Monday, March 17, 2008

Falafel For Dinner . . . . A Thumbs Up!


So as many of you know I am trying to lose weight and eat a whole heck of a lot better too. I have been trying to eat more veggies and beans and things like that. I am taking it very easy with the meat. I am not nor do I want to be a vegetarian but vegetarian food is often very good, good for you and much easier on your waistline. So today I picked up a box of Casbah Falafel Mix. Its just a few dollars in the pre-packaged foods aisle or ethnic aisle at the grocery store. They recommend serving it in a pita with yogurt sauce (recipe for sauce is on the side of the box and is very simple once you buy the ingredients). They also suggest serving with fresh tomatoes, lettuce, and onion.

Heres GemsInIsrael.com's definition: Falafel: Chickpea and vegetable mixture made into balls and fried. Served in pita bread this is most common fast food in the country, which is served with a variety of salads, pickles etc.

I am not a fan of frying food but if you use the right oil that is just about the worst part of it. It is made from all good things. I wonder if I can somehow spritz with oil and bake it. One day I hope to make it from scratch but until then the boxed mix was quite good. I would recommend this to anyone, even our baby cried until we gave him some. He also loved it. We made sure to slather his with yogurt sauce. It was a hit. I made the entire box but only fried up about half of it.

Tomorrow I will either make the rest of the falafel or we will have the spicy black bean burgers I found in the frozen section. I will eat those also on a whole wheat pita with a slice of cheese, ranch dressing, lettuce, tomato, & onions. Will let you know how those are when/if I make them tomorrow. Suppose I could skip the pita and just eat kinda like a salad with the burger on the bottom. Anyone have any excellent vegetarian recipes they'd like to share please send them my way or paste them into a comment box. Thanks!

2 comments:

Gluten Girl said...

All of my vegetarian recipes include cheese - to appease the appetite of a 3 year old is quite challenging! But I do love to bake salmon, halibut or tilapia with a little bit of olive oil, chopped garlic, cherry tomatoes and scallions). I wrap it in aluminum foil, pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes at 400 and you've got a healthy dinner entree. Everyone eats this even my little girl (I don't feed her the garlic or tomatoe or scallion of course!) Good luck with the weight loss!!!!

Momma Val said...

We eat cheese but I do try to limit with my diet. The salmon idea sounds good, I'll have to try it next time we get some. Hey did you say you were weaning Chloe? We are not with ours little guy yet but wondered how all that goes and ours is about the same age.