An Experiment With Pimento Cheese

I love pimento cheese. It's something that I've only recently discovered, but I've come to find that it has to be a good pimento cheese. Not that fake stuff that has weird orange food dye in it. It has to have real cheddar cheese in it.

One thing I love more than pimento cheese is a warm, gooey toasted pimento cheese sandwich. However, a problem I encounter on the keto diet is that I can't have the bread. So, I've found a way to improvise with the support of my fellow Instagramers.

Here's 1/4 cup of a good quality pimento cheese in a non-stick skillet. I cannot emphasize that it has to be a non-stick skillet and it has to be heated on low heat. Too high, too fast will result in burnt cheese which is gross.

TaDa!

The melted cheese will slide right out of the pan and a serving of pork skins are the perfect vessel for these. And the only carbs in this snack are the carbs in the cheese, which was 2 gms for 1/4 cup. This was actually pretty filling, so I ate it as a meal. I'm so glad I tried this!

Hope you guys enjoyed this one!

Stuffed Chicken Breasts

I was sitting at work, wondering what to make for dinner. I knew I had taken chicken breasts out for dinner, so I started to google recipes for stuffed chicken breasts. I read a lot of different recipes and then my own recipe started to formulate in my mind. Little did I know how good this meal was going to turn out.

Since it's just me and Mister at home, I only made enough to feed the two of us.

Here's what you'll need for 2 servings:
2 chicken breasts
1 10oz package of frozen spinach
8oz Cream Cheese
1/2 Cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese
6 strips of bacon

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Start by frying your bacon (or however you like to make it). You'll want it cooled off a little so it's easy to chop up into smaller pieces.

While your bacon is going butterfly your chicken breasts. You'll want to get these thin, like you're going to make a chicken Parmesan with them. I like to place them between two pieces of plastic wrap and then beat the snot out of them with a rolling pin. It's a great way to relieve some stress! Try not to beat them too thin though.

Pop your spinach into the microwave and get it heated up or make it the long way if you want to. I always have the steamables on hand, so I just use those as my go to when I need spinach. Make sure to strain your spinach really, really well. You don't want that extra water in your mix. Press it out with the back side of a spoon or cup.

Put your cream cheese and shredded cheese into a bowl. Add the spinach to it, the heat will slowly start to loosen up the cheesy and make it melty. When your bacon is done, let it drain and cool off. Give it a rough chop and then add it to your mix. It should now look something like this:

Now you're going split the mixture in two and spread the mixture over your chicken breasts. Gradually roll the chicken breast up so it looks like a pin wheel. You'll probably need toothpicks to hold the chicken together. I used 3 toothpicks for each chicken breast.

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. This makes for easy clean up.

Your chicken breasts should look something like this:

Now pop them in the oven and then let them hang out for 25-30 minutes. When you take them out, cut into them and make sure they're not pink and cooked and the way through.

And that's the finished product! The finished product was so yummy. The outside of the chicken needed some seasoning, so next time I make these I'll do a coating on the outside. The inside mix was rich, gooey, and so good.

Here's a link to the stats on MyFitnessPal: Stuffed Chicken Breasts and here's an overview below.

Hope you enjoy this one!

(Keto) Mug Cake w/ Ice Cream!

So I saw a mug-cake being passed around and I decided to give her a shot, while also finding a way to add a little ice cream. I didn't invent this recipe; but I sure as hell loved it!

Ingredients:

• Cooking spray
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons Splenda
• Pinch salt
• 1 tbsp heavy cream/almond milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp baking powder

In 2 separate bowls I did an egg and beat it. Then i put all the other ingredients in the other bowl and mixed.

Then I threw them all together in a bowl. 

Lesson learned: Maybe needed more splenda; could have been a tad sweeter.

Spray the mug with cooking spray (or rub butter in it) then place mixture into a mug, and then I microwaved for 1 minute 20 seconds; I wonder if it would have been more moist had I done it for slightly less and will experiment next time.

I found this pretty keto-friendly ice cream, and did half a serving of it!

And boom, I used the ice cream in conjunction with the cake to kind of moisten it up a little bit.

This entire dessert was 5 net carbs as per MyFitness pal, which doesn't add any carbs for Splenda for some reason, which probably was another 2 net carbs, for my guess of 7 net carbs. Not bad if you had a good day of not getting close to 20!

I do recommend trying it a few times and tweaking the sweetness and such; as mine could have used more sweetner even with the 2 tbls of Splenda!

Enjoy and tell me what ya think

-Freeze

Keto (And Gluten Free) General Tso's Chicken Over Zucchini Noodle Lo Mein

Freeze here back from a night in the kitchen to bring you a new, yummy recipe.

After grabbing my Vegetti the other day, I have been wanting to try any and everything I can with this. In my last blog I did Italian with a Chicken Parm.

Now let's take it to Asia with this new masterpiece.

General Tso's Chicken Over Zucchini Noodle Lo Mein.

Let's start with the homemade sauce. I'm going to pull a first here and list the ingredients (normally in my recipes they can be found in the nutritional break down at the bottom of the page)

That will be provided on this blog as well but the sauce is a laundry list of items.

Just for the sauce:
1/4th Cup of Chicken Broth
3 tbsp Rice Vinegar
2 1/2 tbsp Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Reduced Sugar Ketchup
2 Tbsp Splenda (or Erythritol if you have it)
2tsp Sesame Oil
1tsp Hoisen Sauce
1tsp Red Curry Paste
1tsp Red Chili Flakes
1tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Minced Ginger
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar (or Xantham Gum)

Put it all in a bowl like this:

Then mix it all together and set aside while we do other things.

Now while that sits to the side lets take chicken and cut it into cubes. I used 2 pounds of chicken tenders. (Go ahead and pre heat the oven to 325)

Then I made my breading which was grinded up pork rinds with a little bit of crushed red pepper.

Egg bath and dip in the breading.

Then we are going to pan fry it in Olive Oil with a hint of sesame oil too; I added some extra ginger here to bring up some more flavor.

Once all of them are done for a few moments throw them into a pan then pour the sauce on top./

Now we are going to bake this for 1 hour; flipping and mixing every 15 minutes.

So this is after 1 hour mixing every 15 minutes. Nice and carmelized and saucy. I threw in some chives and mixed it all up real good. 

Protip Lesson: I probably used too much chicken, so next time make more sauce. (because I liked this amount of chicken)

Now while the chicken was in the oven I grabbed 5 zucchini and used the good ol Vegetti.

Now what I didn't take a picture of was me pan cooking the zoodles into a lo mein.

Heated some sesame oil and threw the zucchini in. Tossed for about 2 minutes then threw in soy sauce (about 1/2 cup maybe more, i did it by sight) and tossed that in to get a nice browning throughout the noodles. 

Then I took out half the noodles and plated it.

Then half the chicken plated on top.

Added some olives because I like olives with dinner for the sodium.

and This is what I demolished: 

It was soo good.

Here's the nutrition first one one serving (which was half of the entire meal)

So total meal if you eat half like me: 16g net carb ( i leave myself all 20 for dinner)

And for the entire meal:

You probably could easily make this 3 separate meals; but I have been intermittent fasting so this is my main meal then i'll have a little fat snack later.

Let me know if you like it and try it!

-Freeze