Eat Shrink And Be Merry

Just as Julie Powell cooked her way through Julia Child’s famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking and wrote a blog about it, our very own Eat, Shrink & Be Merry cookbook will be the subject of a year-long weight-loss-journey blog written by Leslie Teal of Ontario! Leslie’s mission is to lose weight and feel great by next summer, so beginning TODAY, she’ll cook her way through the pages of ESBM, recipe by recipe, chapter by chapter, until she’s cooked every single recipe in the book. Leslie’s an excellent writer and has a wonderful personality. For motivation (not that she really needs any!), we told Leslie that when she arrives at the final recipe in our cookbook, the “Died and Gone to Heaven Chocolate Layer Cake” (splurge-worthy!) that WE would bake the cake and deliver it to her and the three of us would enjoy a slice together! (I mean, we’d EACH enjoy a slice…we wouldn’t share ONE slice…I’m not driving all around Ontario to share a ONE slice of cake with two people….unless they are George Clooney and Brad Pitt.)

We’d LOVE it if you’d visit Leslie’s blog and cheer her on! This is a very big deal to Leslie, since she’s made a firm commitment to lose weight and change her eating habits once and for all, so we’re sure she’d appreciate your support.

Here’s where you’ll find her:
http://eatshrinkandmeetleslie.blogspot.com:80/

By the way, should they decide to make a Hollywood movie out of Leslie’s journey, I’m wondering who will play me????? I often have people tell me I look like “a younger Morgan Fairchild” (thank God for the “younger” part…isn’t she in her sixties??) or Marla Maples. People tell Janet she looks like Leah Remini from King of Queens. I posed this question to Leslie and she said, “I see you two being portrayed by Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bullock.” Now you know why we love Leslie!!

Here’s some good news for fans of our Eat, Shrink & Be Merry TV show on Food Network Canada: Season #3 will make its official debut on Friday, September 4th! Finally! It seems like ages ago that Janet and I danced the salsa while making salsa for our Taco Salad show! Other makeovers in this year’s line-up: carrot cake with cream cheese icing (deee-lish!), deep-fried panzerotti with dipping sauce (we put a clever “twist” on this one; that’s a hint…when you watch the show you’ll see what I mean), and we take a wok on the wild side when we go head to head with a popular Chinese take-out restaurant and their famous pork chop suey and vegetable fried rice. It’s our favourite season ever and we hope you’ll mark the following days and times on your calendar:

Eat, Shrink & Be Merry, Season 3, Food Network Canada
Begins Friday, September 4th
Show Times:
Fridays: 8:00 am, 11:30 am and 7:30 pm
Saturdays: 9:00 am

If you’ve been searching for our new fully-cooked, gourmet chicken burgers at Costco and haven’t been able to locate them, just remember to look in the “refrigerator/deli” section, NOT the frozen aisles, and NOT in the refrigerator section that’s behind glass doors. You’ll find them in the refrigerator bunkers near the sausages, cheeses, falafel, etc. Ask a smiley Costco employee and they’ll point you in the right direction. And if you still can’t find them, it’s because they’re sold out! Hurray!

At this time, the burgers are in the L.A.-area, Seattle, western Canada and Ontario Costco stores only. (Ottawa Costco stores should have them in a week or two. Patience!) Hopefully it’s just a matter of time before many other regions across North America jump on the burger bandwagon.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been getting tons of positive feedback. Thanks so much for your emails and phone calls!! I personally can’t wait for our other products to hit store shelves, especially the unbelievably delicious Ultimate Veggie Burger that Greta has somehow miraculously concocted in her very own kitchen. Gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, high in protein and fiber, containing two super-grains (chia and quinoa). There’s really nothing like it anywhere. Honest! And best of all, it tastes super-great!

Stay tuned for more updates…

Oh, and one more thing: For those of you who watch our Food Network TV series, the third season of Eat, Shrink & Be Merry will begin airing some time in September. Loads of great recipes and loads of fun. It might be our best season yet!

It’s summertime, and the grilling is easy, especially when you pick up a package of our brand-new, fully cooked gourmet chicken burgers at Costco. These juicy burgers are our favourite food product that we’ve ever sold under the “Janet & Greta’s” brand, so we just had to let you know about them. They’ve been for sale in Western Canada Costco stores as well as Seattle-area and Los Angeles-area Costco stores for over a month, and they’ve literally been flying off store shelves (can chickens fly?). This weekend, you’ll (finally!) find Janet & Greta’s Gourmet Chicken Burgers at Ontario Costco locations. Look in the refrigerated meat section, not in the freezer, as our burgers are not sold frozen. They’re vacuum-packed and sold in a box of 8 burgers. You don’t even need to freeze them when you get home, since the packaging allows them to be refrigerated for 60 days. But trust us, they won’t last more than 2 days in your house…they’re that good! 
 

Our chicken burgers are gluten free, have no preservatives, MSG or artificial ingredients, and they’re made with 100% whole muscle, boneless, skinless chicken, which means they don’t have any of that cheap-o  “mechanically separated” chicken or bread-crumb filler.  As a bonus, each burger contains a poultry 9 grams of fat!

Because our burgers are already cooked, they won’t shrink down to a puny little disk when you heat them up. No siree, they’ll stay plump and moist and totally scrumptious! You can grill ’em, bake ’em, pan fry ’em or pop ’em in the microwave for 50 seconds and dinner (or lunch) is served!  They’re fuss-free fabulous food that your family will love. Our burgers taste great on a bun with all of your favourite burger toppings, but we like eating them bun-less, with a knife and fork!
 

Please check them out this weekend if you’re visiting a Costco store. You won’t be disappointed!

What: Janet & Greta’s Gourmet Chicken Burgers (did we mention they have little bits of roasted vegetables in them?)

Where: Costco stores across Canada; Seattle-area and Los Angeles-area Costco in the US.

How much: About $12.00 for a box of 8 burgers (bargain!)

Did anyone happen to catch Dr. Wayne Dyer on “Ellen” last week? The renowned self-help author and inspirational speaker told Ellen that he had really been beating himself up over his expanding paunch–weight that had been creeping up gradually around his middle. In consulting with some fitness and nutrition experts about his “growing” problem, he found out that in the 19th century, the average person consumed only 13 grams of sugar per day. Today, that figure is an astonishing 285 grams per day! Go figure! No wonder 1 in 3 Americans are overweight, and so many are morbidly obese.

So he tried a simple experiment: He limited his sugar intake to 20-25 grams per day. Not easy, but doable. (Just to give you an idea of how much sugar is in stuff: 50 grams in a Coke, 40 grams in a large glass of orange juice, 11 grams in a serving of Kellog’s Frosted Flakes, 14 grams in a 100 gram serving of Activia Strawberry yogurt, 2.3 grams in a 10 gram serving of ketchup, 39 grams in a grande Starbuck’s Cinnamon Dolce Latte.) And whaddya know? The fat melted off! In one month, he lost 17 pounds. “It basically just melted off,” he said. Interesting.

So the next time you’re reaching for a banana-chocolate chip muffin to go with your latte, just remember the famous words of Confucious: He who eat too much sweet, have too much seat!

Muscle is a terrible thing to waste. But when you diet without exercising, that’s exactly what you’re doing. When you lose more than two pounds per week, typically half of the weight lost comes from muscle. That’s bad news. Muscle is your calorie-torching, fat-incinerating furnace, using energy even when you’re catching some zzz’s (giving new meaning to the phrase “you snooze, you lose!”) Fat pretty much just sits there. Sure, if you starve yourself on a super-low-calorie diet, you’ll lose weight. But it’ll be an unfavorable type of weight loss. Though the scale says you’re five pounds lighter, what you’ve really done is simply changed your body composition. You’re simply a smaller fat person! Gushy all over! That’s not what you had in mind when you were downing those Slimfast shakes, was it? To make matters worse, when you go off the diet (and you will), you’ll gain back the weight you lost and then some. By sacrificing muscle on the restrictive diet, you’ve turned your body into a less-efficient fat burner, so you’ll gain weight even though you’re eating less. What a great plan! To transform your body for the better, don’t lose muscle–use muscle!

…that undertakers have discovered that human bodies are not deteriorating as quickly as they used to?

The reason, they believe, is that the standard North American diet now contains so many preservatives, and these chemicals may prevent the body from decomposing rapidly after death. Seems that eating too much processed food is a self-pickling procedure, of sorts. “Dilly beloved, we are gathered here today…”

If you’re looking for something fun to do this weekend, you could check out the 17th Annual Good Food Festival & Market at the International Centre, 6900 Airport Road in Mississauga. (It’s near the airport.)

Greta and I will be on the Food Network Get Cooking Canada Stage on Saturday, April 25th at 3pm making a recipe from one of our new grEATing cards. We’ll be giving out samples of food and also giving away samples of our grEATing cards. Plus, some lucky folks in the audience will win our cookbook, too! Should be loads of fun. Hope to see you there!

This morning I was cooking LIVE on CH-Hamilton, making a DELICIOUS salmon burger recipe while promoting our new line of Hallmark “grEATing” cards. We had many requests after the show for the recipe, because it’s scrump-DILLY-icious (made with lemon and feta and dill and honey mustard and other good stuff), so I’m posting it here. This recipe is FOR SURE one of my top-10 favourite recipes I’ve ever developed for any of our cookbooks or magazine columns or TV show. It’s a must-try recipe and a great way to get some healthy fats into your diet.

Heart-Smart Salmon Burgers

1-1/2 lbs (680 g) boneless, skinless salmon fillet, cut into chunks
1 cup fresh whole wheat bread crumbs (see tip below)
1/2 cup crumbled light feta cheese (2 oz)
1/4 cup finely minced shallots or red onions
1 tbsp honey mustard
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 egg
1 tbsp minced fresh dill
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1/4 tsp each salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place salmon chunks in a food processor. Pulse on and off until salmon is chopped into very small pieces. (If you don’t have a food processor, use a very sharp knife and mince the salmon by hand.) Transfer salmon to a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients. Mix well using your hands.

Form mixture into 6 patties, about 3/4 inch thick. Place patties on a large plate, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour. (Chilling will help the patties hold their shape while cooking.)

Spray a large, non-stick skillet with cooking spray and heat over medium-high heat. Add patties and cook for about 4 minutes per side, until salmon is cooked through. Be careful not to overcook the patties, and be gentle when flipping them so they don’t fall apart. If you don’t have a high-quality (unscratched!) non-stick pan, you might want to cook the patties in a tablespoon or two of olive oil.

If desired, serve patties on small, whole wheat hamburger buns with sliced tomatoes, lettuce, and honey mustard, or top them with a spoon of low-fat tartar sauce (see recipe below) and serve with a salad.

Makes 6 servingsPer serving: 236 calories, 10.4 g total fat (2.8 g saturated fat), 26 g protein, 9 g carbohydrate, 1.1 g fiber, 106 mg cholesterol, 333 mg sodium

Cooking TipsFresh bread crumbs are simple to make: Just break up a slice of bread (preferably whole wheat) into several smaller pieces and place in a food processor or mini chopper. Pulse on and off a few times to create fluffy soft crumbs. An average slice of bread will make about 1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs. Dry, store-bought bread crumbs are more compact (and drier, of course!), so if a recipe calls for fresh crumbs and you’d rather use dry, cut the amount in half. To make low-fat tartar sauce for this and other yummy fish dishes, mix together 1/2 cup low-fat mayonnaise, 1 tbsp minced fresh dill, 1 tbsp sweet pickle relish, and 2 tsp each prepared horseradish and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Refrigerate until ready to use.

If you’ve just eaten Chinese food, pizza, popcorn or pretty much anything from any fast food joint, you’ll want to do a pre-emptive strike against the inevitable big-time bloating that’s about to hit your body. All of those foods are loaded with sodium, the evil arch-enemy of healthy hearts and waistlines when eaten in excess. If you’re hoping to squeeze into that tight little black dress for a big party on Saturday night, don’t even think of ordering that bucket of popcorn at the movies the night before.

When you think of salt, think of the word “tension,” as in “hypertension.” Salt can raise blood pressure in susceptible folks, making their hearts work double overtime. That’s not good. And secondly, as in “water retention.” (Okay, okay, I know it’s not spelled like “tension,” but you get the drift.) When you eat too much salt, your body tries to dilute it with water to get things inside your cells back into balance, or homeostasis. That extra water shows up as swollen feet, legs, hands and eyelids. Over time, water retention can inflate your weight by as much as 5 to 15 pounds! Eeeek! Moral of the story: He who eat too much Chinese food may not fit into his Beijing suit!

But here’s your pre-emptive striking weapon–your anti-bloatation device! Try making a jug of this tasty, refreshing, much perkier alternative to plain ol’ water. It’ll help beat the bloat, and it’s also very soothing to the digestive tract, too.

2 litres filtered water (about 8 1/2 cups)
1 small cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced
1 lemon, thinly sliced
12 mint leaves
1 teaspoon freshly grated gingerroot

Combine all ingredients in a larger pitcher and chill. (Parsley is another option that is a great diuretic. It helps with water retention and bloating. You could use it instead of mint.)

Try it! You’ll like it!