Fat Frog Diary

 Found this great recipe for easy summer salads. Yes, I said plural. This recipe has options! I used canned chicken, making this recipe a great "shelf special" to keep on hand. CHICKEN AND GARBANZO BEAN SALAD (w/options) 2 c cooked chicken, beef, or Spam 1 15oz can garbanzo beans/chickpeas 1 cup cubed cheddar or Monterey Jack 2 stalks celery, chopped 1 sm. Green pepper, chopped 2 green onions, chopped ********** ½ c mayonnaise 2 Tbsp lemon juice ½ tsp chili powder 1/4 tsp garlic powder Leaf lettuce Cherry tomatoes Nuts, chopped (optional) ******************* Mix the first set of ingredients in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl mix together the second set and add to first set in large bowl. Mix well. Cover and chill until ready to serve. Serve on leaf lettuce and garnish with cherry tomatoes and optional nuts if desired.

Mayonnaise and Salad Dressings are some of the staples of the American dieter’s repertoire. Without a salad for lunch or the ubiquitous tuna sandwich, the American dieter is lost in a sea of pre-packaged and tasteless frozen dinners.   Perhaps the most feared alternative is –oh, the horror!—raw vegetables with nothing to flavor them but the forbidden cream cheese or peanut butter. However, the mayonnaise available on most grocery store shelves has many flaws, not the least of which are high carbs and an overwhelming amount of unpronounceable chemicals and preservatives. There is an alternative. Surprisingly, it’s easy to make one’s own mayonnaise with a few simple spices, two eggs, two cups of cooking oil, and two tablespoons of an acid liquid such as vinegar or lemon juice. By combining these ingredients in various ways, the humble mayonnaise can become a sublime catalyst to elevate even the humblest salad to stardom. The same thing has happened in the salad dressing marke...

Many folks act like we dieters can never have a snack again. Wrong. We can we just need to adjust our thinking. These delicious marinated cukes take a matter of a few minutes to make and stay for weeks in the fridge. Save a pickle jar and keep these around instead. IMHO, skip the sugar and use Splenda. I've not tried the creamy version. I was after a recipe for "refrigerated pickles" when someone recommended the Marinated version. I've been hooked ever since.

You don't have to have an egg salad SANDWICH. You can just have egg salad, or use a tomato cup. Remember that the carb counts below include the bread. Take that away and the carb count becomes very good indeed! Plain old white bread slices can be 70 calories and a whopping 13g of carbs EACH. Pita isn't any better at  130 calories and 30g of carbs. Nope, not even the so-called "healthy grains." Forget it. Eat it without the bread and save yourself the carbs. If you don't, you may as well just superglue the bread directly to your hips.

I was surprised to learn there are people in the world who don't know how to make this ubiquitous lunch food, or worse, who stir together canned meat, mayo, maybe a little instant minced onion, and call it good. Then again, I used to be one of them, until I found this recipe and made it, just to be different. I will never go back to plain old chicken salad ever again! I found Nirvana. Then I looked at the variations. YUM-OH!

In the same way as my comments on Feb 4 concerning mayonnaise, the same thing has happened in the salad dressing market. The so-called "diet" dressings can be higher in sugar and carbs because they're supposed to be lower in fat. Yet at the same time, the "regular" dressings are so loaded with chemicals and preservatives as well as carbs, the choices are very limited unless you like vinaigrettes. I happen to like creamy dressings, though I've learned that dipping my fork into a small cup of 2 T of dressing (average serving size on bottled dressings) and then stabbing a forkload of salad means I get a much tastier mouthful than pouring the dressing over the top and hoping it's still around when I get to the last fork full. Imagine having fresh dressings to dip your veggies into, and I don't mean just for a bowl of salad. Imagine taking a small sealed container of this with some celery, green pepper strips, and fresh broccoli when you need a snack. Y...

Okay, if you're on a low carb diet, I'm sure you've now seen that regular old mayonnaise is lower in carbs than the so-called "light" mayo. (Hey, they took out the fat, so they had to put sugar in to compensate.) Perhaps this is why when I followed slavishly the "diet rules" and ate only "diet foods" I actually gained weight! Making my own mayonnaise to eliminate all those interesting and unpronounceable chemicals the commercial producers put in seems like the logical next step in my freedom from fat. Here's my recipe for mayo, done with several common kitchen appliances. (I'll be using the food processor, but you can use what you have, okay?) I can't wait to try these!

Even I am stunned by the ingenuity of these garden ideas. I'm going to try some! http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/251/grow-your-own-food-in-a-bag-in-a-truck-anywhere.html Tin Cans? How about those big-ass coffee "cans" made of plastic I have by the ton? I'm so trying this. Lena

Can you think of a better way to grill out than kabobs and a cool salad? Try this set now, then save it for hot weather!

I will agree that using packaged spinach is a good idea for this recipe. You can also find frozen shrimp in the freezer cases, and you can save money by boiling the little critters yourself. However, I admit I buy with the tails off. I said I'm lazy. LOL! The dressing is out of this world good. You'll want to keep that one handy for every time you serve a spinach salad.