I started thinking of soup when I first started this whole “six ways” thing. I did a similar “single-serve” soup a couple weeks back, using broccoli slaw. This time I wanted to have a bit of noodle action – I keep a bit of multi-color rotini on hand just for times like this. I figured I would throw in some veges, let it all simmer and I’d be good to go.

I started with what in the cooking world is known as a mirepoix – a mix of carrot, celery and onion. After starting about 2 cups of the chicken broth simmering, I lightly sauteed the onion, then celery and shredded carrot. After tossing the diced up chicken and 1/2 cup of the noodles in to the broth I had an idea… I have a bunch of roasted buttercup squash that I cooked up over the weekend so I cook about a cup of it and pureed it with some of the chicken broth, then put it along with the other veges back in to the pot with the chicken.

Once it was almost heated up I seasoned it with a bit of salt, garlic powder and fresh ground pepper… once in the bowl I garnished with a bit of green onion.

I’m sure I probably read about doing something this somewhere before, pureeing the squash to make a creamy soup without all the cream and such – this wasn’t an original idea, but it was tasty.

I’m sure I’ll do something like this again and I’ll try to formalize a recipe for it to share, but in the mean time… do what I did and just play with it a bit.

It didn’t feel right calling this a chicken pot pie when I cooked mine in a pan. A sauce pan for part of it and a cast-iron skillet for the baking part. So yea. But whatever you want to call it, this turned out rather well I think.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of “pot pies”. I’m really just not a huge fan of pastry type crusts in general. So I have no idea where the urge to make this dish came from. But what I did know is that it wouldn’t be a traditional type. I’ve seen similar dishes where instead of a top crust, you use drop-biscuits or dumplings of some sort. But alas, I’m not a huge biscuit fan either.. and I’ve never made dumplings (which aren’t they just “boiled” biscuits anyways?) So what to do?

Well, I asked for ideas on Twitter… and someone suggested corn bread (which I do love), or the “cheesy pizza crust” I was talking about a couple weeks back. Ding! I think we have something there. It’s such an easy recipe too… 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, 1 egg, and a 3oz block of cream cheese. And I knew I had all the stuff on hand. So we had a topping. But then what about the filling?

I had the chicken, the reason for this whole idea in the first place. I always have a few certain vegetables on hand… carrots, frozen peas, onion. That would work. When getting out the carrot I found some sweet potato left over from another meal. I had some celery too but option to skip that for this dish. Another thing I keep on hand is a can or two of evaporated milk. I use this in place of cream in making sauces to get a bit more depth than just milk (especially since my milk is soy milk), without as much of the fat. Oh! There’s also a can of mushrooms. Yea, I know… they’re slimly lil suckers, I would never use them on a burger or to top a steak, but I keep a couple small cans on hand just for occasions like this where they go in to something and offer just a bit of that mushroomy flavor.

Like I said, I’ve never made this sort of dish before, but I know that it’s basically the chicken and veges in a thick cream sauce. So I started out by basing this on my stroganoff recipe, in particular using a roux as the thickener. I did a video of this for BTV about a year ago. I chopped up some onion and lightly cooked it before adding the butter and flour. I used a small can of evaporated milk and about 1/2 cup of the chicken broth I had from cooking up the chicken. The veges I added were a medium carrot and some sweet potato about the same size as the carrot that were shredded and about a cup of frozen peas. I shredded the carrot and potato instead of dicing because I figured they would cook faster that way. In hindsight, I had some roasted squash and beets in the fridge that I forgot about and would have loved to add some of those in there.

I had two of the chicken breasts left, both just over 7 ounces, so I chopped one of them up, leaving me with just enough chicken left for my last two meals in this experiment. Then after I got the veges in, it was still a bit thinner than I wanted, especially since I wasn’t going to use a bottom crust, so I mixed in 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed. So this not only added some fiber and some omega 3s, the flaxseed sucks up moisture and helped thicken the whole thing up a bit more. I seasoned mine with liberal amounts of garlic powder and fresh ground black pepper and a few pinches of kosher salt.

I poured this in to my 9inch cast iron skillet and dropped spoonfuls of the “pizza crust” batter on top. I didn’t do the greatest job when it comes to even distribution, but you get the idea. The whole thing went in to a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes, till the topping was lightly browned. Scroll back up to the top here to see what it looked like coming out of the oven. When I went to plate it, it held together very nicely. I don’t know if it was because of or in spite of the addition of the flax… but no matter the reason, it worked great.

It plated up wonderfully, I didn’t need a soup bowl to serve it in. The cheesy topping added a nice touch of sweetness overall… and it was very filling. I was figuring I’d get two servings out of this, but I think for a post-op, you’ll easily get three or four servings. I recently wrote a piece for my nutrition blog about being flexible in the kitchen, and this is a great example of that I think. It would be a great way to use some some left over vegetables. You could use various kinds of meats in here… season it to your own tastes, savory or spicy. And there’s many different ways you could top this, biscuits, corn bread, potato dumplings, etc.

So yea… it was a success. I got a dinner a lunch and an additional side dish out of this for me…. and I could see doing similar versions of this in the future. Also, you could easily double this and bake it in a larger pan.

Wraps are pretty basic overall, and I know I said I wanted to be trying some new stuff with this series, but I had a couple slices of some wonderful pepper-garlic bacon (no nitrites/nitrates) left and since bacon makes everything better, So for lunch yesterday, I whipped up a fairly basic club style wrap-sandwich. It sure looked good, right? But of course I have a few twists in here.

The basics of this are … well, pretty basic. There’s a couple different wraps I get, depending on what store I’m at and such. The South Beach Whole Wheat wraps are pretty decent. 110Calories, 5G protein, 17g net carbs (25g-8g fiber) and 3g fat from non-hydrogenated soybean oil. first ingredient is 100% whole grain whole wheat flour. The other one I get sometimes is Joseph’s Flax, Oat Bran and Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas. These are much lower in carbs, just 5g net (11g – 5g fiber). They’re also lower calorie at 70, slightly higher in protein at 7g and have just 1.5g fat. The first ingredients though are water, wheat gluten and corn starch. So I dunno, overall they’re sort of a toss up. The SB ones are “heartier”, the Joseph’s (pictured above) are softer and lighter.

The insides are pretty simple.. spinach, a bit over 2oz of chicken cut in strips and a couple slices of the bacon I picked up at a local co-op. The ranch sauce though is homemade, sorta. Instead of a ranch dressing I used about 1/2 cup of yogurt and mixed in 1.5 tsp of Penzys Italian seasoning. I’ve used this seasoning on everything from seasoning breadings and coatings for chicken or fish to making different sauces and dressings. If you don’t have something similar you can mix your own by using a mix of dried parsley flakes, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper and maybe some dill or oregano. Grind it all up in a blender or food processor and mix in to the yogurt. Or… buy some ranch mix or pre-made dressing. But if you do that, please… skip the fat-free. Your body needs some fat. Ok, the bacon counts as a bit more than some, but still, fat-free dressing make up for the lack of flavor from the fat by adding sugar and chemicals and crap. So please?

Alright, I used some of the sauce I made on the sandwich and the rest as a dip for some carrot and celery sticks (they were my afternoon snack) and I had some left over refried beans as well.

Stay tuned for last night’s dinner in Part 4 – a potless, chicken pot pie.

I’m sure I’ve used this “joke” before… but this type of meal is something I’ve come to call the Mother & Child Reunion… and yea, I’m just weird that way. An egg scramble with chicken… among some other things.

This doesn’t show up terribly great in pictures, but this is scrambled eggs with chicken, spinach, green onions, and a light sprinkle of cheese.

Tossing a handful of spinach in the pan and “wilting” it before adding your eggs is such an easy way to add some great nutrients to your breakfast. And with using the pre-cooked chicken this only took a few minutes. I grabbed about 3oz of meat, roughly chopped it and started heating it up in the skillet while I chopped up a green onion and a handful of spinach. Threw those in the pan with a sprinkle of salt and stirred it up as it cooked for about two minutes then poured in the scrambled up eggs.

You could do this as an omelet by pulling the meat and stuff out of the pan, cooking the eggs then folding that stuff back in, and it looks better, but … well… I’m a dude… I’m not worried bout that much. I threw the cheese on after I plated it just because I had a touch left over from last nights pizza. For those counting, with two eggs this was over 30grams of protein in this plateful.

A quick note about portions… where I’m at with things, I can eat meals that I feel are “normal”, that are of size that I think most folks “should be” eating. Maybe a touch smaller. And while there are some days that are the exception to this, by far I seem to be able to eat more than many bariatric post-ops. I’m probably in the 1800-2000Calorie a day range overall, and I seem to be able to maintain my weight there at that level. It’s when I indulge in too many treats that things get out of hand on me. But I realize many post-ops that are as far out as I am, or even further, still tend to each much less.

Most of what I have been posting here is flexible enough that hopefully you can make it work. For example you can easily do half of what I did here… but on the flip size it’s also easy enough to bump something like this up in quantity if you’re cooking for other family members or something. And even the pizza I cooked last night would be great for families… let each member of the family top their own pizza, and if they have a much larger appetite add in a nice tossed salad to keep things healthy for everyone.

So yea, I get comments here and there regarding how much I can/do eat sometimes so figured I would throw this out there.

Coming up next is a lunch, I’ve got a couple slices of some garlic-pepper bacon, so I think a club sandwich wrap is in order. Look for that to be posted tomorrow!

Cooking when you’re single can suck sometimes. Then toss in the fact that I’m a surgically altered freak and it throws a whole ‘nother level of fun in to the equation. Generally when I cook, I try to cook just enough for a dinner and a lunch… but sometimes when you make something there is no easy way to make a limited quantity… like chili. So I end up eating it nearly every day for like a week.

Well, I had some chicken that needed to be cooked up, so I thought I would see just how many different ways, how many different meals I could get out of this one batch of chicken… and maybe it will give some of you some ideas on new things to try. Some of these will be sort of standards, but I’m also challenging myself here to try and come up with some new things too… like the white/green pizza I made last night.

Ok, fine. I realize there’s not much new, especially in the bariatric community about a tortilla pizza.. not even one with chicken. But… if you look close, that’s not tomato sauce… and no… it’s not alfredo sauce… it’s hummus. Hummus I made with green onion and some ripe olives to be precise.

I call it white green pizza because the chicken, the hummus, and the cheese are white. There’s green onion, jalapenos and cilantro for the green. And no, I’m not going to call it white-green-black because of the olives. Just pretend they’re green olives or something if it bothers you that much.

The point of this is, trying something just a little difference can give you a very different spin on something you might be getting tired of. The nice thing about this is that I didn’t have to crack open a jar of sauce just to use a few tablespoons worth. If you use store bought hummus, you shouldn’t be downing the whole thing in one sitting so having some left over for later is no big deal. And really, even if you copy my idea of using the hummus, you can top it with whatever you want. I’m using chicken here cause .. well… did you not just read the whole first part of this posting?

Oh, to back up a bit. I picked six ways because I had roughly 1-1/2 pounds of cooked chicken breast. (It started out just over 2 pounds). I cooked it by simmering it some chicken broth on the stove. Simmering it like that can help your chicken breast from drying out, a big plus for anyone maybe just a few months post-op. So yea, if I figure on using 3-5 ounces per meal I should get six meals out of the chicken I have here. There’s actually only about 2 ounces of chicken on the pizza, but I did eat about another 1-1/2 ounces on the side.

So stick around and see what over ways I come up with to use this chicken up. And don’t think you have to do single servings of stuff like this. These are all ideas you can apply to a meal for two or more… just you’ll need lots more chicken than I do if you’re doing all six is all.

Did you realize it has been over three months since I last did a post about what I eat in a “typical day”? I know, horrendous, isn’t it? What was I thinking? Oh yea… that I’m kinda boring at times that way. And honestly, the only reason I’m doing one today is that my wellspring of post ideas is kind of tapped dry at the moment.

So yea.

Anyone that’s been around here for awhile knows that for the better part of a year my usual breakfast was a big bowl of quoatmeal. But, earlier this year I got a bit of a bug.. and for better or worse, since then I just can’t seem to eat that much for breakfast. Now it’s usually a protein shake, maybe an egg (sometimes two!), but lately I’ve been in a bit of a different routine.

Peanutbutter waffles. This particular one is a Kashi 7-Grain that I got on sale, half-price, at the local co-op. There’s a bit over a Tbsp of peanut butter, some chia seeds and a bit of raspberry preserves. I don’t always do the fruit topping, and this was the first time with the chia seeds. I actually did two of these today, but ate the first before I decided I should take a picture. The protein shake I drank after I got to work (so it was about 45min after I was done eating) just to get some extra protein. I do my morning vitamins just before breakfast; calcium, multi-vit, D and B12.

I also had a mid-morning snack, about 9ish (keep in mind, I eat breakfast about 6:10) of a banana. I didn’t take a picture of that, if you don’t know what one looks like, try Google.

Now, while my breakfasts in recent months have been pretty small… my lunches tend to be larger than what I think most people would expect.

That’s a chicken salad roll-up, made with chicken from a rotisserie chicken, some chopped onion, seasonings, romaine lettuce, and a slice of swiss cheese. The whole wheat roll up is a South Beach brand, a decent amount of protein to balance out the carbs. Oh, the dressing is a blend of mayo and yogurt. The salad is made from some corn I grilled the other night with chopped bell pepper, onion, jalapeno, cucumber and a spicy vinaigrette dressing. then of course some blueberries and some more calcium. I typically do either the Bariatric Advantage chews (caramel here) or Celebrate bites. They’re kind of like having a bit of candy or a dessert with my lunch.

Now, I had one meeting set for after work, then I had planned on going home and heading out for a run. But… cause of a work issue I missed that meeting, and my radio show meeting that I usually have on Thursday nights that I thought I didn’t have tonight I found out I do have.. so yea. Best laid plans and all that…

So instead of catching a snack (I was going to get some beef jerky) to get me through the run before having some left over grilled pork and probably a kale salad for dinner… I’m at my usual Thursday after-work hangout, Panera.

It’s weird, I was feeling really hungry when I left work… so I got my usual, the Pick Two, with tuna salad (probably my favorite of the basic sandwiches). I asked for it grilled, but they forgot that and I didn’t feel like worrying about it. I just found out they’ll grill any sandwich no extra charge, so it’s like a tuna melt… without the cheese. Though I could pay extra to add that I suppose. I also got the chicken cobb salad. The whole deal is about 500 calories, give or take a few. Not too bad actually. But, I got about halfway through the sandwich and maybe three-four bites of salad, and I’m full.

I’ve got a couple more hours to kill before my meeting, so I’ll likely finish it before I go. We’ll see. I think next week I’m gonna ask if they can do the tuna as a lettuce wrap for me. hmm.. that’ll cut the calories in the sandwich almost in half. Not that I’m terribly worried bout once slice of bread, but it might be a nice option.

I won’t be home tonight, likely till after 10. I have a bit of a treat at home if I’m feeling the need for something. Most days I do have a snack around 4ish, some jerky or fruit, or yogurt or something, and then I eat dinner around 7ish, so I can usually make it till bed time without another snack. But my schedule is kinda off today, so we’ll see how it goes.

So yea, oh… kale is really good for you and if you prep it right, makes for a tasty salad. It’s worth sharing, so I’ll try to do the salad and write something up about it in the next few days.

Till then…

This is one I’d been talking about for a while now – stroganoff. This version is made with chicken, but it works just as easy with beef too.

Chicken Stroganoff

What You Need:

• 20-24oz skinless chicken breast
• 1-1/2 to 2 cups chicken broth/stock – low sodium
• 12 oz can evaporated milk
• 8 oz mushrooms – sliced
• 1/2 medium onion – sliced thin
• 1 cup edamame – shelled (optional)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons margarine
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
• salt, pepper to taste

What You Do:

Cut the chicken in to bite sized pieces.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat, add about a teaspoon of oil or spray with no-stick spray and add chicken, cooking and turning just to brown on all sides. Work in small batches and set aside as it cooks. You don’t want to crowd the pan with too much meat or it will cool the pan off too much and make it harder to brown the meat.

Once all the meat is done, turn heat down to medium and deglaze the pan by adding about 1/4 cup of the chicken stock and stirring the pan to loosen up and bits of meat stuck to the pan. After most of the stock as cooked off, add the onions and sautee for about one-two minutes, until they start to turn translucent.

Add the mushrooms and cook about 2-3 more minutes. Add in the edamame if using and cook about 1-2 more minutes until beans are heated, onions are caramelized, and mushrooms are softened.

In a clean saucepan, make a roux by heating the butter over medium heat just until butter has melted. Add flour and wisk into the butter to form a paste consistency, heat until it starts to bubble, stirring constantly to keep from burning.

Incorporate the milk slowly in to the pan, about 2-3 ounces at a time, stirring constantly. After each addition, let the liquid start to thicken again before adding more. After milk has been added, start incorporating the chicken broth. If you want a thicker sauce, only use about 1 cup of broth. For a thinner sauce, add about 1-1/2 cups.  It should take 3-4 minutes to fully incorporate all the liquid to the roux. Stir in garlic powder, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.

Stir meat and vegetables in to the sauce and simmer over low heat about 5-7 minutes until meat is cooked through and everything is fully heated. If sauce is thicker than desired, add more broth. If too thin, allow to simmer longer, uncovered, to reduce the amount of liquid.

Serve over whole-wheat pasta, shirataki noodles, piece of toast, bed of quinoa or how ever you like, or just straight up!

If you want beef stroganoff, sub beef broth for chicken broth and your favorite lean cut of beef. I typically get the stuff sold as “stew beef”, it’s bits and pieces usually from trimming other cuts, and while they’re already chunks, I typically cut them down a bit more. Cheaper cuts of steaks work well too because of the moist cooking method used.

I recently got the chance to get a Costco membership… now typically, being single, I don’t do a lot of shopping at the warehouse clubs, but this was a free membership for me, so I grabbed the chance. A few days ago I stopped by there after doing some other shopping to get a feel for what they had on hand, and one of the items I came across was the Apple & Gouda Cheese Chicken Sausage from “Sausages by Amylu”. I decided to check them out, and while I usually leave the review up to folks like Eggface, I figured I’d try my hand at it this time.

Of course now I can’t find the receipt, but I paid about $12 for a 3-pound package of 21 sausage links, and they come in three packs of seven. After taking the picture above, I tossed two packs in the freezer and left one in the fridge. Trader Joe’s has a number of pretty good chicken sausages as well, but I don’t get by there all that often, and if memory serves, they’re about $4 for a pack of 5. So these at Costco are less than 60-cents each, while the ones from Trader Joe’s run about about 80-cents each. There is another brand in my local grocery store that runs about $6 for 5… so the Costco ones are a pretty good deal.

The front of the package touts them as “Pork Free”, “All-Natural*” and “Gluten-Free”. The gluten free thing probably means there’s no gluten based fillers I suppose. The footnote on the all-natural is “No Artificial Ingredients – Minimally Processed”. They also claim to have “Zero Grams Trans Fat Per Serving, No Preservatives, Nitrates or MSG”. All well and good I suppose, though I’m not sure how trans fats would get in to a meat product to begin with.

They’re pre-cooked, so you just heat-and-serve these guys. You can grill them, cook on the stove top, microwave, broil, whatever. I cooked a couple tonight by first cooking up some onions and peppers in a bit of olive oil, then adding a couple of the sausages to the pan, stirring, flipping and such for about 5-6 minutes. Then tossed some cooked quinoa and a couple teaspoons of water in the pan and covered it to steam everything for a couple minutes. Then about another minute with the cover off to cook off any excess water. Easy-peasy.

As far as taste… they’re good. Very mild… have to say I’m not sure I really tasted much in the way of apple, but there was a very nice line of the gouda cheese. It was nice and melty… and I got a bit in pretty much every bite.

The inside of the package has some serving ideas, and I could see making some tortilla pizzas with these. A lil olive oil, slice up a sausage, add some chopped onions and pepper and some mozzarella. I think that would be really good. One of their ideas is also to dice these up with some apple and shredded cheese, wrap in a tortilla and bake. That sounds intriguing. I think one of these with some scrambled eggs would be a good breakfast or dinner too.

Nutrition wise, each link is 110 calories (50 of them from fat), 450mg of sodium, 3g of carb, less than a gram of sugar and 13g of protein. Given that each link is about 2-1/4 ounces, that’s pretty in line with what it should be as far as the ratio of protein per ounce (typically 7-8g per ounce for chicken, but there is some apple in here too). If you’re far enough along, you could possibly down two of these in a meal like I did tonight, and with the quinoa, I probably got close to 30g of protein in my meal.

The ingredients are pretty straight forward: boneless, skinless chicken breast and thigh meat, apples, gouda cheese, spices, natural flavor, kosher salt, water, evaporated cane syrup and lamb casing.

Now given that they have nearly a dozen flavors listed on their website, it would be nice if they carried other flavors… or maybe did a combination pack? While I could see buying these again, I would probably eat them more often if I had other flavors to mix things up with… but that’s a issue with the store, not the product I suppose.

I made my debut on BTV a few weeks back in a couple clips from the Vegas Meet & Greet, and despite their better judgment I’ve convince Mike, Toni and Lynnda that I should start doing more videos for them…

Here’s the first of what could be many more videos to come… dunno if the title Mike picked will stick, but it works for now.

If you want to get the full recipe you can hop over to the forums or check out my original posting bout the seed crusted fish. Oh, and be careful when reheating this in a microwave… make sure you have it covered or this is what might happen.

Other BTV Video Clips:
He Did What?
Cooking With Mr. Wizard

Looking for a nice glaze/sauce to put on that chicken or maybe those chops you want to grill? I’ve got one for ya right here! And don’t worry, there’s no sugar in here except for in the little bit of Worcestershire sauce used.

I first tried this on some country style pork chops .Then this week the grocery store had chicken legs and thighs on sale for just $1 a pound, so I thought this would be a good time to further test out this bbq glaze.

It’s not a sauce, you likely won’t be dipping in this, it really is much more a glaze, meant to be brushed on a couple times during the cooking… be it on the grill, broiler or oven, or in my case my NuWave oven.

Anyways, it’s pretty easy to make … combine the following in a small saucepan

1 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons prepared mustard
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (tabasco, Red Hot, etc)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Put this on high heat just until it starts to boil, then drop the heat to medium-low and stir a few times while simmering about 5 minutes or until the mustard pretty much dissolves in to the mix. You can easily halve, or double this depending on how much you need. You could make it up a day or two ahead of time, but I wouldn’t let it sit around after you’ve used it… if you’re basting, it’s gonna pick up stuff from the meat.

This will give you enough to glaze 3-5 pounds of meat… I started out by tossing the chicken in the liquid before putting in the oven, then cooked about 30 minutes, turning over half-way through. I brushed more glaze on the chicken I think it was three more times during the cooking.

The vinegar gives it a nice tang… I used my home-made hot pepper sauce for a bit of a kick (adjust the amount of the pepper sauce to your own tastes!) and like I said, the only sugar is from what’s in the Worcestershire (and again, I used my home-made stuff).

I may try using this as a marinade (if you do this, leave a comment to let me know!), and I think it might even work good for a roast.

I really like it how this turned out, though of course I have ideas for further tweeks. But that’s another post…