A new *burp* tasty recipe!

Okay okay okay yeah it's been a long damn time since I've posted... again. Last night though, I made a great new recipe that I just had to share! Best of all, it's easy to make and most of the ingredients you really SHOULD already have available in your kitchen!

So, here we go. There's not really a name for it, but it's got two separate pieces which go together wonderfully. Here they are:

Caramelized balsamic onions
* 1 medium size red onion
* 1/2 stick unsalted butter
* About 1/4-1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
* Healthy sprinkle of black pepper
* Light sprinkle of salt
* Light sprinkle of ground thyme
* 2 tsp sugar

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Slice the onion into half rings, about 1/4 inch wide and add to the melted butter. Pour the balsamic vinegar over top of the onions and stir until they become soft, about 5 minutes, adding the pepper, salt and thyme about halfway through. Once the onions are soft, sprinkle the sugar over the whole thing and let it cook until the onions start to turn golden brown, stirring less frequently.

Once the onions are ready, set them aside and place another skillet onto your already warm burner for the following:

Lemon balsamic tilapia
* 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
* About 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar (enough to fully cover the surface used to cook the fish)
* Slightly less lemon juice than balsamic vinegar. You want about a 4:3 ratio of balsamic to lemon.
* A dash of ground cloves
* Tilapia fillets (I made 3; much more and you'll overcrowd the pan, causing you to lose heat)

Toss the garlic into the pan and let it sizzle for a minute to bring out some flavor. Next, lay the bed of balsamic and lemon juice, being sure that your entire fillets will fit inside this bed. Be sure that the garlic is evenly distributed throughout the bed also, so that you don't get too heavy of a garlic flavor in one spot. Now, add the tilapia on top of everything and put that dash of cloves over top. You don't want a lot, just a hint will do the trick. Cook for a couple of minutes on each side, until it's thoroughly cooked through. This shouldn't take long at all.

To serve, just toss everything onto a plate. There should be plenty of juices in both pans to give you a nice drizzle over top.

Enjoy!
P.S. This also reheats very well!

Another yummy veggieful recipe

I may not be on my low iodine diet anymore... and it may have been a few years since I've been vegetarian, but I still enjoy experimenting with foods related to both diets. In that light, I made up some totally delicious pasta on Friday evening, which I felt needed to be shared. The idea originated from the Pasta Romantico at Boulders on Broadway, then changed a bit from a recipe found on the side of the pasta box... then received a few changes and additions of my own. A nice personal touch from yours truly.

The resulting recipe has no name, except for delicious. Here it is:

Ingredients:

• 1 package (8oz) angel hair pasta
• 3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
• 3 whole scallions, chopped
• 1 red onion slice, chopped (I sliced one ring from the middle of the onion)
• 1-2 small white mushroom(s), chopped
  
• 2 roma tomatoes, chopped
• 1/2 lime
  
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
• 2 tsp fresh chopped basil
  

Directions:
Preparing the pasta:
Boil 3 quarts water, add noodles to the boiling water, let the water return to boiling, then cook for an additional 3-4 minutes or until noodles are tender. Careful not to overcook! Once thoroughly cooked, drain and rinse with cold water to ensure they don't continue cooking.

Preparing the rest:
In a large skillet, heat up the olive oil. Once warmed up (just a couple minutes) add the garlic and scallions to the olive oil. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Don't let these brown! Next, add the scallions, red onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepper and basil. Cook all of this for another 5 minutes or so, continuing to stir frequently. You want the garlic to start getting yellowish, but not browned and give all of the flavors a chance to mix together.

Final touches:
Once both the pasta and veggie medley are ready, combine them in a large bowl (including the olive oil you cooked the veggies in!) and toss them together. Squeeze the 1/2 lime over top of the mix. Toss some more to make sure all the flavors are mixed throughout, and you're ready to go!

Serving:
Serve warm (not hot!) with a sprinkling of feta cheese over top. Makes about 6 full size servings.

This does refrigerate and microwave well. A good sized portion takes 60 seconds to get warmed up perfectly in my microwave.

Enjoy!

As always, let me know if you have tried and enjoyed the recipe!

P.S. If you want to get a small bit of meat in here, I haven't tried it myself but I would bet that if you sauteed some shrimp and added them in here, it would be quite tasty.

A whole new level of frustration

This whole low iodine diet thing is going to kill me one of these days. Not only is it a hassle to have to cook all of my meals, with very limited ingredients... but I'm also staying with friends right now, so I don't have all of my normal kitchenware and spices. Then to top things off, since I am staying with friends, my entire life is packed up in boxes in the garage... which, up until 5 minutes ago, included all of my cookbooks and loose recipes. Just about an hour ago, I began the endeavor to hunt for these materials... and I have just now finally gotten to sit back down at my computer, finally having achieved my goal. I had to, quite literally, climb around, over and THROUGH all of my belongings. I opened nearly ever box that I had packed in the hopes that these were in there. Now, I know what you're thinking... cook books, the box should be labeled "Books". That's what I thought. Next logical guess.. "Kitchen". Nope. Then I started going through the unlabeled boxes, of which I had plenty. I packed and moved in a bit of a hurry. By the time I got to the last 2 boxes, I was about ready to give up. One of the boxes is nigh impossible to get to without removing half of my other belongings first. The other box, which was in fact right out in front within easy access, I had discounted right off because it was far too large. Certainly I wouldn't put books in a box that large. ...right? Oh well the hell, so I tried it, and lo and behold, there are my freaking cookbooks.

Damn that sucked.

At least I can say I got a good workout today. Even if it wasn't rock climbing, my thus-far limited experience with it certainly helped, finding foot holds and hand holds through that mess.

...now I have to spend the time actually cooking something. Ugh.

I think I may just go get some of The Joey Pizza.

The Joey Pizza

Alright so I've been enjoying this pizza so much (in fact, a few cold slices served as breakfast this morning -- yes, it is incredible cold) that I decided I should post it up here to share with the world. Really, I can't take credit for the creation myself. That credit goes to Eric Geryol, owner of Boulders on Broadway, which is a bar I happen to frequent. The reason this pizza is that I was on a low iodine diet at the time, and there was no way Eric was going to let me be stuck at home because no restaurants would cater to me. Out of the many dishes I tried, this one stood out in amazing glory. Now granted, there is *some* iodine in this pizza, because there are minimal amounts used in the dough and perhaps a bit in the pizza sauce (I have also gotten it without the sauce though and it is still wonderful.) This pizza can be easily made at home, however, using the pizza dough and tomato sauce recipes from ThyCa's low iodine cookbook.

Anyhow, without any further ado, the pizza is as follows:

• Thin crust (essential!)
• No cheese
• Pizza sauce (optional, as noted above)
• Artichoke hearts
• Garlic (actual chunks, not just powder)
• Basil
• Balsamic vinegar

The vinegar should be drizzled over the top before cooking. In my opinion, you can't really be too liberal with this. The sweet/tart flavor of the vinegar really makes the pizza. Cook it until the crust is a light golden brown and enjoy!

Not only is this pizza one of the staples of my low iodine diet, I have continued ordering it regularly since... and other people have actually called me up to ask what was on it so that they could order it as well!

If you try this pizza out, let me know what you think! Also, if you happen to be around Tempe, AZ and craving a pizza, I highly recommend stopping into Boulders on Broadway and trying out the original! This place has the best pizza in town, by far.

Enjoy! Also keep a look out, I may be posting some more recipes soon, as I'm starting back on the diet for a few weeks.

Low iodine confusion

Even though I am drawing near to the end of my current cycle of the low iodine diet, I have still been looking into the specifics more and more closely over recent days. This is especially after receiving a print-out from my doctor's office yesterday (I had been instructed over the phone to begin the LID, thus never received it before) which brought up many questions for me.

You see, every publication I have found regarding the low iodine diet disagrees on some points... usually several. In general, they agree on most things. I have found some almost disturbing discrepancies, however. For instance, every guideline I have seen so far says no soy products. Well, almost. According to Dr. Kenneth Ain, in The Low Iodine Cookbook (Norene Gilletz; Your Health Press, 2005)

Soy lecithin is extracted from soy oil, rather than the protein parts, and has just trace amounts of soy proteins (only enough to bother people with soy allergies). Soy oil, in reasonable amounts (usually as part of a vegetable oil mixture or a minor ingredient) won’t add any discernible iodine to the diet and is not goitrogenic. There is no reason to think that soy lecithin is in any way unsafe for the LID.

Okay, good to know. SOME soy products are safe. Then I receive these guidelines from my doctor's office yesterday, and there is NO mention of soy at all. Not a single word of it.

Another point of confusion is with fruits. Yes, fruits. According to the ThyCa LID guidelines, there are no issues with fruits, aside from maraschino cherries and rhubarb. They make for wonderful snack foods and there are no problems with any fruits aside from the two mentioned. I have been going by this notion for the duration of my diet so far... only to find that this may be grossly wrong. The banana & strawberry smoothies I have been making for breakfast may in fact be quite high in iodine. The guidelines I received from my doctor yesterday states:

Allowed fruits and fruit juices: Apple (fresh only), apple juice, apricots (fresh only), avocado, berries, cherries (fresh only), cranberries, figs (fresh only), grapefruit, grape juice, grapes, mangos, lemon juice, melons, nectarines, oranges, orange juice, peaches (fresh only), pineapple (canned), pineapple juice, plums, tangerines
Disallowed fruits: Bananas, dried fruit (raisins), applesauce, fresh pineapple, canned peaches or any fruit not listed in the foods allowed.

Now I have found, through my own research today, thanks to The World's Healthiest Foods Website, that strawberries are in fact one of the most iodine rich foods in the world. This source, at least, provides solid numbers. This I can work with. I'm tired of all of these lists of do's and don'ts with no numbers or resources to back them up. I need to start finding solid numbers.

I could continue on and on with the discrepancies between the diets, but what's the point? Nobody really agrees. For my own sanity, however, I need a single definitive source. I need to know the iodine content of different foods. I need to know what foods I can and cannot eat while on this diet. I was astounded yesterday when I was reprimanded for drinking orange juice on the diet, by a lab technician who was assisting with my case! Not even doctor's staff knows the specifics of the diet! This should go to show just how contended the diet really is!

I think I have some work ahead of me...

Milk does the muscles good

Just a small bit of interest... a new study suggests that skim milk is far more likely to promote muscle growth than alternative soy supplements. It's something to do with differing types of protein. While soy does have sufficient protein to keep you healthy, it isn't as helpful as casein for building muscle mass. Now that I've started working on building muscle, maybe I should be drinking more milk...

Anyhow, here's the article: http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/04/19/skim.milk.reut/index.html

Branching Out

So I'm working on branching out some lately, expanding my horizons as it were. I've complained a fair bit that I don't get out enough, don't meet new people... so I'm doing something about it now.

Last night, I went to the grand opening of a local club, "The Cherry Lounge & Pit". It was a VIP only event, free drinks until 11pm, and I was offered a ticket... so hell yea! The place actually turned out to be very nice. The crowd was definitely a mixture that I wasn't expecting. The sign on the door claimed "strict dress code".. but the clientele didn't quite show evidence of that. Perhaps this was simply because of the nature of the event, but I was very happy with the diversity. While there, I met several new people, found a good new club, and perhaps somewhere I may try to spin in the future.

Today for lunch, I also decided to try something new. I had to run an errand at lunch, so I decided to stop somewhere near there for lunch: Teakwood Tavern & Grill. This place surprised me, I like it. My first impression when I walked in was that it was a total dive... albeit a bit bigger than your typical dive. Not that this is a bad thing, I've haunted my share of dives. The staff was very friendly; perhaps a bit slow, but it was a busy lunch time so that's excusable. I took my seat at the bar, got a glass of Kilt Lifter (bonus!) and ordered some kind of... honey mustard chicken sandwich. This thing comes out, and holy hell it was big. Tasty too! I couldn't taste too much of the honey mustard, probably not enough with the huge chunk of chicken on there. It also came with a small cup of "fresh" fruit.. well, mostly fresh anyhow. I may have just gotten a bad part of a pineapple, who knows. Overall though, I was pleasantly surprised. I can definitely see going back there again.

I gotta keep this up, I like this whole "new" thing. It suits me.