Fondant Au Chocolat

Seeing as how I had plenty of the pulled pork from Wednesday night, I had that for dinner again last night. So that means I'll pull a dish I made earlier in the week, and post it up for today's entry. Everything ever mentioned before about healthy eating gets thrown out for this post. However, no matter the diet, I think it is OK to indulge once in a while, just don't make it a habit. This is a quick dessert, beginning to end I think it took me under half an hour to make. The recipe I found was in French, so i had to convert and translate on my own.

the recipe called for 7 regular sized chocolate bars, 6 eggs, 2 tbsp flour, 13 tbsp sugar (yeah i did a lazy conversion here)and t tbsp of butter. You take the 6 of the chocolate bars and the butter and melt them in a pan over low heat so you don't scorch the chocolate. While that is melting you can mix the flour eggs and sugar together. After the butter and sugar are melted, you mix the melted mixture with the egg mixture and be sure to mix quick and well, so the eggs don't get so hot as to cook. Mix well, then fill your ramekins halfway (I used 4 ramekins). Once half full, break the 7th chocolate bar in quarters. Place the quarters in each ramekin, then fill each ramekin with remaining mixture.



Cook at 425° for 12 minutes. The middle will be a gooey delicious warm chocolate lava texture, and the outside will be light and fluffy cake mix. After you remove from the oven, I halved 2 strawberries and placed a half in the middle of each ramekin. Simply amazing!

Pulled pork

This was such a simple recipe, and it turned out amazing. I took a pork shoulder (roughly 5-6 lbs.), placed it fat side up in my 5 quart Crockpot. I covered it with some ‘Sweet Baby Rays’ BBQ sauce then sprinkled some brown sugar and cinnamon over the top. Set the Crockpot on low, and head to work. Let that shoulder cook on low for 12 hours. I’m sure you will be tempted to pull the lid off and try some, don’t. Just keep letting that shoulder do its own thing. A lot of people told me to add a cup of water to the Crockpot with this, however at the advice of someone, I decided not to. This shoulder creates enough moisture on its own to cook in its own juices, no water necessary. Plus when you add in that water, at the end you are left with nothing much more than a bath of greasy water that your meat has been soaking in for quite a while, no thanks. So here is the shoulder all glazed up and just getting turned on early in the morning before heading off to work.



12 hours later, with the netting cut off, the larger sections of fat trimmed off and after working through the shoulder with a few forks. We have a large bowl full of delicious pulled pork, ready to slap on a bun and add a dash more of BBQ sauce. I was very impressed at how the meat turned out, and how good it was. I was a little nervous about not adding in that water at the start, but it definitely didn’t need it. The meat was very juicy, and seemed to fall apart and melt in your mouth. Here are a few pictures of the full dinner, and a close up on one of the sandwiches.





Now this isn’t the healthiest thing you can make, so I wanted to make sure to eat a smaller portion of this. As well as add a fruit to the meal. The benefit for me is I had just finished about an hour of plyometrics, so a sweeping feeling of nausea had hit, and I wasn’t overly hungry. So a single sandwich with some strawberries and apple sauce was a perfect portion for me. The other nice thing, is now I have a good amount of this meat left over, so I will be able to eat on this for a few days, making this a very cheap, and very easy meal for me.

Salad with grilled chicken and fruit, warm butter beans with garlic and rosemary

This meal is somewhat of a combo idea. The salad is somewhat of a knock off of the ‘Strawberry Fields’ salad found at Panera Bread. I picked up a head of lettuce at the store for 69 cents, and copped it up myself. To the lettuce I added some sliced up strawberries, a few slices of mandarin oranges, a sprinkling of shaved almonds, and some cold grilled chicken breast then used a poppy seed dressing. This is a great tasting salad, and very light.



Then I found a recipe in the ‘Stone Soup Cookbook’ for the beans. You take a can of butter beans, slice up 2 cloves of garlic, 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary leaves then sprinkle in some crushed red pepper and chili flakes. Throw all that in a saucepan with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and cook on medium heat for about 5-7 minutes. These were surprisingly good. I had a few doubts about them, but if you like beans, they had a really good flavor. I toasted up some French bread and spread some Ricotta cheese on top of it. I would take a spoon full of the beans and add it to the bread and eat that way, it was quite good.



Now, a photo of the full meal. Very healthy and good flavors, and extremely cheap too.

The journey begins

I love food. That isn’t a hard fact to believe, given that we as humans need food to exist. However, I truly do love food. I love everything about it. From smells to flavors to textures, food has always kept my interest. Ever since I can remember, I have enjoyed cooking. I love to make new things, try new food and entertain people. After reading all of that it also shouldn’t be hard to believe that as of recent years I have ‘let myself go’. Holding a job where I sit at a desk doesn’t do much to boost the metabolism, but neither does having quite a large sweet tooth. The eye opener for me was one day I stepped on a scale out of curiosity and saw 220 staring back at me. Standing just less than 6’0” tall and holding that for a center of gravity made me realize the path I was on. So I took that motivation along with a desire and love of cooking and I started my path to slim down, and have fun doing so. Having a love of cooking can only help me with this goal to lose weight, as I know exactly what I will be putting into my body. I have also started an exercise regimen. My last goal along with my weight loss and cooking aspirations is to do it all while being frugal. This will be the difficult part, but portion control is going to be the main point here. The plan is to make one large(r) meal on Sunday or Monday, and eat that, or variations of it for dinner each night. Hopefully anyone who finds this along the way will find the inspiration they need to make whatever changes they want in life. Be it weight loss like me, or losing your own vice.
So each meal I make I will try to photograph and give a recipe (as best I can in some situations). While I know I’m doing this to aid in weight loss, also understand that a love of food includes all the things that are bad for you too. So don’t be surprised when a few desserts pop up on here. Anyway, thanks for reading and stopping by, I hope you find some things you like and be sure to check back, as I will try to update often.