We'll Be Right Back...

View from the top of Diamond Head Crater

 Wow, we've been on the go for over a week with family and friends in town!  It's been fun, just no time for the computer...no time for anything at home!  We've been eating out so often, we're pretty sure we've gone out to eat more in one week than we have since January!

The food has been fabulous and as usual, we started out trying to eat healthy, but a lot of meals are ordered family style here and we let the family and friends pics the places and dishes.  One more week and we're back to our regular lives.

Lanikai Beach at sunrise

We're definitely doing a few days of Attack once everyone's gone back to the mainland!

The nice thing was hiking and snorkeling were included in last week's activities, we got our exercise in!

Hope everyone's doing well on Dukan.  We're afraid to weigh ourselves!

The Diamond Head Hike has been modified.  The State built a second route to the top of the crater which is nice and offers better views of the island.  Park outside the park if you ever visit (near Kapiolani Community College) and walk into the crater...great exercise and it's only $1 per person.  The cost per vehicle is $5.  Or better yet, email us and if we're free, we'll join you on the hike!

Lanikai Beach is of the top 10 beaches in the United States according to the Travel Channel (or maybe the world, can't remember).  It's beautiful at sunrise and there is a Pillbox hike not too far from the beach.  The hike is strenuous, uphill and some places are steep.  It's great exercise and offers wonderful views of Lanikai Beach and the windward side of Oahu.  If you'd like more information on the Pillbox hike, check out Yelp or email us!

A Couple Minutes of Your Time Could Make a Difference

Sandi's granddaughter - photo from Flamidwyfe's blog

As mentioned in previous posts, one of our favorite Dukan Bloggers is Sandi over at Flamidwyfe.   She's quite an inspiration to anyone setting out to lose weight...whether you're following the Dukan Diet or some other diet.  We enjoy reading her blog...she should really write a book about her Dukan experience!

A good majority of her posts are extremely positive and you can't help but think, man, that's the way to enjoy every minute of your life...to be open minded, open hearted and to not be afraid to try new things.  Although we don't always have time to jump on the computer, we always save all her posts and read them the soonest we can.

Today is a busy busy day for us but sitting in my email box was an email notification from Flamidwyfe's blog entitled "My Granddaughter Celeste Alena".  We opened the email to do a quick read through which is what we usually do.  Then we read it again, wow...if you have a couple minutes to spare, please read Sandi's post.

We've already voted for Celeste and we will be voting every day.  We hope she and her family win the van!

Dukan Pollo Asado en Cazuela

Pollo Asado en Cazuela

We loved this recipe!

Side note: It's been a crazy, busy week with unexpected get togethers with friends and the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival is on, so not a whole lot of cooking going on!   The Merrie Monarch is known as the "World Series" of Hula competitions with festivities throughout this week and ends with a 3 day hula competition.  We have our turkey ham recipe we'll try to post...hopefully by the end of the weekend.

Back to this Cuban dish!  It's not the most colorful dish, but it was very tasty.  As mentioned in previous posts, we love Cuban food and this recipe is similar to Chicken Fricassee in taste.  Since this recipe calls for 1/2 c. of sour orange juice, we've classified it a Consolidation and Stabilization recipe.

For the sour orange juice, we used 1/4 c. freshly squeezed orange juice mixed with 1/4 c. freshly squeezed lime juice.  We got this recipe from several blogs...most of the recipes call for the same ingredients but use slightly different cooking techniques.

This past weekend was supposed to be our mostly fish weekend but we ended up dining out a few times due to putting in some overtime at work, etc.

RECIPE:
Serves 4-6 (the female half did a Pure Protein Day, so she ate more chicken than she normally would)
Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Cook Time: approximately 45 minutes

6-8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, fat removed
1/2 large red onion, sliced
3-6 cloves garlic, minced (we used 6)
1/2 c. sour orange juice (1/4 c. orange juice, 1/4 c. lime juice)
salt to taste (we used 1/4 t. since we're watching our sodium intake)
olive oil or nonstick spray
1/2 c. dry white wine
1 bay leaf
1 t. black pepper

In a large ziploc bag, mix the garlic, salt and sour orange juice.  Add chicken (we usually rinse and pat dry our chicken after removing most of the fat).  Marinade at least one hour (overnight if you can), we marinated ours for about 6 hours.

In a large pan (we used our stir fry pan) brown chicken on high heat, set chicken aside.  Lower heat to medium high, add onions to pan and saute for a couple minutes.  Deglaze pan with wine, then add marinade, bay leaf and pepper.  Add chicken back to pan and simmer for 25-35 minutes.  We simmered ours for about 35 minutes.

The chicken was tender and very tasty.  The female half had chicken only, the male half had his over brown rice.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Giada's Salmon with Lemon, Capers and Rosemary - It's a Dukan Recipe!

Giada's Salmon with Lemon, Capers and Rosemary

NOTE: This is a scheduled post...took the weekend off and barely touched the computer!  Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

Had this not been so "lemon-y" we would have loved this.

Not sure if we did something wrong, but this was a little too much lemon for us...and the female half loves lemon-y things!   Don't get us wrong, it was still very tasty and we will make this again, but with less lemon.  We found this recipe on Giada De Laurentiis' page on Foodnetwork.com.  It looked simple and easy to prepare...and we just so happened to have fresh rosemary available!

Fresh rosemary isn't something we have all the time.  It's available, but it's very expensive and we both don't have green thumbs!  The lemon seemed to overpower the rosemary and capers.  The next time we make this, we'll probably use just one lemon slice for each fish and skip the addition of lemon juice.

We're positive this recipe would work well with our favorite Opah fish too :-)

RECIPE:
Serves 2 (on a Pure Protein Day, if we were eating this with brown rice or quinoa, this would have served 4)
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 8 minutes (our fillets were about 3/4" thick)

4 - 6 oz. salmon fillets (we actually had 2 at 6 oz. and the other 2 were smaller)
olive oil (optional, we didn't use any, but if you want to, brush oil lightly on both side of fish while seasoning fillets)
1/2 t. kosher salt
1/2 t. black pepper
1 T. minced fresh rosemary leaves (we would use 1/2 T. if you're using dried)
8 lemon slices (next time using just one slice per fillet)
1/4 c. lemon juice (that's 1 T. each fillet, next time using just 1 t. each fillet or just the lemon slices)
1/2 c. Marsala wine (or dry white wine)
4 t. capers
4 pieces of aluminum foil (we used 3 since we wrapped our two smaller pieces in one foil)

Rinse and pat dry fillets.  Preheat your grill or grill pan - we used a grill pan over medium high heat. Season with salt, pepper and rosemary (and olive oil if you are using it).  Place salmon fillets on foil pieces large enough to fold and seal tightly (ours came out so so, we used to be good at this since we've made foil packet dinners in our crock pot - we're rusty).   Top each fillet with 2 lemon slices (or 1), 1 T. lemon juice (or less if you don't want your fish too lemon-y), 2 T. Marsala wine and 1 t. capers.  Fold each packet tightly.   Place foil packets on grill pan and cook for approximately 8 minutes.  If your fillets are thicker, you'll want to cook them 10 minutes for every inch.  Carefully open packets when done and serve in the packet with the juices.

Besides the strong lemon flavor, this was a great, light and easy dinner.

Enjoy!

Dukan Portuguese Style Fish (better to use steak though)

Portugese Style Fish

We have mixed feelings about this dish.

It was tasty, but a bit too salty for us.  Partly because we didn't use enough fish (didn't want leftovers) and didn't bother to cut down the marinade recipe.  In our opinion, this marinade would have definitely been better with steak...that's what the original recipe called for.  Why did we use fish?  Two reasons, we just had beef the day before and we really only eat beef once a month if that often.  Second reason, our fish guy had some fresh swordfish from the fish auction the day before!

We started searching for Portuguese recipes after reading about a new Portuguese/Brazilian restaurant opening up here in Honolulu.  If you're wanting to try this marinade with fish, we recommend you cut the marinade recipe in half or at least cut the salt in half.  We do use a lot less salt in our cooking...we have been out to eat with friends where we thought the food was a bit salty and they thought it was fine....depends on your normal daily sodium intake!  Add the salt a little at a time and taste the marinade before you marinade your steak or fish.

In the end, the male half said it was nice to try something different even if we will both end up with high blood pressure haha!

RECIPE:
Here is the recipe we used, please adjust it to your taste.  For the original recipe, click on the link above or google "Portuguese Style Steak"...you'll find 3 or 4 different versions of this recipe.

Serves 2 (male half had rice and beans with his, if we were both not eating starches, we would have needed double the fish)
Prep Time: 5 minutes, plus 6 hours marinating time
Cook Time: approximately 30 minutes

3/4 lb. shutome or swordfish, cut into 3/4" medallions (next time we'll probably cut them into 1" steaks)
(if using beef, use 4 steaks of your choice)
4 eggs

Marinade ingredients:
1/2 lg. red onion, sliced
1 c. white wine (dry)
1 t. crushed red pepper flakes
1 T. paprika
1 clove garlic, minced
1 t. kosher salt (we would use 1/4 or 1/2 t. next time)

Combine marinade ingredients in a large ziploc bag.  Add cleaned fish (pat dry your fish with paper towels).  Marinate fish for 6 hours in the refrigerator, turning occasionally.

Heat a large skillet (we only had our stir fry pan) over medium high heat, spray a little bit of non-stick spray and fry fish with onions reserving the marinade.  We cooked our fish for approximately 3 minutes, then we added the marinade to the pan and let that simmer until liquid was absorbed.  Crack the eggs over the fish, cover pan and let the eggs set.  Once the eggs are set, serve immediately.

Enjoy!  Please make adjustments to your taste and we'll be trying this recipe with steak, so we will post that when we do!

DukanItOut Recipe Contest Submission

Japanese Pork Roll Ups

Please vote for us!  :-)

We entered the DukanItOut Appetizer Recipe Contest...check it out!   Our recipe is super simple, which is the way we like to cook since we're always on the go.  Check out some of the other recipes submitted, wow, they all look great...we'll definitely have to try some of them, especially the hot wings recipe!  The competition is definitely tough and it's great to see a lot of people Dukan'ing recipes and eating healthier.

We entered our Japanese Pork Roll-Ups recipe.  This recipe was one of our go to recipes during Attack (with just pork and konyakku - almost the same stuff as the Shirataki noodles but no tofu in it) and Cruise (with and without veggies).  They are very easy to make and cook up quickly too.

A little about why we like Dukanitout's website.   We originally started the Dukan Diet in June of 2011 and failed miserably due to poor planning and underestimating how we would feel during Attack.  After the failure, we decided we really needed to meal plan, we searched for Dukan Recipes which were out there but not plentiful...then we came across Dukanitout.com and MyDukanDiet.com.  Wow, these two ladies have amazing recipe sites.  They both have a clear understanding of the Dukan Rules, are creative and have great will power.   The sites not only gave us great recipes to follow, but helped inspire the Dukan-ing of our own recipes that we've loved over the years.

We have been fairly successful on the Dukan Diet (not as successful as Flamidwyfe - talk about will power, she is definitely a success story), but had it not been for the many bloggers blogging about their experience on the Dukan Diet and the two recipe sites mentioned above, we probably would have failed a second time!  We started our own recipe blog after reflecting on how difficult it was during our first start and how these recipe blogs (not to mention the numerous Dukan Blogs out there) helped jump start us into Dukan Success.

Today, we often talk about (with a smile) how this Diet and the recipe blog have really made our kitchen/meals interesting.  We probably haven't cooked the same meal twice since July 2011 and we still have tons of recipes we want to try/Dukan!

Time to Clean out the Freezer

Ugh!  The line to our ice maker seems to have sprung a leak.  Well, it's actually the landlady's VERY OLD refrigerator (over 20 years old) and she STILL buys the extended warranty for this thing.  It must be sucking up all of our electricity too.  Wish she would invest in a new one!

Anyway, Sunday night we noticed the leak...the male half noticed water dripping down into the garage (that is through her old wood floors).  Luckily it's not dripping down into her downstairs unit where her family stays when they visit.  Since then we have shut the ice maker offer and are slowly cleaning out the freezer.   We'll be trying our best to plan our meals around what we have in our freezer....chicken thighs and fish we bought from our fish guy last weekend.  Not sure how many we can put together this weekend, but we're imagining at least 1-2 chicken dishes and perhaps a mahimahi and another swordfish or salmon recipe.

Speaking of fish, perhaps it'll be a fish weekend (although the male half prefers to mix things up versus eating just chicken or just fish for 3 days in row.  However, prior to our October vacation, the female half wanted to lose a few pounds before going on vacation and we went on a fish only diet (as in no chicken, beef or pork) for a couple weeks and it helped promote her weight loss!

It may be worth hearing the male half say "everything was good, but it would be nice to have some variety"!  With it being Easter though, we will be making a ham on Sunday...a friend is giving us her Crock Pot Ham recipe which we will try our best to Dukan!

Hope everyone has a nice Easter :-)

Dukan Turkey Herb Meatloaf

Turkey Herb Meatloaf

Note:  This is a scheduled post.

We loved this. Today we had a brief discussion about meatloafs. The female half felt like making one, the male half told her how it's okay but he feels soft things should just be soft and his mother always added chopped raw onions to their meatloaf and he just doesn't like crunchy things in his soft things. Oh my! There went the onions and orange bell pepper idea although the sauté idea was considered. Decided to use the fabulous garlic sauce from Skinnytaste's salmon recipe we had this past weekend. The male half agreed but only if the female half agreed not to put any of the sauce on the top of the meatloaf..he had enough mustard for this week :-).

 We would definitely make this again and the female half would probably even dare to brush on some garlic sauce during the last couple minutes of baking. The flavor of this meatloaf is mild, just the way the male half likes it. The female half would prefer to use twice the amount of garlic sauce to make it "bursting with flavor".

It turned out to be a fast, simple meal minus the one hour five minute bake time...which actually gave us time to get other things done :-)  Sorry, just a couple photos since it was a throw it all in one bowl and mix recipe!

RECIPE:
Serves 4
Prep Time: less than 10 minutes
Bake Time: 1 hour, 5 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit

1 lb. ground turkey (lean)
1/4 c. oat bran (next time we'll use 1/8 c.)
1 egg
2 c. non fat mozzarella, shredded (if you don't like your meatloaf this cheesy, cut it down to 1 c.)

Skinnytaste's Garlic Dijon Herb Sauce (mash together with a mortar and pestle or mini food processor):
1 tsp. Herbs de Provence
1 tsp. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. olive oil (optional, we went without it)
3-4 cloves garlic
2 T. Dijon mustard

Mix turkey, sauce, oat bran, cheese and egg together...mix it well!   Place turkey mixture evenly in a 9" x 4" loaf pan (we lined ours with parchment paper) and bake for about 1 hour, 5 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit or until done.  After removing pan from the oven, let the meatloaf sit for 5 minutes, then cut and serve.

The meatloaf was juicy when it first was sliced, but as the meatloaf cools, it does become drier.  We would use only 1/4 c. next time we make this meatloaf.  This was a Pure Protein meal for the female half...the male half had his with brown rice.  We'll either make sandwiches out of the leftovers or make a sauce to pour over the meatloaf.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Hawaiian Dukan Lu'au Foods

Note:  This is a scheduled post.

We love poke which is basically fresh fish cubed seasoned with salt, sesame oil and seaweed.  There are many recipes out there for poke.  When the female half was a little girl, poke was made mostly out of ahi (tuna) or aku (tuna also) with the above ingredients and maybe some green onions or onion slices and a little bit of chili pepper.  Now, you can get not only ahi or aku poke, but tofu poke, imitation crab poke, cucumber poke, tako (octopus) poke, swordfish poke, and more.  You can make it as fancy or simple as you like.  We generally have poke at least once a week.   Poke is something you find in most supermarkets and at almost every lu'au here in Hawaii.

Salmon Poke

For a nice addition to a salad, dice up some fresh raw fish of your choice, toss with a little bit of salt and sesame oil (you don't need a lot) and serve over salad with a light fat free dressing.  If you want to make your poke a little fancier, add sliced onions, fresh seaweed (or furikake if you don't have fresh seaweed), wasabi, tobiko or masago (both fish eggs).

We don't care for the shoyu (soy sauce) poke sold here, stores tend to use older fish for shoyu poke and it often times is too salty for us.  Here are some poke recipes (most of them probably don't need as much sesame oil as they mention and if they aren't Dukan'd already, they are easily Dukan'd):

Shoyu Poke
Aku Poke
Classic Ahi Poke

Lomi Salmon (or Lomi Lomi Salmon)

One of our favorites is the salmon poke at Safeway.  We prefer it without the shoyu based sauce they offer.  This really just has fresh salmon cut into cubes, lightly seasoned with Hawaiian salt and sesame oil.  Add in some slice onions (mildest you have), crushed red pepper flakes and green onions).  Refrigerate for at least half an hour before serving (see photo).    Make is as spicy as you like and with as many onions as you like.

Lomi Salmon is another item you will always find at a lu'au in Hawaii.  It's a very simple recipe...we don't have it often since the male half doesn't care for raw onions or tomatoes.  The female half decided to have some with her lunch (see photo below).  Here is a recipe for lomi salmon.  Lomi Salmon is definitely Dukan friendly.

Flamidwyfe's Cuban Steak (It's a Dukan Recipe!)

Flamidwyfe's Cuban Steak

We loved this!

Thank you, Flamidwfye!  We love Cuban food.  There's really only one Cuban restaurant here in Honolulu.  The food is tasty, but pricey so we don't go there very often.  Which is why we love trying Cuban recipes at home!


Decided to try Flamidwyfe's Cuban Flank Streak recipe without the onions and mushrooms since it's a Pure Protein Day for the female half of this couple.  We used her marinade recipe exactly as she posted but only had time to marinade our meat for about 4 hours.  It was still fabulous.  We went ahead and used all the oil the recipe called for!  (Oh, we used one pound of meat since we were feeding two people, so the recipe below is Flamidwyfe's recipe doubled.

RECIPE:
Serves 2 (male half at rice and look funn with his, if he didn't have starches, we would have needed 1 1/2 lbs of beef)
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes
Cook Time: approximately 7-8 minutes for medium rare, 1" thick steaks

1 lb. beef, top round steak (fat trimmed, we tenderized using the salting method, use the 1 tsp of salt for each side and be sure to rinse your steaks well, if you are using this method, be prepared to salt for an hour or so)

Marinade ingredients:
Juice of 2 limes
1/4 c. olive oil
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. Italian Seasoning
2 t. garlic powder
1 1/2 T. soy sauce, plus 1/2 T. water (if you're not watching your sodium intake, ok to use 2 T.)
1 t. favorite hot sauce (we used Frank's RedHot)

Put marinate ingredients in a large ziploc bag.  Mix marinade well.  Add steaks.  Shake up.  Refrigerate for 8 hours or more (we only had time for 4, but it was still tasty).  Turn bag occasionally.  Before grilling steak, let steaks sit at room temperature (we usually let it sit for 10-15 minutes).  Heat a grill pan or frying pan over high heat, spray with a little bit of non-stick spray and place steaks in pan.  Cook for 4-5 minutes, turn steaks over and cook another 3 minutes or so for medium rare 1 inch steaks.

The white rolled up things in the photos are look funn, a Chinese flat rice noodle that's rolled.  The look funn factory in Chinatown here sells them plain, with char siu (pork) or shrimp but we've seen them with scallops too.  You can eat them as is or fry them up like we did.  It was a special treat for the male half of this couple.  He's not Asian, but he sure loves Asian foods!

Enjoy...we sure did...and thanks again to Flamidwyfe for the 'ono (delicious) recipe.  We'll definitely try this with chicken next time!