Lotsa Latkes! Happy Hanukkah!

Just a quick post here to share how I made on-plan latkes tonight.  It was the first night of Hanukkah, and since we have travel coming up this week, tonight was the night.  I seasoned them two different ways, and both types turned out fantastically!



I made them with sweet potatoes and yellow summer squash - completely on plan and barely a crossover!  Let me share the recipe as best as I remember, because I totally winged these.  I used the fine shredder blade on my food processor for the veggies.

Ingredients
3 small/medium sweet potatoes, peeled and finely shredded
Mineral salt
1 small onion, finely shredded
1 cup egg white
1/2 to 3/4 cup baking blend (honestly, I didn't measure)
Seasonings (see below)

In a bowl, combine shredded sweet potato and squash, salt generously, and combine well.  Let sit a few minutes, dump the mixture into a towel, and squeeze out all the liquid (I was amazed at how much came out!).  Return mixture to bowl, season with pepper, and add the shredded onion.  I drained off most of the onion juice but kept some of the liquid in for flavor.

Now, divide the mixture in two.  To the first mixture, I seasoned it with a clove of minced garlic, along with thyme and Herbs de Provence (because this is what I had in my cupboard - you can use whatever herbs you want).  I used a large cookie scoop to portion out my latkes and formed them into balls and flattened them.  I fried this batch of latkes in a combination of refined coconut oil and olive oil (for taste and for the spirit of Hanukkah, during which a small amount of oil is said to have lasted eight days.  Normally I do not cook with olive oil, and you don't have to.)

Keep these warm on a plate in the oven while you work on the second batch.

I went Indian flavors with the second batch.  I added a combination of vindaloo spice and garam masala (they are nearly the same thing but vindaloo has heat to it). You could use your favorite curry powder instead if you want.

I fried this batch in straight up coconut oil.  This entire recipe made 30 latkes that were about the size of sand dollars.  I ate four of them, which adds up to less than a half a sweet potato.  I call this a crossover because these latkes like to absorb oil, and my oil use was generous.  I served them with tenderloin steaks and mushrooms fried in butter.

My hubby asked for applesauce, so I ran down to my root cellar and fetched a jar of Mother Fletcher's Homemade Applesauce (that I canned about five years ago. Shows how much I eat applesauce).  I took a small spoonful myself for dipping.  My, my, these were simply delicious!

Happy Feast of Dedication/Hanukkah/Festival of Lights!

Fooled Ya Frittata!

Once again I find myself in the position of getting ready to head out of town, and needing to clean out my fridge in order to eliminate waste.

Before bed last night, I noticed a carton of egg whites that was about 1/4 full.  And my veggie drawer was filled with garden goodies.  With these things fresh in my head, I believe I dreamed of preparing this morning’s Fuel Pull Frittata.

For the frittata, I chopped up onion, jalapeno, zucchini, garlic, and okra and sauteed them in a teaspoon of butter in my cast iron pan, seasoning all with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, I added a little scoop of turmeric to the carton of egg whites, and shook the carton like mad.  When the veggies were nice and softened, I poured the now-yellow egg whites over all the veggies.  After a nice crust formed on the bottom of the pan, I finished the frittata in the oven. 

Frittata with inflammation-fighting turmeric

Out popped a golden yellow egg and veggie dish, which I admit was a little bland upon first taste.  So I sprinkled it with Parmesan cheese, nutritional yeast, Italian herb seasoning, and a little more salt and pepper.  Yum! Much better!

Fuel Pull Frittata

This frittata can be tweaked in so many ways. Use whatever veggies you'd like!  Add some feta, kalamata olives, pepperoncini, and sun dried tomatoes for a Greek style S frittata.  Throw in some salsa, black beans, corn, and taco seasoning for a south of the border E frittata.

To keep this breakfast in Fuel Pull mode this morning, I topped off my brunch with a Triple Berry Triple Zero Greek yogurt.

And now for a travel tip:  I filled the empty egg white carton about 7/8 full and threw it into the freezer. I did the same with an empty coconut milk box.  Voilà! Handy disposable ice packs for my cooler while traveling! 

These egg whites freeze well. 
I buy a case at a time and thaw as needed.

Welcoming Fall with Versatile Chili

All pumpkin spice hype aside, nothing says fall to me like a warm vat of chili. (Confession: I threw some frozen pumpkin into a batch of chili last week to use it up. But not today).

I love how the onset of fall also happens to yield a plethora of chili ingredients from the garden. 

Coincidence? I think not.

Today, I needed to use up a bunch of produce before leaving for our vacation in a few days. I came up with a great fuel pull chili that you can easily make into an E or S meal, as described below, following the main recipe.

This recipe is flexible depending on what you have on hand. What follows is what I threw into my electric pressure cooker.

Garden Veggie Chili
1onion, chopped

6-8 assorted peppers, chopped (you choose the heat)

4-6 medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped 

2-3 garlic cloves, minced

1 6-oz can tomato paste

1 pound lean venison or turkey (ground or cut into small stew meat)

1-2 T. chili powder

2 t. cumin

1 t. mineral salt

1/2 t. black pepper 

*1 cup kombucha (optional)

*1 cup water (or 2 if not using kombucha)
*See note below

Ready to zap!

Cook in your pressure cooker using the stew setting. Allow to de-pressurize naturally. Taste and adjust seasonings.  I added a doonk of stevia at the end to balance the acidity.

Enjoy as is, or add a nice dollop of nonfat Greek yogurt and some chopped jalapeños. At this point, the chili is still in fuel pull mode.

*Note:  My chili turned out a bit runny, but I was ok with it.  For a thicker chili, reduce liquid to 1 to 1 1/2 cups.

You can keep this fuel pull chili in your fridge, and doctor it up depending on your mood.

For a yummy E chili, add black beans and/or frozen corn to the above and heat through.

For a rich S chili, use beef instead of turkey or venison if desired, and top with sour cream (or stick with the yogurt) and shredded cheddar. 

My second bowl of S chili

If you don’t have a pressure cooker, this can easily simmer in your crock pot all day.

Happy fall!

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie... in Reverse (How My Morning Was Hijacked)

I love those childhood stories where one thing leads to another.  The mouse and the cookie.  The moose and the muffin.  They really capture how my mind works!

Except this past weekend, I had the reverse happen to me.  Let me 'splain.

Saturday morning, I woke up with the intent of making my weekly batch of Trim Healthy Mama E pancakes.  (These are my favorite way of getting my E meals in, by the way.)

My carton of egg whites were thawed and ready.  My oats were ready to grind.  My brain was awakened  by coffee.  Let's go!

Ahhhhh!  I was out of cottage cheese... the one thing that I had forgotten in my previous day's Costco run.

So, if you take from a mouse her cottage cheese, and said mouse really needed to come up with an E meal, our mouse decided to make granola!

And if mouse is making E granola, why not come up with S granola at the same time? So with a little help from Pinterest, I was off and running.

My pancake morning morphed into a granola morning.  So let me share my recipes, which you can tweak to your heart's content.  Both recipes contain egg white, adding that protein element.

Oatmeal Cookie Granola  (THM E)
3 cups old fashioned oats
3/4 cup egg whites (or 3 egg whites)
1/2 cup THM Gentle Sweet (or your favorite on-plan sweetener that is double the sweetness of sugar)
1 T. melted butter or coconut oil (I did half of each)
1 t. vanilla
1 t. baking soda
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. mineral salt

Mix all ingredients well. Spread onto  a large cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Nuttty Granola (THM S)
1 cup almonds
1 cup hazelnuts
1 cup pecans
1 cup flaked coconut
1 cup flax meal
3/4 cup egg whites (or 3 egg whites)
1/2 cup Gentle Sweet (see note above)
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 t. mineral salt

In food processor, pulse the harder nuts (almonds and hazelnuts, in this case) until well-broken up.  Add pecans and coconut, pulse further until nice and crumbly.  Pour into a bowl, add remaining ingredients, and mix well.  Spread onto a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 20-25 minutes, stirring often.

Because these recipes include egg white, I am refrigerating my granola in glass jars, labeled E and S.

E on left, S on right

The next thing I had to do in the kitchen was make something for the church picnic that was happening the following day.  My intention was to make the Trimtastic Holiday Pumpkin Roll (Trim Healthy Table, page 393).  I even had my shredded yellow summer squash ready to go for it.  But then something changed in my brain (I'm not sure what), and I decided to make my favorite pre-THM cookie recipe instead:  molasses spice cookies, which I Trim-Healthy-Mama-fied.  Here is the result of my efforts.

Molasses Spice Cookies (THM S)
3/4 cup coconut oil
*1/2 cup Gentle Sweet (or sweetener that is 2x sugar sweetness)
1 egg and 1 egg white (or just use 2 eggs)
2 T. molassas
2 doonks pure stevia
**1 1/2 cups THM baking blend
2 t. baking soda
1 T. gelatin
***1 t. cinnamon
***1/2 t. each of cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and mineral salt

Melt oil and cool slightly.  Add sweetener, egg, and molassas and whisk well.
Meanwhile, combine remaining ingredients in a medium bowl.  Add wet ingredients and mix well.  Form balls, roll in a little bowl of Gentle Sweet, and press them down slightly onto a baking mat or parchment.  Bake at 375 for 9-10 minutes.

* For a homemade Gentle Sweet recipe, click here.

** For a homemade baking blend recipe, click here.

***I love these cookies so much that I mix up a batch of the spice blend, and use 1 tablespoon of it for this recipe.  Two parts cinnamon, and one part each of cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and salt.

These cookies were Left Behind and never made it to the church picnic.

(O the rebel in me - I was assigned a side dish, but one does not simply go to a church function that contains no dessert that one can eat.  So my side dish was cookies.)

Another note about those cookies - the molasses.  Molasses contains about 15 grams of carbs per tablespoon.  Used mostly for color in this recipe, which makes about 15-17 good-sized cookies, the molasses only adds just under 2 carbs per cookie.

And one more note (the last, I promise) on these cookies.  My friend Vicky suggested adding gelatin to my recipe, and it worked wonders!  It made the cookies soft, chewy, and not as crumbly as my original recipe.  The only other change I made to the recipe was to add the egg white, because the addition of the gelatin made the dough a little too dry.

I know you are thinking, "but what about your thawed summer squash?"  Or maybe you were so enthralled by the spice cookies that you have forgotten  all about it.  But I had to deal with the thawed stuff, so I squeezed out the water, threw in some baking blend, salt, pepper, Trader Joe's 21 Spice Salute, salt, pepper, and egg whites.  Then I made little patties/blobs and fried them in some butter and coconut oil for a delicious S lunch side dish - Fritters!  They were delicious and even my hubby loved them.

My veggie-heavy garden season lunch.  Fritters are on the left.

Pizza and other Italian Delectables

The other night, I was hungry for the flavors of Italy and it was getting late.  So I ventured over to Pinterest to find a low-carb pizza that I could throw together quickly for dinner.  I found several pins that seemed to fit the bill, so in my usual manner, I morphed together several ideas into my own recipe.

For the crust, I combined 2 cups shredded mozzarella, 1 cup shredded cheddar, and three eggs.  (The next time I make this, I am going to reduce the fat content by using 3/4 cup egg whites instead of whole eggs.)

After combining well, I spread the mixture thinly and evenly into a rectangle on a sheet pan that was lined with a silicone baking mat. It baked for 10 minutes at 450 degrees.  When done, I allowed it to cool a bit.  You can also use parchment paper, but keep the temp at or below 425 degrees.

While it was baking, I prepared my other ingredients.  Since they wouldn't be in the oven long, it was best to pre-cook them.  I cooked up some bulk Italian sausage, zucchini noodles, onions, and peppers, which I then sprinkled onto the slightly cooled crust.  My daughter is going through a vegetarian phase, so her half didn't get any sausage.  Her loss. I didn't even use tomato sauce for this pizza (because I didn't have any on hand), but of course, you can.  I added thin slices of fresh tomatoes instead. I sprinkled a little more mozzarella over the toppings, and put under the broiler for about 2-3 minutes.

Look at this thing! A delicious S pizza!

As my daughter was eating it, she told me that it tasted better than any of the junk food she could get at our local convenience store.

Um, thanks - I think.

The following day, I had some leftover cooked sausage, so for lunch I sauteed some peppers and onions, added the sausage to reheat, threw in some chopped fresh basil from my garden, and then topped this concoction with mozzarella cheese.  Into a 375 degree oven went my pan until the cheese was all melty.  My side dish was a salad of halved cherry tomatoes that I sprinkled with balsamic vinegar and basil. 

Delicious and filling! It was like having an Italian sausage with peppers and onions at Boston’s Fenway Park, only without the bun. 

Buon appetito!

*Update: The crust made with cheese and egg whites turned out beautifully!

Summertime Salads and Berries

Ahh, summertime!  I eat salads all year, but the ingredients that are available in the summer are just so fresh-tasting!  I have a small garden right outside my house, so I take advantage of that as much as possible.  I am also a member of a CSA and get fresh veggies every other week.  And I also have a neighbor who is more than generous with her sizable garden.

Salads are easy to throw together.  Today, I want to share with you a few of my recent inspirations.  (For more salad and salad dressing ideas, you can view a previous post here.)

First up:  BLT salad with Caesar dressing.  This S salad consists of mixed greens, tomatoes, turkey bacon, parmesan, and homemade Caesar dressing (recipe in the above link).

BLT Salad

Here is another quick salad I came up with when I was particularly hungry - an S Greek salad.  It contains chopped romaine, cucumbers, yellow peppers, roasted red peppers, green olives, pepperoncini, sun-dried tomatoes, chicken breast, and then sprinkled with feta.  My Greek salad dressing contains red wine vinegar, olive oil, black olive tapenade (because I had some in my fridge), fresh minced garlic, a smidgen of Dijon, and cracked black pepper.

Hearty Greek Salad

Right now, strawberries are in season near me. Berries can brighten up many a salad!!  The following salad luncheon (S) contains some of that leftover Greek salad, along with a sweet and sour spinach, strawberry, and cashew salad. For the dressing, I simply combined lime juice, stevia, and olive oil.  (Keep reading for information on that smoothie in the photo).

Colorful Salad Lunch

This next yummy salad came about last night, when I arrived home at 9:20 pm after an evening of Uber driving.  I know it was late, but I was hungry.  So I dug through my fridge and came up with this S salad/late night snack:  Chopped hard boiled eggs, yellow and red peppers, olives, feta cheese, pepperoncini, sprinkled all over with fresh lime juice.  (Boiled egg time-and-sanity-saving hint:  I buy the ready-cooked two-packs of organic hard boiled eggs from Costco. So convenient!)

Late-night salad/hearty snack

Before I go, I want to share about an ingredient I discovered this week:  honeyberries (also called haskaps).  My generous neighbor has bushes that are full of them, and she let me come and pick.  The name is somewhat ironic, because they are quite tart.  I blended some of them with the limeade that I keep in my fridge (in my adorable new lemon/limeade bottle that I brought home from Israel) for a refreshing beverage that you can drink with E, S, or FP meals.  If you don't happen to have access to honeyberries, you can substitute any berry of your choice.

For the lemon or limeade, squeeze 4-5 lemons and/or limes into a bottle (I think my bottle is about a liter).  Add 4-5 doonks of stevia, fill with water, and store in the fridge.  Add fresh mint if desired. 

Honeyberries, and a smoothie made with limeade from my fridge.

THM Traveling: Israel

Eating in Israel is an experience!  Everything in the produce section of the grocery store is fresh and in season, because it comes from right here - this tiny little country that can fit inside Lake Michigan.

Is there anyplace else on earth like Israel?  A tiny little country - and yet it grows both apples and bananas, which require different climates!

Anyway, I digress.

I just spent two weeks in an apartment with four other ladies, and we were located just steps from a grocery store, where we were frequent visitors.

Meat, chicken, and fish are expensive here, which is partly why Israel has the highest number of vegetarians per capita behind India.  The other part has to do with the rules of kashrut (kosher food).

Meat and dairy do not mix here, so we would either choose to have a meat meal or a dairy meal.  Our kitchen had separate dishes, utensils, and sinks for each.

We pooled our money and enjoyed several meat meals, but I have to say that dairy was queen when it came to protein.  Israel makes the most delicious cottage cheese I have ever tasted.  And I found Triple Zero yogurt in that nearby store!  O joy!  Cheese has been another big ingredient, and I confess that I brought two bricks of Costco cheese with me, because deciphering the Hebrew in the cheese section has always perplexed me.

Eggs are reasonably priced and are considered pareve (neutral) and can pair with either meat or dairy.  I made a dish called shakshuka at least three or four times.  Basically, it is eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, which doesn't really sound very exciting, but let me tell you... it is delicious!!! Here, let me give you a quick recipe (which can be widely varied):

Shakshuka
1 medium onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1/2 hot pepper, chopped (more or less or none depending on your desired heat level)
Butter or olive oil
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 little smidgen of stevia (cuts the acidity of the tomatoes)
Salt and pepper to taste
Eggs
Shredded cheddar

In a frying pan, sautee onions and peppers in butter or oil until lightly browned.  Add tomatoes and spices.  Taste and adjust seasonings.  Crack eggs (as many as you need or whatever will fit - I usually did 6-9 for our group). onto the top of the tomato sauce, season with salt and pepper.  Cover and simmer until the eggs reach your desired done-ness.  Turn off heat, top with cheese, and cover pan again so the cheese melts.

Variation:
One day, I added a can of black beans and a little BBQ sauce to the basic tomato sauce and eliminated the cumin.  I also added a little Trader Joe's 21 spice blend.  I skipped the cheese on this version.

Every time I made shakshuka, I asked myself why I never make this at home.  The answer is that I don't think about it.  Well, I'm thinking about it now, and plan to make this regularly!

Wonderful shakshuka

Ahh, the veggies!  Berries from the shuk.  Eggplant. Peppers. Cabbage.  Sweet potatoes. Not to mention tomatoes and cucumbers for classic Israeli salad.  There was never a shortage of salads at our house.  I buy fresh lemons for dressing, and I travel with a small olive oil.  Those lemons also got squeezed into my water bottle, along with a little stevia for a refreshing beverage on these hot Israeli days.

This billboard from Ben Yehuda Street pretty much says it all.

When I stay at apartments while traveling and do my own cooking, I bring my own culinary kit - because you never know what the place will have.  One year, before I started doing this, all I found in that apartment were salt, pepper, and rosemary.  I got so tired of flavoring everything with rosemary that I went to the Arab market and got ripped off buying spices.  I have learned a lot since then.

My current culinary travel kit contains the following:
1 small bottle olive oil
1 small container Now brand pure stevia
1 bottle pepper and Celtic sea salt mixed together (I used to carry each separately, but since I always use them together, it made sense to combine them)

1 bottle Trader Joe's 21 Spice Salute
Cinnamon in a baggie (not needed this time because the apartment had it)
1 knife with a sheath and a sharpener

I used to carry many little jars of different spices until I discovered the Trader Joe's 21 blend, which I absolutely love (introduced to me by my friend Lynne).  I try to bring as little as possible in my culinary kit for the sake of efficiency.

I am considering adding a small bottle of red wine vinegar to the mix if I can make room for it.  We bought a huge bottle, the only size available, and barely used an eighth of it.

My Mount Hagen organic coffee sticks travel with me in a separate little bag, along with  individual THM packets of sweet blend.  Then I grab half and half and almond milk from the store.

And now I must make a confession:  bread.  There is nothing like Israeli bread.  The pitas are so soft and delicious. they are like eating a baby seal.  (Note:  I do not actually eat baby seals.  I am being facetious).  The bagels, covered with sesame seeds and zaatar spice, are heavenly.  Challah bread on Shabbat.  Yes, I have indulged in much bread.  I believe they treat their wheat differently here, because one of my friends who cannot eat the wheat from the US has no problem here.

With all these crossovers, I have been careful to pair them with exercise.  This is not difficult to do here.  Jerusalem is a city of many hills, and walking is one of my main forms of transportation (along with a bus card for when I am just too weary, too hot, or need to be somewhere quickly). 

Last night was a fun night out with some good friends of mine who live here in Israel. We went out for sushi. It was delicious, and they brought their one-year-old baby who got to taste sushi for the first time. He enjoyed himself tremendously, and had a sticky rice spa treatment in his hair.  Isn't he just adorable?

Israeli sushi - so good!

I probably could have kept this sushi meal in E mode, except for those delicious tempura ones that pushed me into crossover territory.

This post has been a work in progress for several days now, and this morning I had the courage to step onto the scale at my apartment, (since today marks one month away from home in my current travels). I was pleasantly surprised! I am up only about a pound since the last time I weighed, which was about six weeks ago.  Traveling and THM really can work together!

I am wrapping up this rather long post from my favorite coffee shop in Jerusalem - Etz Café (my daughter had her first official date with her husband here). I'm enjoying a late-morning E+ smoothie with strawberries, blueberries, spinach, almond milk, and honey. (I just made that up... E+ due to the honey).

In two days, I'll be on a flight back home so that I can catch my breath before my next journey to visit my kids.

Shabbat shalom and blessed Shavuot (Pentecost) from Jerusalem!

Frugal Kitchen: Save Those Leftovers

I hate wasting food. At my house, I try to salvage everything, as long as it has not become a fuzzy science project or hazardous waste.

Today's post will hopefully give you a few hacks that can help you save money.

We are getting ready to take a trip in a few days, so my first order of business is to take stock of the fridge and deal with what is there.

My last post featured chicken soup, and I still had chicken stock and chicken meat in the fridge. So I started there.  You always want to be aware of what proteins you have in the fridge, since they are generally the most expensive and also the first to go bad.

Last night we had chicken soup again, but I changed it up and came up with Chicken Bacon Ranch Soup with broccoli. 

The recipe started the same way as the Provençal soup in my last post.  Instead of laughing cow cheese, I added reduced fat cream cheese to the stock and cauliflower in the blender, and a handful of cooked bacon bits from the freezer to the pot. I changed the herbs to more of a ranch flavor with dill, thyme, black pepper, and garlic. I topped this S soup with shredded cheddar.

Moving on... I have a couple more proteins in the fridge: egg whites in the carton and cottage cheese. I will probably use them up before we leave, but if I don’t, I will pop them both into the freezer when we depart.

Now, on to my perishable vegetables. I generally buy lots of them, so I really have to make an effort to use them up. 

We were invited to a friend’s house for dinner tonight, so I looked at my giant bag of fresh broccoli spears and offered to bring the salad... Broccoli and Bacon Salad. Remember the bacon I cooked and froze a few posts back? It came in handy today.

I like to steam my broccoli briefly, and then chill it right away under cold water. It brightens it up and softens it a bit. To the drained broccoli, I added chopped onion, chopped yellow pepper, grape tomatoes, and cooked diced bacon. For the dressing, I started with mayonnaise and added fresh lime juice and stevia.  Normally I add nonfat Greek yogurt to my dressing, but I was out. So to cut out fat elsewhere, I eliminated the shredded cheddar and the nuts from the salad. It turned out quite delicious! To avoid a crossover, I didn't add any dried fruit to this S salad.

What’s next? Ok, limes. I buy them at Costco in 5 pound bags. Almost every day, I make this drink with them: fresh lime juice, stevia, and plain or bubbly water. That’s it! It is so refreshing, and chock full of vitamin C.

When the limes in the bag start looking like they have seen better days, I use my handy beloved kitchen tool, the citrus squeezer. I cut the limes in half and squeeze the juice into a glass bottle, where it will keep for a long time in the fridge.

I have other veggies on hand that will need to get eaten over the next couple days: lettuce, peppers, mushrooms, and green beans. These should not be a problem. I foresee a pepper and mushroom sauté in my near future. And a batch of green bean fries from the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook.

The only veggies I won’t worry too much about are my carrots and onions, which last a long time.

Next, I will look at things in jars.  Oops, I discovered some applesauce hiding behind the pickles from my granddaughter’s last visit. Too old - out it went. It’s okay though; I have about 6 million jars of it down in my root cellar.

Here is another handy trick that will keep your food fresher much longer: move it into smaller containers as you use it up. This gets rid of the extra oxygen that will cause your food to oxidize and spoil faster. This goes for most everything: soups, casseroles, pickles, half and half, or whatever. You will be amazed at how much more life you get out of your food this way.

Fermented veggies preparing to move

When I leave for a trip, the one thing I make sure to leave in the fridge is eggs. They are not going to go bad, and it is oh-so-convenient to whip up omelets when we get home and are tired and hungry. Serve your omelets with fermented veggies on the side, and you will get just about every nutrient under the sun.

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 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.