Today’s Recipes
I’ve received several requests for more kid and “family” friendly recipes. I’ve travelled back in time to think about the kinds of things my OWN mother made for me, growing up. Today kicks off about a week of family friendly meals, with the help of my own mother, my memory and the big kid inside! These are the sorts of meals I ate growing up and still make! All updated for a low-carb 2013!
Check them out at the bottom of this post!
Fat is Good, Fat is Flavor
Speaking of Moms … I recently wrote a guest post for Lindsey over at HomemadeMommy.net. It’s a little bit of my story, wrapped in a tug-of-war between protein, fats and carbohydrates, stuffed with some factoids about healthy fats, then topped with a tasty dollop of Bacon, Parmesan and Herb Fat Bomb. I really enjoyed writing it and hope to do more. It was a great experience and one I’m really proud of. For some reason, I see it as a bit of an achievement. Not only do I like it, but someone else was willing to post it on their site. Thank you, Lindsey!
Click the following image to read the entire post!
Healthy Life Summit!
About a month ago, I joined a collection of bloggers known as the “Village Green Network”. Now, just to shed a little light on how amazing VGN is, they’ve coordinated 35 different health experts, authors, doctors, bloggers, farmers and activists, all for your viewing pleasure! They will be covering 5 different topics, over the course of 7 days at the end of March: Healthy Eating, Healthy Body, Healthy Babies and Kids, Healthy Living and Healthy World.
From March 24th, through March 30th, the presentations will all be freely available on the VGN website. It’s a DIZZYING array of speakers. When I saw some of the speakers, I about fell out of my chair. VGN never fails to impress me!
Check out the list of speakers and the days they’ll be available by clicking the image below.
The summit looks absolutely incredible and will also be free at the end of March. If you’re like me, and have plans on those days (I’ll be cooking up a storm for my blog!), you can download the whole package (valued at $199.00 USD) and watch it at your convenience. It’s a 75% discount, if ordered prior to March 23rd!
Full Disclosure: I’m not really sure how this all works, to be honest. You all have front row seats to my fumbling around the Internet. I’ve been doing this recipe blogging thing for about 6 months. I have posted approximately 200 recipes, without even TRYING to make a penny (friends and family think I’m nuts!). It’s time I try and figure out how to make a career out of this. I sincerely believed I’d have about 12 followers at this point in the game, and knew I’d spend the first 6 months just trying to test the validity of this “idea” of mine. I’m frankly a bit shocked, but … my “fantasy” of 12 followers has exploded. I can’t say with any clear accuracy, but my burgeoning little blog has blossomed from the 12 I thought I’d have, to over 3000! This little idea of mine … actually seems to be working! I can’t even BEGIN to tell you how happy that makes me!
I am an affiliate of the Healthy Life Summit. It’s totally free to watch during the days it’s available, but if you miss it and download it, I make a little bit of money. It’s FAR from a lot and really … I just hope one of you signs up for it, just so I can see how it all works. I’ve never done this before …
In any event, I GENUINELY believe in the speakers. There’s also something there for everyone. I’d promote this whether I stood to make a dollar or not. Go check out the list of speakers. I really want to see the Joel Salatin presentation. I’m also interested in Vanessa Romero (a fellow low-carber). She’s great and REALLY interesting. Then, there’s one I’m a little embarrassed to admit I’m drawn to, but … I’d also like to see the presentation on the humane slaughtering and butchering of animals. As someone that cooked thousands and thousands of pounds of meat in my lifetime, I feel it’s something I owe to the (delicious) animals. I should really understand this at a meaningful level.
So … there ya go! Go sign up, so that I can keep turning out free recipes for y’all! (how was that for a tiny little guilt trip) 😉
More, soon!
DJ
Parmesan-Mayo Baked Chicken Butterfly
A few months ago, my mother sent me the recipe for Chicken Piccata and said it was a favorite of my fathers. The recipe was actually my mother’s twisting of Giada de Laurentiis’s, which is, itself, probably a twisting of Veal Piccata. In any event, I tinkered with it to make it low-carb, then added it to my site. It was really quite popular! SO popular, in fact, that I went back and asked my mother for another suggestion. This time, she came back with Parmesan Crusted Chicken {Hellmann’s Mayo Recipe}, which is, itself, a twisting of the recipe from Hellmann’s recipe.
Here we have my re-tooling of THAT particular recipe!
Because there is so much fat from the mayonnaise, I decided that it’s a super juicy and flavorful recipe, no matter how you slice it. So, I chose to butterfly it. This will allow it to cook that much faster and give a little more surface area for the toppings. It also just makes it look like a much bigger portion that it is. Optical illusion!
Also, because breadcrumbs are considered dark and evil within a low-carb landscape, I needed to replace them with SOMETHING. It’s so common for people to use almond meal, in place of flour and/or breadcrumbs. I decided to go with hazelnut flour for 2 reasons: 1. I frankly prefer the taste and 2. to be different. NORMALLY, I LOVE the way hazelnut flour works in recipes, but … in this instance, the end result was a bit of a speckled mess. It was absolutely delicious and was devoured within seconds of the photo being taken, but I confess to not loving the appearance of this particular chicken recipe. It looks like someone dropped it at the beach. A lighter almond meal, or even crushed pork rinds, will certainly yield a more attractive chicken dinner, but I’m not convinced that it will TASTE any better.
No matter what you do, though, smothering seasoned chicken with mayonnaise, parmesan cheese and almond meal, hazelnut flour or pork rinds, the end result will be a luscious taste explosion!
Photo Note: The photos are taken with Roasted Spaghetti Squash and Marinara Sauce.
Thanks, Mom!
Roasted Spaghetti Squash
Spaghetti Squash is not, contrary to popular opinion, a racquet sport played in a four-walled court with a small rubber ball and a bowl of pasta.
IT IS, however, a delicious winter vegetable, also known as Squaghetti. This oblong squash tends to be fairly large and is usually yellow. Within it is a firm flesh and seeds, similar to that of a pumpkin. Where a Spaghetti Squash suddenly becomes a little extra interesting is in what happens to the flesh, when it is cooked. It becomes … Pasketti!
Yep, this interesting vegetable separates into easy strands of pasta-like goodness, when steamed, roasted, baked, nuked, etc. It’s a fantastic low-carb, totally “real foods” and paleo style pasta substitute. It’s a twinge on the sweet side, with a texture similar to a lightly grainy al dente pasta with a twinge of “crunch”. It’s difficult to describe, but I find it to be absolutely delicious!
One of my favorite things to do is roast it, then sauté the strands with a little bit of garlic, butter, salt and pepper. That’s it!
For the most part, use it in any fashion in which you’d use a pasta noodle, which includes side dishes, main courses and even Asian applications and stir fries.
Photo Note: The third photo is taken with Marinara Sauce and Parmesan-Mayo Baked Chicken Butterfly
Nutrition Note: I had a heck of a time finding accurate and trustworthy nutrition for this recipe. It is unclear to me what the USDA is using in their analysis. A standard spaghetti squash weighs between 4 and 6 lbs. and would make about 6 cups worth of spaghetti squash, after the rind, seeds and some water are removed during the cooking process. The USDA doesn’t bother listing the fiber content of a raw spaghetti squash, but states it’s got 7 grams of carbs per 100 grams (about 4 ounces). The USDA DOES have 10 carbs per cup of cooked spaghetti squash, with 2 grams of fiber, resulting in 8 grams of “net” carbs per 1-cup serving. This isn’t super low, but it’s reasonable (and tasty!). The challenge is that my recipes are based off of gram weights to do their calculations. As a result, I need to set the value of the spaghetti squash to 930 grams (about 2 lbs.). This isn’t an accurate number, but is the only way to get the recipe’s math to add up to the USDA’s numbers. WHEE!!
Not Mac n’ Cheese
This recipe is a bit of an odd one for me, in that it appears to embody some level of growth on my part. The inception of the idea came from a request for more “kid friendly” recipes. As a big kid myself, I LOVE macaroni and cheese. I assume most ALL kids do!
This is not Macaroni and Cheese.
My plan had been to use Dreamfield’s Pasta when I decided to add a Mac ‘n Cheese recipe to my website. However, I’m fresh off of reading “Wheat Belly” and currently of the mindset that pretty much anything “wheat” is bad and evil. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably regress at some point, but, as of this writing, I’m trying to steer clear of grains (tasty, tasty grains).
So, this recipe is Mac n’ Cheese, but … with cauliflower nibblets, instead!
Truth be told, when all is said and done, and I had a big plate of this sitting in front of me… it was delicious! I didn’t mind giving up the pasta, on iota!
Pasta Note: If you wanted to use Pasta, you absolutely could. To use pasta, you would pre-cook the pasta, but cook it about half as long as it states on the box. It will continue to cook, as it’s baked.
Smoky Note: I’m a big fan of smoky flavors, but recognize not everyone is. I suggest two smoked cheeses in the ingredients. Smoked cheeses are optional. Substitute one, or both, with un-smoked cheeses and the end result will STILL be tasty!
Pancakes
This recipe is here, not because it’s a breakfast item. It’s actually here because of a few requests for “kid-friendly” meals. I don’t have any children, which makes that mission a bit tough. However, I WAS a kid at one point in time, and I know what I was fed and what I ate.
A favorite “dinner” was always served … upside-down!
Obviously, it’s a pancake recipe, and would be absolutely delightful at the beginning of your day. It would also serve very well as a dinner! When I was a kid, a favorite way to eat this was with milk and sugar, rather than the typical maple syrup. I’d suggest perhaps some almond milk and some powdered erythritol, instead! Or, with some butter and jam! Or, powdered erythritol and lemon! Or, syrup and berries!
Many ways you could go with these things. So, I will provide the basic recipe.
Interestingly, this recipe has a somewhat mysterious origin. When I very first started losing weight and it became noticeable to friends and family, they all suggested I build a website, or write a book. A few months into this thing, I did just that! This was one of the recipes on that feeble site. It only every achieved 4 recipes, and then I stopped. Too busy and … too much work.
This was one of those 4 recipes. I don’t remember where I got it. I MAY have even made it up with all the stuff I’d been purchasing at the time … no clue. However, when I decided to make pancakes for kids, I looked it up gave it a whirl. Not too shabby! For a “diet” pancake, it was EXCELLENT! Highly recommended!
Note: Recipe makes 6 “DJ-Sized” pancakes, 12 standard ones, or 24 “silver dollar”.
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