Ingredients

1 lg head of cauliflower, chopped/shredded
1 1/2 cups of salted peanuts (red, skinned, Spanish)
7 oz dried cranberries
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup sugar

Method

Place cauliflower, peanuts & cranberries in bowl. Mix mayo & sugar together. Stir into salad. Mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour. Makes 10 cups.

Thanks to Katie for the recipe. I had the salad at a picnic on Sept 1, 2013. She thinks she got the recipe decades ago from a Sunset magazine.

I decided I wanted steak for breakfast. Grabbed a 1 lb top sirloin at Fry's for $8. Turned on the broiler in the oven. Broiler doesn't work. Damn. I'll have to stove-top it. Pulled out the dutch oven, put it on the back burner so the smoke would most effectively be removed by the fan, turned the stove to 7, which is way hotter than I normally cook.

I covered the steak with a bit of olive oil, some garlic powder and ground red pepper. Cut it in two so I could cook just half at a time. Gave it maybe three minutes a side so it was still red and bloody inside. So good! Next time I'll be a touch more generous with the garlic and red pepper.

May 19, 2003, second time around. This time around I tried the temperature higher, at 7.5. This does not work as well. The surface burns too fast and the center doesn't get cooked. The level 7 worked okay for a pretty rare steak, but if I want the cooking to get more toward the center, I'm probably going to have to do a 5 or 6, especially if I'm cooking for someone who likes his steaks well done.

October 14, 2013, another round. I may have waited too long to record this, but here is my memory. I took 1 tbsp of red pepper (spicy, not wimpy), 1 tbsp of garlic powder (cheap generic) and 1 tbsp of sea salt. Mixed them together, rubbed them on both sides of the steak. Fried them on the stove top at temperature 5 until it seemed right. Freakin’ awesome.

Power 5 is confirmed for good steaks on my current stove.

Ingredients

• one quarter head of cabbage, shredded fine
• juice of two small lemons
• salsa brava

Method

Mix cabbage with lemon juice till all the cabbage is covered. Mix with enough salsa brava to cover all the cabbage. Makes two servings.

I liked this.

Ingredients

Divided into four portions, that's about 235 calories per serving, but bear in mind that the package of chicken breasts assumes that each breast is 7 oz.

Procedure

1. Put onions and then chicken in crockpot. Mix these spices

   • 1 tbsp mixed Italian spices
   • 2 tsp garlic powder
   • 2 tsp onion powder
   • 1 tsp ground cumin
   • ½ tsp red pepper

   with ½ cup of water. Pour over chicken. Cook on high for 2 hours on the porch.

2. Add green chiles. Cook for another hour (maybe two) on low

This came out pretty tasty. Next time I think I'll add half a teaspoon or a teaspoon of salt.

In my quest to eat more greens and also to find recipes that don't heat the house in the summer, I'm experimenting with crockpot collard greens. I took two bunches of collards, cut off the think stems, and chopped the leaves. In the crock pot I threw some coconut milk along with 1 tbsp of hot curry powder. I used a wire whisk to mix the coconut milk and curry powder evenly. Then I threw in the collards. Then I set the crockpot outside on the porch, plugged it in, and set it to low. The amount of liquid in the pot is minimal, which concerns me, but I really don't want a mess of pot liquor. I added 4 oz of water just in case. I'm hoping that four hours will do it. The calorie significant parts are:

Divided up into four servings, that should be about 111 calories per serving.

I ended up letting it cook 4 hours on low. Added a bit of salt. Then I stirred it. Then let it cook another hour. The amount of time was enough to cook the collards without turning them into a stringy mess. The taste was mediocre. It probably is a mistake to make collards without adding some decently sauteed onions and garlic. Or maybe just a tablespoon of sugar.

Lean cuts of deli meat are healthy, and so are raw vegetables and fruits. Today I packed for lunch:

• Roast beef 4 oz
• Raw brocolli 3 oz
• Raw apple 6 oz

For a lunch when you want to lose weight, that is perfectly reasonable, a total of 300 calories. Actually, it's probably just a bit too little: to make The Zone I should add another 1.5 carbohydrate blocks, which I'll do next time. Still, the point is this: it is super easy to eat healthy with only a modicum of planning. The beef was pre-sliced by the deli guy. I cut up the apple and the broccoli in the morning and put it in a box, but that was the extent of preparation.