A HARTE APPETITE: THE REAL TEST: DIETING AFTER THE HOLIDAYS

"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall diet." That was my attitude during the final holiday weeks of last year. But with the new year I must get serious about losing those pounds which my clothes reveal I have gained. (Wouldn't it be nice if everything had an elastic waistband?)

For someone like me, for whom eating has always been a consuming passion (my favorite food is seconds) and who thinks equal amounts of dark and white chocolate constitute a balanced diet, this is quite a challenge. I've always considered "diet" an especially offensive four letter word.

Nonetheless, I've tried just about every diet you've ever heard of and some you probably haven't. In fact, I've even tried three or four fad diets at the same time! Predictably, none of them were successful, for, as Psychology Today reports, the odds are 9 to 1 that people who have lost weight will regain it. Now that's what I call a fat chance.

Of course, I am not alone in fighting the battle of the bulge. Statistics show that the average American gains a pound every year (I'd be happy to settle for that) and that for the first time in our history, overweight people outnumber those who aren't. No wonder that Americans spent $141 million dollars on diet books in 1997. In fact, the fastest selling hardcover book in history was the diet cookbook written by Oprah Winfrey's personal chef, Rosie Daley. (Yes, I have a copy. I even paid full price for it!) Nor is our obsession with dieting really new. Weight-loss fads go back to the 1890's, coincidentally or not about the same time, Jeanne Schinto writing in Nation Magazine notes, that the ice cream sundae was invented. Moreover, according to Michelle Stacey, writing in Town & Country Monthly, the first diet book, William Banting's Letter on Corpulence, was published in 1864.

Over the ensuing years, lots of different and often conflicting approaches to losing weight have been championed. No sooner had the low fat craze spawned an entire industry of fat free foods than Dr. Atkins came along promoting a high fat diet. (Nabisco has even started putting back some fat in its popular SnackWell's line.) And just as we abandoned high protein regimens, Dr. Bob Arnot and Dr. Barry Sears show up advocating such plans. And so it has gone with carbohydrates as well. First pasta was out, then it was in, and now it seems to be back out again. As Victoria Clayton, writing in Redbook, puts it, "Newton's third law of motion could easily apply to weight-loss info: For every theory that explains how to drop a pound, there will be an equal and opposite theory that turns the first one on its head." It's hardly surprising, then, that after analyzing eight leading weight-loss books, Consumer Reports rated none of them excellent and found one downright dangerous.

So what are those of us who are "corporeally challenged," to use Jeffrey Steingarten's term, to do? The sad truth is that the only way to lose weight is to take in fewer calories than you burn. Harvard Women's Health Watch puts it bluntly: "Calorie-cutting is one of the messages that is obscured in many fad diets. Like it or not, the key to weight control is balancing calorie intake and energy expenditure. . . ." This is what my wife has been telling me for years. Just eat smaller portions, she counsels. (Ever notice how such annoyingly logical advice usually comes from people who are naturally thin?)

This leaves only two options. The first involves reducing the calories and, because a gram of fat has twice the calories of a gram of carbohydrate or protein, the fat in foods you enjoy. This is not always as hard as you might think. After all, as Lynn Fischer, the self-styled "Low Cholesterol Gourmet" observes, "Almost all standard recipes have superfluous or simply gratuitous fat." Thus she recommends simmering onions and other vegetables in water rather than sauteing them in butter or oil, a practice which we have adopted at our house. Among the other tricks we employ are these:

-- substituting thickened chicken bouillon (use one tablespoon cornstarch per one cup stock) for oil in pasta dishes.

-- toasting nuts to bring out their flavor, thereby making it possible to use fewer of them.

-- replacing chocolate with cocoa.

-- using mustard in place of mayonnaise on sandwiches.

-- cooking with skim milk.

-- using two egg whites in place of one whole egg.

-- substituting low fat yogurt for sour cream.

-- placing oil in baked goods with fruit puree such as applesauce or apple butter.

These and other ploys along with obvious measures such as trimming fat from meat and broiling instead of frying can save a surprising number of calories over the long haul. But, frankly, there's a limit to how far you can go with this strategy. As Deborah Madison (the Julia Child of vegetarian cooking) warns, "True gustatory pleasure is satisfying in itself, and low-fat remakes of classic dishes lack the soul of the original." She has a point. For example, in my experience you can only remove so much fat and so many calories from a cheesecake before you end up with something so far removed from true cheesecake that it no longer deserves that label.

So you're left with a second recourse: developing an appreciation for dishes which are healthy and happen to taste good as well. Indeed, there are whole cuisines, such as Japanese, which are inherently flavorful yet fundamentally low in fat and calories. This approach, especially when coupled with regular exercise, may be the wisest in the long run because it ultimately involves a change in lifestyle.

Today's column offers recipes which employ both of these strategies in the hopes that as the dieting season begins you won't find yourself a couple of weeks from now in the predicament of the late comedienne, Totie Fields, who once lamented, "I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks."

Creamy Poppy Seed Dressing

Incredibly, Ladies Home Journal claims that salad dressing is the highest source of fat in the average woman's diet! This recipe, from Cooking Light magazine, containing only .2 grams of fat and 12 calories per tablespoon, can change that.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup nonfat mayonnaise-type salad dressing

1/2 cup nonfat sour cream

1/2 cup unsweetened orange juice

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

1 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/8 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

Whisk all ingredients together until smooth. Chill.

Baked Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Perhaps you've heard of the garlic diet. You don't really lose weight on it, but people stand so far away from you that you look smaller. Actually, the garlic in this classic French dish mellows as it cooks, so forty cloves really is not too many. The recipe, from Eating Well magazine, weighs in at only 431 calories and 7 grams of fat per serving.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 pounds bone-in chicken pieces, skinned

salt and pepper

40 large garlic cloves (4 heads), unpeeled

1 3/4 cups dry white wine

1/4 teaspoon thyme

1/4 teaspoon rosemary

2 tablespoons Cognac

chopped fresh parsley

12 thick slices coarse bread

Directions:

Heat oil over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed, flameproof casserole dish, add chicken in a single layer, season with salt and pepper, and saute for 5 minutes per side. (Don't be concerned if pot scorches slightly.) Remove chicken and add all but one clove of garlic. Saute, stirring, until beginning to brown, about 3-5 minutes. Spread cloves in a single layer, return chicken to pot, add wine, thyme, and rosemary, cover tightly, and bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 60 minutes until chicken is tender and cooked through. Remove from oven. Ignite Cognac and pour over chicken, shaking pan until flames die. Adjust seasonings and sprinkle with parsley. Lightly toast bread slices and rub both sides with cut side of reserved garlic clove. To serve, place slices of bread on plate, top with chicken pieces, some of the sauce in pan, and several garlic cloves to be squeezed out and spread onto bread. Serves 6.

The New Chocolate Decadence

The latest issue of Bon Appetit magazine calls flourless chocolate cake the "dish of the year." Unfortunately for dieters, their recipe calls for over a pound of chocolate, a stick and a half of butter, six eggs, and half a carton of whipping cream. This version, from Alice Medrich's beautiful book, Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts, has only half the calories (184) and one fourth the fat (6 grams) of its namesake, a chocolate dessert popularized a decade or so ago.

Ingredients:

5 oz. semisweet chocolate, finely chopped

2 eggs

1 egg white

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 cup plus 1/2 tablespoon cocoa

2 tablespoons flour

2/3 cup plus 1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup low fat milk

Directions:

Combine cocoa, flour, and 2/3 cup sugar in heavy saucepan. Whisk in about half the milk to form a smooth paste, then mix in remaining milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, simmering mixture for 1 1/2 minutes. Pour hot mixture over chopped chocolate and stir until smooth. Combine 1 egg and 1 egg yolk along with vanilla and whisk into chocolate mixture. Beat remaining two egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining 1/4 sugar and beat until stiff but not dry. Fold one fourth of whites into chocolate mixture, then fold in remaining whites. Scrape mixture into 8-inch round cake pan coated with nonstick spray and lined on bottom with parchment paper. Set cake pan in baking dish at least two inches deep and two inches wider than cake pan and pour in boiling water to about halfway up sides of cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for exactly 30 minutes. Cake will still be gooey inside. Cool cake and refrigerate overnight before unmolding. Serve with raspberry sauce or light whipped cream.

Got a recipe you'd like to share with our readers? Are you looking for a recipe for something in particular? Send your recipes and requests to A Harte Appetite, c/o The Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.

~Tom Harte is a professor at Southeast Missouri State University and writes a food column every other week for the Southeast Missourian.