Crab Cakes

My wife's response to this: "I'm not chow'n down with the Browns tonight!". She does not like seafood, although she did try to eat it.

I haven't had many crab cakes before, so I don't have much to compare this with. I was a little disappointed myself. This is the third recipe in a row that hasn't been great. My problem with this is that these cakes aren't really "solid". They are very mushy in the middle and it's hard to scrape them off the pan. And the underside doesn't get cooked. So, when I had leftovers today, I flipped the cake over and broiled the other side. It came out better. I'm not sure if broiling is that great an idea for this recipe. Perhaps baking would have been a better idea.

Normal crab cakes 1000 calories. These come in at around 150 calories each.

Shrimp Pad Thai

To be honest, Rocco missed the boat on this one. I know how to make a pretty good authentic Pad Thai. This healthy version isn't really close to it at all. For one thing, one of the necessary ingredients to Pad Thai is tamarind juice. Considering that tamarind juice is only 10 calories a serving, I'm not sure why Rocco didn't put it in. And seeing as I've had to really look for some of these ingredients, I'm surprised he didn't make it one of the ingredients.

I might actually be able to take some of the ideas from this recipe and make a healthy version.

In any case, normal Pad Thai is around 2000 calories, which makes it one of the most unhealthy things you can eat. This recipe comes in at around 300 calories.

Chicken Piccata

So, this is the first of two recipes I tried this week that were just ok. It wasn't bad, just not great either. The few times I've had chicken picot I've enjoyed it. I guess I'm not a huge fan.

The thing about this recipe is that it uses basically the same lemon sauce as two of the fish recipes, so that just adds to the disappointment. It might be healthy but it just isn't outstanding.

I did make one screwup. I bought capers at the store, however, a few days later, when I went to look for them in our cupboard, I couldn't find them. But, capers shouldn't make or break this recipe. I pick the capers out of normal chicken piccata anyway.

Normal chicken piccata comes in at around 1000 calories, this one comes in at 250 calories.

Oysters Rockefeller

I've only had oysters twice and I've never shucked my own. So, after visiting a total of 3 different grocery stores to find oysters, I went home and began shucking. First, actually, I watched several videos. It's really interesting that you pull them apart at the hinge, instead of the front or the side. In any case, it was a fun experience and I'll definitely want to try this again.

These came out awesome! I can't possibly explain how great they were. In fact, they served as my main dish for the night.

Normal oysters rockefeller have around 330 calories. This recipe has around 130 calories. Because my wife doesn't eat shellfish, I ended up eating her portion. Still, that's only 260. I'll definitely be making this again.

Sweet Potato Puree

Sweet Potatoes, if you believe anything on the internet, are the most nutritious foods you can possibly eat. Ok, that might be up for debate, but they are good for you. Rocco includes a recipe for a sweet potato puree, which is useful if you need a quick, healthy side.

I did have to tweak this recipe. I love a baked sweet potato with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. This puree doesn't have any of that. I really like those flavors, so, what I did was add a bit of Molly McButter, for +5 calories, and a little bit of Truvia. My little tweaks really made it tasty and my wife didn't even notice I added a sweetener.

So, I guess when you add all the butter and sugar to this, it can be around 400 calories. The Rocco version is around 80 calories.

Grilled Chicken with Warm Mango Salsa

I've never worked with mango before, so this was really interesting. It takes some skill to cut it, but I watched a bunch of online videos and figured it out.

The prep time to make this is surprisingly long. There is a lot of veggies to cut up and after that's all done, you need to heat it up. But it came out awesome, although my wife would argue that it was too spicy. It might have something to do with the half of jalapeno in the salsa.

Normally this recipe comes in at around 600 calories. This now comes in at around 300. Definitely a keeper.

Loaded Nachos

I've been known to order nachos at a main dish at restaurants. So, yes, I love nachos. And I was a little disappointed with this recipe. My issue with it is that I really like lots of cheese on my nachos. This has a lot of toppings, just not as much cheese as I'd like. I don't think that the amount of cheese I'd like would allow it to be healthy, though.

So, normal nachos come in at around 900 calories. These nachos come in at 350.

Cheddar Cheese and "Potato" Soup

What could be wrong with potatoes? They are higher in calories then most other vegetables. So, instead of using potatoes, Rocco uses cauliflower. A pureed cauliflower has a similar texture to mashed potatoes. It does taste different, though, it's not quite a potato. So, if you are craving a potato soup, this might not be for you.

The other thing is that this doesn't last in the fridge very long. I'm sure why. It might have been that the cauliflower we used as starting to get old. In any case, I'd recommend eating it right away and not saving left overs.

So, normal cheddar and potato soup comes in at around 700 calories. This soup comes in at around 200 calories. The chopped scallion really makes this good, so don't skip it.

Smoked Turkey Reuben

If you like Friendly's Supermelt Sandwiches, this is the sandwich for you. This can't have corned beef, like the real reuben has, because that would be unhealthy. So, Rocco calls for turkey. It's delicious. It could easily replace the grilled cheese as the quick and easy go to sandwich. Of course you need all the ingredients, like sauerkraut, low fat swiss, high fiber bread, etc. This recipe uses Rocco's low fat "Russian Island" dressing.

The real reuben has around 950 calories. This one has 335. It has the greasiness of a grilled cheese, because you use a ton of cooking spray. I like the grease.

Russian Island Dressing

Ok, the blog is back. I was lazy and didn't post anything for the past week. I'll catch up.

Rocco here combines Russian Dressing and Thousand Island Dressing. And it's really good. As you will see in my next blog post, it is used for some of his sandwiches.

Regular Russian dressing is around 150 calories, this recipe is only 20. You can't tell the difference.

Mozzarella Sticks

AWESOME!

This recipe is fantastic! First of all, if you knew how bad mozzarella sticks were for you, you would never eat them again. I'll start off with that badness: 2 mozzarella sticks are around 750 calories and have around 40 grams of fat. That is bad. But, they taste really awesome.

So, Rocco's recipe comes in at around 240 calories and around 8 grams of fat. And, you wouldn't know it if I didn't tell you. They are that good.

The one issue I had was that the cheese drips out that crust. When I do these again, I will probably only heat them for 7 minutes, instead of the 15 minutes Rocco suggests.

Jambalaya

I've only had jambalaya a couple times so I'm not sure if this is an "authentic" recipe. The problem with my attempt at this was that I had just made chili earlier this week, so it kind of was too similar. Next time I'll try to break up my recipes a bit more.

The other thing is that my wife doesn't like seafood and doesn't like spicy food. So, I didn't use shrimp and used a little extra andouille sausage instead. The extra andouille sausage gave the recipe quite the kick, though. So, while I liked it, my wife didn't.

Normal jambalaya is 650 calories vs Rocco's jambalaya, which is only 350.

Chili Con Carne

Yum, chili!

It's actually pretty easy to make a chili that is healthy. You just make sure that you pick ground turnkey instead of red meat. So, I'm not sure I needed this recipe to make a healthy chili.

But, since I am working my way through this book, I did the recipe anyway. It was pretty good. Maybe not the best chili I've made, but good enough.

I couldn't find a can of 35 ounces of whole tomatoes, so I used one 28 ounce can plus one 14 ounce can. It made a lot of extra chili. I saved the rest in the freezer as leftover.

Normally, chili runs around 1000 calories a serving. This one comes in at 287 calories.

One last thing: you can see in the photo that I needed to spice things up a little bit. That's "Dave's Insanity Sauce" in the background. I put four drops in my serving and it gave it a nice kick.