Flat Belly Kelly (& Katie Too!)

The Flat Belly Diet is a diet with four meals a day. The idea is that you eat around 1600 calories a day, and each meal has a MUFA (monounsaturated fatty acid). MUFAs are the good fats. My mother has been on this diet before, and she lost fifteen pounds and kept it off for almost six months, but some unwise eating around the holidays has her on the diet again. She and I recently bought the Flat Belly Diet Cookbook, and we’re going on the diet for Lent. We’re going to try to post one or two recipes a week, and we’ll track them on this site. I felt vindicated when I saw the book had a recipe for tofu chocolate mousse, even more so when I saw that mine was healthier.

It’s an easy diet to follow, and it’s delicious. You’re allowed to have chocolate, but limit yourself. I don’t think there’s a single thing I miss while on this diet. It does eliminate bacon, but I’ve long been a fan of turkey bacon and chicken sausage. I like them better. Caveat: One part of the diet I don’t follow: low salt. I’m on a high sodium diet for health reasons. However, Katie’s going the low salt route, so you can follow along with her.

I’m going to make a list of things I need to get in my kitchen. These aren’t integral parts of the diet, but they’re ingredients that come up frequently that I seem to be running low on.

Egg whites
Oranges
Sun-dried tomato
Lean ground turkey
Safflower oil (or flaxseed)
Low-sodium beef broth (I want to make my own)
Dried beans ( Great Northern, garbanzo)
Alfalfa sprouts
More tofu! (I’m going to use it in place of things I don’t like, like feta, so I want soft and silken)
Canola mayo
Low fat plain yogurt
Whole wheat tortillas
Whole wheat pasta (angel hair, rotini, and linguini)
Walnuts
Instant brown rice
Low-sodium vegetable broth (again, I want to make my own)
Leeks
Eggplant
Mushrooms
Capers
Scallops
Slivered almonds
Smoked Paprika
Water chestnuts
Italian turkey or chicken sausage
Bean thread noodles
Reduced fat mozzarella
Dried plums

Staples:
Green beans
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!
Frozen blueberries
Oatmeal
Tomato (you can never have too many!)
Hummus

Tofu Two Ways: A study in bean curd, deception, and chocolate

Last night, I was on a mission. I had a bet with Katie, and while I often back down from a fight, I never back down from a bet. The candidates: A sixteen ounce package of silken tofu and a fourteen ounce package of soft tofu. The rules: Tofu must be the main ingredient. The bet: I would make Katie like tofu….five dollars were on the line.

Tofu is one of those intimidating foods that people avoid. It’s too healthy, it’s too…weird. Tofu is fermented bean curd. This sounds scary, but it’s significantly less frightening when you remember that cheese is fermented milk curd. And as we know, cheese is all kinds of delicious.

My first recipe: Tofu Chocolate Mousse. For those unfamiliar with it, silken tofu is soft, creamy, and tastes slightly like olive oil. That’s it. I slit open the package and drained the liquid into the sink, then tossed my hapless victim into the food processor. I blended it until creamy, then melted two tablespoons of semisweet chocolate chips. I drizzled them in, then microwaved 3/4 cup of fat-free milk. In the warm milk, I mixed in two tablespoons of Splenda Baking Blend and two tablespoons of cocoa powder, regular old Hershey’s stuff. This was drizzled into a running food processor, and made the mousse creamy rich. I then added three more tablespoons of cocoa powder, and two tablespoons of cornstarch. You, my dear reader, can adjust the cocoa and sweetener to your personal preferences, but I like mine deep and dark and barely sweet. The mousse should now be very thin, because it hasn’t set up yet. Push it through a fine sieve over a bowl. If you want to make tofu fudgsicles, now is the time. Put it in the fridge overnight, and in the morning the starch will have hydrated, and you will have a deep dark fudgy bowl of delicious and craving.

My second recipe: Tofu Veggie Dip. It doesn’t take much to put soft tofu into a dip. I sliced up two small yellow onions into thick strips, and sauteed them on very low heat for half an hour. I dumped the caramelized onions into the food processor with my tofu, and pulsed repeatedly while drizzling in fat-free milk. You can use any dairy here. Sour cream would be nice, plain yogurt would be nice, unsweetened soy milk would be fine. Even cottage cheese could play well with tofu. I added two tablespoons of lemon juice to cut the tofu smell, then pushed it through a sieve, much like the last recipe. I then mixed in a regular old packet of vegetable soup mix and put it in the fridge for two hours so the flavors can blend.

Needless to say, Katie likes tofu now, and it’s going to become a regular staple in our house. With a little food-savvy and a little work, tofu is healthy without tasting like it.