What’s great about roasted chicken is that it’s both a healthy lo-co meal PLUS it’s the ‘dinner that keeps on giving’ with terrific leftovers.
But I rarely serve it because the store-cooked chickens are always dry, and…well… actually roasting a chicken is awful. The sticky process of tying down the legs, the horror of reaching into the cavity for the giblets. And the guilt when you toss the carcass rather than making soup. Because who does that, really?
Way back when – was it really just months ago? – when my doctor said I needed to lower my cholesterol, she gave me several dietary suggestions. According to the now-faded yellow-stickie I kept from that appointment, here’s what she suggested I begin to eat daily/near-daily:
Psyllium (aka Metamucil) daily – check
Oatmeal – check
Fish Oil – check
Multi-vitamin and/or margarine with plant sterols – Huh?
I dutifully followed her advice on the first three, but had completely forgotten about the plant sterol thing. Until, that is,
So there I was in the produce aisle searching for arugula to try that Pappardelle with Baby Spinach Arugula, Herbs and Ricotta recipe I posted about when my friend Michaela called.
“Why is this a good lo-co recipe?” she asked. “Where is the nutritional info? I didn’t see that in your post? Can you add that?” (Michaela writes historical fiction for teens – so she’s a stickler for details! But we love her anyway.)
I stammered something to the effect of, “Well, um, it’s a Cooking Light recipe… so… um…”
After 3 months of lo-co lifestyle changes, my cholesterol test results were mixed. Total and LDL (bad) cholesterol dropped, but HDL (good) and Triglycerides went the wrong way. Triglycerides, in particular, went up A LOT.
As you may recall, my doctor advised 4 key things. The first in this list below was to ensure I stay on track with lower cholesterol results, and the other THREE were for triglycerides in particular:
Keep up the low-fat, low-cholesterol, plant-sterol, high fiber dietary changes I’d made (I have been marginally successful with this in recent months)
Exercise more (marginally successful here would be a HUGE overstatement)
