Everyone's a Dieter: The Low Cholesterol Diet Experience

It’s strange, but I’ve never considered myself a dieter.  It’s strange because at exactly the ripe old age of 2, I’ve been doing exactly that – dieting.  It started with the milk, egg, potato allergy.  My mom came pretty close to eliminating those things from my diet.  Then in high school out of some morbid combination of rebelling from my steak and potato/hunter gatherer family and simply being a teenage girl who wanted to wear midriffs (it was the 90’s, so give me a break!) I became a short lived not all that dedicated vegetarian.  In college I moved on to the necessary peanut butter and cracker diet, which really only meant that I wasn’t allergic to these ingredients and they were cheap so I ate A LOT of them.  Which brings me to today in my adult, working life where I’ve been on a number of self-inflicted diets ranging from the sugar-free diet to the yeast-free diet to even the grain-free diet and the worst of all the sugar-yeast-grain free diet.  

The optimal word here is “free” and yet I don’t feel free at all, but rather a slave to these diets.  But really we all have some kind of diet and so I’m pretty sure that makes us all dieters and we all have to eat so I guess we are all slaves to whatever diet we choose in some way or another whether it is in the kitchen, the drive through, or the five star restaurant.  We have to eat to survive.

Green onions from my flower pot garden

I’m sure you’re wondering where I’m going with this and wish I would post a picture of a hamburger or something. No hamburger today.  The husband recently discovered that he has high cholesterol and so we immediately embarked on a low cholesterol diet. We have been on this diet for about two months now.  We aren’t incredibly strict about it and do enjoy a nice trip to Sonic occasionally.  The husband has gotten a lot of inquiries about this low cholesterol diet he is on and so I thought I would share the secret with you all.  Are you ready for it, people?  The secret to the husband’s low cholesterol diet is (enter drum roll....) vegetables!  The secret is exactly what our mothers have always told us: eat your vegetables! The husband and I took on a conscious effort to reduce the meat that we eat and increase the vegetables.  The goal is not to lose weight, but to be healthier and balanced. We also have added whole grains into the mix too.  (I’m not sure if corn chips count as a whole grain, but I can’t live without them and so they stay in the “diet”.)

What kind of vegetables, you ask?  Experienced dietitians may disagree with me, but I say anything!

Zucchini Noodles with Lime Chicken

 I have even started growing my own onions!  Next year I hope to try basil and even zucchini.  While it is technically a fruit, zucchini is this diet’s best friend.  We have made a number of “pastas” from zucchini using the inspiring spiralizer.  Our latest recipe was Zucchini Noodles with Cilantro Lime Chicken.  Of course, I changed it up a bit because I don’t like cilantro so I omitted it and sprinkled a tiny amount dried parsley on the top of the complete dish.  I also only used about half of the cumin.  This left the dish tasting fresh, the sour bite of the lime juice dressing an invigorating surprise.  I also added fresh green onion from my flower-pot garden and slices of fresh tomatoes from my dad’s neighbor’s garden. 

It was relatively easy to make this healthy dish and the husband said he would eat it again.  Not a bad tasting meal for being part of a low-cholesterol diet.  Like all of you other dieters out there, we like (love?) food and we will be joining you all at  the bbq grill to celebrate Labor Day over hamburgers and maybe some other kind of red meat, so there probably won’t be any other healthy recipes posted for a while.

The Inspiring Spiralizer

Spring.  It’s right around the corner.  The February sun is tempting us, teasing us with the possibility of warmth, the possibility of something new, something worth rolling out of bed to experience, the possibility of inspiration.  While the weather can’t exactly decide what it wants to do and we can’t depend on the sun to create these possibilities, we have to find inspiration in other things.

I happened to find inspiration in a kitchen gadget that I received for Christmas called The Spiralizer.  It is a tool that can turn a regular run of the mill zucchini or yellow squash, in my case, into a beautiful bowl of spirally pasta.  Inspiring? Exciting?   It is if you haven’t eaten traditional pasta in months.  So, to me The Spiralizer is the best invention since the Salad Shooter.

Zucchini or squash pasta tastes healthy, but not healthy  as in boring or “I know that I’m really eating imposter pasta,” but healthy as in fresh, as in “mmmm this is different, this is good,” as in I want seconds!

My first attempt at using The Spiralizer was a great success.  I followed the recipe for Low Carb Zucchini Pasta.  (Shocking that I actually followed a recipe, I know!) OK, so I didn’t have any zucchini, so I substituted yellow squash instead. (Guess I didn’t follow the recipe after all!)  I washed and then cut the top and bottom off the squash, then pushed and turned it through The Spiralizer.  The result, as you can see by the picture, looked much like traditional wheat pasta.

Then I made a variation of the sauce that I use in the Italian-Paleo Eggplant with Crumbled Beef, Tomatoes and Mint (minus the mint) recipe.  This sauce is very different from the usual meat marinara sauce.  It does not call for tomato sauce or tomato paste, but rather fresh tomatoes.  It also calls for vinegar, but I use apple cider vinegar to add just a hint of sweetness.  This is an excellent sauce on top of eggplant, but the squash is much more fun to spiralize than roasting the eggplant.  However, why couldn’t an eggplant be spiralized?

See what I mean?  The Spiralizer is inspiring!  If only it was in spring.