All posts by RAverett

Main Dish, Recipes

Quick Fix Green Chile Chicken

Green Chile Chicken Skillet Casserole

Cinco de Mayo is just around the corner so it’s time to throw out a few recipes to help celebrate the day!  Since I am a product of the Southwest, I love this kind of food, but I admit, much of it has a Tex-Mex flavoring to it.  This recipe is one I’ve made for years and always relished.  It’s easy, takes about 30 to 40 minutes to prepare and tastes wonderful.

It only required a couple of changes to make it low carb’d and that was mostly to replace the rice with riced cauliflower.  Using pico de gallo that is already made from the grocery store and canned green chile enchilada sauce really speeds up the process but still delivers the wonderful flavors.  If you can’t find pico de gallo at your grocery store, it is easy to make with onions, tomatoes, jalapeno chiles and cilantro.  There are many on the internet, but you can try this one.

Green Chile Chicken Skillet Casserole

Chicken strips work very well with this dish.

6 oz – Chicken Breast
4 tablespoons Pico de Gallo
1/2 cup Green Chile Enchilada Sauce
2 tablespoons Chopped Green Chiles
1 teaspoon Better than Bullion chicken plus 1/2 cup water or 1/2 cup chicken broth
1 cup Cauliflower, frozen, thawed and riced
1 cup Zucchini sliced or chopped
2 tablespoons Sour Cream,
1/4 cup Cheddar Cheese, shredded
1 tablespoon Olive Oil

If starting with fresh cauliflower, par boil for 3 minutes and drain. If using frozen cauliflower, thaw and cook in the microwave for 2 minutes or par boil for 2 minutes, then drain excess water off. Process in a food processor for a few seconds until it is riced. Or you can chop finely or grate.

Cut the chicken into bite sized cubes.

Heat oil in a medium skillet and add the pico de gallo. Saute about three minutes over medium heat. Move to one side and add the chicken to it. Cook until brown on both sides, then add chicken broth or bullion and water to the skillet along with the enchilada sauce. Stir in the chicken pieces and let come to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer, then add the riced cauliflower and zucchini.

Cook for about 15 minutes until most of the liquid is reduced and zucchini is fork tender. Add the sour cream and cheese and stir in to mix well, cooking for about three minutes more to melt the cheese.
Serves 2 or 3 people, depending in how hungry you are.

Nutrition Info: 2 servings
Calories: 274 Fat: 13.8 g Net Carbs: 5.7 g Protein: 26.2 g

3 servings:
Calories: 183 Fat: 9.2 g Net Carbs: 3.8 g Protein: 17.5 g

Healthy Life

About the special products I use…

products-images

Since I use several low carb products, I wanted to talk a little bit about them.  First, I am not receiving any compensation from the makers of these products and they probably don’t know I have a blog or mention them, so I’m not trying to plug any particular product — just letting you know what I use and why.

As I’ve mentioned, my body isn’t a very efficient fat burner so the amount of net carbs I can eat daily and lose weight or maintain my weight is very low.  The minimum recommended on the Atkins diet for their induction phase is 20 net carbs a day.  That is just about the maximum I can go and still lose anything.  If I go up to about 23 net carbs, I am a maintenance weight.  If I go over that, then I begin to gain.  While this might sound like a problem, it really isn’t as bad as it sounds as there is always something you can eat with no carbs.

Liquid Sweeteners

But it does make me very aware of the net carbs in some products, like powdered Splenda, Equal and Stevia that may only have a little, but the carbs are in the filler that the actual sweetener is in.  By using a liquid sweetener, I can eliminate the carbs completely.  It may sound like worrying over nothing, but if I use four packets of sweetener a day, that’s almost 4 net carbs I can use elsewhere.  For instance, it can be a whole low carb dessert!

If you are baking with a powdered sweetener, one cup is about 24 carbs and that’s a lot extra in your food.  There are times where the powdered sweetener is needed for a texture, but you can cut some of it and use liquid for the remainder.

There are several manufactures who make liquid sucralose.  Just check it out on a search and you’ll see various brands.  Liquid sucralose is just the concentrated sucralose in a water suspension rather than the powder.  I use EZ-Sweet, which is readily available from Amazon.com, Netrition and other suppliers.  You might even find it in grocery and health food stores.

Flours

Since I love breads, flour is a big problem if your body doesn’t use carbohydrates well.  I am not even going to question how products such as CarbQuick, Atkins (no longer being produced) and Bob’s Red Mill flours reduce the carbs in the flour they produce.  Some are a mix of various flours that may not include any wheat flour while some have managed to block some of the carbs in the product so that it isn’t absorbed by the body.  I’ve said before that many of the new products coming out have been developed to help diabetics more than folks trying to maintain a low carb lifestyle, but it’s benefited all of us.

Being special products, these flours tend to be at least double the regular flours.  If you buy a loaf of pre-made low carb bread, they run about $8 a loaf.  You can bake them for less than that.  All of flours I mentioned are available from Amazon and Netrition.   Other brands are also available.  I’ve used several of them.  I generally go with CarbQuick because it’s versatile and the lowest net carb count of the ones I’ve seen.  But there are time you want a finer flour and Atkins or LC Foods both produce a finer textured flour for baking breads and cakes.

Don’t overlook almond, coconut, and other nut flours when baking.  They are lower in carbs and work very well in baking.  They are also gluten free for those who can’t eat regular flour. My Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe can be made using just almond flour or a combination of almond flour and coconut flour without using any of the wheat flour products that contain gluten.  Soy flour is another option, but I personally don’t like the taste of it, so I use it in very little quantity.

As I go along with this blog and use these products, I’m going to try to feature them a little more under the Yummy LC Products header.  Some of the products I use are mixes for breads and cakes, while others are ingredient items.  Either way, I’ll put items there that I use and I’d like to introduce to you that I think will help you to enjoy a low carb lifestyle if that’s your goal.

First published on my blog 10/08/2012.

8/2012 12:20 PM

Healthy Life

My Low Carb Healthful Living

Anyone who has followed a low calorie diet, then compared it to a low carb diet will notice that low calorie doesn’t always equal low carb and vice versa. I can attest that just counting calories and following a low calorie diet will not always work and often leaves you hungry as well as frustrated and unhappy.   I was never a huge overeater although I probably ate a little more than my body needed.  If I went on a strict 1000 calorie diet, I could lose weight, but I was often hungry.  It’s also not easy to maintain and it is depressing to think you can’t enjoy any of the foods that you really love.  What’s the point in life if you can’t enjoy it?  So you slip off and eventually revert back.

I think people need to find out how their body processes food, how much of it and what kinds.  I went on a low carb diet for the first time when I was just out of high school and lost a lot of weight that I kept off for about six years before it began creeping back as my diet slipped back to old habits and I was exercising less.  The same pattern repeated when I went on a low calorie diet and I kept the weight off again for several years, before the pounds returned with friends.  In between, I’d had success with several other diet options, but none of them a plan for life.

When I went on Atkins this time, I noticed that the plan had changed its approach.  Instead of 40 carbs to begin, the diet was now talking net carbs, which are the carbs that your body actually uses of what you consume.  Two weeks at 20 net carbs to start, then you gradually add carbs until you stop losing weight, drop a few carbs back and that’s what you eat to continue to lose.  Then you go back up to the stall amount and you’re at the carbs you actually burn.  Makes sense.  Along the way, you audition food to see which foods may stall your diet and which seem to help.  Starch and sugars are really the culprits and since this helps you limit them, it also makes a low carb diet a good choice for diabetics or anyone who needs to control their blood sugar.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that the max number of net carbs I could eat and not gain weight was about 23 a day.  Not a happy number for me.  So, 20 carbs was my ideal for losing weight and that means a fairly slow weight loss.  Over the past four years, I’ve lost 142  pounds (as of April 15. 2014).  Considering that I am not a really active person, that’s not bad.  I am retired and I don’t do a lot of exercising, so I am thinking that if I can establish some kind of regular exercise program, I might be able to up the carbs a little.

Now, when I say 20 carbs a day, that might cause a panic, but again, this is net carbs – carbs that my body actually uses.  All the rest are pass through and there are a lot of those.  Still, on average, I eat about 40 to 65 carbs a day.  But when you consider all the things you can eat that have little or no carbs in them, like many meats, cheese, eggs, and some vegetables, then you see that the majority of your carbs can be spent on vegetables and fruits with lower carb counts and reduced-carb food items.

All of these new products with reduced carbs, make it possible to eat delicious food you love and still stay within your low carb lifestyle.  And I think that will be the key to not gaining the weight back this time.  If you can have delicious and “legal” food, then you’re less likely to wander.

Which brings me to one of the reasons I decided to blog my recipes and my stories.  If I put it out there, I hope it will help to keep me on course over the years and will encourage others to do the same.  I just wish I’d known how my body handled food earlier in my life and that the food substitutes had been as plentiful as they are now.

Originally posted on my blog on 08/26/2012