365 Days of Low-Carb Living - 1

The lovely stuff that makes Outrageous Snapper outrageous. Just make sure your snapper is FRESH!
Starting from the bottom left: Greek olives,  garlic, cilantro, fresh lemon, sliced bell peppers, diced sun-dried tomatoes.

Outrageous!

That's how I described the red snapper in a dinner I cooked in January 2005, the year I kept track of everything I ate. That's right. Nearly 365 days of methodically recording breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. I stopped a couple weeks short of a year, which may be testament to my sanity. Am I really that boring? Sheesh.

However, I was then, and am now, a carb-conscious gal, and that's basically what this one-year food diary was all about. I also reported highlights of daily life, random thoughts etc., as well as recipes. (Kinda like my blog, huh?)

Nobody else was privy to my observations then, however, and I was not shy in rating the snapper meal a multi-cultural melange, a totally accidental gourmet dinner, and super good! Outrageous!

I've recently revisited these odd notebooks and am amazed and puzzled at what I wrote. I've decided to try to re-create some of the dishes I described with superlatives, such as the outrageous snapper,  and also to revisit a few of my thoughts. One never knows whether one's thoughts are worthy until revisiting them. Even then, it's dicey, which is a also good cooking word.

Ok, so one recent evening, because of wanting to recreate some of the 2005 recipes, I was really groovin' in the kitchen. Tunes were pulsating on our new sound system, my notebook was opened like a  cookbook next to the stove, and I was chopping and sauteing and dancing around. I think it was the Subdudes. Or maybe Ghostland Observatory.

Passing through the kitchen,  PK noted my excitement. What was so I doing? he asked.
I am trying to recreate THIS! I said. And I pressed into his hands the notebook turned to the page with the Outrageous snapper. Super Good! recipe.

He read the two pages and solemnly put the notebook on the kitchen counter.
Then he said, Can I tell you something? You're not going to like it. 
This is PK's way of being subtle and preparing me for a bomb.


Ok, say it! I got ready. Bristling just a little.


Ok. I will. You shouldn't be praising your own cooking!

I love this. PK would never praise anything he did,  except maybe that he fathered and helped raise two unbelievably great young men. (There I go again with my superlatives! Totally deserved, of course.) So for me to praise my own cooking in my private food diary was offensive. That's just how he is.

I love him anyway. I remember when he grew the best apples I have ever tasted, no exaggeration, and when people came to buy them, he said things like, Oh, don't take that one. It's probably got water core. Or,  Oh, the apples picked last week were a lot better.  Or,  You'd do better just to go to over to the supermarket and buy your apples. 
As a salesman, PK fails.

And so it embarrasses him that I would comment even to myself about the virtues of something I've cooked or created. I admire his humility, a trait he passed along to our aforementioned utterly amazing
two sons. I don't think of myself as a braggart, but I can't imagine suggesting a recipe (or a whole way of eating) that I didn't think was at least good, at best, great.

What I'm going to do is try to ignore him and tell you how to re-create some successful low-carb cooking experiences. To be honest, the outrageous snapper I made recently did not rate the superlatives I gave it seven years ago. But! I believe that has totally to do with the fact that I did not use fresh fish as specified by the recipe.

The weak link in my recent snapper dinner—the snapper!
It looks good, but not fresh and unworthy of the rest of the ingredients.

BTW, I had NO recollection of cooking this meal, so I was forced to follow my own directions. I commiserate, therefore, with those who have requested further direction on certain other recipes. I defend my position that altering recipes here and there matters little. You don't run to the store if you're lacking an ingredient. (Unless you're baking,which low-carbers do very little of)

However, when a recipe calls for fresh fish, use fresh fish! Not previously frozen and kinda grey looking—and the only snapper left in the case—as I did the second time around. Grrr. I should know better.

Here are recipes for the snapper and the cabbage.

An unlikely, but delicious, accompaniment: curried caramelized cabbage.

I'm not taking credit for either. The Indian curried cabbage came from Fran McCullough's book, the Low-Carb Cookbook, a great resource. The snapper may be credited to another low-carb author, Dana Carpender, as I have relied on her books a lot through the years. Or maybe I snagged it from the Internet. I'm pretty sure I wasn't smart enough to come up with combining the salty Greek olives with sweet dried tomatoes.

Outrageous Red Snapper
1 - 2 T olive oil, halved
3 fillets of fresh (!!!) snapper
1/3 cup chopped sundried tomatoes
1 medium green bell pepper, sliced into strips
1/2 large lemon
1-2 T minced garlic
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pitted Greek olives
1/2 bunch of cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Lightly saute garlic and peppers in half the oil, two minutes max
Add tomatoes and olives and squeeze in half a lemon
Heat the mixture through and remove from pan. Set aside.
Add remaining oil (if you need it) and fry the fish in the same pan. You want the fish to be just barely cooked through. Squeeze remaining lemon on and season fish with salt and pepper.
Return the veggie/olive mix to the pan and gently settle around the fish. Heat through and serve with curried cabbage. If you don't care about carbs, serve with brown rice.

Curried cabbage
Melt a couple T of butter in a large non-stick skillet and stir in a little curry powder.
Thinly slice half of a large head of cabbage and mix into the butter and curry. Cover and cook on medium heat until wilted, stirring occasionally. Uncover and cook, stirring frequently, for about a half hour or until cabbage begins to caramelize. Add more curry and/or butter to taste, and salt and pepper.