Consolidation and our friends

A couple of our friends have shown interest in the Dukan Diet after seeing the female half of this couple lose around 15 pounds...and keeping it off!  One of them even read up on the diet and asked for some of our recipes.  In the end, all three friends decided the diet was way to restrictive for them.

One couple ended up cutting out rice (they only ate brown rice to begin with) and shed a couple of pounds.  They are also adding two days of low impact exercise to their weekly routine.  The other two friends we're still trying to motivate more so because we'd like our friends to be mindful of their fat intake and remain healthy.

Now that we've been in Consolidation for a few weeks and have managed to shed a couple of pounds, we're gently trying to get our friends to start in the Consolidation Phase since they've all agreed they can't make it through Attack and Cruise.  Their weightloss wouldn't be as drastic, but Consolidation does promote healthier eating, eating fatty/sugary foods in moderation and a healthier lifestyle.

With the holidays here, we may need to put our Consolidation pitch on the side and work on them in January.  It'll be a tough month for us too.  The next two weeks we have 4 holiday gatherings planned.  Most of our gatherings are what we call "pupu pau hana" gatherings or "after work happy hour" gatherings.  Most of the restaurants here serve deep fried, fatty appetizers during happy hour - the cheaper foods.   Some of the Dukan bloggers we are following are lucky enough to have some friends who also Dukan, but for us, during these gatherings we are the only two Dukan-ing which makes it harder to order healthier foods...the kind everyone else wouldn't eat!

Here are some of the foods we've been eating during Consolidation:

• Whole Wheat Sandwich Thins - once or twice a week (we can eat this daily, but we really don't miss bread anymore)
• Van's Wheat-Free Gluten-Free Waffles and French Toast Sticks with sugar free maple syrup - once a week
• Non-fat yogurt with oat bran - daily
• Boiled eggs - once a week
• Homemade omelets - once a week
• Fat Free Turkey Hot Dogs - every other day
• Think Thin Protein Bars, Chocolate Fudge - daily
• Salads
• Homemade Dukan meals
• Poke - once a week
• Pizza - celebration meal
• Turkey Reuben - celebration meal
• Pasta - celebration meal
• Pumpkin Pie - celebration dessert
• Moscato wine - celebration
• Sushi - celebration

As mentioned in an earlier post, we're trying to be as good as we can during the holidays but plan on doing a few Pure Protein days and possibly go back to Cruise come January.  Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Dukan Korean Braised Chicken (easy)

Korean Braised Chicken (the veggies are underneath!)

We loved this recipe...we will definitely make this again!

This past week the female half of this couple has been 'ono (hungry) for Korean food.  We came across a great Korean recipe site and decided to try one of the recipes out.  This dish was supposed to be Dakjjim, but we made quite a few changes (some to make it Dukan and some to fit what we already had in the fridge) we're not sure we can still call it Dakjjim.

We've never had Dakjjim, so we're not even sure what it's supposed to taste like...but as mentioned earlier, we loved this recipe.  Next time we will make the following changes: use chicken thighs with the fat removed, add the potatoes for the male half of this couple, run out and buy the peppers and add an additional bag of shirataki noodles.  Another note, the recipe mentions adding garlic and ginger to the recipe, but we didn't see where she listed how much to use.  The recipe below is what we ended up using.

Our oyster sauce had sugar in it but if you can find one that doesn't have sugar, you can make this dish during Cruise without the starchy veggies and sesame oil.

RECIPE:
Serves 3-4
Prep Time: 15-20 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes

1 lb. chicken tenderloins, cut into bit sized pieces (soak in cold water for a few minutes)
1 can straw mushrooms (you can use white mushrooms)
1 carrot, cut into 1/8" slices
1/2 large red onion, sliced
5 green onion stalks, cut into 2" pieces
shred the white parts of the green onion and soak in cold water for 10 minutes
1 red pepper, sliced (seeds removed)
1/2 jalapeno, diced (seeds removed)
1 bag shirataki noodles (we used the Japanese ones, but you can use the angel hair Tofu Shirataki noodles), rinsed and drained
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 t. ground ginger (we would have used 1/2 - 1" of fresh ginger if we had it)

Sauce ingredients (mix together before you start cooking)
1/4 c. soy sauce (we used 1/2 soy sauce and 1/2 water due to high blood pressure)
1/4 c. oyster sauce
1 T. splenda brown sugar
1 packet Truvia

Heat wok, spray with a little bit of olive oil spray and add chicken.  Stir a few times, then look cook for 3-5 minutes.  Stir again and cook for another 3-5 minutes.  Add garlic and ginger, stir fry.  Add sauce and 2 - 2 1/2 c. water - start with 1 3/4 c., mix and taste.  If it's too salty, add more water.  We ended up using 2 c. water.  Cover and cook on high heat for 8-10 minutes.  Uncover and add onions and carrots, cook for another 8-10 minutes on high heat.  Add mushrooms, peppers, and noodles, stir and cook for 7 minutes.  We added a t. of cornstarch to thicken the sauce up, but after we ate the dish, we didn't feel it needed thickening.  Turn off heat and add 2 t. black pepper and 1 T. sesame oil.  Mix well and serve.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Vietnamese Fish

Vietnamese Fish

We liked this recipe....it was very tasty.

We love Vietnamese food and this dish was tasty, but it didn't make us go "wow".  We would definitely make this again and might try it with chicken instead of fish since the recipe we found was made with chicken.  We pretty much followed the recipe almost to the tee, except we omitted the oil and we only put tomatoes in one envelope since the male half of this couple doesn't like tomatoes.

We ate this as is...no starch or starch replacement.  On a celebration day, we would've eaten this with some Vietnamese noodles.  It is a very light dish and easy to make.

RECIPE:
Serves 2
Prep Time: 15-20 minutes
Bake Time: 15 minutes or until fish is cooked through

1 lb. marlin, cut into cubes
pepper
kosher salt
1/2 tomato, dices
1 t. ginger, minced
2 green onions, finely sliced
2 T. fish sauce (Vietnamese)
a pinch of natural sweetener
fresh chopped cilantro for garnish

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.  Sprinkle cubes of fish with pepper and salt, mix.  In a bowl, combine tomatoes, ginger, green onion, fish sauce and sugar, then toss with fish.  Prepare two large pieces of parchment paper.  We like to fold our parchment in half, then cut a heart shape out of it (half a heart so when you open it you have a full heart).  Place half the fish mixture in each of the parchment and fold to seal.  Place both packages on a sheet pan and bake for 15 minutes or until fish is cooked, let sit for 5 minutes before opening packet.  Open packets carefully, top with fresh chopped cilantro and serve either by itself or over Vietnamese noodles. (you don't have to use as much cilantro as we did, we just love cilantro.)

Enjoy!

Dukan Korean Inspired Fish

Korean Inspired Fish

We liked this recipe, we probably would have liked it better if it were less salty.

Korean food is very popular in Hawaii and one of our friends started telling everyone how much she loves Korean food.  She made us hungry for some Korean food and one our favorite dishes is Fish Jun.  Fish Jun is normally just fish with salt and pepper dipped in an egg batter and fried served with a dipping sauce.  We decided to try making Fish Jun with a Meat Jun recipe.  We used Sam Choy, a local Hawaiian  chef's meat jun marinade for our recipe.  If you like your food saltier, use all soy sauce instead of the 1/8 c. soy sauce and 1/8 c. water.  We always use low sodium soy sauce, but that is still too salty for us.

We also decided to try this recipe without the flour, even though in consolidation we would have use oat bran ground into flour or wheat flour.

RECIPE:
Serves 2-3
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time - 15-20 minutes

3/4 pound white fish, we used a marlin, you'll want to cut your fish into thinner slices if it isn't thin already
1/8 c. low sodium soy sauce
1/8 c. water
2 T. sesame oil
1 green onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 eggs, beaten

Dipping sauce:
1/8 c. low sodium soy sauce
1/8 c. water
1 stalk green onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 t. ground sesame seeds or 1/8 t. sesame oil

Mix the soy sauce, water, sesame oil, green onion and garlic in a bowl.  You can either marinate your fish for an hour or dip your fish in the sauce, then in the egg batter, then fry in a pan sprayed lightly with olive oil spray.   The fish cooks fast, so you'll want to mix your dipping sauce ahead of time.  We served our fish on whole wheat sandwich thins so we used the dipping sauce as a sandwich dip sauce.

Enjoy!

Dukan Singapore Noodles

Singapore Noodles

We loved this recipe...but it was a bit spicy for the female half of this couple.

Well, not make your nose run spicy, but spicy enough where the first thought that came to mind was "we have to use less curry powder next time".  

A few months ago we came across a great recipe site called "No Recipes".   This is the first recipe we've tried from this site, but everything Marc posts looks great and the innovative recipes even better.  The male half of this couple loves curry, so we chose this as our first recipe to make from this site.  

You can find Marc's original recipe here.   While we loved the way this dish came out, here are the changes we would make to the recipe below: use angel hair tofu noodles instead (we already had the spaghetti tofu noodles in the fridge), use only 1 T. curry powder and lessen the amount of chicken broth mixture since with the tofu noodles being non-absorbant this dish came out soupy.  For a celebration meal, we would use Marc's recipe as he posted it, with the mai-fun noodles. 

Another note: we used turkey breast since we already had some in the fridge, but next time we'll either try chicken or tofu. 

RECIPE:

Serves 2-4

Prep Time: 15-20 minutes

Cook Time: less than 10 minutes

* We recommend prepping all ingredients first since this dish cooks quickly.

2 pkg. tofu noodles (we used spaghetti but would have gone with angel hair)

4 oz. turkey breast, cut into strips

2 t. shoyu (soy sauce)

2 t. Chinese rice wine

1 t. cornstarch

2 T. curry powder

2 T. fish sauce (we used a Vietnamese one)

1 T. oyster sauce

3/4 c. chicken broth

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 T. ginger, minced

1/2 medium onion, sliced

1 red bell pepper, chopped

8 oz. can of strip bamboo

4 oz. bean sprouts

3 green onions, chopped

Boil noodles for 5 minutes in salted water.  Drain and pat dry.  While your noodles are boiling, mix the shoyu, rice wine and cornstarch in a bowl.  Add turkey and let marinade.

Measure out curry powder into a small dish.  In a separate bowl, combine fish sauce, oyster sauce and chicken broth.  Heat a wok over high heat until very hot and spray with a little bit of olive oil spray, then add the egg, swirling them scrambling.  Remove egg and set aside.  Spray wok again, then add garlic and ginger, then fry until fragrant.  Add the turkey (discard marinade).  Our turkey was already cooked so we just stir fried it to heat the turkey.  

Add the onion, bell pepper, bamboo and bean sprouts - stir fry until vegetables are a bright color.  Add the curry powder and stir fry until fragrant, then pour chicken broth mixture in.  Stir, then add noodles and use a tong to coat noodles with sauce.  Top with green onions and serve immediately.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Consolidation

It's been a BUSY couple months with our awesome vacation (thanks, Little Miss Contrary for the Victoria, Inner Harbour suggestion!), work events for both of us, gatherings with friends, weddings to attend, etc.  Before our vacation we were at the Consolidation point of the Dukan Diet, but the female half of this couple did not quite reach her goal (had 3-5 pounds to go).  We decided to move into the Consolidation Phase anyway to make eating during our vacation easier.  Gained a few pounds, but it was worth it.

After returning, our schedule's been quite busy and we don't have as much time to cook...so it's been a lot of eating at functions or eating out while on our way to a function, hence the decision to stay in Consolidation versus going back to Attack. We still try to make healthy choices but when you're at a dinner with a set meal, you either have to starve or eat what's on you plate.

After a month and a half of being in he Consolidation Phase (and not as much exercise as we should be getting) the female half of this couple actually lost two of the pounds she gained on vacation!  We'll be sticking with Consolidation thru the holidays and will most likely go back to the beginning of the diet in January to get down to our goal weights.

We still believe the Dukan Diet really does work...if you stick with it.  For our celebration meals we've been enjoying pizzas, Mexican food, sushi, etc and eating very low fat for our other meals with one Pure Protein day per week.  Once you get into your routine, it's not as bad as it sounds.

Dukan Quinoa Turkey Chili

Quinoa Turkey Chili

We loved this recipe, although we would have liked it a bit spicier.

This was our first time cooking with Quinoa...our friend fell in love with it and bought everyone a bag of Quinoa!  Quinoa cooks up nicely in a rice cooker and since we prefer our food less mushy we used 1 1/4 c. of chicken broth to cook our Quinoa instead of the 2 c. as suggested by many others.

We decided to try this recipe found on allrecipes.com and altered it to make it Dukan friendly.  Since this recipe does have Quinoa, this is a Consolidation and/or Stabilization recipe.  The male half of this couple got an extra treat - sliced avocado on his chili.

If you love spicy food, you may want to increase the amount of chili powder you use, leave in some of the seeds from the jalapeno and/or add a chipotle pepper in adobo sauce.  Next time we make this chili we'll probably use 1/2 c. to 3/4 c. of quinoa instead of 1 c.

RECIPE:
Serves 4-6
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes

1 lb. lean ground turkey
1 c. quinoa
1 can chicken broth
1 red onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 T. chili powder
1 T. ground cumin
1 t. dried oregano
1 t. dried parsley
1 - 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
kosher salt and black pepper to taste
1/4 c. cilantro, chopped

In a rice cooker, add 1 c. Quinoa with 1 1/4 c. chicken broth (the rest of the broth will go into the chili).  Cook Quinoa (as soon as the rice cooker turns off, remove Quinoa and fluff).  While your Quinoa is cooking, brown your ground turkey.  Once your turkey is cooked, drain and remove turkey from pan.  Spray pan with olive oil spray and saute onions, garlic and jalapeno for approximately 5 minutes.  Add chili powder and ground cumin and cook for an additional minute.  Add crushed tomatoes, bell pepper, dried oregano, dried parsley, salt and pepper.  Simmer for 20 minutes.  Once your bell peppers soften, add back ground turkey, Quinoa and mix.  We added the remainder of the chicken broth at this time since it was a bit gummy for our liking.  Once chili is heated completely, mix in cilantro and serve.  We added a fried egg on top of our chili.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Low Fat Pumpkin Spiced Cupcakes - Celebration Dessert

Low Fat Pumpkin Spiced Cupcakes

We loved this recipe and so did our co-workers!

As mentioned in a previous post, we tried some low fat cupcake recipes from skinnytaste.com.   While we both love chocolate and thought the Low Fat Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes were wonderful, these Low Fat Pumpkin Spiced Cupcakes really screamed "Halloween".  We're thinking about making these for Thanksgiving also.

We made these without the icing since the cake mix has enough sugar in it.  If you are interested in trying the Pumpkin Spiced Cream Cheese Icing, here is the original recipe.

We couldn't find the Golden Vanilla cake mix here so we used French Vanilla and made a second batch of these with Yellow cake mix...both turned out just great.

RECIPE:
Makes 24 cupcakes
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes
Bake Time: 20-25 minutes, 350 degrees Fahrenheit

18.25 oz Betty Crocker Golden Vanilla Super Moist Cake Mix*
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 cup canned 100% pure pumpkin
1 cup water


Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients together then add to dry mix.  Mix well.  Fill cupcake liners 2/3s full and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes or until cooked.  


Enjoy...we sure did!

Low Fat Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes - Celebration Dessert

Low Fat Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

We loved this recipe and so did our co-workers/friends.

Our new favorite low fat recipe blog is skinnytaste.com.  It's just amazing.  There are several recipes we want to try, it's just been such a busy month for us, we hardly have time to cook!  We did however try two of the low fat cupcake recipes and they were both great!

Before our vacation, we didn't quite make it to our goal, but we were pretty close.  We decided to move on to the Consolidation Phase to make eating while on vacation easier.  Next week it's back to the Attack Phase to lose the couple pounds we gained on vacation and try to lose the last few pounds we originally set out to lose.

We baked these cupcakes for a few reasons...it's part of our last celebration meal before starting attack again, tomorrow is Halloween and we're both taking a big batch of cupcakes to work and we just had to try these.

We made these without the chocolate glaze, but here is the original recipe in case you want to try the glaze too.

RECIPE:
Makes 24 cupcakes
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes
Bake Time: 20-25 minutes, 350 degrees Fahrenheit

18.25 oz Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix

1.4 oz sugar free, fat free, instant chocolate pudding

1 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

1 1/3 cups water

Mix dry ingredients together.   Mix pumpkin and water together.  Add the pumpkin mix to the dry mix, mix well.  Fill cupcake liners 2/3s full.  Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes or until done.  Ours took about 22 minutes.  

Enjoy...we sure did!