All posts by Rene Averett

Main Dish, Poultry, Recipes

Oven BBQ Chicken Breasts with Roasted Turnips

Originally posted on May 31, 2012 on my LiveJournal blog. Transferring it here.

Nothing like a week of vacation to totally ruin a good diet, is there? Actually, I was doing fine in New York and managed to keep on a low-carb regime the four days I was there. It was when I went to Vermont to cheer a friend on in the New England marathon that things went downhill. I admit that booking the Doubletree was putting temptation in the immediate pathway as I was handed a warm, chocolate chip cookie upon check-in. Did that say 38 carbs or 58? Either way, a lot of carbs in that cookie, but it was delicious. Still,it was difficult to avoid the carbs although I continued to try. The last day, the one when I had to fly back home, proved the most difficult. I had to take a bus in the wee hours of the morning to the Manchester, NH airport where I arrived at 6:00 am. No restaurants were open, only the bagel bar that sold yogurt, with berries and granola, so there was another herd of carbs. Still waiting for my flight at the airport at lunch time, I found a vendor that sold a lobster roll and, sorry to say, I ate the bread part as well.

So back home now, I am going back to a very strict low-carb diet until I lose the pounds that I know I gained on this trek. I am not even going to weight for about a month, but just assume that it will take me about that long to get back to pre-NY weight.

With this in mind, I made a delicious low-carb dinner that was an oven BBQ flavored crisp chicken breast. For the coating, I used crushed chicharonnes (fried pork skins), which can be found in most grocery stores. Served with roasted turnips, pan fried zuchinni and a simple salad of cucumber slices and pico de gallo, this made a wonderful and filling meal.

Oven BBQ Chicken Breasts with Roasted Turnips

Makes 2 servings

1 large Chicken Breast, skinned and cut into four strips (about ½ inch thick)
½ cup of crushed BBQ flavored Chicharonnes
¼ teaspoon BBQ Rub – I used a mesquite, applewood flavored rub
2 medium sized Turnips, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces.

Preheat oven to 365 degrees.

Wash the chicken and pat dry. In a plastic bag, crush the chicharonnes with a rolling pin or the heel of your hand until bread crumb sized. Add the BBQ rub and mix well. Pour the crumbs into a shallow pan and roll the chicken into the crumbs until they are evenly covered.

Spray a shallow baking pan with olive oil cooking spray and place the chicken on the pan. (I like to use a silicon baking mat to prevent sticking.) Spray the top of the chicken with spray olive oil.

Pour about a teaspoon of oil into a plastic bag, add seasoning, then add the turnips to coat with mixture. Arrange the turnips on the pan around the chicken.

Bake for about 20 minutes, turn the turnips and chicken and bake an additional 20 minutes. Check the chicken to make sure it is done through but still juicy and the turnips are tender.

Net carbs in the chicken are <1, turnips about 5.6

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 9/10/2012 12:10 AM

Main Dish, Mexican/Spanish Recipes, Pork, Recipes

Tasty Pork Carnitas at Home

I love carnitas! They are tender, wonderfully spiced and so delicious. You don’t need to go out to a Mexican restaurant in order to get these to enjoy. You can make them easily at home.

Carnitas are simply little bites of meat that have been cooked in seasoned liquid until it dries or you fry or bake them until they have a nice crisp exterior. Serve with sour cream, salsa and guacamole and you have a delicious meal. Luckily, not all recipes have to be adapted for a low carb lifestyle and this is one that requires no special ingredients. This also adapts well to a slow cooker. The picture at the top shows them with the standard condiments and a serving of my Tex-Mex Spanish Cauli-rice.

2 pounds pork butt or 1.5 pounds of cubed pork
1 medium onion, sliced
1 large clove garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon herb seasoning
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1 cup chicken or beef broth
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt or garlic salt, to taste

Cut pork butt into large cubes. In a three quart saucepan, combine pork, onion, garlic, seasonings and broth. Add enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about two hours until the pork is tender and breaks apart easily. Check the water a couple of times to make sure it hasn’t all boiled out before the pork is tender.

If you are cooking in an oven, heat the oven to 300 degrees F. during the last 10 minutes of cooking. Remove the meat, draining any excess water off and place in an oiled roasting pan. Sprinkle with garlic salt or any other preferred seasoning.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, turning the meat once. If your meat isn’t thick, it may take less time to brown and crisp, so check a couple of times. Remove from oven, cut large chunks into smaller, bite-sized pieces or pull apart with two forks for a shredded meat.

If you prefer to fry the meat, cut into bite-sized pieces (about 1″ cube) and heat the oil in a heavy skillet (I prefer cast iron for this.) Add preferred seasonings, then fry the meat until it is lightly crisped.

Serve carnitas with grated cheese, sour cream, salsa and guacamole. User a tortilla to make a burrito or to just pick up pieces for dipping in the condiments. I use La Tortilla Factory flour tortilla, which are 3 net carbs per tortilla, but you can use any brand you choose.

This recipe serves 6.

 

Nutrition for just the carnitas per serving:
Calories: 334 Net carbs: 1.3 g  Protein: 28.9 g

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 10/3/2012 3:31 PM

Italian Inspired Recipes, Main Dish, Poultry, Recipes

Adapting Chicken Parmesan to Low Carb


Moved from my Live Journal blog where is was published July 26, 2012.

I love food, almost any food, but Italian is a real favorite. How can you go wrong with cheese and pasta? Oops, pasta. That’s the problem with Italian and a low carb lifestyle.

(Note from 05/06/14 – I have been using Dreamfields, which claimed to have a 5 nc pasta, however, those claims are apparently incorrect and the pasta is not low carb.  All I can say is that I have been using it and it appeared to not impact my weight loss.  Other people have had issues with it.  So, use an alternative to pasta for this dish.)  

My recipe this week is for Chicken Parmesan with pasta. But you don’t need to serve it over pasta. You can make zucchini noodles by slicing the zucchini into long, thin strips and dropping them in boiling water for three to five minutes before draining and putting them on the bottom of your casserole dish. You can also substitute in spaghetti squash, which has a slightly nutty flavor and is also a delicious pasta substitute.

Chicken Parmesan Over Pasta

Ingredients:

3 large skinless Chicken Breast halves, butterflied and pounded
1 large Eggs, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon Water
1 tablespoon Oil
1/2 cup Pork Rinds, crunched up to the consistency of flour
1/2 cup finely grated grated Parmesan Cheese
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan Cheese
1 cup Mozzarella Cheese
1 to 1 1/2 cups Pasta Sauce, to taste (I use a tomato basil sauce with around 3 net carbs per 1/2 cup)
Salt and Pepper to preference
1/2 teaspoon Italian Herbs
2 cups cooked Zucchini strips or 2 cups Spaghetti Squash
Oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.   Cook whichever squash you are using for your pasta and keep it warm until ready to serve.

Combine eggs, water, 2 teaspoons of olive oil, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning and set aside. Combine crushed pork rinds and finely grated Parmesan cheese .

Heat oil in a heavy skillet.

Dip chicken breasts in egg mixture, then into pork rind crumbs, then cook in the skillet for 6 to 8 minutes per side until lightly browned.

Drain pasta and pour over the bottom of a 9 x 12 baking pan, arrange chicken breasts over the top, then spoon pasta sauce evenly over the breasts and pasta. Top with mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly.

Makes 3 to 6 servings depending on how hungry you are.

Per 1/6 of recipe: Carbs: 4 – Calories: 345

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 9/16/2012 12:39 AM

Jams, Recipes

Making a Jam or Compote

z-pear-jam

With the end of summer, I found myself with a decent crop of pears on my 12 year old pear tree… a very unusual occurrence. Normally the birds sample every piece of fruit on the tree as soon as it is fully formed. This year, only a few had holes pecked in them and I decided to pick them before they ripened on the tree. My pears are on a five in one variety of tree that produces small fruits, but it was a plentiful crop this year.

I brought them in, put them a bag to ripen and in due time, they began to turn colors and soften. Now I had way too many pears to eat before they began to turn rotten, so what to do? Pears are not an allowed food on the weight loss part of a low carb diet, although they are allowed when you reach maintenance. But I love the taste and decided to turn them into a jam or compote that would result in a low carb version.

LC Foods has a wonderful product for making cranberry sauce that is 0 carb and 0 calories, so the only thing you have to worry about is the actual carbs and calories in the fruit. Pears are very rich in natural sugars, which makes them high carb’d. While I don’t have a way to remove the carbs, I can use them sparingly and they make a wonderful topping on a low carb muffin.

So, I pulled out the LC-Cranberry Sauce, which uses “Inulin (chicory root) fiber, digestion resistant polydextrose fiber, sucralose, organic stevia rebaudiana leaf and natural luo han guo monk fruit” to make the powder, to make a delicious cranberry sauce. At $7.98, this makes several batches and I used this last year to make the sauce as instructed on the label for Thanksgiving, but also cooked it longer to make it thicker, put it in a jar in the refrigerator and used it as a cranberry jam for about four months. Wonderful!

I thought it would work well with the pears and I am very happy with the result. You can cut back a little on the amount of the LC-Cranberry Sauce powder since pears have a natural sweetness that cranberries don’t have.

With this success, I plan to try more fruits, such as peaches, apples and anything else that I can’t find already made into a jam. (LC Foods has strawberries, blueberries, peaches and blackberries for sale in pint jars for $7.98 a jar, which is really not unreasonable when you compare the prices at the grocery store for small jars of jam.) For now, here’s the recipe I used to make Pear Jam.

z-pear-jam02

Pear Jam or Compote

3 cups diced fresh Pears
1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
1/2 cup Water
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Clove
1/4 cup LC Foods Cranberry Sauce Mix

Cook diced pears with lemon juice, water, cinnamon and clove until they are just tender and boiling. Add cranberry sauce mix powder and stir in well until it is completely dissolved. Cook on low heat for about 15 minutes so that the mixture begins to thicken. Turn off heat and completely cool.

Once cooled, put the pear compote in a jar, then in the refrigerator. It will keep several weeks in the fridge. Or you can bag the compote in a freezer bag and freeze them until you are ready for them. Thaw them out, then put into a jar and into the refrigerator.

Makes about 2 cups of pear compote.

Nutrition Info for 1 tablespoon
Calories: 13.1 Total Carb: 3.4g Fiber .7g Net Carbs: 2.7g Protein .1g

TIP: Pears ripen from the inside out, so when they are soft when pressed around the stem or the bottom indicates that the pear is ripe.  Once the softness extends to the middle of the exterior, the pear is already over ripened.

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 11/4/2012 1:09 PM

Curds and Jellies, Jams, Recipes

A Taste of Pumpkin Pie In A Spread

z-pumpkin-spread

As I was slathering my morning muffin with Pumpkin Butter this morning, I realized that I had not added this simple and delicious recipe for the low carb goodness of this butter to my blog. It simply needs to be shared. If you love the taste of pumpkin pie, this is just for you! This recipe is adapted from one I found on the web and I simply made it low carb and added a few more spices. This is a refrigerator jam, so you do need to eat it within a few months… if it lasts that long! In addition to putting it on toast or muffins, you can mix it with vanilla yogurt (I use Carbmasters) or mixing it with soft cream cheese and whipped topping for a quick pumpkin parfait.

Easy Low Carb Pumpkin Butter

15 oz. Canned Pumpkin
½ Cup Water
½ Cup Granulated Splenda or Ideal sugar (or 24 drops of liquid Sucralose)
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
1 tsp. Cloves
1/4 tsp. Allspice
1 teaspoon Pumpkin Pie spice

Put canned pumpkin into a sauce pan over medium heat. Add sweetener to water and stir into pumpkin. Add spices and cook for ten minutes stirring often.

Let cool, then spoon into a canning jar, put on lid and store in the refrigerator.

Makes about 30 servings – 1 tablespoon each

Nutrition Info (with Splenda)
Calories 6.7  Net Carbs 1.5 g  Protein .2 g

(with liquid Sucralose and/or sugar alcohol)
Calories 6.7  Net Carbs 1 g  Protein .2 g

Tip: This is a refrigerator butter. Keep pumpkin butter refrigerated and use within 6 months.