Vinegar, Vinegar, Vinegar!

I am a huge fan of vinegars of all sorts. I have a decent collection of vinegars ranging from Barrel-Aged Balsamic, to Rice Wine Vinegar, to your plain old Apple Cider among others. Last night, I decided to make a balsamic marinated grilled pork chop with sauteed cole slaw. Both had…you guessed it, vinegar. This is a super easy dinner to make, just allow 30 minutes for the pork chops to marinate in the balsamic mixture.

For the pork chops, the marinade goes something (I never measure) like this:

In a plastic freezer bag, add your pork chops then add

1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons of olive oil

1 table spoon of seedy mustard

1 table spoon of pureed garlic

1 teaspoon salt

Let this sit for 30 minutes and make sure to flip it over 15 minutes in so that both sides get all the goodness.

The cole slaw was simple. Most supermarkets have ready bags of cole slaw handy. I bought a bag of chopped cabbage and a bag of broccoli slaw because they didn’t have the conventional cole slaw bags handy…and I love broccoli slaw.

I added the slaws in a pan and drizzled olive oil.

Let it cook down, until it is soft…about 3 minutes.

Then add about 3 tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar.

A dash of salt and pepper to taste.

For something extra, I baked some small tomatoes with olive oil and kosher salt at 350 degrees while the other things were cooking. This way we felt full from the meal without having to eat carbs.

The pork chops and the slaw took approximately 6 minutes (although I cooked my chops on my Foreman Grill, so cooking times may vary).

Scavenging in the kitchen

It was one of those days where you don’t really have anything for lunch, but you’re hungry, so you have to make something and you don’t want to go out and waste money on fast food. What do you do? You go into scavenge mode. You know that mode? You start looking deep in your fridge and pantry to see what you can concoct to satisfy your empty stomach. Your significant other walks into the kitchen to find your ass bent over, protruding from the fridge, your torso disappeared, and your head stuck in the vegetable crisper.

Well, it was one of those afternoons and I came up with this dish: A whole wheat penne with sauteed creminis, zucchini, grape tomatoes with feta and scallions. I sauteed the veggies with some garlic and added about 2 tablespoons (or basically what was left) of some white cooking wine. I topped the penne with the veggies and then squirted some lemon on it instead of salt and topped it with feta and scallions with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

It wasn’t too bad for using what we had, and not caving into the dreaded fast food (or pizza craving we were having).

Extreme Nachos!!!!

There comes a time in the midst of a hardcore diet, that you want to cave in and eat something really really bad. Well, this weekend was that time. I wanted some extremely loaded nachos. Saturday is our “free day” where we take a break from all of the week’s calorie counting, so we decided to give into the nacho yearning. It was a very spicy, itchy, persistent yearning…one that was so intense, that I might have had to go get checked out by the doctor.

Oh, and I’ve lost another 5 lbs this past week…which makes it 10 lbs in 2 weeks. Not too shabby!

Back to that itchy nacho craving…We went to the market and bought all of the nacho accoutrements: chips, beans, tomatoes, cheese, etc…We did give into our diet by substituting ground turkey for ground beef.

The ground turkey was cooked in a skillet with McCormick burrito seasoning.

The chips were Tostitos Multigrain.

The refried beans were also heated before they were added to the nachos.

The oven was preheated to 325 degrees and the nachos were arranged on a pan. The refried beans, ground turkey, diced tomatoes, shredded cheese were piled on, and the entire thing was baked for 12 minutes.

It was topped with scallions and avocados, and served with a side of fat free sour cream.