stop shopping doesn’t cut it.
- Garden Fresh Market. This place is Mecca for me… I have to say. I would shop here every day if it weren’t an hour away from my apartment. Whenever I’m in the suburbs visiting my Mom, I will shop here… but otherwise, it’s just a hike. If anyone in the Chicago area lives near one of these though… just think every ethnic product ever made. Every kind of produce you can imagine. And a meat counter that runs the entire length of the store. Yeah, it’s the shit.
- Whole Foods. I call this place “Whole Paycheck.” … ‘Nuff said.
- Dominick’s. This is the fancy Northshore grocery I previously spoke about. The one I stood muttering to myself in while searching feverishly for Crab Boil Whatsit. Anyway… it’s nice… but it’s pricey… and, I just cant shop with all the Northshore women. I just can’t. (If you’ve seen Mean Girls, think the “cool mom”. See my point?)
- Grand Foods. In the wealthy Northshore town I teach in. Think “Whole Paycheck” prices… and full of Northshore people. I just don’t fit in. I also run the risk of running into my students here.
- And finally…. Lincolnwood Produce. I think I may have found it. Exceptional produce at exceptional prices. It is a miniature (but certainly not too miniature) version of Garden Fresh, but it’s on my way home from work! I decided to try it out one day and wandered around for over an hour… I found, among other interesting finds, tripe, lamb hearts, amish-made butter, about 50 kinds of infused oils, chopped liver of several kinds, monkfish… I had to control myself, which is usually a good sign.
The kicker here: I estimated my total as it would usually be… and I came in about $40 under my estimate *Happy Face*
Ok, so I know I’m totally slacking on entries, but I plan to catch up very soon. I have about 3 more recipes to enter. Let’s just say it’s been a crazy work week… additionally, I’ve been nauseous and sick for about 5 days. Feeling like that doesn’t quite put you in the mood for adventurous eating. Or eating at all really. But, I assure you I am back!
