One piece of advice my mother gave me that I’ve always remembered and try to put into practice is to not spend so much time thinking that you wished you were thinner. She says she spent way too much time thinking about that and worrying about it and eating a lot of bad diet food. Now she looks back at pictures and thinks “Why in the world did I think I needed to lose weight? I was thin!”
One of the worst things that I recall her making during one of her diets was a pitiful baked fish. She would buy these sad little frozen fillets, put some Mrs. Dash or something equally bad on it and bake it until it was a shriveled up little piece of yuck.
And it made the house smell fishy.
I think she would have lasted longer on these diets if she had had the recipe I made tonight. It was moist and flavorful and even the girls liked it (mostly). I’ve feel like I’ve been in a bit of a cooking stupor lately but I think this may have been just the thing to get me started again.
And it made the house smell yummy.
Baked Fish alla Veracruzana adapted from a Williams-Sonoma Cookbook
Preheat oven to 400.
Slice two yellow onions thinly. Chop a couple of pieces of garlic. Warm 1/4 cup of olive oil in saute pan and cook the onions and garlic over med-low heat for about 10 minutes until the onions are nice and soft. Add a can of diced tomatoes, 2 teaspoons dried oregano, 1 tablespoon chili powder and a pinch of cinnamon. Add the grated zest and juice from one lemon and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Salt and pepper fillets (I used rock fish but any thicker fish will do: cod or halibut or sea bass). Place in shallow oven proof dish and pour tomato mixture over top. Bake for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with cilantro or parsley and serve right away.
I served ours with green beans and fingerling potatoes but would use rice the next time to soak up all the lovely sauce.
Eat this regularly and you’ll never have to worry about weight watchers.
Or a smelly house.