Welcome to Lyna's Favorite Recipes

Having made cranberry sauce successfully for the first time, I moved on to make more than several batches since Thanksgiving 2010.  It has become Lyna’s specialty. This year I made a few extra to give to some co-workers.  So here is the recipe for Lyna’s Cranberry Sauce:

• 4lbs Cranberries 
• Water – just enough above the level of cranberries as they juice when cooked.  Boil the berries in water till they pop.  They tend to soften very quickly.  Lower the heat to medium and to simmer during the process.
• Corn starch - one cup: mixed and stirred in 1 cup of water, pour into the boiling cranberries. 
• Brown Sugar – just enough to help making the dark red color and get rid of the tart of berries
• Coconut oil – it has sweet and bakery flavor, preferred to the vegetable oil which gives a layer of grease at top surface.
• Ginger – powder or fresh-grinded: about 1 table spoon.  Ginger makes a big different.

Pan-Roasted Red Snapper with Fennel, Olives and Lemon
4 red snapper fillets,* 6 ounces each, skin on Salt
2 teaspoons flour for dusting
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 large thyme sprigs
12 Nicoise olives, with or without pits, whole
1 fennel bulb, diced, blanched for 2 minutes in salted boiling water, then chilled in ice bath
6 lemons; one juiced and the rest halved
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Season the fish with salt, dust the skin with flour and set aside. In a 12-inch ovenproof nonstick skillet, heat two tablespoons of the olive oil until it just begins to smoke. Place the seasoned fish in the hot oil. Brown for roughly one minute, then add the thyme, olives, fennel and lemon halves (placed cut side down in pan) and cook for eight to nine minutes in the oven. To serve, place each fish fillet skin side up on a plate along with a lemon half. Add the remaining olive oil, the juice from the other lemon, and the chopped parsley to the pan, stir well, gently heat and portion out over the fillets.

Serves 4

Per serving: calories, 337; fat, 17.9g; carbs, 8.6g; protein, 40.8g

I’ve been craving for brownie lately. On average last week, I ate one little (less than 1-square inch) bar a day. That says I was low on energy and need some power surge. Then, now I am having some zits on my face. Is it the chocolate or the Obagi? I can’t tell. But I stopped using Obagi for one week as my skin is so sentive to that stuff. So I tried the AM Exfoliate again yesterday. It did give me some jits in the evening.
Man, I am going back to where I was before, keep doing what I had been doing. A few months ago, Mr Vinh at work (a philosophical and friendly man who likes to tease on every one) commented on my face that my complexsion looked good. And right around the end of January, my sister commented my skin looked good then. Note that the time in between, my skin was like an on and off, under the weather thing. I realized the pattern before seeing my sister again in January, was that I took a lot of rest, went to bed at same time every night, drinking more water. So what made it look good was a process, which imes if can’t be maintained can be broken. So I ‘d better maintain

Pancakes are my favorite foods for breakfast on weekend. I don’t mix the flour as I used to. Walmart has these (wheat with blueberry and regular) pancakes ready-made and frozen, which is so convenient. All you need is toasting them in your little toaster/oven, and adding sides. A package of 12 packets of 3 pancakes lasts me for over about 2 weeks.
So here is my morning breakfast:
- 3 pancakes
- Maple or Honey syrup
- 2 tblsp cottage cheese
- 2 eggs – scrambled
- Juice (orange-pineable or cranberry)
- hot milk
That will keep me up and running for a weekend day of workout and house work.
You can change this course to add or replace sides with fruits such as fresh blueberry, raspberry, strawberry,… yogurt. If you are sedentary or on strict diet, I’d recommend the scrambled egg-whites only.

When losing weight there is an obvious need to educe energy intake but once the diet is established, it’s quite possible to go above the number of estimated calories needed to lose weight.
To try to compensate for these occasional “off days” we could try eating meals at a time when the energy would be more likely used effectively to replace nutritional needs and less risk that excess energy will be placed on the hips as fat. So when would be the best time to eat foods?

Some experts say the best time to eat food is when we feel hungry as this is the natural way our body is telling us we require nutrients or energy. The problem is some people always feel hungry and nibbling on high-energy foods is partly the reason a few of us became overweight in the first place. I believe the best time to consume energy is when the body is at its most active, a time when the metabolism has been elevated or when there is a need for extra nutrition. Perhaps the first instance should be in the morning, starting with a good breakfast, remember while asleep the cells have had no nutritional supply for up to ten hours. If losing weight is the goal cells must be ready for an active day ahead. Also the body needs it’s supply of essential nutrients in the morning, especially protein, because excess or circulating proteins have been used up to help recover or grow muscles, hair, skin, nails or to create millions of antibodies to defend against natural airborne bacteria that may have entered the body during sleep. If the body does not obtain a regular supply of essential proteins for maintenance and growth then muscle protein must be broken down to top up a “protein pool” within the blood. The problem with this process is if it continues it lowers the metabolism and may cause hunger pains mid-morning or early afternoon. The hunger could be driven in order to replenish the protein taken from muscle cells. Having a good breakfast is so important for health and weight control.

Another good time to eat is after exercise. I always have my biggest meal of the day about 30-45 minutes after a weight training session. During this time enzymes responsible for energy production are most active and energy-storing hormones within the blood are suppressed. This means there will be less chance energy will be stored as fat. Carbs will be immediately taken up to replenish the low glycogen stores caused through training, protein will be needed to aid recovery and growth of new calorie-burning muscle tissue and most of the fat from the meal will be needed to fuel many of these reactions. After a good workout most meals are likely to be utilized completely for recovery. This is probably the best time to eat during the day.

NBC Daily News

A culinary insider reveals 7 ways chefs sabotage your diet when you go out to eat. – By Devin Alexander
Unlike most chefs, I actually lost weight after graduating from culinary school. The key to shedding those 20 extra pounds? Knowing all the sneaky tricks professional cooks use to make their job easier and avoiding those that turn even seemingly healthful dishes into caloric minefields. It’s no surprise to me that a Center for Science in the Public Interest study found that the typical appetizer, entree and dessert at a restaurant has 1,000 calories — that’s each, not a total for the entire meal.
Still, it is possible to eat healthy or even slim down while dining out, says Kathleen Daelemans, a West Bloomfield, Mich., chef who has maintained a 75-pound weight loss for nearly 13 years and is the author of Getting Thin and Loving Food (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). “You just need to be a forensic diner,” she says. “Ask a lot of questions and make a lot of requests.”
Here are seven common restaurant practices that can sabotage your diet and what you can do about them.
Shocker #1: Even steamed veggies are high in fat.
“Fat is what sells food in restaurants,” says Deborah Fabricant, a Los Angeles-based restaurant consultant, former chef and author of Stacks: The Art of Vertical Food (Ten Speed Press, 1999). “That’s why it’s ubiquitous, even in vegetable dishes.”
“I was required to sauté all my vegetables and to roast my potatoes in duck fat,” confesses David C. Fouts, a chef and restaurant consultant based in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif., who has labored behind the stove at a number of chic eateries in Los Angeles, including Wolfgang Puck’s Granita in Malibu. “Every order of spinach I made got about 2 ounces of butter.” That’s 4 tablespoons, which adds 45 grams of fat (32 grams saturated) and 400 calories to a single side dish.
Grilled veggies don’t fare any better. They either get an oil-based marinade or are brushed with oil before grilling and then rebrushed on the plate so they look prettier. Even steamed vegetables aren’t safe. “I recently ordered steamed vegetables from room service at a New York City hotel,” Daelemans says. “Sure, they steamed them. But then they tossed them in so much butter and olive oil that I would have been better off ordering a banana split.”
Savvy-diner strategy Order your veggies steamed or grilled and make clear to your server that you want no butter or oil added at any stage of preparation.
Shocker #2: Egg-white omelets aren’t necessarily better for you.
If you’ve been to a fancy buffet brunch with an omelet bar, you’ve seen the chef generously ladle a clear liquid into the pan before making your mushroom-and-spinach favorite. The liquid is fat, and the ladle holds at least 2 tablespoons. That’s 22 grams of fat (16 grams saturated) and 200 calories added to an otherwise healthful dish.
The same scene is repeated behind restaurant kitchen doors whenever you order eggs. “I’ve worked at places where we used faux butter [margarine] even when people ordered egg whites!” says Los Angeles-based Mandy J. Lopez, now a private chef to celebrities.
Sure, you can request “light on the oil,” which might lead a chef to cut it down some, but cooking this way makes his job much more difficult. “A few chefs do use a cooking spray from time to time if they are really conscientious,” Daelemans says. “But oil can withstand a higher heat than spray, so a chef doesn’t have to monitor the food so closely.”
Savvy-diner strategy Next time you’re out to brunch, ask that your eggs be prepared without butter or any other kind of fat. Let your server know that you’re aware the dish may not look as attractive as one that’s practically been fried.
Shocker #3: Those “plain” toasted buns are covered in butter (or worse).
It’s pretty obvious when you take a bite of garlic bread at a steakhouse that it’s dripping with butter. But butter or other fat is added to bread a lot more often than you know. It’s common practice to slap sandwich buns with some form of grease to keep them from sticking to the flattop grill. You may think you’re having a plain grilled chicken sandwich, but there’s a good chance those wheat buns were smeared with margarine before being toasted. This adds 5.5 fat grams (4 grams saturated) and 50 calories.
But that’s not the end of it. The outside of the bread may be smothered in mayonnaise before it’s toasted, says Fouts, who admits to making grilled turkey sandwiches this way at the tony restaurant where he last worked. “That’s how bread gets that beautiful golden color,” he explains.
Savvy-diner strategy Ask that your bun or bread be toasted “dry.” When it arrives, check for signs of butter or other fat, and don’t hesitate to send the plate back if you find any.
Shocker #4: There’s nothing light about marinara sauce.
Italian marinara sauce is rich in antioxidants (thanks to the lycopene in tomatoes), but did you know it’s also brimming with oil? Chefs love to go “glug glug glug” when preparing this hearty sauce. “A gratuitous amount of oil is often used to build this sauce, starting with the sautéing of the onions,” Daelemans says. The oil could add as many as 28 grams of fat (4 grams saturated) and 250 calories to a 1/2-cup serving of sauce. And it doesn’t stop there. “Often we cook marinara with the rinds of Parmesan or the end piece of a prosciutto to give it a richer flavor,” adds Monica May, a private chef in Los Angeles who’s run nightclub restaurants and cooked for numerous celebrities. “One Italian chef I worked with included butter in his tomato sauce because that’s how it was made in his region of the country.”
A plate of pasta and marinara may contain 1,300 or more calories and 81 grams of fat (24 grams saturated). That’s before you even say “cheese.”
Savvy-diner strategy At Italian restaurants, order fish grilled dry, a side of plain steamed veggies and a lemon for seasoning. If you’re craving pasta, order an appetizer portion to share with your dining companion.
Shocker #5: Your “healthy” salad is drowning in oil.
Think ordering an entree salad will help you cut calories? In many cases you might as well be eating fast food. At least 1/4 cup of dressing is used to toss a salad, often more. That harmless-looking ladle of creamy dressing has 38 grams of fat (6 grams saturated) and 360 calories, about the same as a cheeseburger. But “creamy” isn’t the only culprit, says May. “Most dressings are based on a 3-1 ratio: three parts oil to one part acid [vinegar], so even a balsamic vinaigrette has a high fat content.”
Pasta salads, with their colorful broccoli florets and red pepper strips, also can be deceiving. A generous amount of oil is used when they’re prepared. But to preserve that freshly made look, restaurants often add extra “coats” every few hours until they’re served. By the time the salad hits your plate, the oil alone could add as many as 28 fat grams (4 grams saturated) and 250 calories for a 1/2-cup serving.
Savvy-diner strategy Ask for lowfat or fat-free dressing on the side, or dress your salad with a splash of balsamic vinegar or a squeeze of lemon juice. Avoid pasta salads or limit your intake.
Shocker #6:
Meat, chicken and fish get a fat rubdown before cooking. At culinary school it was drilled into us that before any piece of meat is cooked — no matter how it’s to be cooked — it absolutely must be rubbed on both sides with olive oil. Rubbing a 4- to 6-ounce chicken breast, steak or piece of fish adds up to 10 grams of fat (2 grams saturated) and 90 calories. And if it stops there, you’re getting off easy. “Some dishes are designed to have butter and oil play a large part in the taste profile,” May says. “The famous Hollywood eatery Chasen’s was known for its hobo steak — a New York Strip cooked tableside in a quarter-pound of butter!”
Fouts divulges that while steaks are “holding” (waiting to be served) they are commonly immersed in butter to keep them from overcooking. Then, just before a steak goes out to your table, it often gets topped with butter or a sauce made from butter or cream.
Savvy-diner strategy Explain to your server you want your meat, chicken or fish grilled or broiled with absolutely no butter or oil.
Shocker #7: Sushi isn’t as lean as it looks.
With its fresh flavors and beautiful, minimalist presentation, sushi must be diet food, right? Many of us seek it out specifically when we’re in the mood for a meal that’s lean. As a result, lots of dieters let their guard down at the sushi bar. Trusting that they’ve entered a safe-eating haven, they fail to detect the mayonnaise in California, spicy tuna and specialty rolls. It’s particularly tough to notice the excess in California rolls because the white crab conceals the mayo. But it can add as many as 17 grams of fat (2 grams saturated) and 150 calories in just four pieces. Rolls made with American ingredients are always suspect. “You deserve all the fat you get if you order rolls with cream cheese,” May jokes.
Savvy-diner strategy Don’t be afraid to ask your sushi chef what’s in your sushi; a good chef will be happy to tell you in detail. Your best choice is sashimi (pieces of raw fish). And skip any rolls with the word crispy in their description, a sign they’re probably deep-fried.

Daily Caloric Requirements
A pound is equivalent to 3500 calories. To over simplify, if you want to lose one pound per week, reduce your caloric consumption by 3500 calories per week. Consuming less than 1500 calories per day on a regular basis reduces the basal metabolic rate. When the metabolic rate is reduced, less calories can be consumed. Excess calories will be stored as fat. This is why it’s important to combine exercise with diet in order to affect weight loss.
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the basic minimum number of calories that are required to maintain your body weight based on average body composition. To calculate your basal metabolic rate:
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) = 24 * Weight (lb)/2.2
OR
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) = 24 * Weight (kg)

The BMR is then multiplied by a number representing the individuals activity level:

• Sedentary: BMR * 1.45
• Light: BMR * 1.60
• Medium: BMR * 1.70
• Heavy: BMR * 1.88

Generally, eating more than this number of calories increases weight and less than this number allows weight reduction. However, BMR does not take into account extremes of activity or inactivity. Therefore, BMR should be used as a approximation. Various activities will increase caloric requirements above the BMR. The following table shows the approximate amount of calories required for a 135-pound individual performing the following listed activity for 1 hour:

Activity: Calories Expended
Aerobics 620
Bicycling 12mph 620
Running 5mph 500
Ski Machine 550
Walking 4mph 230
Swimming 470
Soccer 370
Stair Master 350

Protein, Carbohydrate And Fat Dietary Requirements
Proper nutrition requires a balanced intake of Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat. Protein and Carbohydrates are both 4 calories per gram. Fat is 9 calories per gram. An example follows for a daily caloric requirement of 2000 calories. The amount of grams of each will vary according to your daily caloric requirement (based on BMR). However, the percentages should remain the same for all. The following example is for a daily caloric requirement of 2000 calories:
Protein: (4 cal/g) should be 30% of total calories = 600 cal (protein) = 150g
Carbohydrates: (4 cal/g) should be 60% of total calories = 1200 cal (carbs) = 300g
Fat: (9 cal/g) should be 10% of total calories = 200 cal (fat) = 22g