What’s for dinner? Fresh scallops! Yum.

Tired of chicken? Change it up with fresh seafood recipes — all on plan.

Do you ever find yourself stressed about what to cook for dinner to stay on your diet plan? Or, you work all day and come home to the frig to open the door and wonder – hmmmmm, what’s for dinner?

I plan and prepare my meals in advance for the week – usually on what I fondly call, meal prep Sunday. So I don’t often have that stare at the frig problem. But I eat a lot of lean protein — mostly chicken and turkey — and admittedly I get sick of the same old…

So this week, I changed it up. And YUM!

One of the many benefits of traveling to the breathtaking coast of Maine is that I have friends that fish. In the summer, I enjoy fresh Maine lobster right out of the ocean and this past week it was scallops. Two of my all-time favs!

Fresh fish and seafood are great forms of lean protein if you are watching the carbs. (Click here for nutritional info on scallops.) But I often don’t eat them at home because in MN they’re not so fresh and/or I’m not certain how to prepare them so they taste great. I eat them in restaurants — I love fresh fish, including salmon, and almost all types of seafood. But at home not so much.

This past week, with a freezer full of fresh scallops, I embarked on a mission to find good, healthy scallop recipes (no, they do not include butter and bacon!).

What I learned is to be careful when searching the web for recipes titled “healthy” — read the recipes as there are so many that don’t meet my definition of healthy yet are disguised as “healthy” in the title (again, no I don’t consider loads of butter and bacon necessary or “healthy.”)

All about scallops

I learned that the key to searing scallops without over-cooking them is to make sure the skillet (ideally cast iron) is super hot before you put the scallops in. Then, stand by the stove cause they only take a few minutes. About two minutes on one side, flip when they are golden brown and about a minute on the other side. I did well in first solo attempt!

So here is my new Pinterest board with a few “clean” and “healthy” recipes that fit my definition of high protein, low fat and delicious. Most of these I have yet to try, but they’re on my list for this winter, as is my friend Jim’s fresh seafood stew.

If you’re like me and you don’t prepare fresh fish or seafood often this link may provide some inspiration — let me know! Or, if you’re a gourmet cook in disguise (Kendra Malloy) and have great truly “clean and healthy” seafood recipes to share, post them here!

Happy and healthy dining!

Lori

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