Yes, I said it, chocolate, coconut, halibut. And why not?

We eat shrimp crusted in coconut, we eat chocolate in savory mole sauces? And did you know that chocolate and coconut are both good for you (in moderation of course)?

The kernel of this idea was bouncing around in my brain for a little bit, my wife had been talking about coconut a lot, and then at a nice restaurant we had this trout server with white chocolate and raspberries (and it was really good), so I was getting the inkling of the idea to give some fish the chocolate treatment, in the end I just sort of winged it.

We love eating halibut, we can’t find it locally so I have to buy it over the Internet. But I guess that is why Darwin invented freezers. Halibut is a wonderful fish that is not very fishy, is thick and meaty like swordfish, but doesn’t come with all the mercury. The largest of the flat fish, it is sustainably caught in Alaskan waters (wild caught Alaskan fish is more or less the best you can buy, of any fish species that can be found in Alaska). The halibut cheek in particular is a prized piece of fish flesh that I hear is Alton Brown’s favorite bit of seafood. So I order it in bulk, and rotate it in with the trout and salmon we otherwise eat. Yes it is frozen, yes I don’t care. Most fish is frozen, even the stuff you buy that you think is fresh was frozen at one point, because most fish is frozen on the boat right after being caught, and how else are you supposed to get Alaskan fish without moving to Anchorage?

So I cook it a lot, but I like to try new things. So, here is what I did. First I thawed out my fillets in the fridge overnight, they already kindly had the skin removed by the processor. Then I dried them off good, salted them, and tossed them in a mixture of cocoa powder and corn starch. Why? Well, the cocoa powder for the flavor, and the corn starch because I wasn’t sure how cocoa powder would behave when fried. See, when frying you want to coat in a starch because starches, when heated, sort of explode and thicken and so the properties that make them good as a thickener for soups and gravies, also make them a good coating for frying food. I also added in a tablespoon or so of McCormick Caribbean Jerk seasoning, which is one of my go-to favorite seasoning blends. In the back of my mind I was thinking “mole sauce” so I knew it needed a little spice.

Then it went into an egg wash and into shredded coconut. Oh yes, you recognize it now, this thing is bound for the deep fryer baby!

3-5 minutes, until its floating brown, you have to look a little carefully, because the cocoa powder makes it extra dark.

The verdict? It worked, everyone liked it. I served it with a mango salsa (mango, cucumbers, roasted red peppers, salt, sugar, basalmic). I took a fish from the cold Alaskan waters and gave it an island makeover.

Yes it was deep fried, though in olive oil, but we’ve still got a heart healthy fish, covered in cocoa powder (which is very healthy for you… the powder, very nutritive, as opposed to a candy bar high in fat and sugar), and coconut, which, while not being low in calorie, is also nutrition dense and very low in bad fats and high in good fats.

My wife has been reading about the Paleo diet for awhile, and I also wanted to make this for her, because I figure it probably qualifies as a Paleo dinner. It is certainly a nice change from perhaps beer battered fish dipped in tartar sauce.

I hate fake doctors, they annoy me so much. You know the people with the Ph.D. from the school of Hard-knocks on alternative healing and natural health?

Here is a general rule for everyone. Only accept scientific information from a scientist. Someone who has actually done research using a rigorous application of the scientific method in their life. Someone who understands what cum hoc is and what it is a fallacy.

Anyways, so these bozos say things like Splenda has chlorine atoms in it, and chlorine is bad, dangerous, a chemical weapon, etc etc.

I’m sorry, but that is just retarded. You know what one of the most toxic and dangerous atoms is? Oxygen. We breathe it in. Do you know how dangerous it is though? Hydrogen too, which we drink. Do you know something you eat every day has chlorine in it? Don’t panic now, but you call it “salt” but technically it is sodium chloride.

The fake doctors like to cite things like a study showing a decrease in the thymus in rats (an organ that usually shrinks by adult hood anyways). The dose required to get this result is 17,000 Splenda packets per day for 30 days.

Did you know you can overdose on water? Did you know you can OD on bananas? Bananas are actually pretty easy to OD on, and you don’t need to eat 17,000 of them.

Practically anything we eat can be dangerous if we overdo it to such a ridiculous degree. Just keep your splenda intake to under 10,000 packets a day and you’ll be safe. Sheesh.

Then they blame it all on corporate marketing and they say “Look at aspartame, people started drinking it and we all got fatter.” A great example of the cum hoc fallacy I mentioned above.

Here is the truth. The fake doctors need to pay their bills. No one goes to an alterative healer, nutritionist, hippy mumbo jumbo person, unless they have been scared away from real solutions. Fear generates business. This happens in many industries, where beliefs trump science, and it is profitable for the practitioners. They like to say the “big bad corporations” are just greed motivated, but all their fear mongering over safe substances is just their own greed trying to drum up business. That is the sorry truth, it is all about money for them, and they want you to be afraid so you’ll come to their seminar or buy their diet or whatever.

They’ll also recommend natural, and imply that natural means safe. This is not the case, cocaine is natural, heroine is natural, nightshade is natural, hemlock is natural. Natural things can kill you.

The truth is, “all natural” means something did not have to undergo rigorous scientific testing or meet FDA approval before making it on to your shelves. A manufacturer may claim their “all natural” product is safe and tested, but there is no law holding them to that claim, no government agency, no regulation. And as such there is no requirement that their testing is done in a scientifically legitimate manner.

I use Splenda in my cooking. I’d rather use pure sucralose, which is concentrated and doesn’t have filler but only commercial producers get that, us regular folks buy Splenda with filler that feeds gut bacteria causing gas, which is really the only side effect from it. I recommend you do like me, and not let the fake doctors scare you.

My wife says this is the best squash soup she has ever had, and she gets it at lots of restaurants.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 Butternut Squash
1 Large Parsnip (white carrot very very high in potassium)
2 Green Apples
1 Large Sweet Onion
1 Leek (optional… leeks are the giant chive looking things – make it two onions if you leave it out)
2 Quarts Chicken Stock
4 normal, 3 huge, or 5 small yukon gold potatoes
1 large carrot, or however many small ones for the same amount
A couple cloves of garlic, minced
salt
bay leaf
saffron if you have it or want to use
ground nutmeg, freshly shaved is so much better if you find it.
ground cinnamon
chopped chives (optional)

Preheat the over to 425.

Peel the squash, then cut it into chunks, and scrape out the seed cavity (as if you were carving a pumpkin) the chunks should be of moderate size, say, 2 inches.

Clean and chop the potatoes, peeling is optional Medium chunks, 1 inch

Peel and chop the parsnip. medium chunks, 1 inch. Ditto with carrot.

Stick peeled & chopped veggies in a 13×9 baking dish, drisle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and toss around for even coating. Stick it in the oven for 30 minutes.

Peel the onion and stick it in a frying pan to carmelize (low-medium heat, salted, a little bit of oil, stirring constantly, until soft). Cut the top and bottom off the leek (you eat the middle part, the white part, with a little green towards the top), cut it in half lengthwise. Rinse it out to remove any dirt, and then chop it up. Stick it in with the onion.

Peel, core, and cut up the apples into 6 slices each. When the oven beeps open it up, toss in the apple, and stir all the veggies. Set the timer for another 30 minutes.

When the oven beeps a second time, put all the veggies into your crockpot (the onion & leek, and everything from the oven) pour over enough chicken stock to cover, add a bay leaf or two, and the saffron if you’re using it, and the garlic. Cook for a few hours, or all day.

30 minutes or so before you want to eat, preheat the oven to 350.

Slice up a nice whole grain baguette, put some cheese (Swiss, gruyere (aged swiss), provolone, parmigiana, mozerella) on top of each slice, stick it in the over until it is toasted.

Meanwhile, get out your immersion stick blender (a must for any serious soup maker), open up the crock pot, remove the bay leaves, and blend it up until smooth. Add a few teaspoons of fresh ground nutmeg (I usually shave off half a nut with my microplane grater), and a tablespoon of cinnamon, blend some more, taste, add more seasoning if desired.

Kill the heat (make sure to check your bread so you don’t burn it), and add 1 cup of milk (you could also use half and half, or cream, but I think milk is just fine). Blend again to mix the milk in well.

Ladle into bowls, garnish with chopped chives and or black pepper if desired, and serve with toasted cheese bread.

Low calories, very very very nutritious, and you get to use two or three veggies you don’t often use (and so may miss the vitamins etc they provide).

Picture coming, next time I make the soup, which should be soon since I just harvested a bunch of squash.

I made this bread recently, it was so good, the best I’ve ever made. Not that unhealthy either.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup soy flour
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1-2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups splenda
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 2/3 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup egg substitute
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 8oz cans of crushed pineapple

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325.
2. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cups and level, combine flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon in a large bowl, mix well
3. Beat eggs with a mixer at medium speed until foamy. Add splenda, zucchini, oil, egg substitute, and vanilla, beating until well blended. Add to flour mixture, stirring just until moist. Fold in pineapple. Spoon batter into 2 loaf pans coated with cooking spray. Bake at 325 for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool.

So I got this recipe out of Cooking Light and tinkered with it a little bit, making it actually healthier. Then, because I felt like experimenting, I used 3 different types of flour. Why? Because I have many different types of flour in the house, and I thought, why not? It certainly turned out awesome so I recommend you follow my lead. With the directions as is I thought the batter was a little thick, well, very thick, for me so I added the juice from the pineapple and added some milk and more oil to get it to a nice consistency. If you’ve made quickbreads like this before you’ll know the consistency you want.

One loaf can be frozen for a month and defrosted on the counter if you like, but man, this bread was awesome, truly, the best tasting bread I’ve ever made. And it gives me something to do with all the zucchinis I get from my garden.

Right now in the oven I have a alternative going. I swapped the 16oz of crushed pineapple for 16oz of maraschino cherries and I added half a cup of dark chocolate (hershey’s special dark) cocoa powder. We’ll see how it turns out.

As I’ve mentioned previously, my wife likes a quick breakfast, and I don’t think shelf bought “protein” “energy” or “power” bars are altogether that healthy with their 20 grams of sugar and whatnot. I know I can do better, and so it was in that spirit that I developed this recipe for super healthy chocolate brownies. These are meal replacement/snack brownies, not dessert brownies.

Before we start, a word on chocolate.

Chocolate is healthy, no seriously, cocoa is very high in antioxidants, protein, and fiber. The fact that it is often mixed with saturated fats and sugar is the problem, but cocoa solids themselves are quite healthy.

To maximize the health of your chocolate snacks always look for the darkest chocolate you can possibly fine, but even though, fats, if not sugars, are necessary, to make chocolate bars or chips of any type.

Ergo, the healthiest way to get chocolate is to find dark chocolate cocoa powder. Cocoa powder is chocolate solids with all the fat removed, but you still get the flavor. Normal cocoa powder isn’t so bad but dark cocoa powder will have 66% less calories, more protein, and more fiber.

Chocolate Super Healthy Brownies

• 1 can Pumpkin Puree, 15oz
• 1 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
• ½ cup Rolled Oats
• ½ cup Flax Seed Meal
• 1 cup Soy Protein Powder
• 1 cup Hersey’s Special Dark Cocoa Powder (or other dark cocoa powder)
• 1 cup Splenda
• 4 tbsp Cinnamon
• 1 cup Egg Beaters or Egg Whites
• ½ cup Light Sour Cream
• 1 cup Skim Milk
• 2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 pkg(16oz-ish) Dark (60% + cocoa) Chocolate Chips (optional)

1. Preheat Oven to 375
2. Mix all the dry stuff (oats, flour, flax seed, protein powder, cocoa powder, splenda, cinnamon, and baking soda) together, really well. Sift it if you want.
3. Put the Egg Beaters in a big bowl, very big, and beat with a hand mixed until nice and foamy and or soft peaks. Normally if making something like an angel food cake we’d be careful now, but we’re not making an angel food cake, so…
4. Add the pumpkin and sour cream into the bowl and mix well, add the milk and vanilla and start adding the dry mixture a little at a time.
5. Meanwhile in another part of the kitchen, if you want it extra chocolately you’ll need to melt the optional chocolate chips in a double boiler or a microwave and then drizzle into the mixture, or just drop the chips in if you’d rather have chocolate chunks in the finished product, your choice.
6. When your mixture has fully come together, stick it into a lubed 13×9 baking dish, it’ll be thick, you should spray the back of a spatula with some non-stick spray to help spread it around. When it is good and even pop it in the oven for 1 hour.

Now, if you cut it into 12 portions, which is typical I think, each one will have:

Without Chocolate Chips: 137 calories, 14g protein, 6g fiber
With Chocolate Chips: 230 calories, 16g protein, 7.5g fiber

Chocolate chips also add sugar and saturated fat. You could also, instead of chips, add chopped nuts, raisins, or something like that. Compare the calorie total of the sans-chip version to any “bar” based food out there. No added sugar, lots of antioxidants and vitamins, lots of protein, and lots of fiber. These brownies are super brownies.

On to the Ingredient Explanation….

I’m not here just to give you recipes, I like to teach why I include certain things in the recipe.

Start with the pumpkin, why do I put pumpkin in this recipe? Well, read the back of your can, see the part that says each serving has 300% of your daily vitamin A needs through beta carotene? That means, that roughly each brownie should end up with 100% of your daily needs, not bad. Vitamin A is a key vitamin but too much of it can cause problems, especially in pregnant women. Beta Carotene though is an entirely safe way to get Vitamin A as your body will manufacture it out of the beta carotene on an as-needed basis, storing any excess still as beta carotene, no chance for overdosing. Beta carotene of course also helps with a myriad of other things.

Whole wheat flour is there for structure, and we’re using whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour for added protein, fiber, and nutrients.

Rolled oats add more fiber, especially soluble fiber to lower cholesterol, as well as protein. Oats are a super food, eat more of them.

Flax Seed Meal, another super food, is the highest plant source of omega 3 fatty acids (good cholesterol, like from salmon). It also adds fiber and protein.

Soy protein powder of course adds protein. Protein keeps your body healthy and your stomach feeling full.

The cocoa powder adds surprisingly large amounts of protein and fiber, and of course those excellent chocolate antioxidants.

Cinnamon has one of the highest concentrations of antioxidants of any food known to man, seriously. It also adds flavor without any added calories.

Splenda is our key sweetener, and is of course 0 calorie.

Egg Beaters are just egg whites that have been infused with vitamins and colored yellow. They add protein, the vitamins, and it is necessary to have a little egg in almost any baked good. We are using a lot of them though, because we want a lot of protein in these.

The sour cream adds more protein, and contributes moisture (we’re replacing what would otherwise be oil) to the final product. If you had to omit one thing, this would probably be it, I don’t know if it is so necessary.

The milk is our moisture, protein, vitamin D, calcium, etc.

Baking soda is for making it all rise, vanilla is for flavor, and the optional chocolate chips are, of course, for chocolate.

Whole Grain Cocoa Angel Food Cake

• 3/4 cup of whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder (dark is better if you can find it)
• 1 1/4 cups of splenda
• 10 Egg whites (no yoke! get the cartoned egg whites).
• 1 teaspoon of Cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon or almond extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Sift the flour, cocoa, and 1/4 cup of the sugar 5 times. Set aside. Sift the remaining 1 cup splenda into a separate bowl. Set aside.
2. Put the egg whites in a superclean bowl and beat them with a hand mixer, you’ll want an actual hand mixer for this, not a stand mixer (they don’t work as well for whipping whites) and not just a mere whisk (your arm will fall off). Add the cream of tarter and beat until the egg whites form stiff peaks, but are not dry. A stiff peak means you can dip something in the eggs and then pull it up and out and turn it upside down and the white will form a peak and stand up straight.
3. Gently fold in the sifted splenda, 1 tablespoon at a time (you need to be gentle, lest you depress the air bubbles you just made). Add the vanilla and lemon or almond extract. Slowly sift small amounts of the flour mixture over the batter and fold in until all the flour is incorporated. Pour the batter into an ungreased 10 inch straight-sided tube pan (angel food cake pan, 2 part). Bake for 45 minutes. Turn the pan upside down, over the neck of a bottle, and allow to cool. Remove from pan once fully cooled.

In total this cake has around 600 calories, meaning you could eat the whole thing and it’d only be 600 calories. Additionally it has a bunch of fiber and a bunch of protein. To the point where, if you had 1/6th of this cake, you’d have more protein, more fiber, and less calories, than a typical “energy” or “protein” bar.

Serve it plain, with vanilla ice cream, or with a fruit sauce (any type of peeled fruit & berry in a deep skillet on medium heat, add splenda, possibly cinnamon or other sweet seasoning, then a corn starch & water/juice slurry. Simmer until all the fruit falls apart).