Starting Phase I with limited selections
Hi Everyone!
I’ve started phase 1 after purchasing the book months ago. I really
would love suggestions from anyone regarding food selections. I’m a
really picky eater and don’t eat pork or beef, so I feel like the
pickings are slim.
Any suggestions, recommendations or words of encouragement regarding
ideas to make chicken, fish and turkey exciting! Thanks for your
advice.
Kia
April 25th, 2003 at 6:02 am
If you’re willing to think “outside the box,” there are lots of other meats out there. Buffalo is surprisingly good (but I think I’m allergic to it, which really stinks), most health food stores sell ostrich or emu (haven’t tried those yet but it’s on the list for this year), Cornish hens, quail, pheasant (don’t know how fatty any of those are), etc.
Otherwise, I’d suggest talking with your produce person (the ones in natural food stores seem to know more than the ones in big chain grocery stores) about using a variety of herbs and seasonings…you can always sniff the fresh herbs to see if it’s something you’d like or not. You could eat chicken every day with different stuff on it and never get tired of eating the same meat every day. It’s just a matter of finding which herbs and seasonings you like.
There’s also using vastly different side dishes (roasted broccoli is AWESOME…a little extra virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper…roasted at 500 for 8-12 minutes while your meat is resting so you can serve it hot) and different cutting/tearing techniques for different textures (boiled fish cubes for soup vs.. flaked fish for salad vs.. broiled fish served on a bed of greens, nuts, and mandarin oranges).
Pretty much any recipe you have or can find online or in a cookbook can be modified to be South Beach friendly. Use the approved food list for whatever phase you’re in at the time and your general tastes as a guide. If you make something you don’t like, just don’t make it again. Print up all of your favorite recipes (or put them on a cd if you have a burner) so you’ll have them handy. You can even mix and match if you file them by category (appetizers, meats, veggies, side dishes, desserts, soups, etc).
I often just make “this stuff I made” using whatever I can find in the house that looks like it would go together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t…I rarely ever write it down so I lose a lot of good recipes. I also make whatever I make in huge amounts (there are 6 of us so most recipes are doubled or tripled) and freeze some of the leftovers as individual dinners and some as full family meals for those days when I’m just not up to cooking.
As far as cooking tools go, my favorite gadget is my rotisserie and my favorite pots are my 12 qt stock pot and my pressure cooker, followed closely by my crock pot and my grill. They allow me to cook the same things in vastly different ways. Plain baked chicken every single day would just about kill me from boredom.
Jennifer Tapp