My zeal for WeightWatchers has been flagging in the last few weeks, and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that I have to pick a new diet every 6-12 months.  Something about the new diet restores my obsessiveness and zeal to adhere.  Serial monogamy with diets, I guess.  In any case, it has worked so far.

So the latest thing I’m going to try is the “Mediterrean diet”.

I ordered "The Mediterrean Prescription" from Amazon using my sophisticated algorithm of picking the most popular book that meets my search criteria (“Mediterrean Diet”).

And for this week’s CrummyCook I searched for “Mediterrean Chicken” on WeightWatchers and came up with a recipe for Greek Lemon-Chicken Thighs and Potatoes.  Basically marinate chicken thighs (boneless & skinless of course) in a lemon-oregano marinade and bake with small potatoes.   I only had chicken breasts, but what the heck.

When Debbie saw the marinating chicken, she said “why not have Avgolemno soup to start"?  She’s big on starting with soup after coming back from Canyon Ranch, where soup quells the demon of gluttony in part.  So I looked up egg and lemon soup in the Joy of Cooking, and it was pretty simple.  Cook rice in chicken stock and slowly stir in an egg and lemon mixture.

Voila!  Not too shabby.  Needed salt, but tasted pretty good.

Not so much the main dish.  It tasted like diet food: light on fats and heavy on lemon and oregano.  And I overcooked the chicken breasts (which, of course, turn to sawdust at the drop of a hat).  Not terrible, but not my best effort either.