How to Get Rid of Muffin Top

You know muffin top, that fluffy bit of tummy that hangs over the top of your waistband. The first time someone asked me how to get rid of it, I was a little to quick on the draw with my response. This was before I worked in the fitness industry. I was going for humor, so I said, "Buy bigger pants." She gave me an evil glare.

These days, I realize that such a question is a great teaching opportunity, and there really is a multi-part response. But first, if you need to get rid of your muffin-top tomorrow, the easiest answer really is in the clothing. It doesn't matter how little body fat one has, if the elastic around the middle is too tight, it's going to create a bulge somewhere. So it really wouldn't hurt to buy some leggings with a more forgiving waist.

That response won't do anything for your

Vintage Slimming Belt

hip-waist ratio, or body-fat percentage, so let's tackle that. First off, hopefully we've all gotten the word that spot reduction doesn't really work. So core exercises like crunches and planks are great for building core strength and stability, but they cannot, all by themselves, get rid of your muffin top.

I am afraid, my friends, that what is required is a solid plan of cardiovascular exercise and solid meal planning. The great part about this is that there is no one right answer as to what specific kind of cardio you have to do. I myself experienced great weight loss results after my first daughter was born from just walking and pushing her in the stroller. As my fitness level improved, and as she was able to take longer naps, I started doing exercise videos at home. Later, when she was able to go to kids' care at the gym, I started running on the treadmill, and that was the beginning of my foray into the fitness world.

If walking, workout videos or running aren't for you, maybe you might like dancing, basketball, soccer, swimming, or any other of a million types of human movement. There's no wrong answer. Just find something that causes you to break a sweat, and that you can tolerate well enough to do fairly consistently for 30-60 minutes most days of the week.

Next up is the food aspect. People have written whole books about food and diet plans. Who am I, but a simple personal trainer and a mother of three who has successfully lost and kept from regaining a decent chunk of weight. I find that the simpler I keep my guidelines, the more likely I am to follow them. Here are a few simple food ideas. (Serious idea props go out to my fitspiration, Jonathan Ross, who wrote the book, "Abs Revealed." you should check it out.)

• Whenever you eat, eat a vegetable. Or at least a fruit. For example, sauté some spinach and onions along with your egg in the morning. Slice a banana into your oatmeal. As pictured below, chop up some spinach, tomatoes and strawberries along with a boiled egg for a simple lunch salad.
• Avoid added refined sweeteners. Let's not make this complicated. I mean things that involved, at some point in the assembly process, adding scoops or cups of sweetness. We could spend a lot of time debating the relative virtues of white sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, Truvia, Splenda, and a thousand other kinds of sweeteners. Let's not. As a general rule, try to get your sweet fix from things that are naturally sweet without human help, like berries, bananas, and oranges. You get the picture. If you, like many of the people in my extended family, like to put spoonfuls of sugar on your breakfast cereal, it's going to take some time to retrain your taste buds. Be patient.

Every time you eat, eat the vegetables.

• Don't eat anything that came out of a deep fat fryer.
• Don't drink calories. Stick with water, unsweet tea, black coffee (with maybe a little milk). Avoid sodas. Even the diet sodas. I hate to bring this up, but beer, wine and liquor also include the emptiest of all calories, alcohol. The relaxation value of a nightly glass of Malbec may be worth it to you you, but 3-4 glasses is probably not helping anything, health-wise.
• Make your own food when possible. It's not always feasible, but it saves both calories and money.

Realize the bullets above are goals, and you won't always meet them. Understand that there will be days when you'll drink all the beer and eat all the cheesecake. Don't let that one day ruin your overall plan. The next morning, put on your stretchy pants, forgive yourself, and get right back on track.

And also, if you'd like more a more detailed and specific workout plan made just for you, contact a personal trainer. Like me. I work with people both in-person and online.

Now go have an awesome day and crush those goals!

Meal-Prep Tips for Travel

I am currently chilling in my hotel room, watching "Thor, The Dark World," and mentally preparing for a four-day athletic conference that starts at 8am. I am also thanking myself for taking the time before I left to prepare meals for myself for the next four days.

This is not my first rodeo. I have been to several fitness trainings, certifications and conferences before. I know that at the end of each day, I will be so tired that the idea of even walking a few hundred yards to a restaurant and waiting for food will be exhausting. Let alone trying to find a healthy food selection amid the french fries, burgers and pizzas. It's really tough at a fitness conference, where we spend all our time talking about helping our clients make healthy lifestyle choices, and then we go out and eat a whole cow and drink 48 beers.

So, I jest. I don't drink beer.

Just in case some other people out there struggle with both the calories and the money involved in eating while on business travel, I thought I'd share some thoughts.

First, a lot depends on how you travel. I happened to be traveling by car, so I had the opportunity to pack a cooler. I left for this conference on Wednesday. On Monday, I went grocery shopping and bought eight of the small square ziploc containers you see in the photo. I bought a family pack of chicken breasts, a large sweet potato, a vidalia onion, a white potato, a red pepper, quinoa, eggs, cherry tomatoes, hummus and some cheeses.

On Monday, I cooked the quinoa and put it in the bottom of the Ziploc containers, and froze it. I boiled six of the eggs and put them back in their original container.
Tuesday, I cooked the whole family pack of chicken. We ate some for dinner, and I cut up the rest, cooled it in the fridge, and then distributed the cold chicken on top of the previously frozen quinoa.

On Tuesday, I also cut up and roasted my vegetables (with olive oil, pepper, and garlic salt). I portioned those out into two Ziploc containers. I meant to freeze them on top of the chicken, but I ended up falling asleep before I completed that step!

I also put some bagged frozen strawberries in one of the Ziplocs.

Wednesday morning, I packed all the pre-made meals up, along with the hummus, cheeses, cherry tomatoes, spinach and fresh fruits, in my cooler with some ice, and it lasted all day. I even had to move my daughter into her new apartment on my way to the conference, and everything stayed fresh, plus I had snacks for when we got hungry on the road.

Air travel
It's a little more complicated when traveling by air, but I still take my foods. In an ideal world, I like to carry enough calories on the plane with me to get through 24 hours, so that no matter what happens, I won't starve or subject anyone else to "hangry" me.

I stock some things in my carry on and some in my checked bag.

In the carry-on, I usually take my insulated bag with some cut-up vegetables, some kind of a dip (I always have to check the TSA rules for size) but I like small containers of peanut butter or hummus. I usually take some kind of dried fruits and nuts, cheese, and some variety of crackers. If I am super-organized, I'll make myself a real lunch, like a nice salad, wrap or sandwich. I am gluten-free, so I can't eat a standard airport sandwich.

In the packed bag, I usually stow some oatmeal packets, power bars, rice cakes, probably more peanut butter, nuts and dried fruits, and possibly a can or two of tuna. I don't eat the tuna on the plane because it stinks.

At the hotel
When I have the option to choose my hotel, I really like to find a place that has both a refrigerator and a microwave, but I'm pretty creative even without one. I have a little one-serving metal travel tea kettle that I use to heat up water, which I can use to make my oatmeal in the morning, and that hot water can heat up a surprising amount of other things, too. Like my cold quinoa and chicken, in this hotel that has a fridge, but only a shared microwave on the third floor.

As to why I go to all this trouble--I spent about $80 on my food for the whole trip. That includes a $20 box of wine and all my snacks. Since I am working at the conference, I will also get fed a couple of times. If I were eating out every meal here, I would easily spend $80 in a day. It's an expensive area. Not only am I saving a lot of money, I have total control over my food. I know exactly what went into it, how it was made, and the freshness of all the ingredients.

Also, since I have a pretty serious gluten sensitivity, I don't have to worry about getting some stray wheat in my food and ending up with intense abdominal pain for the whole weekend. All in all, it's quite worth it. But beyond all that, I love the creative challenge of trying to figure out how to beat "the system."

Whatever you choose to do for food, I wish you happy travels!

Springtime Smoothies

When the weather starts to warm up, it seems I can no longer bring myself to make hot cereal every morning, but neither do I want to eat processed cold cereal that my body will burn through in about an hour, leaving me hungrier than before. So as the spring greens and veggies start to come into season, I start working out my blender and trying some delicious smoothie recipes.

Ruby Red smoothie with beets, carrots and celery

The first breakfast smoothie I ever made was sometime back in the late 1980s. I got the recipe from an issue of Vogue or Cosmo. One banana, a cup of vanilla yogurt and a cup of orange juice. That was a very basic recipe, and although it was pretty tasty (and easy) I wouldn't make it now. Too much sugar--especially with the sweetened vanilla yogurt.

Today, I try to use more whole fruits and organic vegetables as close to in-season as I can. I love to slip in some fresh greens (baby kale mix, baby spinach, etc) but sometimes their color turns the smoothie a shade I call "Incdredible Hulky." They still taste pretty good, though, thanks to the ever-present banana and orange juice that help to sweeten the mix.

As a standard base, I start with one banana and about 1/2 cup of orange juice. The banana provides some body as well as sugar and the juice helps liquefy the rest of the smoothie. You could also use half a banana and any other kind of juice, or even a different kind of liquid, like a different juice or some variation of milk (cow, goat, coconut, almond, soy).

I usually use plain Greek yogurt for protein, as long as I have it on hand. You could also add a scoop of protein powder if you wish. I would recommend not using sweetened or flavored yogurt, even if it's sugar-free. If you are accustomed to the standard American diet that is packed with hidden sugars, these smoothies may initially seem rather tart, but rather than using a pre-sweetened packaged yogurt, try a plain yogurt and a little bit of honey so that you control how much sweetness you add. You can also skip the yogurt altogether if you don't have it, but to me, smoothies without yogurt seem thin and watery.

I have included a few basic recipes, ranging from a fruity flavor to more seriously veggie. You can always play with the fruit and vegetable combinations, and add honey or agave nectar for sweetness if you need it.

Basic smoothie 
1/2 cup frozen fruit (unsweetened strawberries, mangoes, blueberries, or a combination)
1/2 cup orange juice
1 banana
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
2 easy-peel mandarin oranges (peeled)
Place the frozen fruit and orange juice in the blender first. Pulse 3 times, then add the remaining ingredients. Pulse again, and then turn the blender on to the smoothie setting. Check the consistency, make sure everything is well blended, and enjoy.

Carrot-top
Use the basic smoothie recipe above, but add with the frozen fruit
1 full-sized organic carrot, cut into 1/2-inch rounds

Place the frozen fruit, carrot and orange juice in the blender first. Pulse 3 times, then add the remaining ingredients. Pulse again, and then turn the blender on to the smoothie setting. Check the consistency, make sure everything is well blended, and enjoy.

Incredible Hulk
Use the basic smoothie recipe above, but add with the frozen fruit
1 full-sized organic carrot, cut into 1/2-inch rounds
2 handfuls of organic greens (baby Kale mix, baby spinach)

Place the frozen fruit, carrot and orange juice in the blender first. Pulse 3 times, then add the remaining ingredients. Pulse again, and then turn the blender on to the smoothie setting. Check the consistency, make sure everything is well blended, and enjoy.

Ruby red
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup orange juice
2 full-sized organic carrots, cut into 1/2-inch rounds
1 stalk organic celery, cut into 1/2-inch slices
1/2 raw organic beet, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch slices
1 banana
2 easy-peel mandarin oranges (peeled)
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

Place the frozen fruit, vegetables and orange juice in the blender first. Pulse 3 times, then add the remaining ingredients. Pulse again, and then turn the blender on to the smoothie setting. Check the consistency, make sure everything is well blended, and enjoy.

Crock-Pot Pork tenderloin with acorn squash and apples

Sometimes I jest that I feel like every night in my kitchen is an episode of "Chopped." I have 30 minutes, a can of tuna, box of quinoa, and an orange. Now go! I actually enjoy those opportunities to be creative with what I have on hand. Although I seem to have to stop at a store nearly every day to pick up something (deodorant for the boy, conditioner for the girl, milk for everyone), I really don't like running out to get a specific item just for dinner. Sometimes that's just not possible: I may really have only 15 minutes between the time I get home and the time I have to leave to take the kids somewhere, and I need to start something that will be edible by the time I get home.

Last night was a Chopped night. I had a pork tenderloin, but I was out of my usual accompaniments: gluten free soy sauce and onions. I took a look around the kitchen and I spotted an acorn squash and a few apples that were a little too mature for lunch boxes, but still perfectly edible. If you don't have an acorn squash, you could substitute any winter squash (butternut, turban, etc.) or even sweet potatoes. And if you don't have fresh apples, I think dried apples would work well with a little extra water.

So, in about 15 minutes, dinner was in the crock pot. I didn't measure things out to create a real recipe. What I have here is more of a general idea. This should probably serve three, if you do not make total pigs of yourselves like my husband and I did.

1 tsp olive oil
1 pork tenderloin
1 acorn squash, washed, seeded, cut into wedges. leave the skin on.
3 tart apples (preferably the firm kind that hold up to cooking, like Jazz). Peeled, cored & sliced.
2 tbsp Craisins
1 tsp. Balsamic vinegar
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
1/8 tsp. Cardamom
Dusting of Black Pepper

Set your crock pot to low.
Use a paper towel to rub the olive oil around the inside of the crock pot.
Place the pork tenderloin on the bottom.
Top with the squash, sliced apples and Craisins.
Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and honey.
Add about 1/4 cup water.
Sprinkle cinnamon, cardamom and black pepper on top.
Cook in the Crock on low for about 4-5 hours while you are out running errands and attending PTO meetings.
Return home to find a delicious pork dinner waiting for you.

What keeps you motivated to exercise?

 A few weeks ago on Twitter, American College of Sports Medicine, (ACSM) posed a question: What keeps you motivated to exercise?

I tweeted my 104-character response: “I love being able to do physically difficult things. I feel GREAT when I exercise, but feel grouchy and sluglike when I don't.”

A few things kept me from my regular workout over the past few weeks. I went to Paris for a week. I was stuck on a plane. I walked a lot (miles and miles a day) and I danced at night, but I did not do my regular workout. Then I came home and I had a pretty bad sinus infection that made it hard for me to do much more than sit in a chair and be grumpy.

Today was my first real day back at the gym, after two and a half weeks. The break has given me the opportunity to reflect a little more deeply on what motivates me to keep exercising. I think everyone has his own answers to this question, but these are mine.

• I like people better when I exercise. Especially when I exercise with others. I am a naturally shy person, but when I was sick, I could feel myself wanting to draw further into my cocoon. When I went out, to the coffee shop or the grocery store, I felt irritated by my fellow humans. Too noisy, too slow, too pushy, whatever…but then I spent an hour working out with six other women this morning, and we were all getting sweaty together, and by the end of the hour, I thought they were the most beautiful women God ever put on the Earth. Even when I left the gym, I found myself smiling at people and saying hello. I felt friendly again. I think that comes from doing physically challenging things with other humans. It’s kind of what we are made to do.
• I value being able to do difficult things. When we were in Paris, we climbed the stairs on the Eiffel tower as far as you are allowed to. The benefit: we paid 1/3 the money and had no line at all. I am thankful that, at 41 years of age, my knees and back and feet and lungs are capable of climbing 720 steps up and 720 steps down. We also walked, I would estimate, at least 5 miles per day during our trip. If I didn’t exercise regularly, I would not have been able to handle that much activity comfortably.
• I like being able to dance, especially to fast music. I am not a big talker. I can’t express myself adequately through spoken words. Yes, I can write, but words aren’t alive and they aren’t attached to me. When I meet people, I can’t ask them to go read my blog to get to know me better. But when I dance, I am able to be everything I am: mother, daughter, saint, sinner, lover, fighter, thinker, maniac. I can express all that through movement, but only if my body is working. For me, not being able to move is like being mute. And to keep dancing all night, to keep up with fast music, I need to have strength and endurance.
• Exercise lifts my spirits. Scientists say that brain chemicals called endorphins kick in when we exercise. They mask pain, give us energy, and push us through fatigue. All I know is that I can be having the worst and crappiest day, and about 7 minutes into a good run, dance, or a great exercise class, I start to feel happy, and I stay that way for several hours afterward.
• It quiets my mind. I have a busy brain. I think about things that are my responsibility, like my job, and how I’m going to pay for my kids’ college, but I also think about things that are way out of my sphere, like how humans are consuming resources at a faster rate than they can be replaced. If I don’t reign it in, the thought factory cranking in my brain will keep me up at night, making lists and envisioning outcomes. Exercise helps. The more physically and mentally challenging an activity is, the larger the percentage of my attention it requires, and eventually there is no room in my head for anything other than the task at hand. Difficult things like dancing push out thoughts of anything else. Sometimes I need to think about things in a quiet space. In that case, I can go for a run: there, all my body has to do is move forward. I have time to pick through all the threads of my thoughts while the endorphins do their work, making all my problems seem simpler, easier, fixable. 

Everyone’s motivations are different. You might like to maintain your dress size or keep your blood pressure down. It doesn’t matter why you do it, but it’s helpful to take the time to identify your motivation, so that when you encounter fitness roadblocks (and everyone does), you remember why you were doing it in the first pace.

Sweet Potato Fries

A lot of excellent Lindy-friendly songs talk about food. Maybe this is why I like jazz so much—because I love food as much as I love to dance. The songs get stuck in my head, and then I have to go home and make the food. This week’s food song is “Sweet Potato Fries,” By Gordon Webster, off of their Live in Rochester CD.

Sweet Potato Fries
with Montreal Steak seasoning
and ketchup

We saw Gordon Webster perform at the International Lindy HopChampionships last year, and bought three of his CDs. I love almost every song on these CDs. There is so much excellent instrumentation, and they all just seem to beg for improv while dancing.

I have included the “Sweet Potato Fries” lyrics below, and you can give the band a listen here. After listening to this song, you may want to make your own sweet potato fries, which is an excellent idea, because they are very healthy if you make them yourself. Not so much if you buy them in a restaurant, deep fried and smothered in fat, and not as tasty if you buy the big frozen bag at the store.

Tips for making sweet potato fries:

Use one sweet potato per person. Scrub and peel the outside of the potato. Cut the potato in fry-sized strips. (Sweet potatoes are very hard, so use a large, heavy, sharp knife) Place the cut potatoes in a mixing bowl and drizzle olive oil or melted coconut oil over them. Add one of the following seasoning combinations (or improvise your own):

• Salt and pepper
• McCormick’s Montreal steak seasoning
• Crushed rosemary, salt & pepper
• Crushed mint and salt
• Cinnamon and pepper

Stir to combine. Pour the seasoned spuds in a shallow baking pan (like a jelly roll pan) and arrange so they are in  one flat layer. Bake in a 400-degree oven for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the taters are brown and crispy.

Serve hot, with ketchup.

Sweet Potato Fries

By Gordon Webster

Live in Rochester

When men come and dine, they get to feelin’ full just fine

The dining’s in the timing with my sweet potato fries

When men try my spuds, they claim the other gals are duds

Does wonders for the hunger, o my sweet potato fries

When they come and meet, looking for a treat, they get taters

You can take a seat, then you’re bound to eat

A dish that’s just delish if it’s for now or for later

Take your appetite, down to the table, grab a bite

You’ll never have no better than my sweet potato fries

Well, I ain’t got much to show, but I can peel ‘em fast or slow

My sweetie loves to eatie all my sweet potato fries

Don’t got time, don’t got money, but I got a dish to try

Cause I’m a yammy mammy with my sweet potato fries

I can hardly wait, looking for a date with my honey

He knows where to look, when he needs a cook

I’ll fix him up a dish and never charge him no money

Dinner is served tonight, come get your fill and feel just right

You’ll never have no better than my sweet potato fries

Get the salt, pepper too

That’s all the flavor that I’ll add for you

You’ll never have no better than my sweet potato fries

Picky party planning

My family is a haven for picky eaters. My niece and brother-in-law are lactose intolerant. She and my daughter are vegetarians. My sister and I are gluten-free. My husband is salt-sensitive and my daughter eats almost nothing. Trying to figure out what everyone can eat is sort of like a logic puzzle: Mary has twice as many apples as John, and John has three more apples than Jim, but Troy can't work on Saturdays and Betty Lou is afraid of trains. What is the square root of the number of Suzanne's music collection?

Over the years, I have learned a few things about planning for picky parties and I would like to share these tips with you. (By the way, I do not mean to disparage people with food allergies, sensitivities or preferences by calling them "picky." It's a term of affection, and I use it for myself as well as anyone else--so please don't think I am making light of a serious food condition.)

Picky party planning

• Offer a variety. This is generally true for any party, but especially where you know your guests have food preferences or allergies. I have heard of parties where the whole theme is "bacon," and every dish, including dessert, incorporates salty pork in some way. Although that's fine in certain circumstances (and when your guests know what to expect), in general, it is a good practice to plan a range of flavors, textures and ingredients. Offer something meaty, something vegetabley (I just made that word up) and something fruity.
• Encourage guests to bring a dish to share. Chances are, your guests understand their food preferences better than you do. Encourage your guests to bring something to share with others, especially if they have stringent dietary needs. A vegan, for example, can bring a lovely bean salad that everyone can sample. This not only allows the guest to rest assured they will be able to eat at least one thing at the party, they will also be able to share their vegan cooking prowess with others, and educate people that being vegan does not require eating tree bark exclusively for the rest of your life.
• List ingredients on a card. Here’s a tip I learned from working at a hotel event center: Take a few minutes to print up cards that not only say what the dish is, but also what is in it. You don’t have to list every trace ingredient, but definitely call out the big-ticket food preference/allergy items like meat, dairy, egg, wheat and nuts. For example you can type up a label that reads, "Baked Stuffed Shells: Wheat pasta, ricotta and mozzarella cheese, egg, tomato, salt, pepper, ground red pepper." Our hotel used to print these up on card stock in a big, flowy font. Then we would fold them like place cards and set them in front of the dish. The cards can also help you arrange your buffet before guests arrive: if you set out the cards first, you know that you have a place for everything and you can see if you forgot to set out the cranberry sauce because there will be a card without a corresponding dish.
• Keep food simple and separate. Although glossy food magazines and TV shows may make us feel like we need to spend hours and lots of money making complicated dishes, simple foods are less expensive and easier to prepare. Fresh foods taste better.  For example, our appetizers are usually cheese and crackers, grapes and apple slices, tangerine sections, carrots and celery with dip, and other simple items. For a main course, we offer something like a ham or a turkey and simple side dishes.

If you have tips for planning parties for picky people, I’d love to hear them. Please share in the comments!

Spaghetti sans pasta

Every time I go to the grocery store, I see more and more gluten-free pasta products. I am glad there is an increasing variety of gluten-free food, but it's also expensive and high-carbohydrate.

Spicy tomato sauce oer a baked sweet potato

One of the great health benefits of going wheat-free is that you have the opportunity to fill the void left in your diet with more vegetables.

I used to love making spaghetti. I went through a few months after I quit wheat, where I did not make it at all, because I didn't want to spring for the gluten-free spaghetti noodles. Eventually, I got creative and started putting delicious tomato sauce on top of any vegetable that would stand still for a few minutes. Here are some of my new favorite bases for spaghetti sauce:

• Slice zucchini and sautee in olive oil, butter or coconut oil until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Top with sauce.
• Prick a sweet potato all over with a fork, wrap in foil, bake at 400F for one hour (or microwave). Cut open and fill with sauce. (This is particularly good with a spicy tomato sauce--or chili)
• Bake a white potato. Fill with sauce.
• Make mashed potatoes, top with sauce.
• Cut an acorn or butternut squash in half and scrape out seeds. Place cut-side down in a baking dish. Add just enough water to fill the bottom of the pan. Bake at 350F for 1 hour. Top with sauce.
• Using the same cooking method, bake a spaghetti squash. When cooked, scrape out the stringy pulp and place in a colander to drain for about 5 minutes, pressing down on the pulp with a rubber scraper from time to time, before plating and topping with sauce.

Tomato-poached fish and vegetables on mashed potatoes

At dinnertime, I like to imagine that I am on a Food Network show like Chopped, in which I have to come up with an awesome meal based on a strange assortment of foods. Of course the strange foods are just whatever happens to be in the kitchen that night. I have a thing about making last minute trips to the grocery store—I don’t like to do it—since that’s at least a half-hour venture.

For that reason, I like to think of ingredients as interchangeable parts. Instead of viewing a recipe as a rule book, I look at it as more of a guideline. So I provide this, our dinner, which was created based on what I had in the cabinet tonight: Frozen tilapia, leftover homemade tomato sauce, potatoes, some goat cheese, an onion and a zucchini. From zero to eating, this dish took me just about 29 minutes to prepare. I provide it to you in the hope that it will provide you with some ideas, but that it will not prompt you to run to the grocery store.

Tomato-poached fish and vegetables on mashed potatoes

Serves 3-4

6 individually wrapped frozen tilapia filets (or any mild, white fish)

4 redskin potatoes

1 onion, preferably Vidalia

1 zucchini

1 clove garlic

1 ½ cups leftover or 1 can Muir Glen Organic tomato sauce 

Olive oil or coconut oil

Black Pepper

Garlic powder

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp goat cheese

¼ cup milk

Remove from the freezer and run under cold water to thaw:

6 individually wrapped frozen tilapia filets

Start mashed potatoes

Fill a medium saucepan ¾ full with hot tap water. Place on the stove over high heat, and cover the pan.

Wash and scrub four redskin potatoes. Leave the skins intact and cube the potatoes.

Add the potatoes to the hot water. Once the water reaches a boil, lower the heat to medium-high to keep the water from boiling over. Set a kitchen timer for 12 minutes.

Begin the vegetable sauce

Coarsely chop one Vidalia onion. Heat on medium-high about ½ tsp. olive oil in a large, nonstick skillet with lid. Add the onion.

Coarsely chop one zucchini and add to the skillet with the onion. Sautee until the onion softens, becomes translucent, and starts to brown, about 8 minutes. Add 1 clove minced garlic and cook about 1 minute. Season with black pepper. Add ½ teaspoon dried or fresh oregano. Add 1 ½ cups organic tomato sauce (I had some homemade sauce leftover in the fridge, but you can use canned organic sauce like Muir Glen). Stir the vegetables and sauce together.

Poach the fish

Remove the fish from their individual wrappers and slide them into the tomato-vegetable broth. Nestle the fish down into the sauce, spooning sauce and vegetables over the top to cover the fish. Cover the pan and set the heat to medium. Allow the fish to cook in the broth until opaque and flaky, about 7 minutes.

Finish the potatoes

Into the bowl of an electric stand mixer, drop 2 tablespoons of butter, cut up, and 2 ounces of goat cheese (or Greek yogurt, or cream cheese, or sour cream, or feta). Add ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Season with garlic powder.

Use a colander to drain the potatoes. Add the potatoes to the butter & cheese in the mixer bowl. Beat on low for 30 seconds. Add about ¼ cup milk (or buttermilk)—just enough to make the potatoes fluffy without turning them into soup. Beat on medium-low speed for about 2 minutes. The potatoes should retain some of their texture.

Cover the whole mixer, including the bowl, with a towel to keep the potatoes warm.

Check the fish

The fish will be opaque and flaky when done.

Plate the dish

Spoon 1/4 of the mashed potatoes onto each plate. With the back of the spoon, smooth the potatoes out so they form a bed for the sauce. Top the potatoes with ¼ of the fish and vegetable mixture.