Author Archives: thesouplady2

Super Foods – Part 1



Yummy ways to eat yourself into better shape!

I didn’t invent these lists (there are 16 Super Foods in total), for that I must give credit to Rebecca Katz’s “The Longevity Kitchen” and my favorite source for advice to the aging – the AARP Magazine. But the comments are all mine!

Food 1: Coffee. Don’t need much to convince me that life without coffee isn’t worth living. But it’s nice to know that in addition to caffeine – there’s some good stuff – including antioxidants that can protect against cell damage and reduce your risk of chronic diseases like diabetes.

Food 2: Wild Salmon: It’s not just that it is a fish – and everyone knows that you should eat more fish – it’s also omega-3 fatty acid heavy (good not just for your heart, but also possibly a way to keep your DNA healthy).

Food 3: Sweet Potatoes: I admit – I just really prefer the taste of Sweet Potatoes over the plain boring white ones. But it’s seriously nice to consider that sweet potatoes have lots of Vitamin B6 and potassium. They can even help regulate blood pressure. And when eaten with the skin ON, they have more fiber than a copy of oatmeal.

Food 4: Olives/Olive Oil: Known to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, Olive Oil may even reduce the risk of stroke by up to 41%.

Need dinner tonight with 3 of the 4 super foods?
Try Salmon Burritos with Chile-Roasted Vegetables from MyRecipes.com. This recipe is rated as Outstanding!

The usual rice is replaced with pan-roasted sweet potatoes, onions, and poblano chiles, giving this burritos a healthy dose of fiber as well as heart-protecting micronutrients such as carotenoids (in the sweet potatoes), flavonoids (onions), folic acid (cabbage), and omega-3 fatty acids (salmon). Prep and Cook Time: about 45 minutes.

Nutritional Information – Amount per serving
Calories: 325
Calories from fat: 39%
Protein: 19g
Fat: 14g
Saturated fat: 2.5g
Carbohydrate: 30g
Fiber: 3.4g
Sodium: 852mg
Cholesterol: 45mg

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons lime juice
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ground dried chiles
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 pound boned salmon fillet (about 1 in. thick) $
1 large Garnet or Jewel sweet potato, peeled, quartered lengthwise, then sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 zucchini, halved lengthwise, then sliced 1/3 inch thick
1 red onion, peeled, halved lengthwise, and cut into 1/4-inch-thick wedges
1 fresh poblano chile, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
6 whole-wheat flour tortillas (10 in. wide), warmed $
Chopped cilantro, shredded cabbage, low-fat sour cream, and lime wedges
Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425°. Line two 12- by 15-inch baking pans with aluminum foil.
2. Whisk together the olive oil, lime juice, garlic, ground dried chiles, and salt.
3. Rinse salmon and pat dry. Brush flesh side of salmon with 2 tablespoons of the lime-chile marinade. Set aside.
4. In a medium bowl, toss the sweet potato, zucchini, onion, and chile with the remaining marinade. Arrange vegetables in a single layer on the baking pans.
5. Roast vegetables for 10 minutes, then add salmon, skin side down, to one pan and return to oven. Continue roasting until potatoes are tender when pierced and salmon is opaque but still moist-looking in center of thickest part, 7 to 10 minutes.
6. Remove skin from salmon and slice fillet into six equal portions.
7. Spoon vegetable mixture equally onto warm tortillas. Top each with a piece of salmon and a little cilantro, cabbage, and sour cream. Fold tortilla over the filling. Serve with more sour cream and the lime wedges.

Curious about the rest of the Super Foods? Stay tuned!

3 Hotels in 3 Days – Am I nuts or what?



Color me crazy – but I just slept in 3 different hotels in the last 3 nights. What would possess someone to do such a stupid thing? You can’t even take your clothes out of the suitcase – it almost isn’t worth even carrying the suitcase up to the room. Just grab the essentials and go.

Clearly – not my prefered way to travel. But my son got married in San Jose, CA on Thursday (GO Son GO!) and I had to get from Montreal to San Jose to Old Bedford, PA to Atlantic City to Montreal in 5 days. So 3 hotels it was going to be.

Hotel #1 – Ramada just off Highway 89 in Harrisburg, PA. We arrived at 12:30 – left at 8:00 – enjoyed the clean room, comfortable bed – awesome free breakfast (including make your own waffles and unlimited coffee and fruit), and free WI-FI. Perfect.

Hotel #2 – Hyatt Regency at the San Franciso Airport. Glorious hotel from the outside – it’s huge! There’s an inside atrium the size of a small football field, extending up 3 floors. 1/2 the rooms overlook the atrium – with mini balconys you can open to stop out into the ‘inside’. Quiet, very comfy bed, loved the oversized bathroom, great toilet featured low and high flush options, free water and fruit at check-in. Didn’t care for the $25 a day ‘valet’ service, and they charge for WI-FI. Breakfast also was extra. But I slept well. That has to count for something. Not quite as prefect as that Ramada though.

Hotel #3 – Marriott at Dulles Airport. Nothing much to look at from the outside, but at least the parking was free. It was extremely quiet – so clearly they have great windows since we are literally feet from the landing strips. Bed was comfy – since we arrived at 8:00 am and checked out at noon (after a red-eye flight from San Francisco) – quiet and comfy was just right. But the bathroom was tiny, the toilet didn’t flush quite right, the WI-FI is free only in the bar, and there wasn’t even a bowl of fruit to welcome us. Lousy shower too.

So bottom line – Ramada tops the list – but there weren’t any clear loosers. I do think that Marriott ought to be a tad embarassed though.

Surprisingly good Pub Food and Great Beer – Summer Fun



The Vermont Pub and Brewery has been around for over 25 years – so the question is – how come I never ate there before? Answer – I thought it was more bar than restaurant – and I thought wrong.

It was one of those priceless Vermont summer evenings – daylight seems to last forever, and when the sun finally does decide to go down, the air still has that soft summer feel to it. I asked advice of Roger – the guy trying to sell me a Prius (more on that later) – and he recommended the Pub. I figured – why not!

I scored an outside table, and settled in for an easy evening. The newspaper cum menu was a nice start – and listed on the board was a yummy sounding Cajun Catfish for just $11.95. Ok – I could seriously handle that.

According to the informative menu (Prohibition ended on April 7, 1933 among other brew based tidbits) – the VPB has won lots of awards for their home brewed beer – and for just $1.25 they will give you a sample of any one of their flavors. You can even order a flight of samples. I opted for just one- their award winning, and car salesman suggested, Burly Irish Ale. Described as rich and malty – it was a small yet delightfully filling way to end my day. For dinner I tried their fried oysters (skip those next time), and for my main course – choose the catfish. That was exactly the right decision. The catfish was perfectly cooked – white and flaky, rich and delicious, perfectly seasoned. The potion of sweet potato fries was way too large – but they were delicous too.

Service was perfect – fast when needed, and they ignored me completely when I wanted to be ignored.

A B+ (fried oysters were just too thickly breaded to rate an A, beer was way too delicious to just give them a B. So B+ it is!)

Hana – Sushi in Burlington, VT – bit of a hit and miss at a great price



We did our research, and the Hana – an oversized empty space located in a shopping mall just off the highway in Burlington – got decent comments. So we ventured out – looking for a relatively inexpensive late lunch.

The restaurant was completely empty – but given the crazy hour we were there – I can’t say I was completely surprised. We were greeted with a smile – and presented with what I suspect was the dinner menu. Oh well – we were late.

Rather than order 2 differnt maki’s – we ordered a combo platter to share. This was probably a mistake. I suspect that the maki’s were pre-made left overs from lunch time. My fault – I know to avoid that beginners mistake, but I was too tired to even fuss.

The good news – service was very nice and the miso soup was delicous. The bad news – the restaurant is cold and forbidding – too bad they haven’t thought of some way to make it feel more welcoming. And the best that can be said about our Combo Platter is that it was acceptable.

I might give them another try anyway – judging a restaurant on off hours is a bit tough, even for me.

A C – with hopes of doing better next time.

8 Easy Steps to Eating Smart when Eating out!



This is one of my all time favorite topics. I leave and breathe eating out – and I watch my weight like a hawk. I went with Weight Watchers in Feb 2002 – lost 30 pounds by June 2002 – and have kept it off for over 11 years now. Clearly – I’m pretty pound of that accomplishment. I weigh what I weighed in High School. Rocking Grannie!

BUT – there’s a price to pay in staying slim and eating out more nights than I eat in – and I call it the menu game. And like all games, there are rules.

Step 1: Before sitting down – Choose your price point and be sure that the restaurant offers options that will work. For example – if you are thinking of spending about $20 per person – the average price for the entries on the menu should be $10 to $15. The wine, the dessert, the tip and taxes will bounce a $10 entry up to $20 in a blink of the eye.

Step 2: Choose your cuisine – A study by the folks at Tufts School of Nutrition has determined that there are ‘better’ cuisines and ‘worse’ cuisines from an average calorie point of view. Not surprisingly, Vietnamese and Japanese have the lowest average calories when their most popular dishes were analyzed, while Italian, American and Chinese have the highest average calorie counts. (Check out the exact numbers in the study published in JAMA Internal Medicine by Susan Roberts, Director of the HNRCA Energy Metabolism Laboratory. Susan Roberts also is the author of “The “i” Diet” (www.myidiet.com))

Step 3: Try not to arrive famished. This is so hard to avoid, and so critical to keeping control over how much you eat. The other day I ended up devouring almost 1/2 of a delicious milk shake because I was just too hungry when I walked in to remember to ask for water.

Step 4: Always ask for water first – and always drink it before ordering. Then you can focus on what you are ordering, and not ‘shop hungry’.

Step 5: Plan ahead – and either order a small portion – or try to put 1/2 away before you start eating. Restaurants, particularly smaller ones at lower price points, serve way too much food. In fact, those crazy folks at the Tufts Nutrition School cited above studied calorie counts and determined that average meals in 33 randomly selected smaller restaurants in the Boston area ended up weighing in at an astounding 1,327 calories per meal – that’s about twice a normal meal, and more calories than I normal consume in a day. More distressing – fully 73% of the meals they analyzed in their study contained more than 1/2 the daily recommended calories per day for an adult. No wonder we get fat eating out. So plan on take out – every time you eat out. In fact 12 of the 157 meals analyzed actually contained more than 2000 calories – the calories recommended for an entire day

Step 5: Be a fussy eater! Ask for all sauces and all salad dressings to be served ‘on the side’. That way you can control how much of the most fattening things get in your stomach!

Step 6: Don’t order what you really shouldn’t eat. If you don’t order the french fries – you won’t be tempted. Don’t ruin fish (something you should try to eat at least twice a week) by getting it fried, and if you order steak – order the small portion.

Step 7: Put your fork down between bites. This works for any meal – home cooked, or eaten out. Study after study has shown that it takes time for your tummy to register ‘full’, and it’s easy to eat so fast that you go past that point. In fact – this is why I love tasting menus. The time delay between the courses gives my body time to decide how hungry I still am.

Step 8: Carry food with you – and eat it when you get hungry! I always have a small resealable container of almonds with me. They are the perfect snack – not terribly high in calories, take effort to eat (if it goes down fast – it didn’t count is false!)

Well there you have it – 8 easy steps to eating Smart when eating Out.

Rene’s Bistro – Stratford. Gimme the Mussels – Rush!



We got trapped – hungry for dinner before the theatre, on a Saturday night – with no reservations in Stratford, Ontario. And I won’t do Chains, or Pizza. So finding a place that I’d enjoy was not going to be easy. We were turned away from 2 other restaurants – sorry – we’re full. Good for them, bad for us. But Rene’s was welcoming – and while our tiny table for 2 wasn’t the best located – right by the server’s stand and against the wall separating the restaurant from the bar – the welcome was genuine. We explained that we were going to the theatre, they basically said – What’s new, and got on with their jobs.

We were handed menus, our order taken, and the kitchen alerted within minutes of our arrival. And the place, like most restaurants in Stratford on a Saturday before the theatre, was packed. But not noisy – a very pleasant surprise.

We ordered mussels in 2 different preparations – one in a cream sauce, one in a white wine sauce, both of which were served very promptly. The bread – a requirement if you are going to mop up the sauces – was wonderful, warm and fresh. Unlike Montreal Mussel restaurants – fries didn’t come standard. So we did without. But the nice sized portion – and the rapid bread basket refill – did the job nicely.

So – table cloths, good food, and no reservations required – Rene’s Bistro was a winner. Next time I’m going to explore the menu more efficiently – they had some other dishes that sounded great. But noticing the number of mussel servings that walked past – I’m thinking that mussels are their go for dish.

A B. Nice service, good food, worth the price asked. And fast – we made the Theatre with time to spare.

Rene's Bistro on Urbanspoon

Rene's Bistro on Foodio54

It’s the Chowder – It’s all about the Chowder….


Perkins Cove in Ogunquit – finding a reasonable and enjoyable bite to eat without standing in line or fighting crowds is almost a super-human task. The main restaurants, conveniently located right on the parking lot (delightful), are lobster dinner emporiums – huge, busy, expensive, and way too much food.

All of which makes ‘Chowders’ a complete delight. Located at the far end of the cove – past the way too adorable drawbridge, fishing boats, and ‘Mainely Maine’ shops Chowders is right on the cove side. The view from the deck – hidden from view by other buildings, and no even really visible from inside the deli – is stunning. Part is underneath a deck, so it’s protected from the sun and the occasional rain. And part is open to the air, the sea, and the view.

The ordering system couldn’t be simpler. There’s a menu – you order and pay at the cash, and when your food is ready, the server finds you. The fare is what one would expect in such a location, fried fish, sandwiches, and of course Chowder. My husband rated the Clam Chowder the equal of the one at the Wells Lobster Pound – a high compliment. His sandwich by American Standards was acceptable – by Quebec or European Standards, the bread was a bit – well – white.

But what I liked best about Chowders was the attitude. Unlike to servers at the larger places, Chowders felt comfortable. I felt extremely welcomed – like they were glad to see me. Which given the location is a nice surprise. Ogunquit in general, and Perkins Cove in particular are traditionally mobbed. And with so many guests – staying polite and friendly is hard. The staff at Chowders – on the day we were there – completely delivered.

A B+ for food, an A for location and view.

Chowders Cafe & Deli on Urbanspoon

Chowders Cafe & Deli on Foodio54

Pazzo Restaurant and Bar in Stratford, Ontario


Pazzo Flashback – Too good to ignore

Sometimes it really is location – location. And Pazzo is perfectly located – right on the walk way between the main theatres in Stratford. It’s insanely hard to avoid getting pulled in. Between the location (perfect) and the adorable cafe tables that liter the sidewalk and the 2 floors of eating establishment – housing a bar, a restaurant and a pizza/restaurant combo – there’s clearly something for everyone.

Our meal was perfectly acceptable – not insanely expensive, well prepared, properly served, and fast. We were naturally rushed (in Stratford – that’s the norm, not the expectation) and as we’ve begun to suspect – restaurants know the pattern and are totally prepared. Our meals were served amazing promptly – including our make to order pizza.

Was it outstanding. Nope. Was it do it again-able. Yes

A B.

Pazzo Pizzeria on Urbanspoon

Pazzo Ristorante Bar & Pizzeria on Foodio54

I know – it’s a Chain – but Madison’s is still worth rating!


I hate chain restaurants – it smacks of late nights driving with no other options – and in Montreal the options are so plentiful, it makes one wonder why bother.

But Madison’s New York Grill and Bar – at least the one at the Marche de l’Ouest – is so consistently good, so easy to like, so diet friendly while looking so extravagant – it’s hard to resist saying something.

We lucked out and scored a seat on the Terrace. With a delightful breeze, warm night, and comfy cushions on Rattan Chairs, it was a complete pleasure to just sit and chat. Our group of 3 ladies didn’t do the normal lady thing of ordering light – nope – we mostly went for the signature ribs – which at $19 for 10 oz, served with a side of either a huge portion of mashed potatoes, a giant (where do they get that size) baked potato, or steamed veggies was a gourmand delight.

Lick smacking, finger licking good.

I opted for the lighter meal of Ahi Tuna (served Raw) on a huge salad with a scoop of mango salsa. Not the first time I’ve ordered this dish at Madison’s – and it won’t be the last. So good, so filling, and so perfect for my diet. I have to mention that I’ve watched the portion size vary over the years – the salad getting larger and larger, the portion of tuna getting smaller and smaller. But now they are telling you that you’ll get 8 oz of tuna – so I’m hoping that the portion size variation will stop.

But it was yummy. Made more so by a lovely white wine ordered by my friend, pleasant company, and a full moon.

Our waiter must have decided early on that we wouldn’t be good tippers – he mostly ignored us. We had to ask another waiter to fetch him so we could order, and once we’d ordered – we were generally ignored. The good news – your waiter doesn’t serve you – the runners do. So his preoccupation with other tables didn’t keep us from getting and enjoying our dinner. To just get coffee we had to hunt him down – and he forgot totally to offer us the desert options. His loss on that score – we normally succumb to the temptation – but when it’s not offered – we are stronger.

Bottom line – a B for service, an A for food. It’s not fancy, but as long as you stay away from the specials – which can run $35 and up – it’s quite reasonably priced. And while the 2 for $22 isn’t valid at this location during the summer – in the winter – that’s quite the deal.

I’ll be back.

Madison's Grill & Bar on Urbanspoon

Madison's New York Grill and Bar on Foodio54

Homestyle cooking – Yummy Prime Rib – Delicous Mussels – That’s Mon Village in a nutshell


Way out in Hudson – convenient only for those who live in Hudson, attend the Hudson Theatre, or are seriously into horse-back riding is one of my favorite restaurants. It’s not luxurious, it’s not even particularly quaint. It just happens to be right where it needs to be, offering easy to enjoy food at a decent price.

There are really 3 different dining experiences at Mon Village. First there is the outdoor terrace area which lacks a wonderful view but still can be very enjoyable on a late afternoon. Second – and our most frequently visited section – the bar. It’s not just a bar, it’s also a family friendly dining area with heavy oak chairs and tables and a nice light and bright atmosphere. And then there’s the ‘Dining Room’. Part of the original farmhouse – this section oozes history. Dark wood, fire places, table clothes, rickety stairs to private rooms up stairs – it’s a throw back to a different time and place.

Interesting – all 3 serve exactly the same menu. Management will close and open sections depending on the number of people with reservations – on our last visit, a warm Saturday night in late August, the place was packed. We squeezed into the ‘Dining Room’ – sharing with a large party celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary of a very fit couple! We got to enjoy the toasts – in both languages, even though we were seated in the sun room section – apart, but not distant from the celebration. It is a compliment to Mon Village that unlike the modern ‘Bistro’ tendency to noisy eating, we were still able to have a private conversation.

The food is nothing special. Prime Rib, Mussels, Rack of Lamb, Pub food like Fish and Chips – we’re talking hearty country eating. But it’s all properly cooked and easy to enjoy.

The foodie in you won’t be thrilled – but for a meal that satisfies without serious damage to your budget – Mon Village is a good choice. I must like it – I’ve eaten there over a dozen times.

Mon Village on Urbanspoon