Sicilian Chicken Soup (4-quart slow cooker)

4 leg quarters (about 4 pounds)
radishes, chopped (162 grams)
carrots, chopped (138 grams)
celery, chopped (90 grams)
1/4 cup chopped onions
3 cloves of minced garlic
1/2 cup of crushed tomatoes (122 grams)
water
dried parsley
salt
pepper (mix of black and white pepper would be better - I just used black because I didn't have any white)
red pepper flakes (just a bit)
cayenne (more than the red pepper flakes)

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Cook leg quarters in a 4-quart slow cooker with some water for a 3-4 hours on high. Take out leg quarters, remove skin, and bones. Add all veggies to the bottom of the slow cooker. Put the chicken meat on top of the veggies, broken/shredded into smaller pieces. Add all seasonings. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for like 8 hours.

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When we ate this, the veggies were still a little chewy - I'd only gotten 2 hours or so on high for them in the slow cooker - we're gonna run it on low until bedtime (another 5 or 6 hours) and see if they tenderize up. The taste was superb though, very much spot on the soup we like to get at Carraba's.

Grade: B

Update: After an additional 3 hours on low, the verdict is in! This soup is terrific!

Grade: A

Food Disaster

So I tried my hand at some crockpot beef stroganoff served with mashed turnips last night. The turnips came out nommy (though Skyspook is going to have to be exposed to turnips many times before he enjoys them, I think - never had them before), but the stroganoff... well... I'd give it a D grade. We could have eaten it but didn't want to waste the calories. My food experiment cost us about $5, and I know what I did wrong and how to make it better next time.

Here's a good rule of thumb: When a recipe writer asks you to use an inordinate amount of mayo or mustard, it's probably going to come out ooky.

2 tbsp of Dijon mustard in stroganoff? Really?

*

We scrapped dinner, and Skyspook made us some mini quesadillas out of leftover taco beef he'd made earlier in the week. They were quite tasty, and later I made us some microwave chocolate cakes (this time with cream cheese swirl!) with peanut butter frosting.

Yeah, we suffer terribly on our low-carb, low-calorie diet.

Happy as a Clam Dip

I got the recipe off a can of clams but modified it based on what I had on hand and made it "clammier" because as a Maine girl, I can't get enough.

Ingredients

4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp sour cream
6.5 ounce can of minced clams drained except for 2 tbsp of clam juice
1 clove of finely minced garlic
1.5 tsp of parsley
1/4 tsp of Worcestershire sauce

How to Make

Mix cream cheese, sour cream, and clam juice together. Package said to use a hand mixer, but I just toughed it out and mixed it with a spoon (I'd nuked the cream cheese to soften it). Then I added everything else and stirred it up.

I took about a third of it and dipped celery into it for my lunch and chilled the other two-thirds. Might have the rest with pork rinds or something.

Grade: A

summary of weight loss

Summary:

2 weeks

Justin -22, Page -12

4 weeks

Justin -25, Page -14

6 weeks

Justin -38, Page - 19


6-week weight updates took place Monday, February 20. So I won't be updating with the 8-week results until a week from tomorrow.

Nonetheless, I wanted to post these so they'd be easy to find come weigh time. :)

$3.50 gourmet steak dinner

Ribeye with braised carrots? Don't mind if I do!

Scored epic Westside Market cheap noms! A 12-ounce steak that fed both of us cost us $6.00, and the carrots and chicken broth and various kitchen odds and ends Skyspook used to braise them in (1 clove garlic, 1 tbsp chopped onions, 2 tbsp soy sauce) we decided came to about $1.00 - making this restaurant-worthy dish (we were moaning between bites) a total of $3.50 a person.

Grade: A+

Deep-fried love

So Skyspook fried up some chicken wings (tossed half of em in Buffalo sauce, the other half in his homemade low-carb BBQ sauce) in the peanut oil in the new deep fryer that came yesterday. Yum!

He also worked some magic with a soy flour and spices breading that he used to bread and fry up both mozzarella sticks and mushrooms. It was all so delicious.

And the whole deep-fried dinner was under 600 calories! I'll take it.

Take 2: Tweaking the Microwave Pumpkin Cake

Original recipe here.

So I did a trial of cutting both the Smart Balance and the pumpkin back to 1 tbsp. This was better - much more cake like, but I'd like more pumpkin flavor. I'm thinking I might try cutting out the Smart Balance all together (a cake without oil - for shame! there's at least fat in the almond flour) and using 2 tbsp of pumpkin. Will let you know how it goes.

Grade: B+

yay! shaker salad

I took an empty 32 ounce plain yogurt container (we use them as free Tupperware), filled it with baby spinach and napa cabbage, added 2 tbsp of Ranch dressing, put the lid on, and shook it up.

It coated the salad great! I probably could have gotten away with 1 tbsp.

I sense a new lunchtime addiction. :)

microwave pumpkin cake

1/4 cup almond flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp melted Smart Balance (could use melted butter or oil, etc)
1 large egg
5 packets of Splenda sweetening power (I used 10 drops of EZ-Sweetz)
1/4 cup canned pumpkin

Mixed up in a container, microwaved on high for 1 minute 30 seconds.


This was sooo yummy, but parts were so moist that it didn't really hold together as a cake - I think I would halve the pumpkin to 2 tbsp next time, either that or halve the Smart Balance, which would cut down on the calories a bunch. Hmm...

Grade: B

Quickie Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake Filling

2 ounce cream cheese, softened and softened mine in the microwave for 20 seconds)
2 tbsp sour cream
3 tbsp canned pumpkin
capful of vanilla extract
4 shakes of cinnamon, 2 shakes of ginger, 1 shake of nutmeg
sweetener equivalent to 2 packets of Splenda (I used 4 drops of liquid EZ-Sweetz)

combine ingredients, beat together with handmixer, chill (I threw mine in the freezer while I unloaded the dishwasher and then took it out), eat.

Grade: A - This was great and very easy. :)

General Tso "esque" Low-Carb Crock Pot Meal

4 pounds chicken leg quarters, with bone and skin removed - so about 2 pounds of meat yield
4 tbsp sugar-free apricot preserves (I used Smucker's)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
20 drops of the liquid splenda I'm using (that's about 10 packets)

Turned it on low, will eat it whenever Skyspook is out of work. Probably in about 8 hours.

I'll probably add 1/2 to 1 tsp of xanthan gum when there's only a few hours left.
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I basically mashed up these 2 recipes:

http://247lowcarbdiner.blogspot.com/2012/01/sesame-chicken.html

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/03/crockpot-apricot-chicken-recipe.html

I liked how little of the sugar-free apricot preserves 24/7 Diner used, but I didn't have any white cooking wine handy, so I thought the dijon mustard from A Year of Slow Cooking would give it a bit of a wine taste and then add a hot Chinese mustard kind of feel (in concert with the red pepper). Plus, our oven's broken at the moment, and I like the slow cooker for nights when I'm not sure how late Skyspook's gonna be working.

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I sauteed up 8 ounces of white mushrooms that I'd chopped. Used 2 tbsp of canola oil with a tsp of smoked sesame oil in for flavor and then added salt and pepper and served them on the side.

Skyspook liked dinner but said it was a little sweet. Which is kind of awesome how our taste buds have changed on low carb. Next time, I'll add the sweetener right before serving. That should help.

Grade: B+

Nummy Mexicali Crockpot Chicken

I threw this together today with what was in the fridge!!

3 chicken breasts
1/2 cup medium salsa
3 ounces cream cheese
4 ounce can of green chiles
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp dried cilantro
cayenne to preferred spiciness


cooked on low for 7 hours, shred sometime in the middle with a spoon (it'll fall apart)

added 1/2 tsp xanthum gum near to the end

served over:

100 grams riced cauliflower

we added:

shredded cheddar cheese
sour cream
sliced jalapenos
hot sauce

to our preferences :)

Grade: A-