Cheap, simple, low fat + calorie dinner

Most of you already know I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to clothes and makeup :) Well, I'm pretty frugal with my grocery shopping too. Ive found that the best way to keep a low grocery bill is to buy produce that's in season. Luckily, summertime means an abundance of tomatoes, cherries, strawberries, watermelon, corn... anything that needs hot weather to flourish.

We were walking through Raley's looking for wine and snacks when I spotted a sign for white corn ~ 5 for $1. SCORE! Lately corn has jumped in price and it's pretty typical to see 3 for $2 instead of the usual 4/$1. I've never really cooked corn before so I googled it, and came upon a method by Tyler Florence. He said to heat oven to 350 degrees, put corn in the husk directly on the rack for 30 minutes, and that's it! By baking the corn in the husk, it retains all the juice, and comes out super duper crispy sweet and not rubbery at all.

The other ingredients I needed to buy were salt and limes. Most people already have salt in their cupboard, but I don't have any salt so I went out and bought some. Found some cool flavored salts at the ferry building, such as coconut lime (which I need to get my hands on for next time). I picked the Mexican fiesta salt for the corn.


1. Put corn (in the husk) on the oven rack. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

This is how it looks when it's done baking:

2. When corn is done, peel the husk away. Careful! It's HOT!! Squeeze lime juice all over the corn, then pour salt over the corn and rub it in.

You can make a little bread appetizer to go with your corn too. Nothing fancy here. Just good 'ol EVOO, pesto mix, cherry tomatoes, and put it all on ciabatta and bake:

Now serve it up with some white wine and enjoy!

A note about the Hawley wine.. my dad is a huge fan and he introduced me to it. He took my bf up to the winery too one day and now we have a case of goodies in the kitchen :) John Hawley was a founding winemaker at Clos du Bois and chief winemaker for Kendall Jackson. He runs his own winery now with his kids, and it's a beautiful spot. In fact, one of my coworkers got married at their winery :) I love their wines too.. namely their late harvest zin (OMFG tastes like cherries and is so amazing clicky). This viognier we had here was wonderful too (click), perfect for a light, refreshing summer dinner.

When it comes to diet, I've found that the BEST way for ME to stay healthy is to buy food in it's simplest form and eat as close to raw as possible. I'm not a nutritionist or anything.. heck I don't even exercise! But I think this is pretty foolproof for anyone trying to lose weight or get healthy. I'm not trying to lose weight, but I do enjoy eating healthy. And, I'm well aware that there are plenty of people who can be stick thin and eat massive quantities of junky food (hello my fellow Asians)... so don't bother trying to be all contrary and argue with me. Haha you guys know what I'm talking about right? There's always someone who is like, "Oh but I eat 10 donuts and pizza for breakfast lunch and dinner and I'm sooo skinny screw eating healthy." Obviously some people don't need to eat healthy to lose weight... Anyways, back to what I was saying. Key thing is to buy fresh ingredients (namely produce... b/c you could buy a ton of shrimp and eat it raw.. but that wouldn't be very healthy), do very little to alter those ingredients, and that's it. By doing this you cut out processed, fatty, sodium filled foods. And save time. I'm lazy. LAZY!! I don't want to spend time making sauces or cooking or adding anything at all to my food. If I can eat an entire raw meal then that's great b/c that means at most I'm only spending 5 minutes to clean the veggies/fruit. I admit, I only eat healthy about half the time hehe. The other half of the time, I'm gorging myself on yummy cheeses and simple carbs... and my guilty pleasure is Hot Pockets.... just ask my sister I'll eat Hot Pockets for breakfast lunch AND dinner (and I'll make you eat it too if you come over ^_~ )!

I probably didn't explain my diet idea too well, but for anyone who is interested, check out Jinah Chae's recent video on her diet. She pretty much sticks to the simple cooking idea as well, and loads her plate with veggies. I agree with her method 100%.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7FQjI1IpII