progress

I'm really excited about my Daily Favorites series. 

It's easy to make tasty food. Add cheese and bacon to a burger. Add brown sugar and honey to orange chicken. Make cookies or brownies with tons of sugar and chocolate. 

It's a lot more challenging to make tasty food that's also under calorie thresholds. You have to use limes, vinegar, spices, garlic, onion, peppers, things like that. 

It's been eye opening trying to make a lower-calorie orange chicken. Every recipe even for healthier recipes call for honey, brown sugar and sesame oil. I tried this sugar-free orange ginger marinade for lunch today and I ate it but there was something off on the taste of the sauce. Cooking method worked great though.

So I'll need to go back to the drawing board. I'm thinking I'll try a homemade sauce with rice wine vinegar, lite soy sauce, zest + juice from an orange, red pepper flake, garlic and maybe a little bit of a good stir fry sauce to help it out. Since there's no endpoint to this series, I've got plenty of time to experiment and get it right.

Meanwhile here are the ingredients of the jerk seasoning I buy: scallions, scotch bonnet peppers, salt, black pepper, all spice, nutmeg, citric acid, cane sugar, thyme leaves. 

Basically all vegetables with a tiny bit of sugar at the end. Huge flavor for 5 calories a serving. If I was more knowledgable of Chinese-American cuisine, perhaps I could replicate the technique of the jerk paste with orange chicken flavors: scallions, Chinese red peppers, and correct seasonings (Szechuan  peppercorns or five-spice powder?) We'll see.