Chicken Stock, Chicken Soup, and the Forgotten Fuel Pull

One of my favorite foods on the planet is chicken stock.  I'm talking the real thing, and not the cubes or crystals that you stir into hot water.

I mean simmered-for-hours bone broth.  

It is also one of the most nutritious foods on the planet.  There is a reason people eat chicken broth when they have colds.  I have also heard it referred to as Jewish Penicillin.  Many Jewish mothers and grandmothers are masters of bone broth! 

Whenever I can get raw chicken bones, I make a giant vat of the stuff.  But I am going to share a Drive-Through-Sue kitchen hack that makes it easy to whip up this superfood.

Costco Rotisserie Chickens.  I also call them cheater chickens, because I am not starting out with raw birds.  (I used to raise and butcher my own chickens, so you can see how far I have "fallen.")  

They sell these birds for a mere $4.99 each.  (I am not sure that I want to know how.)

Anyway, I usually get a couple at a time, bring them home, and de-bone them, separating the dark and white meat into quart-sized freezer bags.  The skin goes with the dark because of its higher fat content.  These convenient bags of chicken thaw quickly in a dish of hot water when needed.  It is important to label the bags, because when the meat is frozen it pretty much all looks the same.  My bags are labeled D and W.

Meanwhile, all the leftover bones go into a pot on the stove.  I add dehydrated (you can use fresh) carrots, onions, celery, parsley, peppercorns, and then cover everything with water.  I finish with a splash of cider vinegar, which helps draw the minerals out of the bones and into the liquid.  I bring to a boil, reduce to low, and let simmer 12-24 hours.  

When it's done (and cooled a bit), I strain and then freeze in various sized containers.  Silicone muffin pans work great for single-servings.  You can also reduce your chicken stock so that it is concentrated.  It takes up less room in the freezer that way.  Don't forget to add water back in when you use it.

So now we have the foundation for the soup that I made tonight.  It is a creamy and delicious soup that turned out to be a Fuel Pull.  This is a good thing, because I find that before any given meal, my brain always is thinking, "E or S?"  Poor Fuel Pull meal - like the proverbial middle child, it tended to be forgotten at my house.  In fact, confession time:  I had lost most of my weight before I really became aware of the Fuel Pull meal.  Perhaps I would have lost weight faster, had I paid more attention to it!  (No disrespect meant toward middle children - I am one myself).

Anyway, here is the recipe for what I am calling Creamy Provençal Chicken Soup.

1 tablespoon bacon fat or butter

1 medium onion, chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped

1 large carrot, peeled and chopped

1 yellow pepper, chopped (or any color you want)

1 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons Herbs de Provence 

(or just add pinches of tarragon, basil, rosemary, and thyme if you wish)

2 cups diced cooked chicken breast

1 quart chicken stock

8 oz cauliflower rice

3-4 Laughing Cow light cheese wedges (optional)

Salt and pepper

In a saucepan, heat the fat.  Add the vegetables (except garlic) and sautè several minutes, until softened and fragrant.  Add the herbs and garlic and cook another minute or two.

Meanwhile, in another saucepan, combine the chicken stock and cauliflower.  Bring to a boil and cook several minutes to soften the cauliflower.  Add the cheese wedges if using, and carefully puree the mixture in the blender.  If you don't use the cheese, the mixture will still be a thick and creamy consistency.

Pour over the veggies in the pan and add the chicken.  Heat through and adjust seasonings.  Serve with a dollop of nonfat Greek yogurt and chopped peppers, if desired.  Vóilà!  A hearty fuel pull soup!

So creamy and good!

With peppers and Greek yogurt

This soup could be easily made into an S with the addition of shredded cheddar and bacon bits on the top.

Or, make it an E with the addition of cannellini beans and a bit of sweet corn.

Hanging in the Kitchen - Lunch, Bacon, and Almond Milk

After my last post on baking blend, my intent was to bake today.  But my day ended up being an If-You-Give-A-Mouse-A-Cookie kind of day. Because first, I really needed to visit the gym this morning.  I came home hungry and ready for an ooey-gooey S meal.  I needed something quick, and I opened up to page 54 in the Trim Healthy Table Cookbook and saw Deconstructed Stuffed Peppers.

Bingo!  I knew I had peppers in the fridge.

This looks yummy.

The problem was that I had no ground beef (or anything else) thawed.  Well, I never found a recipe I couldn't change.  I went to the freezer and pulled out a little zip bag of cooked dark chicken meat (courtesy of Costco's rotisserie).  I plopped the bag into a bowl of hot water, and a few minutes later I was able to work with it.

Meanwhile, I chopped and then sautéed peppers and onions in bacon fat.  When that was nice and brown, I put those into a square baking dish. To the sauté pan, I added the chicken, which was thawed enough to pull apart and chop.

I then added in some frozen riced cauliflower, salt, pepper, chipotle powder, and a can of diced green chilies to the chicken.  When this mixture was hot and bubbly, I squeezed the juice of a fresh lime over all.  Then I combined the chicken mixture with the onions and peppers in baking dish and and topped it with shredded cheddar.

I popped the dish into a 350 degree oven and baked it for about 20 minutes.  The resulting dish was really nothing like the cookbook recipe, but all I had needed was a photo to get me going.

Behold:  Cheesy Chicken and Peppers

Nonfat Greek yogurt instead of sour cream
adds protein without all the extra fat

Since my oven was hot, I decided to do a little advance prepping.  While the chicken dish was baking, I chopped a Costco-sized package of bacon (3 pounds total) into bite-sized pieces and put them into a rectangle roasting pan.  (I had to thaw the packages in hot water for a few minutes before chopping it up).

Ready for the oven

When lunch came out of the oven,  I reduced the oven temp to 325 degrees and in went the pan of bacon.  The trick with the bacon is to stir occasionally, and more frequently as it reaches doneness.  It can easily burn toward the end.  Set a timer if you need reminders.

When the bacon came out of the oven, I let it cool for a few minutes before draining the fat through a strainer into a pourable container.

This 8-cup Norpro Krona multi pot is one
of my top favorite kitchen utensils.

This is where it gets fun.  I poured the bacon fat into my silicone mini muffin pan and then put the pan in the freezer.

Silicone pans: another kitchen utensil favorite!

Out came solid little discs of bacon fat, which went into a zip bag and back into the freezer. Whenever I want to cook something with bacon fat, I just have to grab a ready-to-go disc.  And if one disc is too much for what I need, they are easily cut in half.

The cooked bacon bits also took up residence in a bag in the freezer, ready to grab whenever I need them.

While the bacon was chilling, I wanted to make one of my Trim Healthy Table cookbook favorites:  Cinnamon Butter Bundt Cake, page 380.  But a quick perusal of the recipe reminded me that I was out of almond milk.

No problem.  Almond milk is so easy to make at home if you have a good blender.  It only lasts a few days though, so I don't make a large quantity at a time.  However, you can make extra and freeze it if you want to.

Throw a handful of almonds into a small bowl (maybe a half cup) and cover with water and let sit about an hour.  If you want a product that is more digestible, add a small spoonful of salt to the water and let sit for seven hours to neutralize the phytates in the nuts.

When your soaking time is up, strain off the water and discard. (Here is the good news.  If you are in a hurry, you don't have to soak the nuts at all).

Throw the nuts into the blender along with about 2 cups fresh water to cover them, and add a shake or two of salt.

Let 'er rip.

Strain.  I like to use a piece of flour sack towel over a strainer, which is over a bowl or pan. You can pick up the cloth by the four corners and squeeze the last bit of almond milk out.   Store the milk in the fridge.

See?  Milking almonds isn't much
 different than milking a cow.

What to do with that leftover almond meal?  For awhile, I saved it, dehydrated it, and made it into almond flour in the blender.  But it just got to be too much, so for now now I compost it.  But I'd love suggestions if you have one!

Now that I have almond milk on hand, it's time to whip up a cake.  But this post is so long already, it will have to wait until the next post.

Traveling THM: Holiday Week Part 3

This is the final post from my week long road trip. I just got home today, and I am looking forward to spending some quality time in my kitchen!

The last several nights of our road trip were spent in hotels that featured breakfast buffets. Since finding  E meals seems to be more challenging in restaurants, I generally go for oatmeal at the hotels to make sure I get those E's in. One day I added cinnamon, and another day I added a small handful of dried blueberries, and always stevia.  Both times, I also ate an Oikos Greek Triple Zero yogurt to get my protein in. Since both meals were nonfat, I added one little serving of half and half to my coffee.

Later that night, lo and behold I was able to find an actual E meal in a restaurant.  It was called Bourbon 'n Toulouse in Lexington. The dish was called Chicken Piquant, a lowfat and delectable cajun chicken stew.  It was served over rice and had bread on the side, both of which I enjoyed in moderation and gave the rest to my hubby.  Since I was in E mode, I actually ordered a rare (for me) beer.

E dinner - Cajun Chicken Piquant!

The next day, I knew I couldn't leave Lexington without just one more trip to the Vinaigrette Salad Kitchen.  This time, it was a BLT salad with added wild salmon and strawberries (I know, sounds weird but it was delicious).  I declined the croutons to keep it in S mode.

S Salad - BLT with Wild Salmon

Side note.  While in Lexington, I stopped at an olive oil and vinegar store where they let customers taste the products.  Those kinds of stores seem to be popping up all over the country (in cities, of course, and not in my little town of 5,000).  I came home and rearranged my kitchen around those oils and vinegars, which will someday soon get their very own blog post. 

Anyway, it was time to head home.  Lunch on the road was a simple E picnic at a rest area.  No lingering.  I still had stops to make while on the road.

E lunch on the go

The last of these stops was Costco, knowing that I was out of vegetables at home.  While there, I picked up my favorite frugal travel food… The amazing Costco chicken Caesar salad for $3.99. You simply cannot beat them for an S meal on the road. And you do not have to be a member to eat at the food court.  I am saving that salad for tomorrow, and I picked one up for my daughter as well.

Travel hack - Costco Chicken Caesar 

You might be wondering why those Oikos Greek yogurts kept popping up throughout my week of travel. They are my latest convenience food discovery, and my daughter’s Costco in Nashville had them on sale. (Oddly enough, they were not on sale at my own Costco, so I’m glad I stocked up).  They are a Fuel Pull food, so they are a great protein option to go with any kind of meal. 

My beloved Oikos

When I travel by car, I usually take my ancient gray cooler and keep a frozen gallon of water in it to keep things cold. And from Sunday to Wednesday, everything I had in my “traveling fridge” stayed cold. I have traveled with that beloved gray cooler for years. When my kids were little, I think they were disappointed to see it, because it meant fewer Culvers and Cracker Barrel stops for them.

I hope you have been able to see that traveling with trim Healthy Mama is quite possible. I have two big travel challenges coming up soon, and they involve an Alaskan cruise and a trip to the Middle East. I am determined to demonstrate that THM can be done in both cases.  Stay tuned!

Traveling THM: Holiday Week Part 2

Here we are at part two of my Holiday Week THM travel log.  We start with Resurrection Sunday morning, which we celebrated together as a family in the living room, with worship and a podcast (we willingly gave up our seats to make room for the Christmas and Easter attenders).

We continued our celebration with a homemade S brunch.  I made mushroom, red pepper, onion, and feta omelettes for the four of us, along with Triple Zero Oikos Greek Yogurt and coffee with cream.

After much discussion, my daughter and her husband decided to have a date in the afternoon, and we grandparents gleefully agreed to babysit!  We took the baby to the park and simply had a marvelous time with her.  Here she is eating her plantain salad:

Plantain the herb, not plantain the banana-like substance

Upon our return from the park, I raided my daughter's fridge in search of leftovers.  Based on the ingredients I found, I scored big:  Southwestern Chicken and Quinoa Salad. Finally, a much-needed E meal!

This one was simple.  In a bowl, I combined cooked chicken meat (left from our previous day's Costco run), cooked quinoa (leftover from a previous day's unsuccessful attempt to feed quinoa cereal to the baby), chopped romaine, chopped red and yellow peppers, and chopped onions.  I then tossed everything with an E dressing.

For the dressing, I located some leftover salsa in a jar, then added the juice of one lime (I always keep fresh limes with me, even when traveling), some cumin, some chipotle powder, and a small sprinkling of stevia.  After tossing the salad, it went on the plates and I decorated them with sliced jalapenos.  It was really yummy!  (Hubby added shredded cheddar to his salad for a crossover.)

Our time with family came to a close, and Sunday night we had to head out to another city so my hubby could work in his territory on Monday while I found things to do, like hike and blog.

En route, we stopped at an Indian restaurant in Elizabethtown, KY.  I ordered Tandoori Chicken Tikka (extra hot), which was an S meal but it arrived with a giant bowl of rice.  My husband ordered a curry lamb shank which arrived with lots of broccoli but no rice.

He loves rice.

I love broccoli.

It was a meal made in heaven once the swap was made.  I kept one small spoonful of rice, just enough to keep me in S mode, and he kept one twig (?) of broccoli.  My sauce was a very spicy tomato and cream sauce.  So good!

Monday morning arrived, and we were now at a hotel.  For breakfast, I enjoyed oatmeal and cinnamon from the hotel's hospitality room, to which I added my own stevia.  For the protein, I added some Greek yogurt from my cooler in the room. (Yes, another thing that I travel with if I am driving and not flying).

The day was gorgeous, so off I went on a lovely hike at a nearby nature center. where I saw all kinds of Kentucky flora and fauna. 

Like this bug

And this deer.  See her?

When I got back to my car after the nearly two hour hike, I was really hungry, and one of my favorite local eating places was 30 minutes away.  Epic (brand, not adjective) Chicken Sesame BBQ bar to the rescue.  I always keep one of these in my purse.  Protein snack on the run.

I arrived at the aforementioned restaurant, which I had discovered the last time I was in Lexington, Kentucky.  Hello Vinaigrette Salad Kitchen - a local chain here.  I ordered the Tuscan Salad (spinach, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, mozzarella cheese, red onion, and roasted red peppers, tossed in a tasty vinaigrette) to which I added a fillet of wild salmon.  I declined the croutons, so my astute server asked if I'd like some sunflower seeds instead.  Indeed.  A great way to garnish this S salad.

That drink you see there is an unsweetened lemon hibiscus mixture that they were offering.  Once again, out came my own stevia.

There are still a couple of days left of this trip as we make our way home to join our other daughter there.  So there just might be a part three, you never know.

Update: Yup, there is a part three.  Click here to see how I wrapped up my holiday week of travel.

Traveling THM: Holiday Week Part 1

My last post was written as we headed out for a week of holiday travel.  Now it is five days into the trip, so I thought I'd give an update on my THM traveling adventures.

It IS possible to stay on plan while traveling.  Here are some situations that I have encountered so far.

On Friday, my son-in-law had to work, so we decided to dine at the fancy restaurant where he is a server.  I ordered probably the fanciest chicken salad I have ever had in my life.  My S-mode Caper Tarragon Aioli Chicken Salad came with romaine, red pepper sauce (the little orange blobs in the picture), pickled winter squash, and topped with Louisiana red onion relish.  The menu failed to mention the potato chips, so my hubby was happy to take them.  All but one...  yes, I ate one.  It was probably not even enough to make this meal a crossover.

When your chicken salad belongs in a museum of art

Later that evening, we headed to a Passover Seder.  I can honestly say that this was my one cheat meal of the week.  Had I chosen to say no to the macaroons and the Nutella mousse, I could have kept it in crossover mode with the lamb kebabs, apple charoset, matzah, and wine.  But the beautiful thing is that cheat meals are a part of this lifestyle!  The frequency with which we enjoy them has a direct correlation to the time it takes to remove (or keep off) the pounds.  So I make them rare.  It was a special occasion and I enjoyed every minute of it.

A beautiful Passover celebration!

The next morning, we took the kids to a coffee shop for brunch.  Breakfast and brunch can be a challenge, because they are usually filled with carbs, carbs, carbs.  So I ordered a smoked salmon platter that came with four half-slices of marble rye bread.  I kept only one half slice, and my obliging husband took the other three.  This kept me in S mode, as that half slice had around 7 carbs (you want to try and stay under 10 in S mode, although the plan recommends not obsessing about numbers).  It too was a pretty plate.  Aren't big cities fun?  The restaurants in my own small town just don't offer this kind of food!

Brunchy goodness!

After brunch my daughter and I headed out for a shopping trip.  Upon our return to her house, we whipped up a fabulous meal of Spaghetti Squash Casserole before settling down to a raucous game of Settlers of Catan.  Ohh, it was a gooey, yummy S meal!

Here is the recipe:

One spaghetti squash, halved, de-seeded, and baked in the oven for about an hour or until soft (or seven minutes in the InstaPot!)  Allow to cool till handle-able.

Meanwhile, make your sauce:

1 lb Italian sausage (or your favorite ground meat), browned and drained

1 jar marinara sauce with no sugar added

Let simmer.

Meanwhile number two, prepare the filling:

8 oz cream cheese (or reduced fat neufchatel)

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp Italian herb blend

Combine well in a bowl.

Now go back to your cooked squash.  Using a fork, remove all the stringy squashy goodness and spread half of it into a 9x13 pan.

Top with half the meat sauce and then all of the cream cheese mixture.

Add the remaining squash, then the remaining meat sauce, and sprinkle two cups mozzarella over the top of all.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until cheese is melted and bubbly. Enjoy with your favorite tossed salad.

It has been an S-heavy weekend so far.  In part 2 of this traveling log, watch for some much-needed E choices.  Click here if you'd like to read it.

Out for Dinner: Amish Style Cafe

We are off and traveling again, and today’s schedule includes 10 hours in the car. Here is how I THM’d my way through the flatlands of Illinois.

Breakfast was a clean-out-the-fridge-because-we-are-leaving event... I ate my my last Oikos Triple Zero. If I hadn’t been rushing around so much, I would have turned this FP breakfast into an E with some chopped apples, cinnamon, and THM granola.

(Note to self: stop at Costco on the way home).

After about three hours in the car, it was time to de-stress with a snack after driving through a wicked Chicago rainstorm.

Cue heavenly music here:

Oh, how I love these marvels of cuisine!

Hubby and I split one of these delectable snack sticks, which I get from my Costco. These natural beauties contain no toxic junk. And a whole stick has 14 grams of protein, 1 gram of carb, and 6 grams of fat, which makes one stick an S snack, (but barely -only one gram of fat above FP mode!) 

So a half stick was a perfect FP snack! We didn’t even feel hungry until around 2 pm.

The problem with that is, at 2pm, we were deep in Flat Little-Town-ville, Illinois.  Restaurants were few and far between. 

After spending some quality time with Google maps, hubby found a little Amish diner in Tuscola, Illinois.

Bingo.

We were greeted with music by K-LOVE. And clean bathrooms. And an S salad that was so good it made me commit a blogging faux pax: I forgot to photograph the beautiful salad!

Obviously, it was good.  

Oops. So let me describe it.

Fresh spinach, red onion, Swiss cheese, hard boiled egg, bacon, and blue cheese dressing. Hold the croutons.

To accompany this lunch, I broke my own personal rule of no coffee after 2 pm. Hazelnut cream coffee with half and half and vanilla stevia. Mmmm.

We are back in the car now and I am still sipping the warm deliciousness. 

And if I cannot sleep tonight, I will only have myself to blame.  But at least there will be a cute granddaughter at the end of the journey to cuddle!

Gratuitous granddaughter photo

Out for Dinner: Mexican Style

This is my first post on venturing out for meals.  I hope to eventually share with you how to navigate any kind of restaurant or special occasion, so I am starting with one of my most frequent dining-out experiences - Mexican.  It was also my first out-to-dinner challenge in the Trim Healthy Mama lifestyle, so it makes sense for me to start south of the border, culinarily speaking.

It doesn't hurt that my little town has a great Mexican restaurant.  Hola to mi amigo, Don Ramon!

It does not take long for the first challenge to show up.  The server delivers chips and salsa to your table.  If I had better self control, I would allow myself one or two of the salt-glistening triangles, but alas, I have a hard time stopping at two, so I need other options.  Here are some tips:

1.  Ask your server if you could possibly get some cucumber, pepper, or other veggie slices instead.  If they will accommodate you, then dip and eat to your heart's content.

2.  Alas, the last time I asked, my hometown restaurant did not do this.  (I need to ask again.)  So with permission from my table mates to double-dip, I take my fork and eat salsa right from the bowl.  If my table mates are opposed to that (or it wouldn't be appropriate to ask, depending on who is at your table), ask your server for your own bowl of salsa.  Enjoy!

3.  Before leaving home, sneak some of your favorite sliced veggies into a zip bag and tuck it into your purse.  Dip away when that salsa comes.

Ok, now that we have not allowed the chips to sabotage us, let's move to the main meal.  When doing Mexican, I nearly always stick with S, even though most meals seem to come with rice, beans, and tortillas.  Last night, I ordered a steak salad off their menu (with Caesar dressing), which was delicious, filling, and had NO starchy accompaniments.  Sometimes salads come in a fried tortilla bowl, which you can decline.

This was my marvelous S meal last night.

Another of my Mexican restaurant standards is fajitas.  I tell them to skip the rice and tortillas, and then I request a few extra grilled veggies instead.   I do accept the refried beans, but I only eat a small amount of them.  And don't forget the guacamole, which is probably my main reason for going S.

Lastly, beverages.

I usually stick to ice water with lemon slices (as seen in the photo above), and then I add liquid stevia drops from the bottle that is always in my purse.  Refreshing and calorie-free lemonade!  You can also order unsweetened iced tea and doctor it up the same way.

Skip the margarita, which is a blood sugar travesty.  BUT, if you are really craving one, then make this in your blender and enjoy before you go or when you come home:

THM Strawberry "Margarita"

1 cup frozen strawberries

Juice of one lime

1-2 doonks stevia to taste

About a cup of water

Let 'er rip until blended and enjoy.  This drink is even more delicious if you use kombucha instead of water, but that is best enjoyed in an E setting.  You could use 1/2 cup kombucha if you plan to go S.

Strawberry Kombucharita

So how to do an E, Mexican style?  I find it a little harder, but it is not impossible.  I could order that same salad, only with chicken, and no dressing.  Ask for more salsa to use as your dressing, or squeeze some lemon or lime slices over it.  You could then also have some rice and beans in moderation.  But be careful - refried beans are a great hiding spot for fat.  You could ask for whole black beans instead.

See, that was totally doable!  

I have a very large challenge coming up in several weeks - an Alaskan cruise. So stay tuned to see if I can rise to the occasion!

Why Did the Tomato Turn Red?

Because it saw the salad dressing.

Funny or not funny?

Ok, kindergarten humor aside, I want to show you today how truly simple it is to make your own salad dressings.  And you only need the culinary ability of a child to make it happen.

Many years ago when I was in culinary school, one of our teachers, French of course, said that no self-respecting French woman would EVER buy bottled salad dressing.   I know that this sounds terribly snobbish, but seriously - salad dressings are so simple to make, and the bottled stuff usually contains ingredients that are not in favor of your health.

The most basic of all dressings includes two things:

Oil
Acid

That's it!  From there, the sky is the limit!

First, the oil.  For salad dressing, my go-to is Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  Another great THM option is MCT oil, which is a coconut oil-based liquid fat with concentrated amounts of medium chain triglycerides - thus the MCT.  It is neutral in taste; it does not taste like coconuts.  And the plan allows you 2 teaspoons of MCT in an E context, instead of one.

There are other liquid oils that you can use, but make sure they are cold-pressed so that you know they are not heat-damaged.  Those pristine vegetables oils that you see in the grocery store are probably terribly rancid, but you'd never know it because of the refining and bleaching process they go through.

Next up - the acid.  Here's where your dressing gets its zing!

Here is my long list of personal favorites:

• Fresh lemon juice (bottled is ok, but fresh is so much better)
• Fresh ime juice
• Red wine vinegar
• Apple cider vinegar
• Rice wine vinegar
• Balsamic vinegar - which has its own list of subcategories.  Currently in my cupboard, I have:
• 18-year aged balsamic
• Fig balsamic
• Cranberry pear white balsamic
• Espresso balsamic
• Plain old balsamic

So already you can see the many possible combinations, and this is just for a simple 2-ingredient vinaigrette made with oil and acid!

The classic formula is 3 parts oil to 1 part acid.  But on THM, it is easy to change that up depending on what meal mode you are in. In S mode, I tend to go 50-50.  I will wrap up this post with an E mode trick below.

(Notice the absence of white distilled vinegar from my list.  That same snobby French culinary teacher impressed upon us that the best use of distilled white vinegar was for washing windows.)

So moving on, things get really exciting when we add a third ingredient category:  flavorings!  This is where you can get as creative as you want!  Here is a list of ideas to get you going:

• Dijon mustard
• Fresh garlic
• Fresh or dried herbs
• Spices
• Crushed red pepper
• Poppy seeds
• Stevia (for sweeter dressings)
• Extracts
• Essential oils (go easy)
• Lemon, lime, or orange zest
• Anchovy paste
• Horseradish
• Wasabi
• Soy sauce

In the mood for an asian-inspired salad?  Try this combo

(Measurements are approximate since I don't usually measure much when I cook):

1 T. olive oil

1 tsp sesame oil (optional)

1 T. lime juice

1/2 tsp garlic powder or small amount of chopped fresh garlic

1/2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp soy sauce

1 doonk pure stevia (or your favorite stevia blend equal to about a teaspoon of sugar)

Whisk together.  Toss together with a bowl of leafy greens, chilled chicken meat with skin, chopped non-starchy veggies such as cabbage, peppers, cucumbers; carrots in moderation, etc; and garnish with chopped almonds.  You have a delicious S lunch that might look something like this:

This past weekend, I made an E salad for an event.  I've named it Spring Quinoa Salad.  The body of the salad was cooked-then-chilled quinoa, asparagus (blanched for a minute and then chilled quickly in ice water), frozen peas (thawed), chopped green onions, and chopped fresh mint.  The dressing ended up with no oil in it at all!

Here are the approximate amounts for a single serving:

Juice of one lemon

Zest of that same lemon

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

I small clove fresh garlic,chopped 

1 doonk stevia 

1/2 tsp dried thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

I was going to add oil to the dressing, but it tasted so good when the salad was all tossed together that I left it out.  And because there was no fat in this recipe, I garnished the top with a sprinkle of feta cheese, just enough to keep the salad in E mode.

Spring Quinoa Salad

So let's talk about creamy dressings now.  You can do all sorts of emulsifying gymnastics with eggs and your food processor, but I know that is not realistic for most of us (including me).   

When I make creamy salad dressings, I start with a good quality mayonnaise.  But then I add the same amount of zero fat Greek yogurt.  This cuts down on the fat load while adding protein to the dressing.  Then you can continue with the list of flavorings.  

This is a great base for green goddess dressing.  Combine your favorite fresh herbs with the mayo/yogurt combo in your blender, adding a splash of your favorite vinegar and salt and pepper to taste.

My personal creamy dressing favorite is Caesar:

1 T each mayo and Greek yogurt

Juice of half a lemon

1 generous squeeze anchovy paste (or 1 chopped anchovy)

1 small garlic clove, chopped

Fresh cracked pepper

Whisk everything together and toss with chopped romaine and parmesan cheese.  You can easily add chicken or salmon to this S salad for your protein. 

Keep in mind that these creamy dressings with the mayo/Greek yogurt blend are S mode dressings.  You can use all Greek yogurt plus your teaspoon of fat if you want to keep them in E mode.

Let me wrap up with my favorite helpful hint for tasty E salads. 

Put all your greens and chopped veggies into a big bowl.  Add a teaspoon of olive oil (or 2 teaspoons of MCT oil, which is allowed in E mode).  Get in there with your (clean) hands and mix until everything is lightly coated with the oil.  Combine your acid and flavorings in a dish, and then toss into your salad. 

Fear not!  Get in there and spread the joy (I mean the oil) around.

Don't forget to actually add your E ingredient to your salad, such as mango, pineapple, oranges, apples, black beans, quinoa, and so on, as well as your lean protein. 

How does this sound?  (I'm making it up as I type)

Mixed leafy greens
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Peppers (as hot as you want them)
Chopped cilantro (unless you hate it, but it's great for pulling out heavy metals from your system)
Toss and coat the above in your teaspoon of olive oil.

Then add:
1/2 cup black Beans
1/2 cup chopped mango
Lean chicken breast

Dressing:
Lime juice
Lime zest
Garlic as desired
Sprinkle of cumin
Splash of Franks or other hot sauce
Doonk of stevia

Toss together.  Enjoy.  Dang, this sounds good.  I think I will make it tomorrow.

Meals on the Fly!

The past two days for me have been crazy.  I have been preparing for a Passover Seder event taking place at my congregation this weekend, and I am getting ready to feed over 70 guests.  I didn't have much time to plan my THM meals, so this post is how I did THM on the fly for two days.

Yesterday was pretty simple.  One of the dishes I was working on for this coming weekend is French Lentil and Lamb Stew.  I tasted as I tweaked.  Lunch - done. I  know... it's better to sit down and enjoy your meal without distractions.  But sometimes, life happens.

The Lentil Stew recipe, minus the lamb, is from Ina Garten, and you can click here for it.  I reduced the amount of olive oil to keep this dish in E territory.  I absolutely love this stew.  It is also a great vegetarian option if you use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock in the recipe.

And can I point out that French lentils are earthy, green, and delicious?  I think they are my new favorite legume.  And one serving (1/4 cup uncooked, or about 3/4 to one cup cooked) provides 9 grams of protein! 

French Green Lentils

Because I like to serve lamb at Passover, I added the meat from lamb shanks that I had braised the day before, to Ina's recipe.  This puts the dish into crossover territory since lamb isn't exactly a lean protein, but I did try to remove as much fat as I could.  I am really thrilled at how this dish turned out.  I just hope that the people from my small Midwestern town concur.

Dinner last night ended up being Italian Quinoa soup, because one of the salads for my weekend event includes it, and I had just cooked a metric ton of it.  I threw some chicken stock, onions, canned tomatoes, lowfat chicken Italian sausage (Costco, have I told you lately that I love you?), quinoa, and Italian seasonings into a pan on the stove.  E dinner - done. 

Three hours later, I was hungry again, so I ate a delicious piece of S chocolate cake that was in my fridge.  Because I could.  THM Chocolate Zucchini Trimtastic cake. 

This morning had me hitting the ground running.  My FP  breakfast was coffee with just a splash of cream and stevia, and a Triple Zero Vanilla Oikos Yogurt (another shout-out to my bae, Costco). 

I paused from my food prep mayhem to make some THM egg salad for lunch.  My hubby was hungry and he loves egg salad.  Costco to the rescue once again!  I always keep their organic hard boiled eggs in my fridge, so out came six of them. Three packages of two.  I chopped them up along with some celery and some fresh jalapenos, and I made a quick dressing of Greek yogurt,  mayo, and dijon mustard.  Normally I add a splash of fresh lime juice and a tiny bit of stevia to the dressing, but I just didn't have the time today. Hubby made a sandwich with it with his off-plan bread, and I chopped up some romaine and tossed it all together and made myself a salad with it.  Here's where I brought out a fresh lime... squeezed it all over my plate.  Along with a berry and Greek yogurt smoothie, this was a yummy S lunch.

Egg Salad Salad

Dinnertime arrived.  Food prep was done for my weekend event with the exception of one salad that I will make tomorrow morning (some call it Israeli Salad; I call it Bob and Larry Salad - tomatoes and cucumbers).

Some will get the humor.  Others will not.

Sigh, what to make for dinner tonight?  I had no protein thawed. My adult daughter had some cooked spaghetti noodles languishing in the fridge that she was not going to use.  I don't often eat pasta, but I hate wasting food.  So I heated the noodles in the oven, and  meanwhile made a quick sauce by sauteeing onions, peppers, and mushrooms in a small amount of butter.  I added a can of tomato paste, water, some chopped garlic, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, a doonk of stevia, and a splash of red wine and let it all simmer.

Here is how I got my protein in:  I put a moderate amount of hot noodles on my plate.  I topped the noodles with some lowfat cottage cheese, and then spooned the sauce over that, topping my plate with a garnish amount of parmesan cheese.  It was pretty much the laziest lasagna ever.

Along with my Friday night Sabbath glass of red wine, this E meal was simply bliss.  It's time to enjoy a night of rest and cribbage with the neighbors. 

THM Blueberry Pancakes and a Miracle Ingredient

I've been excited to write this post about one of my favorites - on-plan pancakes!

This past Monday morning, I was just coming off a very S-heavy weekend.

(S means Satisfying... a meal that includes lots of good proteins and fats but very little carbohydrates.  If you are not familiar with THM, you may click here for the start of a series of seven posts that explain the basics of the Trim Healthy Mama lifestyle).

Anyway, I knew I needed to give my metabolism some good carbs.  And boy do these pancakes do the trick!

They are so easy to make!  I prepare a large batch of them and freeze single-serve portions in zip bags in the freezer. First I will share the pancake recipe, and then further down I will talk about the delicious blueberry compote and the miracle ingredient that made it possible.

2 cups regular rolled oats
2 cups egg whites  (See note below)
2 cups cottage cheese or  Greek yogurt
1/2 cup sweetener equal to sugar (I use 2 tablespoons of THM Sweet Blend which is 4x sweeter than sugar)
2 t. vanilla
4 t. baking powder

Put the oats into a blender and blend until they become a powder.  Add remaining ingredients and blend away, scraping sides and blending as needed.  Allow batter to sit a few minutes to thicken up.

Coat a non-stick or cast iron pan with coconut oil spray.  (I brush the bottom of my cast iron griddle pan ever-so-lightly with a stick of butter, which keeps the fat quantity at or under a teaspoon per serving).  Ladle batter onto a hot pan and cook until bubbly, about 3 minutes.  Flip and cook the other side another minute or two.  This batch makes 6-8 servings.

These pancakes are delicious and high protein.  And there are lots of great ways to top them in a blood sugar-friendly way.  I will mention a few, but first a note on egg whites.

Egg whites are such a versatile lean protein. I buy six cartons at a time and freeze what I am not using.  I always try to keep a carton thawing or ready in my fridge. 

Okay, back to the pancakes.  You can simply top them with fresh fruit of your choice.  Or you could combine an on-plan sweetener blend and cinnamon and sprinkle on top.  I always keep a shaker of sweet cinnamon in my cupboard.

But this week, I went all out with blueberries.  Last summer, I visited my sister in Michigan, picked a gallon of those amazing little wild things, and froze them.  I had been hoarding them, but when I recently discovered that my husband has been eating them, I knew I needed to dig in or he'd eat them all!

Before I give the recipe for the blueberry compote, I want to talk about a fantastic ingredient - glucomannan.  It is a powder made from the konjac root, which is native to Asia.  It is a non-starchy thickener that won't thicken your waistline.  In addition, it has other health benefits, and if you'd like to know more about them, click here to read what Dr. Axe says about it.

You can easily find glucomannan in supplement form, but THM sells a powder version of it which is easier for cooking.  Like my cinnamon sweetener, I keep my "gluccie" in a shaker.

It only takes a little to thicken a sauce.  Also, there is a delayed reaction in the thickening action comparted to cornstarch, so there is a learning curve to working with it.  Unlike starch, which causes thickening at the boil, gluccie causes things to thicken up as they start cooling down.  And a little bit goes a long way!

So here is how I made the blueberry compote:

1 cup blueberries

1 splash lime juice

Sugar blend equal to 3-4 teaspoons regular sugar (I used a teaspoon of blend 4x sweeter than sugar)

1/2 cup water

A small sprinkling of gluccie (maybe 1/8 to 1/4 of a teaspoon)

Combine first four ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil.  Sprinkle lightly with gluccie and stir/whisk like mad to avoid any clumps.  Cook a minute or two and remove from heat.

Delicious!  Pour generously over your pancakes and enjoy this magnificent breakfast!

Using the same thickener, you can also make a pancake syrup:

1 cup water

Sugar blend equal to 5 tablespoons sugar

1/2 t. maple syrup

1.2 t. butter extract

Pinch mineral salt

Optional:  small blob of molassas for color

1/4 tsp glucomannan

In small pan, combine all ingredients except glucomannan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and sprinkle in the gluccie, whisking constantly.  Let simmer for a couple minutes.  It will thicken more as it cools. Store extra in the fridge for up to a week.

Don't feel bad if you over-thicken this syrup.  I often do.  Like I said, there is a learning curve to working with glucomannan.  Simply reheat it, and add a little hot water if desired to thin it out.  

You can also substitute xanthan gum for the gluccie in this recipe, but I have never tried it myself.