A Bright Crab Salad

by | Sep 14, 2012 | Challenge, Seafood

This morning I woke up groggily, not understanding why the whole house smelled like chicken. And then I went to make my coffee, and remembered that the chicken stock was still in the slow-cooker bubbling away. Jewish penicillin! Except, I don’t have a cold, and I want to keep it that way.

I set to work making my coffee, and then immediately after I finished, I realized that it was trash day, and I had an entire room full of cardboard that I had made a resolution to get rid of – the first official step in “making my house more of a home”. And get rid of it I did. A metric ton of cardboard was broken down with a knife and my brute strength, and stuffed in three large recycle bins. By the time I finished, the coffee was forgotten, as was breakfast, but I was rewarded with this beautiful clean room. Wonderful!

Well, I skipped breakfast. It’s something I have to work on. It was a “rest day”, which means that I wasn’t fueling for a workout, but it also means that I’m lazy when it comes to taking care of myself. It’s so much easier to do good when you are focused on good choices.

Lunch, however was a different story. My mom gave me the first of her eight ball zucchinis from the garden. It’s a hybrid zucchini squash – tastes like a zucchini with the firmer texture of a squash.

I doused it with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted it in a 450 degree oven for 45 minutes.

And then I put together a simple salad – zucchini, some of the roasted chicken in the fridge, parsley, mint, lemon juice and olive oil. I took it outside to eat on the porch.

In the late afternoon, I polished off an apple from Applecrest, and headed out for a walk.

Because it was a “rest day”, I decided to listen to a podcast and take a short walk around Fresh Pond. It’s one of my favorite places to escape to, because it is full of people at all times of day, you see dogs everywhere, and yet the paths are large enough that you don’t have to dodge people. You do however, have to dodge the wet dogs coming out of the pond. Today I learned my lesson and was totally soaked from an overly-excited sopping wet corgi.

After my walk, I headed over to Formaggio Kitchen for a late snack, hoping that I’d find something despite the fact that I can’t gorge on cheese or honey or anzac biscuit samples. When I realized that I couldn’t have my favorite fennel sausage because it had both milk products and sugar in it, I decided to splurge on something that I’ve been eying for months: Stumptown Cold Brew Coffee.

Honestly? It just wasn’t that great. I mean, it was good, for sure. But, for half the price, Formaggio brews pretty excellent George Howell iced coffee, and I’ve realized that it can’t be beat. Sorry Stumptown, I wanted to love it…

In another failed moment, I went next door to the Fishmonger to see if I could pick up some seafood for my dinner. I noticed that the board said that shelled lobster was $8.50 a pound, a moderately good deal (although Market Basket sells whole lobsters for $3.99 if you can deal with the crowds) but was informed that it was actually $50 per pound. Yes, in this bountiful season, they were attempting to sell the stuff for a good $47 dollars more than market value. Sometimes I don’t understand this world.

After this escapade and all that disappointment, I was feeling a little hungry, so I devoured two small hard boiled eggs.

Instead of lobster, I decided to splurge on crab for dinner to make myself feel better. Devon had a work dinner catered by Barbara Lynch, so this was another day of fending for myself. Actually, I’ve been trying to get the stuff for the past week, but every time I head to the store, it’s sold out. I finally found some, and grabbed it.

Dinner was dead simple fresh crab salad. I peeled a cucumber, chopped up an avocado, some colorful tomatoes. I made a dressing of one part Red Boat fish sauce to one part lime juice, with a pinch of chile. I dressed the salad with half of the dressing, and dressed the crab in a separate bowl with the other half. To guild the lily, I added just a few spoonfuls of coconut milk to my crab, and then served it on the bed of veg. Here it is!

A bright crab salad
serves 1

6 oz. fresh wild crab
1 medium cucumber
1 avocado
2-3 ripe colorful tomatoes
juice of 1 lime
1 Tbs. fish sauce
pinch of chile flakes
a splash of full-fat coconut milk

Start by making your dressing. Juice a lime, and add an equal amount of fish sauce (about 1 Tbs.). Add a pinch of chili flakes and whisk or shake up in a small jar.

Then prepare your vegetables. Peel and chop your cucumber and put in a bowl. Take an avocado, cut it in half, and score the flesh into cubes before spooning it out into the cucumbers. Then, chop up your tomatoes into wedges. Take half of the dressing, and dress the vegetables, and arrange on your dinner plate.

Then prepare your crab. In a small bowl, pour the remaining dressing on the crab. Add a generous splash of coconut milk (a tablespoon or two), mix gently to combine. Pile your crab onto your vegetables, and tuck in.

Humble Beginnings

by | Sep 13, 2012 | Challenge, chicken

The start of any challenge can be, well, challenging. I’ve been easing myself into things, cooking at home every night, making Pinterest boards with dinner ideas, and stocking up on necessities. With a few exceptions (mostly chocolate), I’ve actually been eating challenge-friendly food for the past week, so I’m hoping not to lose my mind too quickly.

In the morning, I started my day with a light breakfast – a sliced banana with a few spoonfuls of almond butter. Typically I like to eat a little bit more protein for my breakfast (and usually, it doesn’t even look like breakfast), but I was going for a run early, and didn’t want to overload myself. Now that I’m doing shorter, more intense workouts, I usually don’t like to eat much before exercise because I find that my stomach doesn’t cooperate as well as I’d like.

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a race. Let’s be clear, I don’t race. I don’t really run. At the gym, I spent months barely getting through 400m. warmups, because I had been sedentary for 8 months. But for some reason, I caught the crazy, and signed up. It was the middle of the night, I blame exhaustion. And so now, I have a little over a week to get ready for this thing, and so I’ve been running 3-4 miles a few times a week, in addition to two days a week of CrossFit.

Before convincing myself otherwise, I headed out to Fresh Pond to run (very slowly!) around the path. This place is pretty magical.

Fast forward to lunch, and I was hungry again. Steamed kale, and smoked fresh kielbasa, with a large side of raspberries. Kielbasa is one of those “minimally processed” foods I’m willing to partake in for this challenge – but I made sure to choose one with no additives or sugar. This is the turkey kielbasa from Trader Joe’s. It’s a little on the dodgy side of the “happy meat” requirements I subscribe to, but it’s really good. I just need to get the sausage grinder attachment for my KitchenAid.

In the evening, I got to pick up Devon from the airport, and we headed to the store to pick up dinner. Every so often we do the “choose your own salad bar meal” at Whole Foods, and this was one of those nights. Except, in anticipation of hungry afternoons this week, I opted to buy two rotisserie chickens (the second is half off), and shred the meat for the fridge.

I put together my dinner: spinach salad with lemon vinaigrette and raspberries, and a chicken leg with some mustard to dip. After shredding two chickens (and eating a quarter of one as I worked), this was all I could manage on my plate.

Before heading to bed, I froze one of the chicken carcasses in the “miscellaneous bones for stock” bag, and put the other in my very small slow cooker to make some overnight chicken broth.

One day down, 59 to go!