Low Carb Crock Pot Chicken Fajita Soup

I hope everyone had a Wonderful Holiday! I know my family and I did. 2021 will be a wonderful year I just know it!

                             Low Carb Crock Pot Chicken Fajita Soup

Its getting chilly hear in the South this is a fantastic recipe to warm your soul, I found the original recipe on Peace, Love and Low Carb I tweaked alittle for my family’s taste. But I would like to thank Peace-Love and Low Carb for this recipe. 🙂

Ingredients

1 Crock Pot family Size (If you don’t have a Crock you can make on Stove top).

1 pack skinless Chicken Breast about 1 to 1 1/2 lbs 

2 Cups Chicken Stock lower sodium

1 Cup beef Stock lower sodium

14.5 can organic diced tomatoes 

2 Cups sliced Mushrooms

2 Cloves of chopped diced Garlic. (I had to use my backup minced, I was actually out of fresh 😦 oh no!)

1 Onion diced

1 Green Bell Pepper Chopped Diced

1 Orange Pepper Chopped Diced

1 Red Bell Pepper chopped Diced

4 Heaping Tablespoons of Fajita or Taco Seasoning

1 Tablespoon Garlic Salt

1 Tablespoon Fresh Ground Pepper

Salt to taste. If needed.

Lets Cook!

First lets Wash and Trim our Chicken Breast. Set Crock pot on 6 hr. low setting. Lets get our Vegis. washed and Diced. Place Chicken Breast in Crock pot and Cover with Diced Tomatoes.

                      

Now lets add the remaining ingredients.

 Chicken Broth and Garlic Salt and Ground Back Pepper stir in Broth for full flavor.

 Peppers

  Onions

 Garlic

       Mix Fajita Spice into Beef Broth and Add to Crock.

 Mushrooms

Your Crock pot should look like This :

Put lid on and cook for about 5 hrs. then REMOVE chicken and Shred. Works better for me Removing Chicken but if you want you can do it in Crock.

          

Return to Crock and Cook for an Additional Hour. 

Serve with Pepper jack cheese and Cheddar…YUM!

I Really Hope You Guys Enjoy This Wonderful Heart Warming Dish. 

Once again I would Love to thank : peaceloveandlowcarb.com

Amish Breakfast Casserole Goes Low Carb

The climate our kids live in has changed. Life seems more about children than about family and as a result the coming and going of family from home to home has ended. For us anyway. We got so sick of hearing our siblings say they have to ask their kids about an event or holiday that we stopped asking. If you think that is harsh, you should hear what we actually said to our own children!

From the days when aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and even family friends came and went, staying for days at a time, we all have great recipes for getting a nice meal set out without a lot of prep time away from guests. This is actually one of those, but done over in low carb. It is completely fine to prep this the night before and refrigerate until you put it in the oven. Another great thing about this casserole, the meat is completely optional. It does not change the quality of the dish. For my example, I only put on 6 strips of crumbled bacon on top. I have made the original with no meat, with soy meat, ham, bacon, sausage, turkey. As an added bonus, it reheats beautifully.

Serves 8 large portions as a main or 16 side portions as an accompaniment.
Per each of 8 servings, Calculated by Verywellfit com

Nutrition Facts
Servings: 8
Amount per serving
Calories 509
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 30.2g 39%
Saturated Fat 10.7g 54%
Cholesterol 196mg 65%
Sodium 1781mg 77%
Total Carbohydrate 16.3g 6%
Dietary Fiber 2.3g 8%
Total Sugars 4.9g
Protein 41.4g
Vitamin D 12mcg 58%
Calcium 190mg 15%
Iron 4mg 20%
Potassium 770mg 16%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet.2,000 calorie a day is used for general nutrition advice.

Recipe analyzed by Very Well Fit

Ingredients
1 pound Bacon or Sausage, cooked and crumbled (Optional)
1 cup diced onion
6 eggs, beaten
2 cups Zucchini, grated
2 cups Sweet Potato (this is just one whole potato), peeled and diced
8 ounces Cheddar, shredded
16 ounces small curd cottage cheese

Place potato pieces in a small pot of boiling water. Boil for 10 minutes. Drain and quickly rinse with cold water. Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Evenly spread mixture in a lightly greased pan(s), either two 8×8 or one 9×13. Bake at 350°F/176°C for 40 minutes. Serve.

Kid Lovin’ Chicken

“It’s Shake ‘n’ Bake! And I helped!!”

Do you remember that commercial? When I first started cooking, that stuff was always in my cabinets. I bet I had a dozen recipes that called for it.

This works the same, but in a healthier way.

Serves 8
Per Serving
Calories 399
Carbs 4 grams

Ingredients
½ cup Nonfat Dry Milk Powder
¾ cup Parmesan
1 T Paprika
½ T each Thyme, Garlic Powder and Black Pepper
3 pounds Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts

Preheat oven to 350°F. Slice chicken lengthwise for strips or widthwise for nuggets. About ½” thick. In a large container with a lid, mix all the dry ingredients together. Add chicken and shake! Lightly spray or grease baking pan(s). Spread chicken in single layer on pan(s). Bake for 30 minutes. Serve.

Better than the Pub Poppers

I love jalapeño! When I can find them crispy with perfect heat, I will eat them every meal until I run out. I’ve had zero luck growing my own. Fingers crossed, this is the year!!!!

The standard low carb recipe for poppers, however, always leaves me kinda bummed. It’s good. Well, oven fresh they are good. But, to serve them for a get together….well, you are going to have leftovers. They get soggy, they don’t crunch. I think a good popper should snap when you bite it and ooze completely yummy stuff into your mouth.

Do you agree?

First, ditch the oven. That heat is losing your crispy goodness.

Nutrition. As figured by me. Yikes! I promise I double checked my math.
Per Popper
Calories 79
Carbs 2 grams

Makes 18 poppers
4 ounces Cream Cheese, softened
½ cup sour cream
6 ounces bacon cooked crisp and crumbled OR ½ f a 2.5 oz package of real bacon pieces
¼ whole Red Onion, diced finely
2 cloves roasted garlic, or garlic powder to taste
4 ounces Cheddar Cheese, shredded
18 jalapeños, raw, whole

Beat cream cheese, sour cream, bacon, onion, garlic, and cheddar until fairly smooth. Cut off the top of your peppers. Put on protective gloves and safety glasses. Cut a slit down one long side of each pepper, scrape out seeds and membranes carefully so you don’t break the pepper completely. Stuff with mixture and press back together. Serve or cover and refrigerate.

Recipe Notes:
If you’ve never done your own crumbles before, the method I like (remember I am very lazy) is cook and drain your bacon put all of it on paper towels in the freezer, wait a few hours and crush it with your hands.

Not everyone digs heat. I totally get that. Swap mini sweet peppers for the jalapeños and done.

Some people love heat. Swap jalapeños for habaneros and halve the filling.

Zuccoti

Zuccotti – A Low Carb Manicotti

Manicotti is crazy important in my house. It was one of those dishes that I revised before ever making and it was an instant hit. However, I hate making it. It is messy and time consuming.

I only made it for special occasions, especially my first born’s birthday. There are no parties for birthdays in our house. The kids get a present and they get to pick their homemade dinner and dessert. There have been times a party would have been cheaper and less work. For example, manicotti was most commonly served with oven fried chicken, chocolate on chocolate cake and homemade coffee ice cream.

There are no birthdays for a couple weeks but I’m missing my angel, so I broke out the notepad and pans. I hope you like it.

Serves 6. Per Serving
511 Calories and 16 g Carbohydrates

Ingredients
½ cup Salt (optional)
Large bowl of water (optional)
6 Zucchini
1 pound ground sausage (mild, medium or hot)
4.5 ounces sliced black olives
2 large eggs
1 cup Ricotta Cheese
Garlic, Basil, and black pepper to taste
1 ½ cups Marinara or sauce of your choice
2 cups Shredded Mozzarella

Cut ends off and peel zucchini down to white. Core zucchini. I found the best way to do this was the saw thingy that came out of one of those jack o lantern kits.

This next part is totally optional. Mix the salt and water together and brine the zucchini for half an hour. Let drain completely on towels while you prepare the rest.
Crumbled, brown and drain the sausage. Drain the olives.
Mix olives, sausage, ricotta, eggs and seasoning in a bowl.
Stuff zucchini with mixture.
Lay stuffed zucchini in a lightly sprayed 9 * 13 pan.
Distribute leftover mixture evenly along the tops of your stuffed zucchini.
Top with sauce and cheese.
Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes.
Serve.

We served ours with Salad and a low carb cheese bread that is just amazing.

MrsBMcV’s Comfort Pork

Right now I’m concentrating on comfort food. Cindy was telling me about Brunswick Stew, which, I had never heard of nor have ever tasted. It’s a Southern dish, in general, consisting of barbecue leftovers. No one makes it exactly the same and everyone is positive their way is the way it should be made. And, dear heavens, do NOT ask where it originated.

Anyway, after loads of notes on different types of Brunswick stew and the makings of Carolina style barbecue sauce (sorry, Georgia!), I wrote up a low carb reconstructed version.

It turned out awesome but I wouldn’t dare call it Low Carb Brunswick. It tastes sweet and sour with a barbecue-y undertone. The vinegar smell is very strong the first couple hours it’s in the oven, after that, it smells like you are hosting a pretty nice barbecue. The nutrition info is as if you divided the dish evenly into 8, but we didn’t consume most of the liquid.

Nutrition per serving.
Calories 416
Fat 26 g
Carbs 14 g

Ingredients
8 pork chops (around 2 pounds)
½ cup Butter, unsalted
3 cubes Chicken bouillon
2T dried minced onion
4 cloves minced garlic
3 mini sweet peppers or one red bell, diced
1 cup frozen corn
2T Paprika
1/2t Salt
1 cup Rice Wine Vinegar
¼ cup Ketchup
1T Brown Sugar
1t Sweet Chili Sauce (Sriracha)
1t ground black pepper
1t Worcestershire sauce

Spray a 9*13 pan with cooking spray (or grease lightly). In a saucepan, on medium heat combine all other ingredients. Heat and stir until onions expand, butter melts and powders dissolve. Remove from heat and pour evenly over pork chops. Bake uncovered for 4 hours at 250°F/121°C.

Recipe Notes:

Rice Wine Vinegar is not something everyone has. You can sub another vinegar but because of the mild flavor in the rice vinegar, use ½ vinegar and ½ water.
This could use alternative sweeteners to sweeten the dish. Ideally this would have ¼ cup brown sugar instead of 1 tablespoon.

King Ranch Casserole – Low Carb Version

I loved this dish when my kids were little. It always came together so solid and tasty. However, since the original recipe calls for canned soups and tortillas, I had to ditch it even before I started low carb. In this recreation, the cheese really holds the casserole together but it is not going to be the solid portions that accompany the original dish.

Nutrition info for casserole only as calculated by Happy Forks
Serves 6
Calories 434
Protein 46.22 g
Fat 24.56 g
Carbohydrate 5.93 g

1.5 pounds Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 can diced tomatoes and green chilies
8 ounces canned mushrooms
1 cup Sour Cream
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat the oven to 350°C/177°F. Dice or chunk the chicken, cook and season as desired. I sautéed in a bit of oil and seasoned with dried onion, chili powder and coarse black pepper. Drain the meat, mushrooms and tomatoes. Mix together with the cheddar and sour cream. Mix thoroughly. In a LIGHTLY greased 9*13 pan, spread the mixture. Bake for 45 minutes.

Recipe notes –
You can totally use fresh mushrooms for this but you will want to cook and drain them first.
The dish has a quesadilla type quality, so it could be served on tortillas to the high carb crowd.

Hello There!

Hello. I’m not Cindy. I’m Jennifer.

We do have a couple strong mutual interests. First, we married very difficult, rambunctious, charming, men who happen to be brothers. Clearly these men were put on earth specifically to cause us grief under the guise of laughter and mirth. Or vice versa. I’m not totally sure. Second, we both LOVE food. Other than this, we are pretty different.

Our cooking and eating styles are completely different. I cook for 2-6 in the same week and host holidays that may exceed 20 guests. I play with food a lot. I like trying out new recipes and techniques, but only with simple ingredients. You most likely won’t ever see higher end items in my recipes. You will see a lot of budget friendly items. We are a restless, large bunch and so are our meals. The inspiration could come from anywhere in the world, some show we watched, or just experimenting.

While I am always working on my weight and health, I don’t make any significant progress. Willpower is just not my thing. If I work really hard I want to be able to drop a size or a daily medication. So far, I’ve lost close to 20 pounds and am still a size 16 and they have added pills instead of taking them away.

Why low carb then? Because low fat/low sodium didn’t work at all. I gave up egg yolks and salt and sauces and loads of red meat. My cholesterol went UP. TWICE. Low carb makes nice, family friendly meals, picnics, it is interesting and has taken a full inch off my waist and some of the fat out of my face. I would probably do a lot better if I would stick to it, but I adore bread and ice cream, and sitting on my fat, lazy butt binge watching a show stuffing my face with popcorn.

For that reason, I will just be posting recipes without a lot of preamble but feel free to grill me with questions and suggestions.

Here’s hoping I do not bore you all to death!

Low Carb Fall Favorite Pumpkin Pie

 

 

 

 

 

Pumpkin Pie…hmmm What can I say, its fantastic, it feels comforting and it definitely feels like FALL.  

This is a recipe that I decided had to be done, and yes I’m going to start Thanksgiving meal planning Low-Carb style with the dessert. Why? Well I like my Pumpkin Pie Chilled before I eat it, and this Yummy re-du classic takes a minute or 60 to cool down. My husband likes it Warm with Vanilla Bean ice cream instead of Whipping Cream I always say…To Each Their Own!

My first memory of Pumpkin Pie was eating it at my Grandmothers house, a dessert often scene hanging around with Pecan Pie on Thanksgiving. I remember thinking I was eating Sweet Potato Pie,  but told it was Pumpkin, the pleasure of the spices burst in my mouth and the soft creamy texture was awesome. It was love at first bite!

Creating a new twist for this recipe was difficult, I wanted that same feeling of Spices and texture you have with Normal Pumpkin Pie to shine in this recipe,  think I did it. Even the Hubby liked it, without that scoop of Vanilla Bean ice cream. Points in my court 🙂

Ingredient’s

Crust

8 ounce Bag of Pecans

4 tablespoons Butter (real butter)

1 tablespoon of Stevia or 2 tablespoons Splenda

 

Filling

2 Cups Pumpkin puree (use can if you like, just make sure no sugar added 100%)

2 Eggs

1 tablespoon Pumpkin Spice

1 teaspoon Cinnamon

2 teaspoons Vanilla extract

3/4 cup Splenda or Stevia (NOTE: beware Stevia is a little on the bitter side so make it 1/2 cup if using Stevia.

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 Cup Heavy Cream

 

Whip Cream Topping

1 Cup Heavy whipping Cream

1 Tablespoon Splenda or Stevia

1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

pinch salt

 

OK Lets COOK!!!

First lets make our Crust. Pre heat oven 350 degree.

         Blend Pecans, Sugar Substitute.

 Then Add Butter and pulse Blend.

  Should look something like this.

Spoon into Pie pan (grease slightly with wrapper from butter).

Spread with Fingers or Spoon

Put in Pre Heated oven for about 5 min. or 10 Min.

WALLA!!!

Let start our Filling!

Grab your hand mixer and let beat our 2 Eggs, once that’s done add all other ingredient’s BUT the Heavy Cream.

Once every thing is Mixed well slowly add your Cream. I Know these two handed gigs are hard, but lets give it a shot.

 Oh side note, don’t have your mixer on high when you start pouring, I now have a Pumpkin dripping off my coffee pot. Just saying.

Ok, lets take this yumminess and pour into our Pecan Crust.

   Before      After

Bake for about 50 min. how to tell if your pie is done, well there is always the toothpick test, or watch this : https://youtu.be/_u8GXGhWLSc

When you feel your pie is done, set on cooler surface other than your stove top (that might be warm). and cool completely before cutting.

NOTE:  when pie is cooled you DO refrigerate .

Lets make our Whip Cream Topping!

In a medium mixing bowl pour in Whipping Cream, add Splenda (stevia) and Vanilla Extract,pinch salt. Here is a good video to show you: https://youtu.be/Yc0Q-7cdsxo

 I use my hand mixer .

In a few min. you have a finished product, store in fridge until ready to use.

Ok Pie is Cooled LETS EAT!!!

 

 

 

Chicken Pot Pie – Low Carb

Chicken Pot Pie..Yumm that says Fall is here. I found this Recipe on my search for new Fall dishes, I had to tweak just a Bit for my Family Flavor. Pot Pie is one of those dishes that we are all familiar with those warm taste of Vegetable’s  and the Crispy Crust that brings it all together. This is a must have in anyone’s Low Carb Lifestyle. 

The Original recipe came from Peace, Love and LowCarb. Thank you  🙂

Lets get ready!

Ingriendents:

Filling

3 tbsp butter

1/2 cup onion diced

1/2 cup celery diced

1/2 cup carrots diced

1 Tbsp minced garlic or 2 to 3 diced well cloves

salt and pepper

1 1/2 cups leftover baked or rotisserie chicken 

3/4 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup chicken broth

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

3/4 cup sharp white cheddar cheese, shredded

1/2 cup frozen peas or green beans(fresh not canned) cut green beans about 1 inch.

Ingredient’s:

Crust

1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded

3 Tbsp cream cheese

3/4 cup almond flour (not meal)

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1 large egg

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp black pepper

 

Lets get everything prepared our  Mise en place .( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place )

 Filling.      Crust.

Ready? Ok lets get started!

First grab your deep skillet and melt the 3 Tbls. of Butter on Med. heat.

When Butter is melted Add  onion, celery, carrots, green beans, garlic and a little salt and pepper to the skillet.

Sauté until vegis are tender, for alittle faster add a lid for a bit. After Vegis are tender add remaining Ingredient’s. Stir and simmer for about 10 min.

               

 Yum Looks good already!

when you cook for the additional 10 min. Last step remove from burner and add the Yummy White Cheddar Cheese and mix into Skillet .

Cover and set aside, want take but a few minutes for us to get our crust ready.  Pre heat 375 Oven!

First grab a med. Microwave safe mixing bowl, add Mozzarella and Cream Cheese Microwave for 1 minute. Stir to combine and microwave 1 extra minute. 

 

Next, after getting out of Microwave stir, Add almond flour, egg, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian seasoning, salt and black pepper.

Stir and Mix well until you form a Dough Ball. (if it starts to get stringy pop in Microwave for another 20 sec.)

Walla! Ok your supposed to separate into 4 equal balls of dough, but this girl bought big pot pie pans. Yep! So I’m going to only do 3.

Lay out your Parchment or wax paper, roll out circles (my easy method put another piece of wax on top so don’t get sticky on roller).

      

Fill your Tins . Add your crust to the top. Try to make it prettier than mine.  🙂

     OH MY!

 Yeah I tried 🙂

Bake at 375 degree for about 30 min. Brown on Top!

Let Cool for 5 min. and EAT! There is tons of yummy goodness inside!

Enjoy Everyone!  Happy Fall Weather!!!

 Link to: Peace Love and Low Carb

http://peaceloveandlowcarb.com/chicken-pot-pie-low-carb-gluten-free/

Thanks to Kyndra Holley for the wonderful ideas!!!