Teenage IF and Nothing Left to Lose

Insanity is relative.

Insanity is MY relatives. Let's talk about the teen.

Ry is 16 years old now. She is amazing, awesome, beautiful, and also miserably infuriating, and capable of making me want to rage, weep, despair, and implode with love, within any 15 minute time-span.

My parenting sucks. I need to work on being much more disciplined with her; she is horribly inconsiderate of me in so many ways, that 'entitlement psychology' that drives me mad.

A lot of it really IS 'energy' issues on my part.  When you barely have the energy to get up and pee, never mind take a shower or drive to the store, then having the energy to fight with your teenager (and constantly get up and stalk them to make sure they do stuff and nag them for the 1.2 billion things they screw up or half-ass do) is easier said than done. But, I know it is what it is. My not feeling particularly up to it most of the time does not excuse me from being responsible for it.

Sometimes I get so angry and everything about her behavior just seems so wrong. One day, in the middle of ranting at her about something I can't even recall, I remembered the lyrics to a Linkin Park song I like -- archetypal teenage angst. The lyrics, made succinct here:

Tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
Don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
Can't you see that you're smothering me
Holding too tightly afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
And every second I waste is more than I can take
Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow
And I know I may end up failing too
But I know you were just like me
With someone disappointed in you
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

-- 'Numb' by Linkin Park 

And I realized that what I really wanted to do was shake her while yelling, "Be more like ME dammit!"

At that point, I realized the black humor of it all.

Teenage Fat and Self Esteem

She has fought obesity, eventually to morbid obesity. I can't take back the past and my own ignorance and thinking that a lot of stuff was "not a big deal," and thinking that my inability to lose weight in the areas that turn out to define 'Lipoedema' and my inability to handle carbs without weight gain was unique to me. Like I was some alien circus creature and surely "everyone else" wasn't that way. After all, I was surrounded by people who ate 10x worse than I did and they were normal, or at least much smaller. So much for that logic. Some of them are now huge.

I didn't get fat until my early 20s. I had a little chub that hit hard and fast at 13, but it fell off me when I hit 15, 'baby fat' they called it. And she seemed to have more her father's body shape and coloring than mine. So I never expected it of her. By the time it was overwhelmingly obvious that something had gone wildly wrong in her metabolism, she was a pre-teen and the damage was done.

Our house was already mostly low-carb and mostly gluten-free by then. At that point it was more a matter of  wanting to support her and let food focus be her own decision. Wanting to NOT be like mothers of my friends, who told me that their own mom's response to their weight when young was far more horrifying than the weight itself. I told her everything I could about low-carb but how too much of that for me had been an issue so maybe it should be moderated; about emphasis on fresh foods, good fats like coconut oil, and lifting weights. Basically, the things I was reading about at any given time.

That doesn't mean that she has been able to do something successfully before now. Or be willing to do something even 'with me', even when I was willing just for the sake of helping her. It has to come from her, I have learned that the hard way.

To say that the effects of fat on her self esteem are radical is an understatement.

It has been hard for me to understand. By comparison, I was a fairly confident, slightly intellectual, barely-starting martial arts enthusiast, a manager in my workplaces from the time I began working, and a performing artist since I was a child. It turns out I am more an introvert than I realized (when I got to know myself, my psych rating changed from ENTJ to INTP/J). But she is none of that.

She really is nothing like me in many ways.

When I was around 24 and suddenly the social world of strangers began treating me like some especially gross gum on the bottom of their shoe, I was at first perplexed (how could anybody not know that I was cool?), and then enraged (how could they have the gall to look down on me?) and then mortified (if I stand behind the column in this shopping mall for another 10 minutes, those women I used to know in high school will leave). That is to say... I dealt with it poorly.

But, once I got over nearly putting a bullet in my head about it, I was ok. I just focused on work. That's what dad said he did when his (now on #5) marriages went to hell. If you work enough, you don't have time to focus on, think about, anything else. And everyone you are around defines you primarily by your work, not by your weight, at least to some degree. So I became a workaholic.

I'm working normal hours now. Probably temporary. But I'm trying to focus on fiction writing which 'feeds my soul' in some fashion, in my personal time. Still, it's true I'm affected by my weight, psychologically and socially, but except in rare moments of angst, it's more in the background for me.

Not for her. It is up front and center for her.

I didn't deal with fat nearly as poorly as she did, in her own way, though. She got it when self-esteem was still developing. Fat has had an emotional and psychological impact on her that it never had on me, because I had long grown past formative years (including response from boys) when it arrived.

She claims shyness, and "a degree of social anxiety." I don't know what to believe, since the latter often seems to overlap with her not wanting to go anywhere or do anything and seems like a lazy-excuse. All I know is that she has been seriously harmed up by the situation, via more than just her figure.

Teenage Self-Imposed Dieting, Exercising, Intermittent Fasting

On her own, since she is in that "never comes out of her room" phase, she has shifted to a 'fairly low-carb' eating plan on her own, lifts weights, and works hard on practicing IF, or Intermittent Fasting.

Of course, she is 16. She is an artist (impressively so), which to my Virgo x4 logical mind appears to translate in our lives as "never does anything properly, won't study anything thoroughly, makes a mess of every environment, and is the laziest human alive."  I think work and study are The Answer(tm). Clearly, she doesn't. So, getting her to "do these things right" and "truly understand them" is a lost cause.

She does "something" and she's not particularly consistent and she's not particularly severe about it.

But, I'm one of those people who was consistent and severe and ended up with seemingly new problems thanks to 'overdoing' VLC and 'underdoing' rich-nutrition, I suspect. So, it's possible that her doing it "mostly" and screwing it up "to a degree and sometimes" is actually the far-healthier approach!

1. She eats lowish carb. Except when she doesn't. Mostly she tries to keep her carbs to vegetables, legumes, and rarely fruits, and what comes in certain dairy.
2. She eats high fat. That is to say she eats to satiation, and is directly responsible for increasing stock prices in the Daisy Dairy company for their cottage cheese and sour cream products.
3. She eats meat as the base of any meal.  
4. She tries to eat once a day, as much as she can, until she is totally full. She may blow it and have a protein shake or something else very LC in the middle of that sometimes. Once a week, she tries to fast for 30 hours instead of 24.
5. When she can gather up the gumption, she does the lifts I have insisted are the foundation of fitness: we don't have a bench and she's using only dumbbells, so: deadlifts, squats, arnold press, and then some messing-around things (e.g. side bends, shoulder shrugs, calf raises). 

At least, she tells me she is doing this, and that this is why my weights are not in the living room where I want them to be. Since she is holed up in her room like a train robber evading the posse, I will have to take her word on it.

She has lost from around 283# to 240#. (She is 5'6".) She's excited about that, but it's been a bit slow going, probably because she probably has too many calories when lowcarb, and too many carbs when normal on calories, and she is likely seldom if ever truly ketogenic, due to not retaining the <35g carbs daily for long enough to get there more than the tiny dip during sleep or something.

Still, it is a very visible improvement all over her body, and she's so hopeful. The more I read about how weight regain is nearly inevitable and so on, the more when I think of her I feel an incredible rage. I want her to have a life and be proud of herself and feel good. She is young. Surely if there is hope for anybody truly losing it and being able to keep it off, it ought to be her.

Food and Stuff

I had cans of white meat chicken that I store for emergencies, quick protein and kitty treat. Now I can't keep the stuff. She's discovered if she drains it, and fries it with spices, it becomes a diced/flaked chicken she can mix with lots of other things, eat plain, put in salads, whatever. It's surprisingly good.

It's this stuff. At amazon if you buy the 10oz can, 12pk, on subscribe with prime, it's basically the same price as Super Walmart. Except they deliver it to your door.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V1LXTU/

Initially I thought, I'm not fond of this as her primary food, since I am prejudiced against canned food, and it's expensive as hell for me as a 'primary' food, and surely fresh chicken is better. But she doesn't want to cook quite that much if she doesn't have to. So she's living on canned chicken, ground (organic) turkey burger, and (factory) chuck-burger, along with enough 'soft-dairy' for a Vermont advertising model.

She's fond of the Greek seasoning I get her from Penzey's, and herbed crumbled feta cheese. She likes basic italian seasonings, and Montreal steak seasoning.  She still doesn't like eggs, but she doesn't mind them "in" things. She uses canned diced green chilis, and sliced black olives, both in large quantity. And shredded mild cheddar cheese... and she never met anything that cream cheese didn't make better. Sometimes turkey pastrami sliced at the grocer deli. She's getting more courageous experimenting with spices.

She drinks only water, since she says she can guarantee a facial zit for every few drinks of any soda, almost predictably. She eats salads with ranch dressing sometimes. That's about all I can think to say about her eating since I don't actually SEE most of it. I have to work 9-10 hours a day, and sleep, and some computer stuff, which means the only time I might actually be sharing her life in the early evening, she is usually locked away in her room, playing WoW or SIMS or drawing.

But it's working for her...

She's losing weight. She's measurably smaller. She feels optimistic about it.

And if she does every individual thing not so well to begin with, and blows it entirely off and on, well it might be that this actually does her more help than harm in the end.

Because what she's doing is working. She had almost given up hope. She felt desperate and demoralized. She felt like she had nothing left to lose. Now she feels better.

I consider this a great thing.

PJ

Bacon Mushroom Parmy Chicken

Tonight's dinner experiment was a variant mix of a few recipes I've had before. It uses one prepared item, about half a jar of alfredo sauce. It has dairy but no gluten. The measures vary depending on what you want so I don't have a solid nutrient count. The kid declared THE BEST MEAL EVER(TM) so I thought maybe I should blog it, though it's not all that original.

Bacon Mushroom Parmesan Alfredo Chicken

(Doesn't that title make you think that recipes are named like German words? Although if it were really like German it would be more like Baconmushroomparmesanalfredochickencookedinsquarepan -- all one word, haha.)

Ingredients
3 very big skinless boneless chicken breasts or equivalent
6 strips of bacon cut in half (and their drippings from frying)
~1 package of mushrooms (from 1/4cup to 1.5cup, whatever you have)
1/2 cube butter cut in thin slices (that's 1/8 cup or 4 oz for those without cubes)
handful of shredded parmesan cheese (1/4cup to 1cup, whatever you have)
half a jar (or 6-8oz homemade) alfredo sauce or some variant on that
baking pan (I used square 8")

Instructions
heat oven to 350 degrees F.
cook the half bacon slices (you want 3-4 per chicken breast) until ~ 1/2 or more done
put slices of butter over bottom of baking pan
put sliced mushrooms over the butter
put part of the parmesan lightly sprinkled over it all
cut fat off chicken breasts (if you wish) and season them both sides with onion powder, garlic powder, and the herbal season of your choice (I used Green Goddess dressing base from Penzey's, italian seasoning would work too) and place the chicken breasts on top of the mushrooms
sprinkle the rest of the parmesan over all of it, chicken too
place the strips of bacon over the top of the chicken breasts
pour the bacon grease from your few strips into the bottom of the baking dish
pour the alfredo sauce lightly all around the pan both on chicken and in the other areas (it should be enough to make it a little saucy but not enough to drown it)
Bake it at 350 for about 50-60 minutes.

When you're done, if you like you can take the pan drippings and mix it with sour cream, or cream cheese, or coconut flour, or some blendered cooked cauli, or NotStarch/ThickNThin, or whatever you like to use to make gravy-like concoctions. It is pretty edible even without the extra sauce though. Alternatively if you have one of those oil separators used for gravy, used that on the drippings and then just pour the non-oil part of that over the chicken before serving.

No nutrient counts here. Chicken and bacon = 0 carbs. The rest of the ingredients have some carbs but very few especially when it's divided up into servings.

The mushrooms were unusually tasty. Kid raved about them and I had to admit they were really good. Some mix of butter, bacon grease, and parm, plus a bit of the spices on the chicken just above, combined to make that unusually good.

I haven't really felt like cooking in eons but suddenly have the enthusiasm and energy. I haven't felt like doing anything to my house in months either, but woke up at 4am this morning and was inspired to clean out a few cupboard shelves and drawers and make tea and so on. Although I don't feel anywhere near ketosis yet (this is day 12 of re-starting low-carb), something must be working since I apparently have a lot more energy than before!

Maybe I will finally get off my butt and use my pressure cooker. I'm really crazy about the idea of coming up with a low low-carb pressure cooker recipe series. Just being able to cook a whole lot of meat in a very short time, and cook tasty but cheaper cuts so they are tender, seems like it would make the PC ideal for LC eating.

PJ
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Spicy Pesto Tuna Salad

I don't have nutrition counts for this, because I am insanely lazy today, and because I didn't weigh the veggies which I'd need to for any decent estimate. Suffice to say this is a fairly lowcarb substantial protein meal that was VERY munchable for lunch and dinner.

Spice wimps, you could replace the peppers with other crunchy veggies small-diced like celery, broccoli or cooked asparagus. I think adding a few crunchy seeds or chopped nuts and diced roma tomato might be good too.

Spicy Pesto Tuna Salad

6 oz well-drained canned tuna
~2 Tbsp mayonnaise (just to get it wet/mixed, not as a main flavor)
~3-4 Tbsp basil pesto (this is the dominant flavor)
~1-3oz tiny-cubed jack cheese
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 anaheim chili, finely chopped
2 medium jalapeno peppers, finely chopped
4 medium green onions (scallions), finely chopped
~1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

I mixed everything but the pesto and cheese together, then added the pesto and mixed, then added the cheese and mixed. I only added the cheese to increase protein and calories for me, it was not necessary to the recipe. Makes 2-3 servings.

Obviously your counts will depend on what you put in it and how much, and how many servings you make out of it. It's just "a bowl of stuff" and it is yummy cold, which during summer is GREAT. The peppers and onions make it 'crunchy' added to the shredded/creamy which is a neat combo.

This is vaguely similar to my mexi-chicken mix (green or red) except pesto is the dominant flavor instead of enchilada sauce and it's tuna not chicken. They are probably pretty interchangeable though for the most part (that one has nutrition counts). Part of my continuing search for stuff I can eat that is easy, fast, yummy, high protein, lowcarb, and can be made with either pre-cooked (slowcooker) chicken breasts or canned tuna.

This tasted great! I suppose since it's dumping tons of stuff in there anyway, you could also throw in a tiny bit of chopped boiled egg for yet-more protein. It made me two servings, but it could easily have been 3, or even 4 if it was being used as a spread for LC bread/tortilla rollup.

Caveat: I love pesto. If you are not a pesto fan you are not going to like this one. Theoretically I could probably eat a volkswagon as long as it had pesto on it, so you might take my gushing with a grain of salt.

PJ

A Few Little Things

Here's a few little things I've made recently that some folks might like. This doesn't have nutrition on it and most are loose concept recipes you can mess with however you like.


Eggs & Mushrooms

I made this in the morning and the kid and I agree it's ridiculously good. It's one of those no-brainer recipes I feel stupid for even writing down, but I never tried it before so maybe someone else hasn't either.

Ingredients:
* couple TBSP saved bacon grease (I make bacon just to save the grease for eggs)
* couple TBSP butter (use all butter if you don't have bacon grease.)
* some diced onion or scallion
* a few minced cloves of garlic
* a couple ounces mushrooms, cleaned/de-stem'd and sliced thin
* a few eggs
* optionally, a little cream or half&half or milk (or just water is fine)
* some finely shredded cheese, any kind you like (we used colby-jack mix)
* beef broth or french onion soup

I put the bacon grease and garlic in a frying pan and let it get hot and start to cook. I added the butter and melted it, then poured in the onion and cooked for a couple minutes, then poured in the sliced mushrooms and a few ounces of either beef broth/stock or french onion soup (I used the soup as it was all I had), and sauteed it all together for awhile until it seemed cooked through. Turned off heat.

In a cup or bowl crack a few eggs into it and add some salt&pepper or whatever seasoning you like, add a little liquid (the cream/water whatever) and use a stick blender to make it frothy. (Optional of course.) In a separate tiny frying pan, spray it and make it hot then pour the egg batter in there. I let it cook, lifting up the sides to tilt the liquid under so it cooks like an 'egg pie'. You could do this as a quiche if you preferred.

Turn the heat back on the mushroom mix so it gets hot again.

Cut the egg pie into however many pieces you need for the folks eating, and put each on a plate. Sprinkle some shredded cheese on the egg-pie-slice and then on the plate just around it. Then dump some amount of your mushroom mix on top of the egg-pie-slice and the plate around it. The heat will melt the cheese into it.

Obviously your quantity of all ingredients needs to be "eyeballed". The mushroom mix should end up very wet at least. You could add thickNthin to make it a little thicker if you need to (that is a lowcarb replacement for cornstarch or other thickeners, see netrition.com for it I think), or just add more 'stuff' to it (you could add chopped peppers for example).

It was yummy! As variation, I think I could have added a little bit of cream cheese or sour cream to the mushroom mix; and I could have added some finely shredded parmesan to the top if I were presenting it to guests.


Cocoa Coconut Bits

Some folks want to get coconut oil into their diet on purpose, and in my case I'm always desperate to add calories that don't have too many carbs, as my weight means my caloric intake needs to be decent to avoid the starvation response that is the primary cause of my fat to begin with, but usually getting that many calories, unless I'm living on bacon and mayo or something, is hard work.

This is a slightly modified recipe a friend gave me. I made this in a silicon baking pan and I'm not sure how well it would come out in anything else; if you don't have silicon, I recommend using the wax paper in a pie or cake pan method instead.

Ingredients:
* 1/3 cup coconut oil (or 2/3 cup if you don't have the cream below)
* 1/3 cup coconut cream concentrate (tropicaltraditions.com has the pure coconut stuff of all kinds)
* 2 TBSP cocoa (I recommend Penzeys.com 24% butterfat dutched)
* 1 tsp vanilla extract (artificial is much lower carb)
* 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or any spice you prefer)
* optionally, other spices or extracts (citrus peel/extract might be nice too)
* sweetener of some kind. I used a lot of sweetzfree. For me usually chocolate is 1 part cocoa to 4 parts sweetener to work; I think I used about 20 drops.

In a small saucepan, melt the coconut oil. Low heat, it doesn't take much. Add in the coconut cream and melt that with it. Add the vanilla and spice(s) and stir well, then stir in the cocoa.

Nonstick spray a silicon pan (I used a mini-donut pan, but a mini-muffin or even plain muffin pan would work), or, put wax paper inside a pie or cake pan. Pour the mix (it is really a thin liquid) into it and stick it in the fridge to chill. Because coconut oil is solid at 75 degrees or so, it'll usually only take about 15-20 minutes to make these chilled (depends on thickness). When fully chilled through, if you used a pie/cake pan, take it out and break it into pieces. If you used a silicon pan, turn each little piece out. I stored all the little mini-donut shapes (quite cute really!) in a ziploc.

My kid thinks this is revolting by the way. She said, "It tastes like it is almost pure coconut oil, bleagh!" Yes... because it is. But, it's a cocoa flavored coconut oil which makes it pretty decent tasting to me, much like a candy of sorts. Once in awhile if I feel like eating something but it's not food time, I'll just have one of these. They are rich enough that you don't want to eat lots, but they have lots of good fat so they are satiating. Deals with my occasional chocolate longing as well. And I bet I could just stir a little ring into my coffee and have a cocoa mocha!


Pesto Chicken Salad

Spice wimps can replace the jalapenos with diced green bell pepper. :-)

Ingredients:
* 4-6oz diced or chopped cooked chicken (this is great for leftover chicken!)
* 1/4 cup pesto
* 2 oz cream cheese, very softened or melted slightly
* some diced scallions (green onions have fewer carbs than bulb onions) I used 4
* some diced jalapeno (the more the hotter, obviously!) I used 2 medium ones
* optionally, some finely grated cheese, any kind you like but pepper jack would be good

Mix the pesto into the supersoft cream cheese. Mix in the chicken, scallions and pepper. Nuke for about a minute which melts the cheese(s) further, then mix well.

You can put this on any kind of breadish, wrap it in a protein crepe, or eat it plain with a fork -- it's good cold from the fridge as well as hot. I could almost live on this stuff and what I like best is that I can make a lot of it thanks to crockpotting some chicken, keep it in the fridge in separate little half-cup Glad plastic containers, and when it's time to eat I can just eat it or nuke it so it's hot and eat it... insta-food, real food, high protein low carb.

PJ

Chicken Casserole Verde

Recipes are backdated to prevent interference with current blogging.

This is a slight variation on a recipe I found at the lowcarber forum (read it here) that we really liked. Next time we make it, we'll make twice as much... we really chowed on the leftovers for lunch the next day, they nuke beautifully.

Chicken Casserole Verde

INGREDIENTS

4 cups cooked chicken (or turkey) -- shredded or cubed

2 teaspoons Taco Seasoning (you can make this yourself)

8 ounces softened cream cheese (Philly light has slightly fewer carbs by the way)

1 tablespoon minced green onions or chives

7 ounce can Green Mexican Salsa (we used green enchilada sauce)

4 ounce can chopped green chiles

6 ounces Monterey jack cheese, shredded (you could make it spicier by using pepper jack, though it is a bit more carbs)

4 green onions, chopped (this is just to sprinkle on top)

Optional: we would add some super-thin sliced jalapeno and some red pepper flakes 'cause we're hot-spicy addicts but that's up to you.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees while you grease a full size baking pan and put the chicken in it.

2. Add the taco seasoning and mix the chicken around in it to coat.

3. Mix cream cheese with the onions/chives and green sauce in a medium bowl. Stir in the chiles.

4. Pour sauce evenly over chicken and top with the cheese.

Bake for 25 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Remove from oven and sprinkle with green onions.

Makes 6-8 servings.

NUTRITION

The original recipe poster was kind enough to include this:
Per 1/6 recipe: 432 Calories; 29g Fat; 38g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 4g Net Carbs
Per 1/8 recipe: 324 Calories; 22g Fat; 28g Protein; 4g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 3g Net Carbs

But personally I would figure it out yourself based on what you add, because mexican sauces in particular vary widely.

COMMENTS

This is already deemed a staple in our house. The leftovers are as good as the fresh stuff. I think I could eat this several times a week and be happy. Even the kid was nuts about it.

Mushroomy Chicken with Bacon

Recipes are back-dated to prevent interference with current blogging.

This is rather like recipes I've had before that are "cream of mushroom soup dumped on chicken" except it's homemade. It's good stuff. I've modified my version (of course -- if I don't modify something, I just link to it) slightly. The original was on the lowcarber forum (read it here).

Mushroomy Chicken with Bacon

INGREDIENTS:

2-4 boneless chicken breasts (or whatever you prefer.)

2 tablespoons butter, melted (a little more if you have more than 2-3 pcs chicken)

slices of bacon to match your quantity of chicken

crushed garlic (quantity to taste)

1 cup mushrooms, sliced (if everyone eating is LC, just 1/2 cup. Otherwise, put in more and the LCer can just not take so many of them. It's better with more.)

1/3 cup heavy (whipping) cream

Your favorite seasoning to taste for your chicken (seasoning salt, etc.)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Optional: you can half-cook the bacon first if you prefer your bacon a little more done in the final product. (Of course, the bacon dripping on the chicken is the point of this, and you lose some of that, if you half-cook it first.)

2. Pour melted butter into a baking dish of whatever size will fit all your chicken. Add chicken (if it has skin, put that side down), and sprinkle with your seasoning and the garlic. Turn the chicken over, season that side, and lay the bacon strips on top. Sprinkle with mushrooms.

3. Bake 45 to 60 minutes, until chicken is done (is no longer pink).

4. Remove chicken and whatever's on top of it to your serving plates or somewhere to keep warm. Pour all the juices from the baking dish into a small saucepan and whisk together with the cream over low heat until thickened. If you have an issue with the 'reduction' taking forever, try some Not/Starch (replaces corn starch wonderfully and is lowcarb, buy it here).

5. Pour sauce over the chicken and serve warm.

NUTRITION

Well it depends on how much you make. Chicken and bacon have no carbs. Mushrooms and cream have some. USDA says a 'medium white mushroom, raw' weighs 18grams and has .59 carbs. It says 'cream' (heavy whipping) .34 (about 1/3) a cup weighs 80.92 grams and has 2.26 carbs.

COMMENTS

You could crockpot chicken, fry some mushrooms in garlic and butter, and then dump the crockpot runoff and shrooms into a saucepan and make the sauce for this recipe and have something similar -- we crockpot more than we bake, especially in summer.

We didn't make a side with this but I think grilled green beens with pepper, garlic and butter would have been great with it.

All three of us loved it, the kid too. This is a nice one for leftovers you can store in a bowl and nuke for lunch. It might be freezeable but I wouldn't chance it since most dairy doesn't do too well frozen and this has a bunch of cream in the sauce.

Munchy Parmey Chicken Chunks

All recipes back date a month so they don't interfere with current blogging fyi.

OK, the first-source (prior to modifications, etc.) of this recipe seems to be in Dr. Atkins big recipe book (buy it here) under the title Angel Wings. However, it mosey'd on over to the awesome LowCarber forum on a thread called Heroin Chicken Wings (read thread here). I modified this slightly and I didn't use wings at all, so to further devolve the name of this poor recipe, I call my version Munchy Parmey Chicken Chunks since... well, that's exactly what they are.

Munchy Parmey Chicken Chunks

INGREDIENTS

A bunch of chicken. Use whatever you want. We used about 2-3 pounds of boneless skinless breast of chicken, cut with kitchen scissors up into pieces that held about 2-3 bites.

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese. Personally this recipe's so parmey that it makes you wanna yell OUI! so I think mixing a little Romano in would be nice, we'll do that next time.

2 Tablespoons dried parsley
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons paprika
Did you know that the higher quality the paprika, the bolder the color? You pay bigtime for the screaming orange level but wow. It's cool.

P.S. I thought there was too much parsley-etc. in this, I'll reduce it next time.

The original recipe had salt but they're insane. Parmesan is so salty already! I wouldn't add any salt unless you're selling drinks to the people you're serving them to.

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/2 cup butter, melted

Optional: garlic; bit of cayenne; red pepper flakes.


INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cut the chicken into pieces

3. Combine the cheese(s) and spices in a bowl.

4. Line a shallow baking pan with foil. You'll be sorry if you don't.

5. Melt the butter in whatever fashion you prefer.

6. Dip each chicken piece real well in the butter, roll it around in the cheese and seasoning mixture, and arranged it in the foil-lined pan.

7. Bake for about 1 hour.


NUTRITION

Makes however much you make with it! Each piece has only a trace of carbs, since chicken doesn't have any and there's not so much stuff on any given piece.


COMMENTS

This would be ideal with marinara sauce but it's carby. We had it with blue cheese dressing for dipping.

My 10 year gave this her "I ate all mine, do you have any more?" approval.

This is a very 'munchy'-like meal. It's not like a warm dinner or something for guests at a table. This is an awesome thing to make when you're going to be sitting around watching a screen and everybody else is munching on junk you can't have if you're lowcarb. Or if you're going to have to eat in the car or something. There aren't many LC foods that are sorta-crunchy, this is novel in that regard.