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Gourmet Touches Aid in Weight Control

Make Each Meal Enjoyable with Easy Gourmet Touches

No matter what eating plan you choose to follow for health and weight management, making each meal as enjoyable as possible will increase your chance of success.

We really eat with all our senses.

Any gourmet chef will tell you that the appearance of food affects how much it tantalizes the taste buds.

Remember the high school biology experiment where you were blindfolded and had to hold your nose while tasting a bit of apple and a bit of raw potato? You couldn’t tell them apart!

Make a meal as attractive as possible.

Avoid processed foods and “foods” that don’t look like real food. It’s easy to up the eye appeal of your meals. It may take a little effort and time but, on the other hand, it allows you to savor each meal even longer – before, during and after.

You may think you don’t have time for gourmet touches, but since a sensible eating plan doesn’t allow snacking throughout the day, think of it as juggling your schedule around a bit.

Use the good china more often. Think about the colors you plan to put on the plate. My friend Pam derides, what she calls, the Casper meal (as in Casper, the friendly ghost).

This would be something like skinless chicken breast, mashed potatoes and cauliflower – just a gray mass on the plate. Yuk!

Go for colors, as well as tastes, that complement each other. More intensely colored foods are generally more healthful as well, since they tend to be higher in antioxidants – nature’s most powerful anti-agers.

Doesn’t this sound like it would look much more appetizing than a Casper meal: a gourmet meal of paillard of chicken breast with balsamic roasted red peppers (find this easy recipe below), a small serving of brown rice, fresh citrus salad and a glass of (heart healthy) red wine?

Or if you’re an oenophile and require white wine with your white meat, try champagne. Preliminary research results are showing it to have the same heart benefits as red wine. Top the meal off with a truffle (yes, just one!) and savor it like fine wine.

Arrange the food attractively on the plate. Create a gourmet work of art.

A sprinkling of herbs around the edges of a plate is an easy artistic last minute touch. As well, it doesn’t take much time to flatten a chicken breast or pork chop to uniform thickness but it increases the eye appeal and promotes more even cooking.

Uniform size in cut up vegetables has the same benefits: more eye appeal and more uniform cooking time. Invest in a kitchen mandolin. This handy tool not only cuts food beautifully and uniformly, it’s also a big time saver!

Drizzle sauces over, rather than drowning, your food in them. Let your inner child come out and play – with squiggles, swirls, whatever.

Mother may have said, “Don’t play with your food”, but on that she was wrong.

Ed Dunkelblau, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Emotionally Intelligent Learning, in Illinois, says “when we play we focus more on what we are doing”. This pushes worries aside and helps us avoid mindless (uncontrolled) eating.

Make your meal as enjoyable as you can. Take time to enjoy it and you’ll feel much more satisfied.

Paillard of Chicken Breast with Balsamic Roasted Red Peppers

Serves 4

• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts flattened to ½ inch and seasoned with ½ t. salt & ¼ t. pepper
• 14 oz. can of roasted red peppers, undrained
• 2 t. minced garlic
• ¼ cup balsamic vinegar
• ½ cup wine
• 1 t. each basil, oregano & parsley

Spray fry pan with olive oil and heat.

Brown chicken on both sides.

Combine remaining ingredients.

Pour over chicken.

Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Serve with rice or pasta.

Sprinkle perimeter of plate with parsley flakes.

[For a lucious sauce - puree the peppers.]

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be taken as medical advice.

 

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