Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken

This was an experiment that I threw together, and it turned out surprisingly well.  My 1 1/2 year old niece LOVED it and ate 3x the amount she normally eats at dinner.  I don't have exact measurements, because it depends on how much chicken there is.

Ingredients:

• Chicken Breast (1 for each person eating)
• 1 Medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• BBQ Sauce (your favorite kind)
• Worcestershire sauce
• Chicken Stock

Directions:

• Put chicken, onion, and garlic in Crock Pot
• Put BBQ sauce in until almost covered
• Put in 2 splashes Worcestershire sauce
• Pour chicken stock until everything is covered
• Cook 3-4 hours on high

We served it over brown rice (we serve pretty much everything over rice), and it was a good, soupy, hearty meal. 

Diet update

I've been eating corn for the past 3 days and everything is going well, so corn is back in!!  I want to reintroduce wheat next, and then egg.  If I could get my bread and pasta back, life would be awesome.

Baked Sweet Potato

I LOVE sweet potatoes, and this is a great snack, side, dessert, breakfast, whatever!  It's yummy, tastes like candy, and isn't entirely unhealthy.

Ingredients:

• Sweet Potato
• 1tsp Vanilla
• Brown Sugar
• *Butter/Margarine (optional)

*I use earth balance dairy and soy free spread

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
• Put potato on cookie sheet (on foil)
• Bake for 40-60 mins, depending on size of potato
• Remove skin, mash in bowl with vanilla, brown sugar, and margarine.  

You can add more or less brown sugar depending on how sweet you want it.  The margarine isn't necessary; it's plenty moist without it.

Yummy Oven Fries

These are pretty quick and easy, and fairy healthy, even!

Ingredients:

• Russet Potatoes (one for each person)
• Garlic Powder
• Onion Powder
• Dry Rosemary
• Olive Oil
• Dry Basil

*Amounts vary depending on how many potatoes, and how much flavor you want.  Sorry I'm not being more specific, but I just add spices until I like how they look, lol

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees F
• Cut potatoes into wedges, skins on
• In large mixing bowl, toss fries with spices and enough olive oil just to coat
• Put on cookie sheet (Whenever I use a cookie sheet I line it with foil so cleanup is a breeze) in a single layer
• Bake for 25-30 mins
• Broil for 5-10 mins to get crispy brown coating

I'm not a huge ketchup fan, so I dip mine in A1 steak sauce.  These are super easy and very delicious!

New Restrictions & a New Recipe

So, C was doing much, much better with no dairy or soy.  The problem is, he's still very gassy; I don't know if he just happens to be a gassy baby or if he's allergic to something else, so I'm omitting more.  The pediatric GI suggested omitting corn, because he's seeing more and more corn allergies, and there's corn syrup in everything.  I did him one better; I'm cutting all 8 top allergens, plus corn.

So now I have to cook without dairy, soy, egg, wheat, peanut, tree nut, shellfish, fish, or corn.  The fish/shellfish is no problem; I don't eat fish anyway.  I was never huge on nuts in general, but lately pistachios have been my quick go-to snack, and now they're out.  I hardly ever eat eggs (unless they're cooked into something, like cake), so I didn't think that would be a problem, but like I said, they're in a lot of stuff.  Wheat is rough (bye, bye bread), and corn is really hard.  That means no more Slurpees, no Pepsi, no candy (first my chocolate, and now I can't even have Sour Punch!), most juices are out... there's a LOT of stuff with corn syrup in it.  My beloved junk food is now prohibido.  I'm hoping that C shows a lot of improvement, and in a week or so I'll start trying to reintroduce some foods to see if he has a reaction to them.

So what can I eat, you ask?  Basically: meat, fruit, veggies, rice.  So I'm trying to be creative and I make a huge batch of something so it lasts me 2-3 days before I have to try and come up with something new.  Here's a recipe that I tried that turned out really good (and it's for the Crock Pot, which is my best friend because I get nice, from-scratch, home-cooked meals without slaving away in the kitchen) and is super easy:

Chicken & Veggies Over Rice

Ingredients:

• 2 large chicken breasts
• 1 medium yellow onion, minced (I tossed it in our mini food processor)
• 1 tbsp garlic, minced (I used the kind out of a jar)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 medium potatoes, cubed
• 1 16-oz can chopped tomatoes (keep liquid)
• 2 handfuls baby carrots
• Chicken stock
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:

• Saute onion and garlic in olive oil to bring out flavor
• Put chicken at bottom of crock pot, veggies on top 
• I used chopped cucumber instead of carrots in mine, but it didn't turn out so well.  Next time I think it'll be much better with carrots, but you can use any veggies you want: zucchini, asparagus, turnip, etc.
• Put garlic and onion in
• Pour can of tomatoes (with liquid) over the top of everything
• Pour chicken stock until veggies are just covered
• Salt & Pepper
• Cook on low for 8 hours, or on high for 4 hours

We served it over brown rice, and it turned out delicious, and the chicken was amazingly tender.  This is going to definitely be one of my go-to recipes, and I'll try it with different veggies, or maybe even substitute beef and beef stock to make it almost like a roast.  Very easy, very versatile, very delicious.

I'm gonna be skinny whether I like it or not!

So Connor has been doing much better since I cut out dairy and soy, but still not great.  He's still very gassy and has a painful, upset tummy a lot.

We've started a new, stronger (and more expensive) medicine for his acid reflux, and I'm cutting more out of my diet to try and help him.  I've cut out the top 8 allergens, plus corn, and (hopefully) once he improves I'll reintroduce foods and see how they affect him.  That means I'm not eating dairy, soy, egg, peanut, tree nut, fish, shellfish, wheat, or corn.  I'm eating mainly meat, veggies, and fruit right now.  I only cut out the other 7 things yesterday, so I haven't noticed a difference yet, but I'm really hoping it starts working soon.

My hope is that I'll be able to figure out what triggers a reaction, and once we get his issues under control, and hopefully reduce or eliminate his medication.

Good news: he's growing like crazy, and is almost 11 pounds now!!

Garlic Chicken "Pizza"

So, this isn't real pizza because there's no cheese, and I've never been big on tomato sauce (I think there's always too much on pizza), so I omitted that, too.  This was something I threw together real quick for lunch, and it turned out ok.

Ingredients:

• Bake-at-home pizza crust
• Grilled chicken, shredded (half of a large breast)
• 1 garlic clove, sliced very thin
• Olive oil
• Various spices (I used rosemary, basil, seasoned salt, onion powder)

Directions: 

(these are based off of the cooking directions for the pizza crust, and revised)

1. Heat oven to 450*
2. Brush crust with olive oil
3. Top with chicken and garlic
4. Add pinches of spices
5. Lower oven temp to 425*
6. Bake on cookie sheet on middle rack for 10 minutes

This turned out pretty good.  You can use whatever you want on top, I was trying to find a way to use the grilled chicken I had leftover from yesterday's lunch.  You can also dip it in marinara sauce if you want, and of course, if you can have cheese, go ahead and throw that on top.  I should really start taking pictures of stuff before I eat it...  I'll try and remember for next time :)

My new food blog:

http://youmeanihavetocook.blogspot.com/

Turkey Meatballs

I originally made this dish with penne pasta and a homemade sauce that didn't turn out so great, so I'm going to hold off on posting a sauce recipe until I find one I like.  I used Barilla pasta (picture below), and they also make a line of whole wheat pastas.  I can have beef, but I like turkey better and it's healthier, so I used that instead.  Any of my recipes that involve ground turkey can easily be made with ground beef as well.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, minced
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
• a pinch of:
• Rosemary
• Oregano
• Basil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive Oil

Directions:

1. Mix everything, minus olive oil, in medium bowl 
2. Roll into balls using palms (whatever size you like)
3. In large frying pan, heat just enough olive oil to coat the bottom
4. Cook meatballs over medium heat.  For larger ones, turn to low and cover to make sure they cook all the way through

These are super fast, easy, and if you have the meat, the rest you can pull from your fridge or spice cabinet.  I've also formed them into patties to make some delicious turkey burgers.  If you're cooking on the grill, just eliminate the olive oil, but make sure to use some sort of cooking spray so they don't stick.

Poor Baby :(

I posted before about how we're dairy and soy free.  We didn't know that Connor was intolerant to soy, we eliminated it as a precaution because of it's correlation with dairy intolerances.  Bryan found out online, and I did some further research, and we found out that most people who can't tolerate soy can tolerate soybean oil, because it's highly refined and usually doesn't trigger a reaction.  I was so excited, because a LOT of food has soybean oil, and it would've meant a lot more things I can eat.

So the day before yesterday, I ate soybean oil to see if we got a reaction.  BIG mistake.  We had such a bad day yesterday.  Connor didn't sleep, he was super fussy, gassy, had stomach pains, and diarrhea all day.  He wouldn't let me put him down, and I had to be either up and walking around or rocking or bouncing him all. day. long.  It turns out, he's not only soy intolerant, but also extremely sensitive to it.

Today we're already doing better.  He's still fussy and gassy, but it'll take a couple days for the soy to get completely out of his system.  This means that not only do I have to learn to cook (eek!), but I have to cook from SCRATCH.  No boxes or shortcuts, because almost everything has dairy, soy, or both.  I think I'm going to create a food blog (never thought I'd type that sentence... ) about recipes I've tried, how easy they are (I'm going to try and stick with fast and easy until I get some cooking skill under my belt), and how they taste.  I'll add a link once I get it going.

Here's a picture of Connor from earlier today: