The DIY Diet

This is another comfort food, perfect for cold, snowy, winter days.

I used to make it often for my friends in the makeshift kitchen I assembled in my two-room Bachelor Officers’ Quarters suite in Anchorage, Alaska.

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Quiche isn’t as popular as it once was. I don’t remember when I last saw it on a restaurant menu.

To me, it is one of the most elegant fall lunch or brunch entrées you can prepare.

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Crudités — a pretty fancy word for raw vegetables with something to dip them into.

Crudités make a nice low-calorie lunch, especially during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season when many of my evening meals are going to have high-calories items, like Christmas cookies and other delicious holiday desserts.

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I learned to make fried rice from my Okinawan-heritage sister-in-law.

She taught me to start with sautéing the vegetables requiring the longest cooking time.

I always had trouble in the end when all the ingredients were at last in the large frying pan.

When I tried to stir the mixture, the rice, meat, and vegetables would fall over the edge of the pan onto the stove. I had to figure out a better way for me to do it because I love homemade fried rice. This recipe is the technique I developed.

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Grilled, wild Alaskan salmon is my niece’s favorite seafood, so when she was coming to Minnesota for a visit I wanted to make something special for her.

I’d originally encountered this recipe on Alton Brown’s informative and imaginative Food Network show Good Eats. The name of the recipe was Salmon Fillet en Papillote with Julienne Vegetable.

I made the entrée according to the recipe once, then I began making changes to meet my needs. That’s why I now call it Salmon and Vegetables Baked in Parchment. I eliminated the snow peas, the coriander seeds, and the vermouth called for in the original recipe and reduced the salmon from an 8-oz. fillet to a 4-oz. fillet (277 calories). I also wanted to oven bake it rather than prepare it in the microwave as Alton Brown did.

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Quesadillas are nice low-calorie luncheon choices if you use the low-calorie tortillas available now days. I buy the Whole Wheat Low-Carb/Low-Fat Tortilla, Original Flavor by La Tortilla Factory. They are about 7 inches in diameter and are only 50 calories each.

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Several years ago I watched TV personality-gourmet cook Ina Garten make this recipe on her Barefoot Contessa Food Network show and have enjoyed watching repeats of the show several times since then.

I love shrimp and I love this recipe. I’ve modified it slightly to meet my needs. When I invite friends for lunch I often make this entrée. It is easy and quick to make, and is an elegant dish to serve.

I admit, when I have friends for lunch, I will likely go over even the 700 calorie dinner goal, but I will cut back on the other food I eat during that day.

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I’ll bet you never thought you’d be eating a twice baked potato on a diet. As I told you, on the DIY Diet we eat everything because we calculate the number of calories in our food so that we know what we’re eating. I like twice baked potatoes, so it was one of the first foods for which I calculated the calorie count.

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Fall means back to school, and how I loved school!

From the moment I walked into my Northern Minnesota kindergarten classroom filled with large, colorful caricatures drawn on the many blackboard walls by our talented teacher, to the child-size playhouse containing kid-size kitchen appliances and fun furniture for future homemakers to enjoy, the large sandbox filled with trucks and graders and bulldozers, to the many instruments on which we tried to make music, I loved going to school.

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I enjoy Ragu brand sauce, but it’s even tastier when I doctor it up myself with some ground beef and a little bit of sugar. Pair one-half cup of this sauce together with one serving of pasta (2 oz. dry), and you have a 357 calorie lunch. You can’t beat that!

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