If I could have a choice of what was [sic] delicious ...

Sopa de pollo - Karlos Arguiñano ... ¡ Quiero hablar castellano de la misma manera que este maestro de cocina !

It's late morning on a Saturday, and the chicken used to make a vegetable soup should have been prepared late Friday afternoon. Instead, I welcomed the Sabbath at Margarita's Mexican Restaurant where I got chicken picado and albóndiga soup.

The soup is made without a recipe of any sort. I always make sure that I have my major ingredients on hand; celery, carrots, onion, parsnip, turnips, rutabaga as well as the usual herbs such as savory, thyme, bay leaves, paprika, chervil, dill, and marjoram. I don't cook with salt. I generally add a single cube of bouillon that has enough salt for the week!

While I almost always use organic chicken, I am not fussy about the parts I include. In later years, I have taken to just buying drum sticks (legs). More often than not, the bird gets cut from the bone and the meat is recycled into some other dish (chicken croquettes, chicken salad, chicken à la King). Most of my closer friends and blog readers know that I am on a weight watching journey and that I have been using the most tried-and-true method I know; portion control and calorie counting. The tools have served me well and the outcome has been noticed.

"Is Duncan on a diet?"

"Is Duncan sick with something?"

"Is Duncan on Weight Watchers?"

I had lived a vegetarian lifestyle for a number of years many moons ago. I have thought of revisiting it, but I worry about the source of protein. Yes, there is always tofu and there are a wide assortment of beans out there. Other places that are forgotten are lentils, oats, protein-rich vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, asparagus, artichokes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and Brussels sprouts... There are also milk, cheese, eggs, nutritional yeast that come to mind. If I were to eliminate meat from my diet, it would be with a focus on vegetarian rather than vegan. And I have evolved to a point where I would not advertise to the world what my lifestyle is. If anyone were to ask, I'd like to think I would say, "I tend to shy away from eating meat."
For now I have a larder that is filled with prepared tuna salad in a can and six Ritz-like crackers in a box. I am not restocking the shelves. I will finish what is there and then come up with something different to eat.

.. -- Later that Day -- ..

The chicken soup is done and the chicken was turned into 5 portions of chicken salad. Each serving is 206 KCals. Probably more information than you wanted to / needed to know. The salad is a simple recipe of 2 cups of cut up chicken, 1 cup of diced celery, 2 hard cooked eggs, 6 tablespoons mayonnaise. No onion. No salt. No pepper. I might add a sprinkle of dill when I eat it. Today I pulled out Ritz crackers.

My obsession with food is my own making. I don't share it with anyone else but the gal who is in my Lunch Bunch group. We talk about other healthier diets (Mediterranean looks the best right now). I am so trying to stay away from using the oven in the warmer months. But for now, I will do some research on what is out there. I have already more or less dropped so many things from my life such as red meat, bread, cold cereals... There is always room for improvement