Day 5: 110 mg cholesterol and a 4 star rated burger patty recipe

Today’s cholesterol intake was 110mg, due to only one meal with meat: my utterly objective wife gave me an 8 out of 10 for my new burger patty recipe 🙂

Other than that, I soaked some unpeeled almonds yesterday evening. Cooked my usual rolled oats in the morning. Rinsed the soaked almonds. Took 8 almonds, poured boiling water over it, waited a minute or so and squeezed the peel of the nut: easypeasy… one of the nuts even got catapulted away…

Then I added the almonds to the oatmilk and… Well, now I have oatmilk with a nutty taste. An improvement (especially the whiter color…) but still not as delicious as real milk. The almond milk by itself with some added brown sugar wasn’t to bad either: : a white, nutty drink, not really milk but surely tastier than oatmilk.

Lunch: bread with organic cherry marmelade 82 grams of fruits for 100 grams of sour cherry spread: more or less as delicious as homemade, just that in our homemade cherry jam you could still find parts of the cherries:

You are right: such a little amount of bread doesn’t get you through the afternoon, so for early tea I had a peach and for later tea I had grapes and a smoothie made of:

• 50 grams of the Greek yogurt (10% fat) from the pot of last Monday that still needs to be finished
• 2 strawberries
• 50 ml water

Bang! This little amount of strawberry smoothie (about half a cup only) already makes up for 25 mg of my daily cholesterol intake. Not really worth it, but like I said: somehow I need to finish the Greek yogurt.

Pork patty recipe

For dinner I tried to be inventive and made some pork patties:

• 200 gram pork meat
• a 40 gram piece of a French loaf (some leftover from Day 2: nothing goes to waste in our kitchen…)
• 1 very small onion (sjalot size)
• 15 capers
• 1 decent teaspoon of Dijon mustard
• 1 heaped teaspoon of meat curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• a bit of freshly grounded black pepper
• a dash of Worcestershire sauce
• about 5 cm or 2 inch cut from a bunch of coriander: leaves and stem: I just work my way down from top to bottom as the stems and roots (yes, the whole plant can be used, be it that roots, stem and leaves have different tastes)
  
• olive oil to fry

1. Cut the onion finely and saute in olive oil
2. Defrost the French bread as much as needed to cut into pieces and start roasting in a non stick pan. Once the bread if a bit dryer, blend to fine crumbs and roast the crumbs further, as brown as possible, making sure you don’t burn them black: keep tossing the pan from time to time. The browner the crumbs, the tastier the end result.
3. Put the rest of the ingredients on a chopping board and start chopping by hand (obviously with a cleaver in your hand): I read that to increase your HDL, you need some exercise, so that’s why I am not using any kitchen aid to mince the meat… 🙂
4. Once the meat is chopped fine, combine with the onions and roasted breadcrumbs. Since there isn’t an egg to "glue" everything together, you need to try to shape a ball as good as you can. If you have leftover crumbs, just incorporate them on the surface of the meat.
5. Divide into 4 patties and fry of 7 minutes on each side in a non stick pan with some olive oil. I had some potato left overs from day 3.

For those who only read this post, be informed I am not on a low fat diet, but on a low cholesterol diet, so I have no problem of adding an extra spoon of olive oil once I had the impression the patties were drying out a bit.

The patties were served with cooked rice and a mixed veggie salad (cucumber, salad leaves, organic tomatoes – the ones that taste like tomatoes and don’t need any dressing -, red sweet pepper) and a simple vinaigrette of olive oil, lime pepper and salt.

For those westerners like me who only learned to eat cooked rice with lots of curry sauce: if you mix the rice with the mashed patties, your "rice has taste" like I use to say here in South East Asia 🙂 For those who still aren’t convinced eating rice without sauce: make sure you never throw away left over potatoes 🙂

For drinks the usual fruit mix: this time with orange juice, strawberries, a peach (it’s the season after all) and some very sweet seedless grapes:

Total cholesterol intake: 110 mg

• breakfast = 0 mg
• lunch = 0mg
• teatime = 25 mg from 50 grams of 10% fat Greek yogurt
• lunch = 85 mg from pork meat.

Today just illustrates how easy it is to go overboard with cholesterol from diary products: although I had only half a cup of a smoothie of which half was water and a few gulps later you have an extra 25% of cholesterol in your system: about 10% of the recommended daily intake.