Diet, Cooking, and Exercise: barbecue

It was a tough weekend on the range. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, I learned a number of things that didn’t work. I had some pork loin that I cut into boneless chops and a couple of roasts, so I thought I would try to make a low fat, low sodium barbecue sauce. I used the following ingredients and simmered it for about 30 minutes. It was a flop. The tomato paste still tasted raw. I may try adding a little hickory Liquid Smoke and simmering it another half hour.

2-6 oz. Tomato Paste
1-4 oz. Tomato sauce-no salt added
.5 C Packed Brown Sugar
1/4 C Sweet Onion-Chopped
1 C Apple cider vinegar
2 t Dry Mustard
2 t Paprika
1 T Chili powder

I actually parboiled the chops for 30 minutes first, put them in a casserole dish, and covered them in the above sauce. I covered the casserole dish with aluminum foil and let it heat at 250º for about an hour.

I then decided to try another cole slaw recipe, this time a mayonnaise-free recipe from the Lotrel web site, attributed to Joe Montana. When I made it according to his recipe, there was way too much yogurt and very little flavor. I saved it by increasing the apple cider vinegar from 2 tablespoons to 1 cup and adding 3 tablespoons of sugar. Next time I will reduce the plain yogurt to 1 cup and leave the other ingredients alone; it should be about right then.

Cole Slaw 4

1.5 C Dannon all natural Plain Yogurt
7.5 C Slaw Mix
1 C Apple cider vinegar
0.25 t. Celery seed
0.25 Paprika
3 T Sugar

I added one-half cup of apple cider vinegar to the slaw mix and let it sit for about 15 minutes, then added the rest of the ingredients. I let the flavors blend and the slaw chill in the refrigerator until it was time to serve.

This slaw contains only 57.88 calories per cup and, 11.61 g protein, 11.25 g carbohydrate, .05 g fat, and 44.25 mg sodium. Percentage of calories from fat is only .01%.

I have some catching up to do in posting my daily recaps. I’ve had a cold for the last week and have avoided the fitness center and have had generally low energy, but I have stuck with my diet. Here are the recaps.

Sunday