Lemon Butter Chicken

I recently started a new low carb diet. I saw a recipe that fit my diet on Tip Hero.  It was a one pan meal, so that was nice, too.

   

Lemon Butter Chicken

4 large chicken breasts
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
dash salt and pepper
1 Tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 cups baby spinach, chopped
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 teaspoon dried thyme

   

Preheat the oven to 400°.

   

Cut the chicken breasts in half, lengthwise.  Place them on a plate and season both sides with the paprika and salt and pepper to taste.

   

Melt the butter in an oven proof pan.  I used cast iron.  Sear both sides of the chicken for 2 to 3 minutes.  Remove to a plate.  Add the minced garlic and stir for about 20 seconds.  Stir in the broth, heavy cream and cheese.

Bring the mixture to a simmer and add the chopped spinach.  Cook until the chicken is wilted and the cream has thickened slightly.

   

Stir in the lemon juice, zest and thyme.  Place the chicken back in the pan and put it in the oven.  I turned the pieces a few times in the sauce to get the lemon flavor on both sides of the chicken.  Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

   

I served the chicken with a small salad.  I stayed within my Atkins guidelines and had a really nice meal.  Lee liked it and he isn't on a diet, so I considered that a win.

Healthy Chicken Tenders

A few months ago I was in California and I happened to be in a Trader Joe's.  I love Trader Joe's and they don't have one here in Southwest Virginia.  I came across some almond meal.  It is almost almond flour, but not that finely ground. I bought some and brought it home for some vague future use.

The package mentioned that it could be used for breading.  What a good idea!  After a quick peek around the Internet, I discovered that by using this for breading chicken tenders and then baking them, I fit in with a bunch of healthy diets.  It works with Atkins, Paleo. and plain old low fat!  So give it a try.

   

Healthy Chicken Tenders

1 pound chicken tenders, or chicken breasts sliced into strips.
1 cup almond meal
2 eggs

spices of choice... some suggestion are cumin and coriander and chili powder for a Mexican flavor, or garlic and Italian seasonings. On this occasion I used:

1 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
1/4 teaspoon paprika
pepper


   

Preheat the oven to 400.  Use foil to line a baking pan and then spray it with Pam.  Or use parchment paper.

   

I prefer to snip the tendon and remove the bit of white membrane on the tenders.  Then rinse the tenderloins and pat dry with a paper towel.

   

Break the eggs in a medium bowl and whisk them until smooth.

   

Put the cup of almond meal in a good sized bowl.  Add the spices and stir together with a fork. 

   

Now for the assembly line.

   

Dip the tenders into the eggs and then coat both sides with the almond mix.  Place on the prepared baking pan and then do all the rest,  leaving a bit of space between each tender.

   

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

   

 I cut one in half to make sure they were done.  If you want them to crisp up a bit more you can place them on a cooling rack, but I was hungry and just put the hot tenders on a plate and served them with some Ranch dressing for a dip.  The bottoms got a bit soggy, but they tasted great.  Lee could taste the almond, but I couldn't.  Maybe it was the Ranch dressing I used!

   

You can't just have meat for dinner, so I steamed a bit of broccoli to go with the tenders.  I had some Alouette spreadable cheese left over from making ham roll-ups a few days ago.  It was the garlic and herb flavor, but any flavor you like will do.  The Alouette is low carb and does not have  a whole bunch of fat, so I had a plan.

   

After steaming the broccoli, I put the hot vegetables on top of the 1/3 cup spreadable cheese I had placed in the bowl.  The broccoli melted the cheese into a delicious sauce.   I  had cut the broccoli and cooked it in the time it took for the tenders to cook.  Bam!  Dinner!

Better Thai Chicken Burgers with Vegetable Curry

I recently posted a recipe for Thai Chicken Burgers.  They were pretty good, but the "Thai" part was mostly coconut milk and some cilantro.  I mentioned that they needed some peanut sauce.   The recipe made enough for a few more meals for the two of us, so I froze the rest.  My daughter, Tara, suggested I use the rest of the coconut milk in a curry.  A meal is born. 

Best of all, this meal is very Atkins friendly.  I am currently tortur following that particularly boring diet.  But this was good!  And not just the same old salad!  Sure it's low carb, but if you aren't worried about that, serve the curry over some fluffy, aromatic jasmine rice.  Oooh.  That sounds good.  But that's not what we had.

   

Vegetable Curry

Well you're gonna be making the Thai Burgers, right?  You will end up with about 1 cup of coconut milk left over.  Use that for this dish.

2 Tablespoons minced onion
1 teaspoon minced garlic
oil for cooking
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon curry
1/2 teaspoon salt or more to taste
1 cup coconut milk
2 cups diced Vegetables  I used 1 zucchini, 1 yellow squash and a small handful of green beans.  Cauliflower would be terrific, too.

   


Finely chop some cilantro leaves.  Remove the thicker stems.  Divided use.

   

Place a small amount of oil in a medium fry pan and heat to medium.   Add the onions and garlic and cook for about 3 minutes.  It will start to smell like an Indian restaurant.

   

 Add the diced vegetables and cook for one more minute, stirring to coat them.  They will turn sort of yellow.

   

Add the coconut milk.  heat to just below a boil and then cover and reduce to a simmer.  Cook for 20 minutes or until the vegetable are soft.

While they are cooking get to work on your ...


Better Thai Burgers

OK.  The recipe is two posts down.  Go there and make the burgers.  Not point is putting it here twice, but basically you put chicken breast with coconut milk and a few other things in a food processor and then fry up the meat into patties.  Here is where it gets REALLY delicious.  You are going to make a quick and delicious...

 Peanut Sauce

1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar or for those trying to eat low carb, Splenda
1/4 teaspoon ground (or freshly minced) ginger
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1/2 cup water.

   

Place everything in a small saucepan and heat over low heat.  At first you will think you did something wrong.  Well, I did.  It seems too thin for peanut sauce. 

   

Heat for about 10 to 15 minutes and it will thicken right up.  Serve over the finished Thai burgers.

   

Sprinkle the cilantro over the burgers with the sauce and the vegetable curry.  If you are lucky your husband will think it is delicious.  Mine did!

Raisins in Gin

I have heard that eating a few raisins in gin every morning is supposed to help with arthritis.  My finger joints are tender and swollen these days so I am going to try it out.  Painting isn't helping.  I woke up with most of my fingers tingling.  The others were numb.  It hurts to make a fist.

   

I went to the local ABC store, because for some reason the state of Virginia prefers to sell alcohol rather than letting grocery stores do that.  The very helpful state of Virginia employee there directed me to the pricier version of gin.  I was going to buy a small bottle of generic gin.  He convinced me that the more expensive version has more juniper berries and therefore was more efficacious.  I wonder if he is on commission?

   

I came home and put the raisins in a Ball jar and covered it with gin.  This morning I fished out 6 raisins.  At this point I should point out that I am not particularly fond of raisins.  If raisins are called for in a recipe, I generally use Craisins.  But as Craisins haven't been touted as having arthritis fighting properties, I had to go with raisins. 

I also am not fond of gin.  I find it worse than drinking Nyquil, mouthwash  or maybe kerosene.  I have no clue why people would drink a martini when there are so many tastier ways of getting your alcohol.

   

I decided to try to choke them down in the middle of my breakfast.  And by breakfast, I mean a giant cup of coffee (or two) and an Atkins bar.  Oh, and some Crystal Light to swallow my morning vitamins. You can't START your breakfast with gin, after all, and I needed a few bites more of the bar to take the taste away.

They tasted really bad.  I hate gin.  It didn't matter about the raisins, because I couldn't taste them.  I had six and I will have six more tomorrow and the day after that.  I will work my way through the whole jar and then reevaluate.  I hope they work, so my hands don't hurt and the swelling goes away.  I hope they don't work so I don't have to keep eating them.

 

 

 

Cauliflower Leek Puree

Lee and I had our Thanksgiving meal more than a week ago. Travis and Vanessa were unable to come, but our girls came and so we had it early. It is jarring when in a grocery store and they are still touting Thanksgiving and shoving turkeys at us. Wasn't that last week??? The good part is that Christmas music doesn't seem all THAT early....

So, while it is Thanksgiving, we didn't want or need a huge carb laden meal. So we decided...wait, that sounds like we had a meeting and figured all this out...I decided to have a turkey breast and use the Cauliflower-Leek Puree recipe from the Atkins web site. It looks rather bland and cauliflower is not my favorite, but Lee likes it and I shouldn't be having potatoes any time soon. So that is what we had with the small edition of peas because it was such a bland white bread appearing meal. Well, there was that whole grain roll with which we indulged.

On the subject of peas, our daughter, Trista tells us that there is a "sauce" called pea wet. It seems that when you prepare Mushy Peas, an English treat, well, food item, there is a greenish foam on top. This is then scooped off and ladled over chips (the English version of french fries). Chips with pea wet sounds disgusting, but never having eaten them, I can't speak from experience. Try it yourself and report back.

Cauliflower-Leek Puree
original recipe from Atkins.com

3 cup cauliflower, separated into florets
1 leek, white and green part
1 tsp salt, divided
3 Tbl butter
3 Tbl heavy cream
1/8 tsp nutmeg

You will get almost 6 cups from one cauliflower, so I made the whole thing. The leeks I bought came in a package of three, so I used all the white parts from the three and a bit of the green.


Cook them in a large pot of lightly salted boiling water for 15 minutes, until very tender.


Drain and return to the pan to remove excess moisture. The recipe call for a food processor to be used to puree this in batches with the butter and cream. I have a hand blender and that is far superior. Just add the butter and salt to the pan and puree until smooth. Then add salt and pepper and a dash of nutmeg. I like to put a dollop of butter on the top to look , well, buttery.


In keeping with a low carb meal, I sliced some strawberries and sprinkled some Splenda on them. Stir and set aside. When ready to serve add a dollop of Cool Whip or a spritz of whipped cream. It looks decadent, yet it isn't!