What's for dinner tonight? How about Lemon Chicken Piccatta, Sesame
Broccoli, and Banana's Foster desserts on a nightly basis. No! We aren't joking. You can
have it ready in in 10 minutes using, 5 ingredients or less for each recipe and cost you
$5.
Speaker and Author of "Too Easy Gourmet, The World's First Non-Fiction
Cookbook", Ben Levitan developed methods and recipes that are realistic for today's
business working single or couple. (About 70% of households are single or couples)
What could be better than a gourmet home cooked meal? With this article, you can be
enjoying a gourmet meal twenty minutes from now.
Too Easy Gourmet recipes are special recipes that:
1) Recipes that can be made in 20 minutes or less, start to finish
2) Recipes that use five or fewer ingredients
3) Servings for one or two
4) Common ingredients
5) No fancy tools (in fact all you need is a pan or two)
If you redefined cooking to mean dialing for Domino's, and gourmet cooking as ordering
extra cheese here's some real help from Ben's non-fiction cookbook . Thanks to Too Easy
Gourmet you can now have a home cooked meal faster than a teenager driving a 1982 Nova
with a neon Pizza sign can deliver it. On the way home from your next keynote or training
session, stop by the supermarket for a few ingredients and get home an cook! Cooking for
yourself is an act of caring, and cooking for others is an act of love. Enjoy.
Quick Main Courses
The key to quick main courses is simple techniques and recipes. Try this Main
course and you'll have Lemon Chicken Piccatta on the dinner table in 6 minutes (really)
using only four simple ingredients.
Lemon Chicken Piccatta
Ingredients
- One 1/4 lb. chicken breast (skinless, boneless)
- 2 teaspoons butter
- juice from 1/2 lemon
- 1 teaspoon parsley, chopped
Instructions
Place chicken between two sheets of wax paper & pound evenly to a 1/4"
thickness. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat until bubbly. Add the chicken and
sauté two minutes per side. Remove the cooked chicken to a warm plate, and
"de-glaze" pan with lemon juice. Add parsley, stir quickly and pour over chicken
as sauce.
Comments
A single 4 oz. chicken breast (1/4 lb.) is about right for this recipe. Roll the
lemon on the countertop to get more juice out of it. Time for this meal: 6 minutes!
Shopping tip: Buy a single chicken breast already skinned for fast and cost-effective
preparation. (Are you really going to de-bone a whole chicken and save the bones for
chicken stock?)
Quick Smart Shopping
It's no surprise to anyone that we don't have time to cook anymore. When we do
venture into the supermarket we often end up spending a fortune on ingredients that go to
waste. Since Too Easy Gourmet are always servings for one, there is little waste but even
more importantly, some shopping strategies will really help. For example, try this great
side dish:
Sesame Broccoli
Ingredients
- 1 cup broccoli florets
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
- 2 teaspoons honey
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
Instructions
Put broccoli in a steamer over boiling water. Steam for 3 minutes; broccoli will
turn a bright green. Remove from heat; allow to cool to room temperature for easier
handling. Toss with remaining ingredients.
Simple and delicious and ready in five minutes, but here's a great shopping tip. If you
buy a whole broccoli, it will cost you about $1.80. Most of the left over will rot in the
fridge. Here's a great tip. Take the 1 cup of broccoli off of the salad bar instead of
buying it a whole broccoli. It's already cut, trimmed, washed and ready to use. It will
cost you about 15 cents and there is no waste. You can find other ready to use ingredients
at the salad bar. How about mushrooms, onions, tofu, green peppers. The cost and time
savings are remarkable.
Quick smart dieting
How about Banana's Foster for dessert? Oh, watching your diet? No problem, the most
important thing you need to do while dieting is to watch your fat grams intake, but you
knew that. What you may not know is how many fat grams you can have in a day.
Bananas Foster
- 2 Bananas (cut in half lengthwise)
- 2 tablespoons Butter
- 2 tablespoons Brown Sugar
- 2 teaspoons Lemon
- 3 tablespoons Rum (at room temperature)
Instructions:
Melt butter in a skillet. Saute bananas, sugar and lemon until softened and brown.
Add rum to pan and ignite. Stir gently until flames dies down.
Comments:
Added touches: One scoop good quality vanilla ice cream.
Nutritional Information
Butter 24 grams of fat
Sugar 0 grams of fat
Banana 1.2 grams of fat
Total 24.2 grams of fat
You can see from the above recipe that this dessert will set you back a total of 24 fat
grams. "Great, but what does that mean to me?" In working your diet, you have an
idea of what you ideally would like to weigh. Using the commonly accepted methods of
calculating fat grams and calories you can easily calculate your total fat gram budget for
a single day. Let's take the example of a woman, Skinny Betty who wants to get to her
ideal weight of 100 lbs. (for the simplicity of the math.) How many grams of fat can she
eat per day?
50 grams of fat per day
Although this may be obvious to many of you, here's a simpler approach.
_________ divided by 2 =__________ ideal weight fat gram budget
So you see, even for a person who wants to be 100 pounds, Banana Fosters will only put
a 24 dent in your daily fat budget. This means if you budget well, you can pretty much eat
what you want and don't have to give up all your favorites. The number of fat grams you
consume in your diet determines your weight. It's almost as simple as that.
This is for the moderately active person. (The usual warning about seeing a doctor for
your specific condition applies) For those of you who like the math, this is based on the
fact that a moderately active person should eat 15 calories per pound of body weight
daily. (For our 100-lbs. person, that comes out to 1500 calories). The heart association
and other health experts advise that no more than 30% of your daily calories come from
fats (as opposed to carbohydrates and proteins). Some experts advise even lower limits.
30% of Skinny Betty's calories budget is 450 calories (1500 total calories times .30).
Skinny Betty can eat 450 calories worth of fat calories a day and not gain weight.
But now we have to convert the calories to grams. Each gram of fat is 9 calories which
means 450 calories divided by 9 equals 50 grams. If Skinny Betty eats 50 grams of fat per
day, her weight will go up or down to 100 lbs.
It would have been much easier to just divide our ideal weight by 2, wouldn't it?
This begs the question, "Well, if I can have so many fat grams every day, why
don't I weight 100 lbs?"
Well - -
Movie Popcorn with butter: 60 grams of fat
Cinnabon: 34 grams of fat
McDonalds Large Fries: 22 grams of fat
Big Mac: 31 grams of fat
VIE DE FRANCE Chocolate Croissant: 23 grams of fat
It adds up quick, if you don't watch it!
Cooking has become a luxury that we only have time for a few times a year. Hopefully
using thia approach, you'll be able to make enjoyable meals several times a week and save
money to boot. The endless cooking shows we see on Cable just aren't realistic for people
who work full time. In workshops I often compare this to the fashion industry" says
Ben "The fashions you see on the runways in Paris are amusing, but I rarely see
people walking around at Walmart wearing them. Same goes for gourmet, cooking. The cable
shows are amusing, but rarely, do people actually follow through with the recipes they
watch on TV. Too Easy Gourmet is a realistic answer for most people today."
Now you can have the convenience of fast food and microwave and feel satisfied.
Ben's book, Too Easy Gourmet, The World's First Non-Fiction Cookbook (ISBN
#0-9640023-0-2, $6.95, Published by Too Easy Gourmet Press), contains 100 recipes, all 20
minutes or less and five ingredients or fewer with fat gram information, shopping
strategies and menu suggestions.
Ben Levitan, a NSA member since 1994 teaches workshops around the country as well as
doing radio and television interviews to promote his book. Too Easy Gourmet is designed to
be easy for meeting planners as well. Ben brings everything but the kitchen sink to teach
his workshop. The meeting planner provides chairs and an electric outlet and Ben brings in
a portable kitchen that sets up in twenty minutes or less. Additional recipes can be found
on the Too Easy Gourmet website at www.easygourmet.com and the book can be ordered by
calling 1-800-Easy Gourmet (1-800-327-9468).
The recipes in this cookbook are:
- Quick -- 20 minutes or less start to finish.
- Easy -- 5 common ingredients (or fewer) for every recipe.
- Healthy -- count your fat grams as you cook.
- Budget Conscious -- no fancy tools needed & shopping strategies that save
- money.
- Realistic -- no overnight marinates, 4 hour simmers, or planning ahead.
