On September 26, 2010, I weighted in at 182.8 lbs. A few days ago, on November 18, I weighed in at 162.6. That’s a 20 pound drop in two months. It was done all through diet.

Back in late September (the 26th, not coincidentally) I put myself on a low-carb Atkins-style diet. The diet is two-fold, actually: control carbs, control portions. That means my menu these days looks a lot like:

• Breakfast: Lazy Omelet(*), usually with 2 eggs, green pepper, onion, green onion, and bacon bits. Sometimes ham bits are added if I have some. This is topped with salt, pepper, and some paprika.
• Lunch: Salad.
• Afternoon snack: String cheese or some walnuts.
• Dinner: Something + salad. The something is some sort of meat or fish. Take your pick. Steak, hamburger, salmon, tilapia, pork tenderloin, or ham. But there’s always salad.
• Evening snack: Again, string cheese or some walnuts.

As you can see, this means I eat a lot of salad. I have the salad-making down to a science. When I’m firing on all cylinders, the salad consists of baby spinach/field greens mix, celery, green pepper, green onion, cucumber, hardboiled egg, manzanilla olives, bacon bits, grilled chicken, tomato slices, and Pine Nuts. I use only olive oil as a dressing, and sprinkle some garlic salt on there for some flavor. I’ve added and removed ingredients, but this combination makes me Very Happy. Seriously. As I’m eating my daily Lazy Omelet, I’m already fantasizing about my lunch salad.

However, all those ingredients mean a lot of chopping and preparation, so every few days I find myself slicing or frying or grilling or boiling something, with the goal of being able to make quick salads when time is limited (such as during lunch hour). When it’s time to make the salad, I pull a lot of stuff out of the fridge: bag-o-salad (half baby spinach/half field green mix), bag-o-fixings (my presliced peppers, cucumber, celery, and green onion mix), hardboiled egg bowl, olive jar, pine nut bag, bag of precooked bacon bits, bag of sliced grilled chicken (with Butt Rub), and a tomato. I’ve found that it doesn’t pay off to combine any more of these in advance, as it will either end up soggy or with oddly-married flavors. Because most of the ingredients are pre-chopped, I can have a bad-ass salad ready-to-go in under five minutes.

The salads have required a lot of fine-tuning. It’s been an evolution. Sometimes too many olives, or too much olive oil. I only found out about pine nuts recently. Hardboiled egg is a big improvement, I realized. And so on. But I feel like at this point I’ve devised the perfect salad for my tastes, which is sooooo much better than, say, announcing that I’ve discovered the perfect combination of toppings for my daily Cheese Fries, isn’t it?

* – I call it Lazy because I don’t wait for the omelet to properly form, tend to it, fold it, let it bake a little, etc. I put all the omelet ingredients in the same pan and then stir it up. Besides, it cooks a lot faster this way.

This is what happens when you design a web site by committee.

ALL I’M LOOKING FOR is some regular run-of-the-mill recipes using chicken. I don’t necessarily want Quick & Easy (I have time) or Healthy (I can make changes to recipes to make them healthier) or International. Hows about a Show All option?

I find this happening more often, where companies are tossing up more and more barriers between me and what I want. Keep It Simple, Stupid. If you don’t believe it works like that, I refer you to the design of Google’s home page.

So now I’ll stop using Epicurious, which I used to enjoy, and try to find recipes elsewhere. Bummer.

UPDATE: look what I found at allrecipes.com.

Ahhhhhhh…. that’s nice. Browse Recipes right at the top of the page, easy to find. Once you click that link, you can then browse by courses or ingredients. Simple.

• 1 pkg sweet Italian Sausage
• 1 pint grape tomatoes
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1/4 of a medium-sized yellow onion, diced
• Some fresh basil, chopped however you please
• 1/2 pint light cream
• 1/2 lb penne pasta (though we use farfalle more often than penne)
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (pref. freshly grated)

Cook pasta according to instructions on box, drain well and reserve 1 cup pasta cooking water. Set aside.

Cook sausage in a small amount of olive oil for 6-7 minutes to brown, then add diced onion and cook until onion is translucent. Add cherry tomatoes and cook a few minutes until tender. Remove the sausage/onion/tomato mix from pan, then add flour to pan. Cook flour mixture for 3-4 minutes to create a small roux. Whisk in cream and bring to a boil, add sausage/onion/tomato mix back to pan. Add peas and pasta. If mixture is too thick, add some of the pasta water or milk (low cal) or more cream (high cal) until you reach the desired consistency. Top with basil. Serve.

Top with parmesan cheese according to individual preference.

One other note: the last few times I’ve cooked the pasta a bit al dente. I add extra cream when I add the pasta, then let it all boil down some… the pasta finishes cooking while everything’s cooking together. That’s me experimenting…