Week 2, Day 2: Low appetite / Tex Mex beef stew

It's useful to start a diet at the same time a cold is blooming. With my taste buds coated with crud, and my appetite depressed by general malaise, it's not hard to stay on program.

Speaking of the program, my husband is being very supportive and is trying to cook to program, as it were. Last night we made a Tex Mex-inspired beef stew from cubes of the $1.49/lb bone-in chuck I bought in vast quantity at the Pathmark a few weeks ago, plus beans that I also bought on sale and cooked in a monster two-pound batch over two days. "Can you have olive oil?" he asked. Sure, I can have olive oil, just not too much of it. Can you have onions? check. Can you have tomatoes? check. Can you have cumin? I can have any seasoning except salt and salt-heavy blends such as soy sauce.

So here's the Tex Mex inspired beef stew -- I think we'll get five or six total servings out of it at a cost-per-serving, including the rice, of about a buck. (Nutritional info per Weight-Watcher serving -- 1 cup stew, 3/4 c rice -- 387 calories, 9 g fat, 6.5 g fiber -- 8 points.)

• 3/4 lb chuck steak, trimmed and cubed
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 medium onion
• 2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
• 2 cups pink beans
• seasonings: they included cumin, oregano, chipotle powder, cayenne, and some Tex Mex blend a house guest brought us
• one green pepper, julienned
• cooked brown rice
  

Brown the chuck and the onion in the olive oil. Add everything else except the green pepper, adjusting seasonings to taste. Bring to boil, simmer a bit, then transfer to a 250F oven so that it doesn't need babysitting. Five minutes before serving, add green pepper and stir in. Serve over brown rice (which I had cooked in bulk last week).

It was so fiery I thought I'd burned my mouth, but once my tongue went numb it was really good. We had steamed whole green beans with it and I used the stew as a dip. A dessert of plain yogurt was wonderfully soothing.