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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Day 1 and Polly in a Shirt

How did Day 1 of the Challenge go for y'all? It went swimmingly for me! I'm going to post some recipes here so get ready. They are modified Paleo and all of them are delish!

For those of you who don't already know, I issued a challenge to my peeps to eat clean for 30 days. We all know that it doesn't matter how hard you work if you're going to fuel your body with junk. I was sabotaging my progress with the food I eat. As a way to keep myself honest, I'll be journaling my meals here.

Since I have to get back to work I'm going to keep this one short and sweet

Breakfast: 2 sausage and egg muffins, 1 banana, Diet Coke (I know, I know) and Water

Lunch: Garlic Chicken, Steamed cabbage, 1/2 of  a Sweet potato and a small side salad of mixed greens with fresh tomato and a Paleo Balsamic Vinegarette, Water

Dinner: Indian Chicken served over Spaghetti Squash with Water to drink

As promised, here are the recipes.

Sausage and Egg Muffins
These aren't really muffins but I made them in muffin tins so I call them muffins. Muffin.

Ingredients:
6 eggs
1 lb. sausage (can be hot, turkey, sage, mild, etc. Whatever floats your boat.)

1. Brown the sausage and crumble it. Drain.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine all eggs, salt, pepper and a little half-and-half or milk. Beat the tar out of them.

3. In a regular muffin tin, portion out the sausage evenly so that you've got 12 muffins 1/2 full of sausage.

4. Spoon scrambled egg mixture over the sausage. I used a measuring cup to do this. I averaged 1/4 cup of the eggs per muffin.

5. Bake on 350 until the eggs are set. Eat.

*Word to the wise. Don't use muffin liners!!! The sausage is greasy enough that they won't stick to the muffin tin. If you're worried about sticking, you can butter the tin first. That would actually probably be delicious.

Garlic Chicken
This is a variation of a slow-cooker recipe I found. It's delicious and very forgiving. My husband loathes onions so I didn't include them but I can imagine that they'd be divine to caramelize with the garlic!

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, cut up. (I used 4 leg quarters because I like the dark meat. That, and it was cheap.)
40 cloves of garlic (This is approximately 2 heads of garlic)
Salt and Pepper
2 tbsp of butter, divided
olive oil
Onion (optional)
White wine or chicken broth

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350. To peel garlic, place cloves in pot of simmering water for 30 seconds-1 minute. This will make peeling much easier!

2. In a dutch oven or oven safe pot with a lid (could transfer to a casserole dish if needed), pour in a couple teaspoons of olive oil and  1Tbsp of butter. Salt and pepper the chicken. Once the oil is hot, brown chicken on both sides and remove from pan. This may need to be done in batches. Just add more oil/butter as needed. We're not frying it, we're just browning it. It will not be done when you remove it from the pot. That's fine- we're going to be putting it in the oven anyway!

3. Once the chicken is browned, throw the garlic cloves in there. Stir them around and let them get good and golden. (If you're using onion this is the part where you would put the chopped onion into the mix). After 1-2 minutes (stir constantly!),  pour in 1/2 cup of white wine to deglaze the pan. This should get the stuck on chicken parts off of the bottom. Let this bubble for a couple of minutes.

4. Add the chicken back into the pot and spoon some of the garlic up onto the top. Put lid on pot and place it into the oven and let it cook for 45 minutes to an hour. The chicken will be falling off of the bone! Serve with roasted veggies. This is a crowd pleaser!

*For those of you who don't like to use alcohol, feel free to use chicken STOCK. Not broth! Broth is watered down!

**If you are using boneless skinless chicken breasts you may want to add 1/4 cup of stock to the wine right before you add the chicken. When you use bone-in chicken it creates its own broth. We don't want dry chickens!

This dish reheats beautifully. It actually tastes better the second day so feel free to make it a day ahead! Can also be cooked in a crockpot. I would make sure to brown the chicken, though- it adds a layer of delicious flavor.


Indian Chicken

I already posted this recipe Here.

Adam and I eat this all the time. You can add in heavy cream, half-and-half, or sour cream at the end (about 1 cup) to make it a creamier dish but to make it Paleo I didn't add any and it tasted just as good! Served over Spaghetti squash that I cooked in the microwave for 11 minutes. Yumm-O!

So, good fellows, that's what I done ate! I'll be having Indian Chicken leftovers for lunch and I am contemplating some lemon pepper chicken for dinner. Or a spicy grilled flank steak. We shall see!

Also, Polly demolished an egg carton yesterday. She also nibbled on a tomato for some antioxidants.

Then, Adam put a shirt on her because he thought it was funny. Polly isn't amused. She's been walking around like a prisoner in shackles.

I'm so going to find this shirt in a million pieces when I get home!

Go eat something green and fibrous!

Over and out,
Sunny

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