Product Review: Nasoya Fettucini Noodles

It's been a while since we've used tofu shirataki noodles.  The male half of this couple didn't mind eating it when we first started the diet, but I recently asked him about it and he said he prefers not to eat them.

As mentioned in a previous post, being Asian, we grew up eating Shirataki noodles...in Japanese dishes, not in pasta.  Never even considered using it in a pasta dish nor did we realize it's low cal, etc.  Since it was colder here in the islands, decided to try No Recipe's Spaghetti Meat Sauce Recipe (with a few changes) this weekend.    Recipe will be posted after I doctor up the photos.

Over the past month we've noticed a second brand of shirataki noodles at our local market...Nasoya's Fettucini noodles.  Decided to give it a try with the spaghetti sauce (of course I make whole wheat spaghetti noodles for the male half).

Here's how we prepared it...

Rinsed the noodles, then boiled in salted water for a few minutes.

We definitely like the taste better.  It's still got sort of a crunch to it, just like regular shirataki noodles do, but we are almost positive it doesn't have any other taste to it which is nice.  (I made the male half of this couple try one noodles to give me his rating).

We're definitely buying this brand instead!

Miracle 01409 Miracle Shirataki- 6x7 Oz (Google Affiliate Ad)

Catching Up

Oh gosh, I drafted this last week and thought I posted it!

Thanksgiving is over and it feels like we're rolling really fast towards Christmas!   We spent the weekend baking tons of holiday goodies for the three holiday get togethers we have this coming week so for dinners we ate store bought poke (seasoned raw fish), sashimi (slices of raw fish), leftover turkey and lots of broccoli.

This weekend will be another busy one with our holiday get togethers, so not much cooking going on this weekend.  It's been hard with the holiday get togethers to say no to carbs and sweets, but so far we've been able to keep the carb and sugar intake to a minimum.  Most days we try not to have any.  I guess the Dukan Diet is sort of on hold for now.  We wanted to go back into Cruise after our scouting trip, but we're still in Consolidation.  The nice thing is with the 45 minute aerobic workout (every other day), we've been able to lose the weight we gained during the scouting trip.

Today we decided to catch up on Flamidwyfe's blog.  Her blog has always been a source of inspiration and when we feel we need a kick in the butt to buckle down on the Dukan Diet, we read through some of her posts.  It's definitely getting us excited again.  We've already decided at this Sunday's Brunch it'll be no desserts or carbs...just attacking the sashimi area, the less fatty meats and veggies.

We do have a couple of recipes to post like our Nabe Recipe which is a Japanese Hot Pot recipe.  Very easy to make where ever you live and with the wintery weather here, the soup base will keep you nice and warm.   Nabe is really just a broth (you can use different kinds, homemade) with veggies and meats.  You can also add Shirataki Tofu noodles to the broth.

Hope to post that recipe soon!

Hope everyone is having a great holiday season.

Dukan Teri Chicken Stir Fry

Teri Chicken Stir Fry

 We liked this recipe, but we botched it a bit.

First of all, Teri is Teriyaki -- I'm not sure what others call it in different parts of the country, but if you go to a plate lunch place here, it's often referred to as Teri.  We used Larry  I'm sure if we followed the recipe exactly as is, it would be great, but we used Truvia instead of sugar to make it Dukan.  We used less Truvia than the recipe called for, but our mistake was not adding it in gradually and tasting the sauce to find the right sweetness.  It didn't come out bad, but it is a bit sweet.

Sunday was an extremely voggy day.  The vog was so thick even Diamond Head looked like there was a sheer drape in front of it.  The vog usually caused a person to feel sluggish and those with allergies often times suffer from headaches, bleeding noses, and congestion.  We had almost all of the symptoms!  Of course, this lead to both of us lazying around the house, forcing ourselves to get things done which meant dinner wasn't planned out.  We would have liked to make Teri Chicken in our grill pan, but due to the lack of time, we decided to use the sauce as a stir fry sauce.

We usually like to slice our stir fry meats thin, but in our mad rush, we cut our chicken tenderloins into chunks and only got to marinate the chicken for about 5 minutes.   Hopefully we'll have time to cook up some Teri Chicken in our grill pan this weekend.

As mentioned earlier, it wasn't bad, just poorly prepared!

RECIPE:
Serves: 2-4 (depending if you have brown rice or something with it)
Prep Time: less than 10 minutes if you already have your sauce prepared
Cook Time: 10-15 minutes

1 lb. chicken tenderloins (we cut ours into cubes, but next time we'll cut it into thing slices)
1 1/2 c. broccoli florets, cut into smaller pieces
Cold water or water with ice in it to cool down your broccoli

Marinade:
1/4 c. Dukan Teriyaki Sauce (Hawaii Style)

Stir Fry Sauce:
2-4 T. Dukan Teriyaki Sauce (or more, depending on your taste)

Marinate chicken for 15 minutes or longer.

Over high heat, bring water to a boil (we used just enough to cover our broccoli), add broccoli and boil for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.  Remove broccoli and place broccoli into cold/ice water.  Over high heat, spray a  stir fry pan or wok with a little bit of non-stick spray or a little bit of olive oil if you prefer.  As soon as your pan is hot, add chicken discarding marinade.  Add 2 T. of fresh teriyaki sauce to the pan.  Stir fry chicken until 85% cooked.   Remove chicken from pan and set aside.  Add broccoli and 2 T. fresh teriyaki sauce to pan and stir fry.  Add more teriyaki sauce if needed.  Stir fry for a minute.  Add chicken back and cook until chicken is done.

Serve as is for a PV/Cruise meal, with red or brown rice during Consolidation.

Enjoy....we sort of did!

Dukan Stuffing - REPOST

Dukan Stuffing

REPOSTING - 11/21/2012 - Aloha from Hawaii and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  We're reposting this recipe because it was a lifesaver last Thanksgiving.  We used Janice's recipe as a base and added some touches from our mother's recipe to give it some additional flavor.  Not sure we'll have time to make Dukan stuffing this year, but who knows!

It's been quite a year with illnesses, fortunately a few trips to the mainland, a few deaths in our family and we just got back from a scouting trip this week...that's partly why we didn't have time to get our butts in gear to make some Dukan Stuffing.  Interestingly, in the past, stuffing was something we always craved.  We didn't really eat it any other time of the year, but we so looked forward to stuffing and gravy at Thanksgiving.  This year, we find ourselves with less sugar cravings and surprisingly less carb cravings... hooray!   Right now we don't even feel like we need a stuffing replacement.  

Shortly before our scouting trip to the mainland, the female half stuck to the diet (Attack and Cruise) and lost a few pounds.  We hit Consolidation right when we left on our trip and of course, the diet sort of went out the door.  We did get to hike a couple of days (a couple of miles each time) and we tried to make healthier choices when possible but we ate more spinach and tomato wraps than we had wanted to.  2 pounds were gained during the fabulous scouting trip and now we've gone back to Cruise to try to get closer to our goal.  We're getting in our daily exercise too.  Just gotta jump start our weight loss again.  

Wishing all of us luck during the "Season of Eating"!  Happy Thanksgiving!

We loved this recipe!  Thanks, Janice!

We used Dukanitout.com's stuffing recipe with some additions to make it similar to the female half of this couple's mom's stuffing recipe.  Oh, Thanksgiving morning always smelled so yummy.  We looked forward to mom making her stuffing which started with an entire stick of butter, included various fresh herbs, water chestnuts and portuguese sausage.  Now that we're watching what we eat, we assumed we would be eating a tiny portion of stuffing this Thanksgiving, but with this recipe, we can now have a decent serving of stuffing!

The one mistake we did make, we forgot to chop the croutons smaller after baking them...but the taste is there and we are looking forward to our Thanksgiving batch.  Note: we didn't have mushrooms and olives which normally went into our Thanksgiving stuffing...so that will definitely go in this coming Thursday.

RECIPE:
Serves 4-6
Prep Time: 30-45 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes

1 batch Dukan Cheddar Bread croutons (we used Becky's bread recipe with Janice's jalapeno sub for the dill.  After you bake your bread and let it cool, cut them up into crouton sized cubes.  Bake them on a cookie sheet at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, then let them cool.  Spray them with a little bit of olive oil spray before baking.

2 stalks celery, diced small
1/2 red onion, diced small
3 water chestnuts, diced small
6 oz. low fat turkey sausage (any low fat sausage would work), chopped
1/2 t. dried rosemary
1/2 t. dried thyme
1 T. fresh parsley
kosher salt and pepper to taste
1 c. low sodium chicken broth
1/2 c. oat bran
1 egg

(add mushrooms and olives both chopped if you like)

Saute celery, onion and chestnuts (mushrooms and olives if you choose to add them) until veggies are soft.  Add sausage, cook for a couple minutes.  Add herbs, salt and pepper.  Mix and let cook for a couple minutes.  Add chicken broth, then croutons and oat bran.  Let cook for a couple minutes.  Add the egg, mix well and cook for a couple minutes.  Transfer stuffing to pan, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes (uncover for the last 5 minutes).

Enjoy..we sure did!

We're Still Here :-)

We are still here...haven't cooked a whole lot since the beginning of October.  October ended up being busy with a couple family members passing away.  It was time to tend to family matters and of course eat with the ones who flew in for funeral preparations.

The beginning of October was the beginning of our Cruise stage.  For the 4 days of Attack we did in September, life was calm...we breezed through it with no problem and lost the three pounds the Dukan chart said we would.  We planned our meals out carefully, did not cheat and exercised daily.  That's where we actually didn't follow the diet.  Instead of sticking to the 20 minutes of walking per day during Attack, we went ahead and did 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day. Our bodies need that extra exercise to lose the weight.  The first couple of Cruise days went just fine, then tragedy struck our family.  We had every intention of sticking to the diet, but could only handle some.  Our eating habits were in line with the diet for the first half of October although we ended up eating a lot of poke and already made items.  Exercise however went out the door.

Once the out of town family started arriving, so did the family style dinners.   Still, we tried to make the best food choices available, but still no exercise.  Looking back at our daily food and exercise chart, looks like we only exercised 2 days in October...oooops.  After the last family member left the island, we were amazed we only gained a pound, but weren't surprised our weight loss had stopped.

It took a few days of being back on the diet and exercise plan to finally start losing a half a pound here and a half a pound there.  We're happy to report a we are sort of back on track.  Next week according to our Dukan chart, we should be moving on to Consolidation but we are still a few pounds away from meeting our next goal.  Last year around this time we were moving into Consolidation for the first time and again, we were a couple pounds shy of our goal...like many others, once we moved into Consolidation, we continued to lose weight.  We're planning on soi ng the same, moving on the Consolidation even though we haven't quite met our goal.  We may even try adding two days of PP here and there.

We did start cooking again this past week and hope to post recipes soon.  They were simple dishes...one was a cold style Shabu Shabu and the other a nabe recipe.  Both made with lots of veggies and homemade broth.

Hope everyone is doing great on the Dukan diet!

Our Official Second Attack

First of all, we're happy to report our the official start of our second time around on the Dukan Diet is off to a good start.  Last July, we both went on the Dukan Diet - the male half really just setting out to manage his cholesterol, lose a couple of pounds and support the female half by not complaining about what we eat ha ha!  The female half set out to lose 20 pounds and by October of 2011, almost reached the 20 pound goal.  We were able to maintain the weight loss for several months, then slowly buy surely gained several pounds back.

Summer was busy with out of town guests, illnesses and traveling.  We are back on track now and are restarting the Dukan Diet.  It really has been the only diet that's work for us.  The South Beach Diet and others we've managed to lose a few pounds, but never over 5 pounds.  This past summer we were still making low fat choices - as in lower fat meats, fish, no mayo, we rarely cook with butter, etc.  The desserts is what killed us.  The other week we both got on the scale...it was no surprise the female half had gained weight but the male half gained 3 pounds!  

We've completed our 4 day Attack (well, the female half did, the male half decided he would eat the same low fat items, but he is going to be in Consolidation so he can have his one serving of red or brown rice with his meal).  The female half is right on target...the Dukan Chart said 4 pounds would be lost if we stuck to the plan and we did!  Yay!  The first two days were difficult with sugar and carb cravings.  By day three, the cravings went away and it was easier to serve the male half his serving of rice!

Here's a run down of the differences between our first and second try.

2011 Attack: Almost reached our first goal (we were about 2 pounds shy of our first goal).  Followed the Dukan rules exactly as laid out.  We planned our meals out, but our mistake was having the same thing for our meals and snacks...meaning we had chicken for breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner.  By the third day, we were sick of eating the same thing.  We did the required 20 minutes of walking each day.  

2012 Attack: Reached our first goal a day ahead of schedule.  Followed the Dukan rules with a few small exceptions - but did not compromise on the refined sugar rule.  We planned our meals again, but changed it up this time - except for breakfast, we can eat yogurt with oat bran every morning.  Here's what we consumed:

Day 1

Breakfast - 1 container nonfat vanilla yogurt with 1 1/2 T. oat bran

Morning Snack - low fat turkey and ham slices

Lunch - ahi and salmon poke

Afternoon Snack - none, bought too much poke

Dinner - Dukan Cuban Style Burgers (recipe will be posted soon)
Drinks - water and zero calorie sparkling water
Exercise - 44 minutes of Zumba, low impact

Day 2
Breakfast - 1 container nonfat vanilla yogurt with 1 1/2 T. oat bran
Morning Snack - 5 grilled chicken pieces
Lunch - salmon sashimi, shrimp, ahi poke (from a different place)
Afternoon Snack - none
Dinner - 3 pieces Korean BBQ grilled chicken, no skin, etc.
Drinks - water, diet coke and zero calorie sparkling water
Exercise - none :-(

Day 3
Breakfast - 1 container nonfat vanilla yogurt with 1 1/2 T. oat bran
Morning Snack - 5 grilled chicken pieces
Lunch - Dukan Turkey and Ham Bake (recipe will be posted soon)
Afternoon Snack - low fat ham pieces
Dinner - Dukan Thyme Pork Chops with Shallots (recipe will be posted soon)
Drinks - water and zero calorie sparkling water
Exercise - 46 minutes Zumba, medium impact

Day 4

Breakfast - 1 container nonfat vanilla yogurt with 1 1/2 T. oat bran
Morning Snack - low fat turkey pieces
Lunch - Dukan Orange Chicken
Afternoon Snack - leftover Dukan Turkey and Ham Bake
Dinner - Salmon and ahi poke
Drinks - water and zero calorie sparkling water
Exercise - 20 minutes Zumba, low impact

We're really looking forward to the bag of broccoli florets in our fridge!

Dukan Cheesy Broccoli Frittata

Cheesy Broccoli Frittata

We loved this recipe!

We've never made a frittata before...it's so easy and yummy, we're looking forward to making many variations soon!  Frittata's can be made with either whole eggs or egg whites for those watching their cholesterol.

We were given a recipe book recently and came across a recipe for a Sicilian Frittata.  It sounded great, but ultimately we ended up changing it quite a bit to fit the Dukan diet.  Nix the potatoes, nix the Italian blend of cheese...etc.  After we get back from our business trip we're hoping to make a Chinese Frittata.

Oh, we made a mistake and mixed in the fat free cheddar cheese into the egg, but it really was supposed to be sprinkled only on the top.  It ended up being great with the cheese mixed in and we'll probably continue to mix the cheese into the egg mixture and nix the cheese on top.

RECIPE:
Serves 2 - we didn't have any starch with this, but we were still full
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 15-20 minutes

6 eggs or 3/4 c. egg whites plus 1/3 c. egg whites
1/3 c. water
1 1/2 c. broccoli, chopped into small pieces
1/2 c. turkey, chopped into small pieces
1/2 c. shallots, chopped into small pieces
2 cloves garlic
1/4 t. kosher salt
1/8 t. pepper
1/2 t. dried thyme
1/2 c. fat free cheddar cheese
1/4 c. grated parmesan cheese

In a skillet, add a small amount of olive oil over medium-high heat.  When oil is hot, add shallots and garlic, saute for a couple minutes until shallots are soft.  Add broccoli, cover and let steam for a couple minutes until broccoli is tender.  In the meantime, mix egg whites, salt, pepper, thyme and cheeses well.  Add turkey to broccoli, mix, then pour egg mixture evenly over broccoli mixture.  We used a spatula to even everything out.  Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes or until eggs are done.  Cut and serve.

Enjoy...we sure did!