Fried Egg Sandwich with Cheese and Tomatoes

During the week I am not able to make a real breakfast because we try to work out in the mornings then go straight to work from the gym, so for one of my first breakfasts at home I tried a fried egg sandwich.  This was easy and filling.  Food doesn’t have to be loaded with ingredients, or fats, to taste good.  The more I cook the more I realize that simple meals can often be the most appealing, satisfying, sophisticated, and healthy.

4 slices rye bread
4 eggs
1 oz Jarlsberg light cheese
3 grape tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp butter

Break 2 eggs in a skillet set to medium.  Gently pierce the yolk to let some of it run out over the whites.  Once the egg is no longer runny, fold it over so you basically have the two eggs stacked on top of each other and flip.  Finish cooking until the egg is cooked through.  Slide the egg on to one slice of bread, top with a slice of cheese and 1 ½ sliced grape tomatoes.  Season with salt and pepper and top with another slice of bread.
Repeat for the second sandwich.  After both sandwiches have been assembled, add ½ tsp butter to the skillet.  Once it’s melted put one of the sandwiches in the butter.  Cook for about 1 minute to toast and warm up the bread.   Repeat for the other side of the bread and for the other sandwich.  I think this is a good idea because once your egg has been sitting on the bread for a couple minutes it gets a little soggy, this will crisp your bread up so it won’t fall apart or feel mushy at all.

Serves 2, 410 calories, 17 g fat

This was quick and easy but a good start to the day with the protein from the eggs and carbohydrates from the bread and was satisfying with the richness from the cheese without being too high in fat or calories.

Healthy "Reuben" with Coleslaw

The other day we were having coffee at our coffee shop and I picked up one of the magazines and actually found a good idea.  I try pretty hard to plan out my week’s meals so that I can go to the grocery store just once a week, but I’m not always good about it and I’m not always good about pairing the right meals together during the day to make sure we get the total calories and nutrients we need.  So in this magazine, Clean Eating, they have 14 day plans of meals that include breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 snacks with the total the calories, fats, etc for each day.  I thought this was a good idea to give us a specific plan on what we should eat throughout the day every day to help stay on track.  We’ve made it through the first 4 days and so far it has worked really well for us.

They have a website,  www.cleaneatingmag.com , where you can download all of their meal plans, it even comes with a shopping list.

I went through one of the Winter meal plans and picked out the meals and snacks that I thought looked good and then substituted in some of my own low fat/low cal recipes as well.  The biggest problem with this is it is a meal plan for one person, and they have you make one serving of everything just about, so there is a lot more cooking involved than even I normally do.

The first recipe I tried, and modified for my needs, was the clean Reuben.  I don’t think I can say this is anything like a Reuben but it was still good and surprisingly filling.  J loves Reuben’s so he was on board with trying this, but once he saw it he was a little scared he would still be starving after dinner, but we were both stuffed and satisfied.

Sandwich
½ lb pastrami seasoned turkey
2 oz Jarlesberg light, sliced
4 slices rye bread

Coleslaw
2 cups shredded red cabbage
2 cups shredded green cabbage
1/2 cup shredded carrots
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¾ cup plain Greek yogurt
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp salt

Dressing
¼ cup plain Greek yogurt
5 grape tomatoes, diced
Dash of salt to taste



Prepare the coleslaw: In a medium bowl combine cabbages and carrots, stir in vinegar, yogurt, salt and pepper.  Let sit for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the dressing: In a small bowl, stir together the yogurt, tomatoes and salt until well mixed.  While stirring, mash the tomatoes to release their juices.  Set aside.

Assemble the sandwiches by dividing the dressing among the slices of bread.  Place 1 oz slice of cheese on each sandwich.  Top with the turkey then pile about ¼ cup coleslaw on top of the meat.  Finish with the second slice of bread and press firmly.  Broil the sandwiches either in toaster oven or oven for 2 minutes, flip and broil for 2 more minutes.  Serve with ¾ cup coleslaw on the side.

Serves 2, 525 calories, 12 g fat

You pretty much have to get it out of your head that this is a Reuben, because it’s not, but it is a pretty good turkey sandwich.

Morrocan Bread, Kbohz

For New Year’s Day my MIL made a Morrocan stew and I was asked to make some bread, so after a bit of research I found a recipe for Morrocan bread, kbohz, that you are supposed to eat with stew.  Apparently they don’t use utensils, they just eat it with this bread.  We didn’t do that, that would be a carb-overload, but I wanted to try the bread anyway.

White Bread

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar

1 tbs yeat
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 ¼ cup warm water, 105-110 degrees F
Additional flour for kneading
Cornmeal, semolina or oil for the pan

Prepare 2 9” round cake pans by oiling or dusting the pans with a little cornmeal or semolina.
Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.  Make a large well in the center of the flour mixture and add the yeast.  Add the oil and water to the well, mixing to dissolve the yeast first, and then stirring the entire contents of the bowl to incorporate the water into the flour.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and begin kneading.  If necessary, add flour in small amounts if the dough is very sticky, or water in small amounts if it is not coming together. Continue kneading for 10 minutes, or until the dough is very smooth and elastic.
Divide the dough in half and shape each portion in a smooth circular mound.  Place onto the prepared pans and cover with a towel.  Allow to rest for 10 minutes.
After the dough has rested, use the palm of your hand to flatten the dough into circles about ¼” thick.  Cover with a towel and leave to rise about 1 hour or until the dough springs back when pressed lightly with a finger.

Preheat oven to 435 degrees.

Score the top of the bread with a very sharp knife or poke the dough with a fork in several places. Bake the bread for about 20 minutes.  Rotate the pans about halfway through the baking time.  The loaves should be nicely colored and sound hollow when tapped.  Transfer the bread to a rack or towel-lined basket to cool.

I also made a wheat-cumin bread which I liked more than the white.  Replace 2 cups of the white flour with wheat flour and replace the sugar with 2 tbs honey and add 2 tsp cumin seeds to the flour mixture.  Prepare the bread the same as above.

Each recipe makes 2 loaves of bread and each loaf serves 6-8 people if you just eat bread with your meal, if you plan to use the bread in place of utensils a loaf will probably serve 4 people.

As far as bread goes this was really pretty easy, and tasted pretty good.  The outside was crusty but not too hard and the inside was soft.  It did have a smaller crumb than I was anticipating, but it wasn’t dense by any means. All in all a good flavored bread without a whole lot of effort.

Almond Butter Cookies

After dinner the other night J decided he wanted dessert.  I didn’t really have a lot in the pantry for baking so I was pretty limited on what I could make.  Peanut butter cookies is usually his first suggestion, and I have recently stopped buying peanut butter because too frequently was I just eating it straight out of the jar for no reason.  I did in fact have a rather large bag of almonds because I am never a good judge of volume when I buy things from the bulk section, so I thought I would try to make almond butter cookies, and I was really quite pleased with the result.

1 cup almonds
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ¼ cup flour
½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a food processer blend the almonds until a creamy paste forms, about 6-8 minutes, scraping down the sides periodically.
In a large bowl, blend almond butter and butter together, then add the sugars and blend well.  Add egg and vanilla and blend well.

In a separate medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the almond butter mixture in 3 additions until just mixed.

Roll the dough into 1” balls and place a few inches apart on a greased cookie sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until set but not hard.
Remove the cookies immediately from the hot cookie sheet to a wire rack to cool, they will dry out if they continue to cook on the cookie sheet.

Makes 24 cookies, 100 calories each

These cookies had crispy edges and chewy centers and had more the flavor of a rich, buttery sugar cookie than a peanut butter cookie.  I enjoyed them quite a bit, I will definitely be making them again.
I didn’t take any pictures because I was too busy eating them.

Swiss and Avocado Lamb Burger

J picks me up from work on his way home, and every once in a while he will stay later than expected, and later than I want to stay.  So yesterday I knew he was going to be late but I was ready to go so I just left at my quitting time and started walking around downtown and I decided I would go to the specialty grocery store downtown and go ahead and get groceries to make dinner.  As I walked past the meat counter it was very evident that it was all way over priced, except for the lamb, which was expensive but not any more so than the supermarket.  So I thought, lamb it is.

¾ lb ground lamb
¼ tsp ground thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
A few dashes of hot sauce
½ avocado
2 slices swiss cheese
2 tbs mustard
2 hamburger buns

Mix the lamb, seasonings and hot sauce in a bowl until well mixed.  Divide the meat and make two patties.

Lamb is very greasy so I use one of those cast iron skillets with the ridges in it so the burger doesn’t sit in the grease and fry.

Heat the skillet to medium heat then put the burgers on.  Cook for 8 minutes on each side for a medium burger.  A couple times while the burgers were cooking I soaked up some of the excess oil with a paper towel to keep from frying the meat.
With about 1 minute left to cook, add the slices of cheese to the burgers so that it melts a little.

Slather the mustard on each bun and assemble the burger with sliced avocados.

Serves 2, 675 calories, 33 g fat

The lamb was front and center here, so if you don’t like the strong flavor of lamb, I recommend using beef or turkey because you probably won’t like this.

Lamb isn’t really the best meat for you, it’s pretty high in calories and fat, but if you plan your day accordingly there is no reason to splurge every once in a while on a dinner that is a little bit higher in calories than normal.