The FastDay Forum

Hi!

I own the Fastdiet book and am waiting for the cookbook to be released here in the States.

For those who own the recipe book, are there any recipes that are just simple and easy and don't require a lot of time in the kitchen? Now that I'm retired, I no longer like to cook, and I prefer easy, quick-to-prepare foods. Does the cookbook have those types of recipes?

Thanks!

It's got a mixture of very simple recipes and some that are more involved.

There's a simple Greek salad recipe, a hot Thai stir-fry that requires a few ingredients, two-egg omelettes four ways, salmon fillets four ways, lettuce bowls with shiitake mushrooms and hoisin chicken is quite straightforward.

The ease is going to depend on what kind of ingredients are easily available to you locally. My question is whether they are going to tweak this for the US market, as some of the ingredients will be hard or impossible to find in the US (smoked haddock, for example). I also assume that they are going to change the measurements to cups, etc. and change the names of things like courgette to zucchini and aubergine to eggplant.

You may need to do a little adjusting of the recipes for unfamiliar ingredients, while still guesstimating the correct calories for the substitution.

At the moment, I'm having success planning meals for one 5:2-er and one non-5:2-er by taking fairly basic normal meals and scaling down the portions or making other slight changes.

Thursday's diet dinner will be steamed asparagus very lightly glazed with butter, topped with a poached egg and 1 tablespoon of freshly grated parmesan, salt and pepper, with a thin slice of garlic bread on the side - comes in at 295 calories and The Boyfriend is happy to have this, also, with the proviso that he'll have a snack in the evening if he's hungry.

Thank you very much for your response Cats. I'll bet the book will be tweaked for the American audience. I know we had to wait a while for the Fastdiet book, as they changed wording, phrasing and measurements. I'll bet the same is true for the cookbook. I'm such a fan of 5:2, I'll definitely be buying it.

By the way, your Thursday dinner sounds lovely!

Congratulations on your weight loss! I sometimes have problems understanding UK measurements, but if I'm correct, you've lost 5 American pounds since May 13th! Wow, what great stats.

Hi, Teabrain,

I'm half-American, half-English. My mother was a War Bride. I spent decades in the US, so am used to doing the food conversions. I shipped all my American cookbooks over when I came back in 2010. I've had to do a fair amount of improvising to try to re-create American foods I'm used to, with not bad success, but I still don't use Metric unless I have to.

Still, it's a trade off. I've now got a bunch of foods back in my life that I hadn't had since I was here as a small child. And with global business being what it is, you can get American items here. Would you believe that I actually pay the equivalent of just over $5.00 for a 16-oz jar of Heinz Hamburger Dill Pickle Chips? Don't bother to tell me I'm crazy, I already know.

Many thanks for noticing the weight loss. I actually only started on May 16th (but who's counting?!), so I'm utterly delighted and finding this very do-able. Friday was a complete calorie blow-out in the evening (it was a special occasion), but at the end of it I felt quite ill from all the food, and I don't even want to eat like that anymore. I just don't want to have to count calories all the time and not feeling if I have an off day that I've blown it, it's not worth dieting, I can't get the weight off, etc. I'll be happy not to look like something resembling a beached baby whale.

Welcome to the 5:2 diet - you'll get loads of help and encouragement here (and we're even bilingual - we speak English and American).

[Tracieknits]

Side note - I love your screen name, Ownedbycats. So true!

One thing I like to do on fast days is roast veggies in the oven. I usually cut them into smaller or bite sized pieces (except for asparagus, that stays whole). I toss in a very small amount of oil (I always measure, and the amount depends on what else is for dinner), a bit of salt and pepper, and maybe one other seasoning. It works very well on a wide range of veggies. Baby carrots are super easy and come out tasting like candy. Tonight we're having cauliflower florest. I also love to do this with courgettes/zucchini, asparagus, brussels sprouts, parsnips, broccoli, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, onions. I always use a high temperature, like 400 or 425 F, and I try to turn the veggies once during cooking. Asparagus takes the least amount of time - I generally do it from frozen and it's about 20 minutes to get a bit of dark caramelization. More solid veggies depend on how large they are. For something like broccoli, I'll do the stems and larger bits in the oven for 15 minutes before adding the delicate florets.

Quite a few meats do well on a stovetop with a non-stick pan. I season heavily - spice blends can be lovely for this. Then I heat up the pan while it's still empty, and once it's hot enough so water dances on it, I put in the seasoned meat. I might give the meat (not the pan) a quick spritz with spray oil like Pam before I toss it in. A few minutes per side, depending on thickness, and dinner's done!

Hi Cats, you are too funny!!..."Welcome to the 5:2 diet - you'll get loads of help and encouragement here (and we're even bilingual - we speak English and American)."

How wonderful that you can get the Heinz pickle chips! They are so good, and I don't blame you spending the money on them. Sometimes we need familiar comfort food!

One day I will visit the U.K. My husband's mom was born there and moved to the U.S. after the war. My husband has visited there to visit relatives. Hopefully one day, I'll make it over there too!

Tracie, thanks so much for the cooking tips! I cooked so much while I was working for 35 years. Now that I'm retired, I admit, I'm just plain burned-out on cooking!

This is such a great, friendly forum!