Once on a camping trip with some girlfriends, I assumed my alternate identity as an English expatriate (don’t ask) and gallivanted around while throwing around the terms “crisps,” “chips,” “crumpets” and “veg” to showcase my vast (hah) knowledge of English jargon (actually, at the time I was obsessed with BBC’s “You Are What You Eat,” and I simply regurgitated all terms used on it! ). Fast forward some 20 or so minutes later and I encountered an actual English fellow! What are the chances?! He saw right through my accent (duh) and, when his bout of laughter ended, informed my friends and me of an awesome English phrase that I still use to this day – a “fit bird” – which is a term used to describe an attractive woman. So, fit birds, let’s move on with this recipe, shall we? I love this salad because you only have to use a few chips (American chips, not English chips, which are French fries!) to infuse the entire salad with that “taco salad” crunch – without all the added nonsense of run-of-the-mill taco salads!

Fit Bird Southwest Salad

Serves 1-2

Ingredients

• 2 cups salad mix (I use an “herb salad mix” or mix romaine and arugula), rinsed and dried
• ½ cup black beans, drained and rinsed
• ½ cup fresh or canned corn, drained and rinsed
• ½ of a small cucumber, chopped
• ½ cup salsa
• 2 slices avocado
• 2-4 tortilla chips/crisps made from stone ground corn, whole-wheat and/or brown rice, crumbled
• optional: slices of green onion, balsamic vinegar (not vinaigrette) for dressing

Directions

• Throw all ingredients together and munch! Now that was easy, right?
• Nutritional information for entire salad: 310 calories, 7g fat, 624 mg sodium, 16g fiber, 15g protein

What are you go-to salad staples? Ever been caught with a false accent?!

<3,

The Cranky One

TGIF guys!  First some random bites of info.:

1. I won a cool little pack of exercise cards from Miss Kari at Running Through Life!  Thanks, pal!  I must say that doing strength-training exercises only using my body weight has been the most enjoyable way for me to build muscle.  We used cards like these once when I was enrolled in a boot camp and I would always think to myself ashamedly that I had been incorrect in thinking one needed a gym and extensive machinery to get a little bicep action.
   This picture is cheesy, what can I say? But those are the cards in my hand as I dream of tricep extensions!

2. Thanks to my friend Tamara for informing me that Calorie King has now posted nutritional information for Olive Garden restaurant here!  What was once elusive and daunting — to gauge how much damage one did with a bowl of pasta and few breadsticks — is finally out in the open!  It’s certainly a good thing – now we can be informed eaters! It also sucks, cuz, let’s face it – you can see your previous choices might have been downright awful!  My favorite dish back in the day was the “chicken con broccoli” coming in at a whopping 960 calories and 41 grams of fat.  I thought it was just chicken with broccoli!  Seems harmless.  Until you face that it’s drenched in a delicious fat sauce.  Oy. Anyone else have a mini heart attack when they found out what their food really consisted of?
3. I noticed I have a little “tick” that I wanted to share because it totally made me laugh (and cry boo hoo) at myself.  I am a total straight-from-the-pan-muncher*! A “pan muncher” or “PM” is someone who, even though she has set aside a nice little portioned out meal for herself, “innocently” nibbles on bits of food straight from the pan while her portioned food sits nicely measured and untouched on the plate. The foolish PM has what is called “in the moment amnesia” so that while the act is occurring she is not even cognizant of it because she is staring lovingly at the cute little portions on her plate and already congratulating herself for being controlled and mannerly while mindlessly indulging!  What a foolish PM I am! *yes I did just make up this term Any one else guilty of PM-ing?
   

Now on to the exciting topic of the day (by “exciting” I mean completely random and only interesting to me, sorry)! TOFU! I made tofu for the first time last night and I absolutely loooooved it!

I tinkered with the recipe from All Recipes here and this is what I ended up doing:

“Baked Tofu Bites” done Bella Style

Ingredients

• One 16-oz package extra firm tofu (I used the Whole Foods 365 brand) — 400 calories, 20 g fat, 4 g fiber, 32 g protein
• ¼ cup light and low-sodium soy sauce — 33.75 calories, 0 g fat, o g fiber, 0 g protein
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup – 104 calories, 0.1 g fat, 0 g fiber, 0 g protein
• 2 tablespoons ketchup — 30 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g fiber, 0 g protein
• 1 tablespoon vinegar — 3 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g fiber, 0 g protein
• 1 tablespoon Hoisin — 35 calories, 0.5 g fat, 0.4 g fiber, 0.5 protein (Read more on Hoison here)
• 2 tablespoons organic, no pulp, orange juice not from concentrate — 13.75 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g fiber, 0 g protein
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds — 52 calories, 4.5 g fat, 1.1 g fiber, 1.6 g protein
• pepper to taste

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line a cookie sheet with foil and lightly spray with Pam Cooking Spray.
• Slice tofu into 1/2-inch slices, and gently press excess water out of tofu. Cut sliced tofu into 1/2-inch cubes.
• In a bowl, stir together the tofu and additional ingredients.  Cover, and marinate at least 5 minutes.
• Place the tofu on the baking sheet in a single layer. Bake in a preheated oven for 15 minutes. Turn tofu, and bake until the tofu turns golden brown, about 15 minutes more.

Nutritional info.:

• Entire cookie sheet worth of tofu (good for sumo wrestlers and really hungry, cranky girls aka ME! ok, I didn’t eat it all but I sure wanted to and came close!) — 671.50 calories, 25.1 g fat, 5.5 g fiber, 34.1 g protein
• 1/4 portion:  167.88 calories, 6.28 g fat, 1.38 g fiber, 8.53 g protein
  

Notes about tofu:  I guess it’s a common challenge to drain the tofu of excess water before cooking so that it doesn’t maintain a soggy texture.  I read that some people let it sit on paper towels and one person even had weights sit atop it to drain the water.  I patted the tofu vigorously with paper towels but found that “vigor” and tofu don’t go well together as the block began to crumble.  Oh wait, I wasn’t supposed to pat it while it was still in full block form? Yea.  I didn’t read the directions.  Lame!  My tofu did come out a bit mushy.  The thing is…I liked it!  Honestly, I thought the tofu tasted like something a good Chinese restaurant would concoct to turn healthy tofu into a heart attack amongst noodles.  But this is just plain good for you and delicious (oh please spare me your “‘good for you’ is a relative term and soy can actually be bad” speech!).  Any suggestions for draining tofu?  Any tofu recipes you want to link me to?

Last night I ate it as is with a side of corn bread and some red potatoes baked with a tad of olive oil, Pam Cooking Spray and fresh from the garden rosemary. Today, I ate it in a salad:

Let me just say, you ain’t no fu if you try this recipe! Just (to)fu it!!

I’ll leave you with a link to the real, and actually meaningful, “To Be or Not to Be” soliloqy here.  How blasphemous of me to conflate discussions of tofu with Hamlet!