REAL MEALS FOR REAL PEOPLE
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009This blog looks long. Don’t be scared away by it though. Most of it is the cooking directions.
A good diet is the most critical component of a healthy lifestyle. It fuels your every moment. Let’s face it. Most of us will never be able to stick with a bodybuilder’s diet. Trying to take on that kind of a change in lifestyle that is so extreme is one of the biggest reasons why we fail at diet and nutrition so often.
I cannot eat the same way a BB does. I applaud those that do for their will and dedication. If I did eat that way I would be useless at work in less than a week and attacking the baker for cupcakes within the month. What I am planning to do from time to time is when I find a meal that I make that is well balanced, nutritious and lean enough to satisfy a healthy lifestyle, I’ll share it on here in a blog.
The first meal I just finished cooking and it worked for my wife (BB diet) and two teenage sons. All of them are extremely active so it needed to be packed with energy. Taste was important to my sons and leanness was my wife’s concern.
It’s a simple meal that brings a bit of the Mediterranean and the south together.
Rosemary Chicken, boiled greens and sweet potato fries.
Don’t be scared when I said greens. This isn’t the old rubbery over-cooked greens you get every New Year’s Day in the south. We’ll get to that in a minute… First the chicken:
Rosemary chicken:
I use chicken halves for this. It helps keep everything moist when it’s cooking and you can eat only the breast letting others get the leg and thigh.
Rub the chicken down with lemon juice and then put rosemary on top of that. Use fresh ingredients if you can. I also use the stem of the rosemary as well. It’s the wood looking part. I go as far as to put some under the skin and even lay it on a small bed of rosemary when it’s cooking. Yes I cook with the skin on. You can peel it off when it’s done. Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees F and bake the chicken until it reaches an internal temp of about 188 degrees F. Like all other meats let it rest for a few minutes before you cut it up.
Sweet potato fries:
This is easy. Wash the sweet potato, leave the skin on and slice it up in a mandolin. Lay the fries out on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and bake them at 375 degrees F for about 20 minutes or to your desired taste. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.
Greens:
I use a mixture of spinach, collards and mustard greens. Make sure you wash them well and remove any stems larger than about ¼”. This will help get rid of the bitterness and toughness. Chop them up into pieces no bigger than 2” square and put them into a bowl. You’ll need about two pounds of greens. Next bring a quart of water to boil in a 5 quart or so pot (it’ll need to be good sized). For flavor I put a smoked turkey leg in the pot to boil with the water. Diestel makes a good smoked leg that is relatively low in sodium and isn’t cured with nitrates or nitrites. When it all comes to a full boil put the greens on top (they look like they won’t all fit but, they will), cover them with a lid, turn the pot down to a simmer and allow it to cook for about 45 minutes.
I serve the chicken pieces on a bed of sweet potato fries with the greens on the side. If I’m lucky I’ll wrestle a couple of pieces of turkey leg away from my sons. Finish that off with an ice-cold glass of skim or 1% milk.
There you have a good nutritious well-balanced meal. You can use the chicken carcass (such a nice word) for chicken stock, and if you are adventurous you can drink the juice from the greens (or pot liquor as they call it in the south).
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