Cohen Lifestyle Dinner in the USA

Last November I went to the USA and visited my cousins from West to East coast. On my first night in Virginia my cousin was curious about what and how much food I ate on my Cohen Lifestyle diet.

I decided to cook a entire Cohen meal for my cousin’s family. We went to Costco to buy the ingredients. My first purchase was 90/10 ground beef to make burgers. I formed the patties to weigh 120 grams each.

The only seasoning to the patties were salt and pepper liberally applied to the exterior of the patty. We then cooked the hamburger on a grill pan without oil.

I also bought chanterelle mushrooms which we’ve never tried before. They were much more expensive than portobella mushrooms.

chanterelle mushrooms

I sautéed the mushrooms in olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper and a dash of white wine (not Cohen approved but what the heck).

It was delicious. The mushrooms were creamy and the taste was quite exotic.

And to accompany the burgers and mushrooms was a salad of spring mix lettuce and reduced balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

I poured a whole bottle of regular (cheap) balsamic vinegar into a heavy bottomed pan and let it simmer until the volume was reduced to 1/3 of the original. It should also be slightly thick and sweet. This took more than 30 minutes to accomplish.

My cousin in law kept complaining since the whole house stank and smelled of vinegar. It was really bad but the effort was so worth it. They couldn’t believe how sweet the balsamic reduction was. I just added some olive oil, salt and pepper and that was our dressing. We kept the remaining reduced balsamic vinegar for future use.

spring mix salad greens

They were quite happy and satisfied with the meal since it didn’t really taste like diet food. Naturally the burger made with US beef was much better than using local Manila beef. I also liked all the different lettuce in the spring mix, most of which we don’t find in Manila. The best was the chanterelle mushrooms which was a real treat for me since all I buy in Manila are portobella, shiitake and oyster mushrooms.

That’s what I like about the Cohen Lifestyle diet. You still eat normal food just nothing processed and in a measured quantity.