Until about 10 years ago, I detested egg salad – and really anything having to do with hard-boiled eggs. Luckily I discovered my prejudice was really against yolks, and now actually crave this egg white salad, particularly on fast days.
To me, the secret to any good egg salad is mashing the yolk to a fine paste before adding the rest of the sauce ingredients. The result? A smooth, creamy consistency with no unpleasant yolky chunks.
Here’s what the sauce/onion mixture looks like before folding in the egg whites and celery:
This recipe includes just enough yolk (one), mayo and mustard to lightly coat the egg whites and hold the salad together. It’s surprisingly satisfying; each one-cup serving has only 75 calories and fills 5-7 lettuce wraps.
Egg White Salad
6 large hard-boiled egg whites, coarsely chopped (102 cal.)
1 hard-boiled egg yolk (60 cal.)
3-4 stalks (1/2 cup) celery, finely chopped (10 cal.)
2 heaping Tbsp. onion, minced (8 cal.)
1 Tbsp reduced fat olive oil mayonnaise (35 cal.)
2 tsp. whole grain mustard (10 cal.)
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1/8 tsp. onion powder
Few shakes of hot pepper sauce
Salt and Pepper to taste
In a large bowl, mash egg yolk with a fork. Add mayo, mustard, onion and seasonings; stir well to combine. Fold in celery and egg whites. Taste and add more salt and pepper, if needed. Serve in lettuce wraps, over spinach or on a 100-calorie bagel or wheat bun.
Yeild: About three cups, 75 calories per cup.
Recipe inspired by this one.
This salad single-handedly cured my lifelong belief that canned tuna requires mayonnaise to be edible. The beans mellow the tuna, and the fresh lemon juice (a must!) brightens all the flavors. On fast days, we serve it on fresh spinach or in lettuce wraps; or, if we’re feeling particularly decadent, on a 100-calorie whole-grain sandwich bun. Read more…
Trying Out the Fast Diet
I usually try to steer clear of fad diets, so when my friend Marti sent me a New York Times article about a best-selling British book called The Fast Diet, I set it aside. But when the mysterious new diet kept cropping up in conversations over the next several weeks, I had to check it out.
The why.
Although it seems I’m always trying to shed a few extra pounds, the diet appealed to me for its other suggested benefits as well – lowering bad cholesterol, reducing cancer risk and, of special interest to me due to family medical history, stimulating brain activity. (I found more helpful info on the brain benefits of intermittent fasting in this article published in Johns Hopkins Magazine: “Don’t Feed Your Head.”)
Intrigued, I sent the NYT article to my husband and he agreed to start the diet with me on April 1. (That way if we chickened out — April Fools’!) Now three weeks into it, we’ve been getting lots of questions so I decided to document the experience here. I’m not in any way suggesting this is a must-do for everyone, and I’m still not entirely sure it’s not a fad, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the diet thus far and it seems easy enough that it could actually transition into a lifestyle change.
Target skirt | Madewell swimsuit | Ray Ban sunglasses | Old Navy t-Shirt | Madewell Chambray shirt | Essie nail polish | J.Crew tote | Target watch | Bamboo sandals | Topshop scarf
Recently, my husband stopped me on my way out to ask if I had anything on the calendar for the following weekend; I said no. By the time I returned, he’d booked flights to visit his father in Hawaii. With only a few days’ notice and a single carry-on bag, I had no idea what to pack.
Poor me.
After Googling “what to wear to the beach Hawaii” and not finding what I wanted – barely there cutoff shorts and teeny bikinis don’t really work for me – I started from scratch. Though “beachwear” was a given, early spring weather in Honolulu can be unpredictable. Plus, whatever I packed for the beach would also have to work for lunch, sightseeing, shopping and anywhere else my photographer husband might want to stop along the way.
I decided to stick with a basic palette of black, white and gray — a strong trend for spring (though when is it ever not appropriate?) and I already own a lot of it — punched up with some chambray, coral (it is Hawaii, after all), and a few gold accessories.
Image: InStyle March 2006, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham
After a week of living with my newly edited closet, I realized something: my clothes were much better organized, but I still had nothing to wear.
I’d stand there hoping for some sort of revelation; when none came, I’d put on the same jeans and shirt I’d worn the previous day.
It was frustrating. Sure, I’d gone shopping before and come home empty handed, but it seemed ridiculous that this was happening at home — hadn’t I already hand-picked all this stuff?
I knew I needed to shop my closet, but I didn’t know how.
So I decided to use some of the time I was saving by not shopping to figure out how to actually wear the clothes I already owned — and discovered two easy tricks.
The first order of business after deciding not to buy anything new for a year was making peace with my closet. Over the years I had read books, saved articles, attended — and even taught — classes on organization, but somehow never managed to extend what I learned to my wardrobe.
Every so often I’d tidy everything up and attempt to organize it, but after a few weeks the chaos would return.
Part of the problem was too much stuff — hangers crammed so tightly and stacks of sweaters piled so high that it was impossible to see what I had — but mostly it was laziness. Since I basically wore the same 10 things every week, my ‘uniform’ of jeans and some type of knit shirt languished on the closet floor until I felt enough mercy — or shame — to wash them.
But realizing that I would have to rely solely on the contents of my closet for everything I would wear over the next year was the wake-up call I needed: time to start practicing what I’d preached.
Where to begin? With a little motivation. Closet organization is not rocket science, and there are a bajillion resources out there — books, magazines, blogs, talk show segments — to help.
All basically come down to some form of three basic principles: Sort, Edit & Organize. Read more…
Nothing New for a Year
Back when I started this blog, I wrote about how my experiment with not buying anything new for more than a year greatly influenced the desire to edit my life in other ways.
Although it’s now been several years since my self-imposed moratorium ended, that experience continues to influence how, when and why I shop, and what I shop for.
This is not intended to be a condemnation of shopping, nor a judgment on what others choose to do. Rather, it’s something I tried that had a profound, lasting, positive effect on me, and I share it with the hope that it might help someone else.
So here goes…
Why I did it.
