Spicy!

Audubon Rhode Island 1/12

A quickie for Crock-Pot Wednesday. One reason why I love Crock-Pot Wednesday is because I work late shift (4-8) and there's nothing more I dislike than pre-made and re-warmed food. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to that. So my $5 crock-pot from a yard sale and a home-made fixed nob is my savior. Throw everything together, “set it and forget it.” Friend of mother, busy people, girlfriends who can't cook, boyfriends who can't cook. With such a simple apparatus, everyone can.

DO NOT skip on these :)

Tonight is a spicy (medium) chicken dish with a light bite but not too much. It can obviously be adjusted to be spicier but don't skimp on the chipotle peppers, they can easily be found in the Spanish aisle or like me at my Spanish butcher. Goya makes a decent one, the flavor is undeniable. My husband even deemed it so delicious that he has placed it in his personal hall of fame. Enjoy!

Hall of Fame Spicy Chicken

Feeds 6 people

Prep Time 5 minutes

Nutrition facts include every bit of sauce, use own judgement.

4 lbs of chicken, boneless, skinless, cut in cubes

½ lb sliced or ground chorizo

1 onion, sliced

15 oz canned tomato sauce

7 oz canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp chili powder

¼ tsp red pepper flakes

Toss everything in the crock-pot and put on low for 8 hours.

Enjoy with every fiber of your body.

Slightly spicy and hearty, perfect after a day of hiking or working

Friend of the busy people

Hungry Julie

	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Fibers	Sugar	Net Carbs
Total:	2599	57	38	472	20	33	37
Per Serving:	433	9.5	6	78	3	5.5	6.5

Because I said I would

Marigold 2013

I discovered this charity through Reddit when this one guy decided to raise money to send 10 cancerous children to Disney. Not only did he manage to do just that but the answer was so amazing that he managed to send ( If I recall) 100 children and their family to Disney. Now, this kind of devotion to fulfilling promises made me look at myself. I have a real confession to make this time, I am the queen of procrastination. I'm often lazy and unwilling. All these promises all these years, made to myself or to the people around me: “I will lose weight” or “Yes grammy, I will call more often.” and I make up excuses and I find ways around it but deep down, I know.

Writing down a promise.

and fulfilling it.

To break the cycle, I began losing weight, actually doing an effort this time and 70 lbs lighter I still find courage to carry on because I see the amazing results that my efforts brought on. Next, I finally donated blood, a promise I made myself 11 years ago when I turned 18. To make up for all those years of making up excuses, I also joined the bone marrow donor list. I will now try and break my grand-father's record of 55 blood donations over his lifetime. Also, I made a summer list (Like a bucket list but less dying at the end) so that I wouldn't spend summer inside this year. My biggest excuse being that hubby won't come out with me, well turns out he's such a great sport that he agreed to come hiking with me this year. Yay!

My awesome husband ^

It took a lot of effort but so worth it!

My summer list includes: 

Planting and Caring for a Garden. Step one -->

Hiking/Biking 200 miles (68 miles done so far!)

Playing 3 rounds of mini golf

Going to the beach at least 5 times

Hike every Audubon Society in RI (12 total)

Go to a theme park (because roller coasters!)

Go to a water park (Chris adores those)

Climb an actual mountain

Raise money and walk for charity

More will come I'm sure as time goes by and I'm actually looking forward to having a lot of fun rather than expend my ass on a computer chair. I also find that I am much less tempted to cheat or overeat if I'm outside than inside. So killing two birds with one stone.

This is your homework this week, make a summer list and stick to it! Make it fun!

As for dinner, tonight I made coconut-ginger tilapia and good-to-god stuffies. Food for thoughts and the belly.

Coconut-Ginger Tilapia (as seen on the Spice Rack)

Nutrition Information for 3 servings of fish and all the marinade divided, use own judgement, no one drinks all the marinade, even if it is THAT good.

Prep time 5 minutes

Bake Time 15-20 minutes

No one can make this look good but it taste damn great!

6 tilapia filet

1 can coconut milk (14 oz)

1/2 jalapeno, minced

1/2 cup of cilantro

2 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp ginger, minced

2 tsp garam masala

1 tsp salt

Oven at 425F

Put all the ingredients save for the fish in the food processor and buzz the life out of it.

Pour over the tilapia filets.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the fish is flaky. (ta-daa)

C for presentation q.q Gordon Ramsay is cursing me somewhere

	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Fibers	Sugar	Net Carbs
Total:	1306	10	75	145	0	0	10
Per Serving:	435	3	25	48	0	0	3

Stuffed Quahogs (perfect for summer BBQ)

Nutrition Info for 5 half shell portions, could be made into 6 easily.

Prep Time 15 minutes

Bake time 15 minutes

So pretty!

4 quahogs

8 oz chourizo, ground

1 tbsp Cajun seasonings

1/2 green bell pepper (or red), minced

1/2 onion, minced

1 stalk of celery, minced

3 cloves of garlic, minced to death

4 tbsp of butter, room temperature

3/4 cup of almond meal

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup of grated Parmesan

Oven at 400F

Mix the butter with the garlic, place in plastic wrap and form a log. Place in the fridge.

Bring a pot of water to a boil, boil the quahogs for 6-8 minutes. Throw away those that do not open.

Open them up completely and remove the clam and the muscle, mince and set aside. Rinse the shells.

In a large skillet, add a bit of oil and saute the onions, peppers and celery till tender.

Add the chourizo and heat up through. (Most chourizo is pre-cooked, but check the package).

Remove from the heat, add the almond meal and the egg. Mix thoroughly.

Open the shell completely or break off the middle part to lay them in a cookie sheet.

Fill each of them with enough mixture (I only made 5 fat ones myself).

Top with a slice of garlic butter and a shake of Parmesan.

Bake for 15 minutes. Enjoy!

FEAST!

	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Fibers	Sugar	Net Carbs
Total:	1,673	30	139	90	12	11	18
Per Serving:	335	6	28	18	2	2	4

I will make another post soon, because I said I would ;)

Hungry Julie

The Spice Rack

Guess who got a tripod for her camera? 

Hello my name is Julie and I have an addiction.

I love spices! I buy them, I mix them, I experiment. I have so many spices that I don't know where to put them anymore. I also have bottles of spices that I have no idea what are in them because I was a loon and didn't label them. Anyway, there is nothing shameful about having a lot of spices but the shame is in not using them enough. Cooking low-carb often involves taking a piece of meat and making it into something. Between slow-cooking in some kind of broth, grilling or baking, it can easily become a vicious circle of salt-pepper-rosemary-thyme , which I can be terribly guilty of.

Mind you! There is nothing wrong with salt-pepper-rosemary-thyme! Nothing at all, one of my favorite combination but there's basil-red pepper flakes-sage-paprika to think of as well! All that to say, try different things, maybe you bought allspice around xmas and only needed ¼ tbsp, use it! I throw a bit of nutmeg into my creamed spinach because it's absolutely delicious.

As you might notice there is now a new page above, audaciously named “The Spice Rack”. It will contain various spice mixtures, some more traditional, because I simply refuse to buy mixed spices such as blackening or Old Bay, and some home made because I like to experiment.

Tonight I made blackened shark steaks and turnip fries. The fries were amazing but then I had a sad when I realized turnips had more carbs than carrots. We ate them anyway and promised to never talk about it again but dear lord were they good. Used the deep fryer and the magic happened.

$4.99/lb, shark is everything I wish swordfish was.

Rub a bit of olive oil and the blackened spice, allow to rest a few minutes

At 350F for 25 minutes with some soft and sweet turnip fries, no one can go wrong.

Visit the new page and I hope you'll find something you like. More will come as I get down to spice business!

As always, your hopeful muse,

Hungry Julie  

Food!

Let's say for a moment that you are dying, the moment of your execution has come and you are granted one last meal. Anything. What would it be? One of my greatest inspiration, Anthony Bourdain, often plays this game with the people he speak with. Aside from having a worldly view on food and the greatest philosophy on respecting other cultures, his dislike of the whoring out of the Food Network and it's reality food shows makes him one of my favorite guy out there. For him a bagel with cream cheese, as simple as that. I asked myself long and hard what mine would be and I think a couple steamed lobsters dipped in garlic butter would make me super happy.

Food makes us happy, and tonight in particular is a very happy meal. Did I say happy a few times? That might be because how many miles I biked yesterday, 25 to be exact, I feel like I'm walking on clouds. I was super hungry so I made a bunch of delicious bacon avocado ranch deviled eggs while the ribs were cooking. Three hours at 300 F and a bottle of Jamaican Jerk seasonings, now that's the way to go.

Tonight's recipe is inspired by “Stork” , a member of the r/keto irc chat that expressed his disdain for raw broccoli when he saw the last post's picture of my pepperoni salad. Raw broccoli is one of those acquired taste/texture and I've been lucky and hard-headed enough to learn to like it. Now I can't live without it! I give you, broccoli slaw! Perfect for summer cook outs, a little sweet, a little sour.

It's not easy being green

Broccoli Slaw

Portion 4

Prep time 5 minutes

2 crowns of broccoli, finely sliced

¼ big red onion, finely diced (2oz)

2 tbsp of dried cranberries

2 tbsp of pepita nuts (sunflowers seeds would be good too)

2 tbsp cider vinegar

1/3 Cup Mayonnaise

2 tbsp Caesar dressing

1 tsp stevia

Mix everything together and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or so before serving.

Mingles Marvelously with Ribs

	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Fibers	Sugar	Net Carbs
Total:	841	39	74	10	12	16	27
Per Serving:	210	10	19	3	3	4	7

What would be your last meal?

Hungry Julie

Simplicity

Simplicity

Now you'd look at my blog and think “That girl never eats anything simple.” While that might be right in the sense that I never crack into a box of mac n cheeze or microwave corn dogs (anymore) but finding recipes, creating something new helps me find a focus in this crazy world. I just about got into a shouting match with a guy from Spain about cooking wine vs real wine. Concession is a dirty word but it doesn't have to be. I HAVE to me concessions about certain things, yes I use cooking wine, yes I use Real Lemon, I'm trying to put all the chances on my sides. There's certain things I simply refuse to do, such as keto-baking: flour-less, psyllum husk, flax seed and Atkins baking mix mixed with Stevia. No no no, I can't do it. For one thing I'm super allergic to flax, something I didn't know before.

Simple!

Back to simple cooking, simple ingredients can still offer us amazing results. Look in your spices cabinet (mine is the size of a fridge) and look for the bottles of stuff you rarely use. We fall too often into routine and we get bored of it. For us chicken is that routine, simple, easy, cheap. I promised I wouldn't do another chicken recipe for a while but here we are again. In this fast-paced life we abide by the time given to us and try to make the best out of it. Today I give you:

Herbes de Provence with Lavander, oh my!

Roasted Chicken with Herbes de Provence

cooking time 50 minutes

prep time 5 minutes

One whole chicken (or pieces with bone and skin)

½ stick of butter, room temperature

2 tbsp Herbes de Provence

salt n pepper

1 lemon cut in quarters

Oven at 350F

Mix your spices with the butter into a paste.

Stick the lemon, more salt and pepper inside the cavity of the chicken.

Rub the butter all over the chicken, inside the skin too.

Place the chicken in the oven on the middle rack and let bake for 50 minutes.

Baste the chicken every 15 minutes with it's own butter/juices.

Messy and delicious

Delicious,simple, awesome

Because a meal is scarcely one without my husband's famous salad, we ran out of cucumbers last night, he was sad and decided to replace them with slices of pepperoni, because you know, it's the "same thing."

Today's challenge: Find 15 minutes and go for a walk.

Yours truly:

Hungry Julie

Portions

A little while back my friend Michael over at Ketopia made a great example of how we perceive portions.Which in turn inspired me to inspect my own habits. Having hit a stall in my personal weight loss and combated the deep desire to eat cake (with some victories and some losses), I wanted to see exactly what was holding me back. While I was religiously putting down in my food journal what I was eating in one day, I came to realize that I was 1- Eating too much, 2-Under-estimating the amount of food. Off handedly, I began weighting my food, which I rarely did because I thought I could guess-timate how much I was putting in there. Turns out 3 oz of meat is a lot smaller than I expected.

My snacks were also getting out of control. Cheese and nuts are pretty awesome but when the problem is deeply-set into the intake amount rather than the matter taken, measures needed to be taken. So I took the almond tin from the car, because stuck in traffic on the way home, 1 oz of almonds will simply not do. Nor will it do while sitting at the computer for 3-4 hours a night playing Borderlands with Hubby.

one ounce

Here I took the picture of what 1 oz of almonds and 1 oz of mixed nuts looks like. It's not much is it? The tin says that 1 oz = 28 almonds, I counted 26 in this picture. Our own brain plays tricks on us to get us to eat more. It's part of our survival instincts. Some people become very depressed when they are dieting because their brain isn't fed as much serotonin.

So in and all, something to keep in mind, especially in a recipe like tonight, it might seem high-er in carbs at first sight but like marinade, you probably won't eat all the liquid and vegetables so give yourself some leniency. I put in the entire caloric content because it didn't seem right guess-timating but if you make it, take the amount of carbs with a grain of salt.

Lamb Stew

No time to cook is never an excuse

Portions 4

Cooking time 8 hours

3 lb of lamb, cubed

2 Cups of chicken broth

½ Cup of cooking white wine (carb free)

1 x 14.5 oz can of diced tomato

12 oz of turnip, diced

8 oz of baby carrots, whole

3 oz of onion, diced

salt and pepper

1 handful of fresh parsley (1 tbsp of dry)

Set everything in the crock pot for 8 hours on low.

Read a good book, go see a movie, visit a museum or get a massage.

Come home, have dinner with someone you love.

This is happy in a bowl

	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Fiber	Sugar	Net Carbs
Total:	1,770	57	60	235	19	31	36
Per Serving:	443	14	15	59	5	8	9

As always, with my love

Hungry Julie

ZING!

Greetings!

Tonight's dinner. Zing swordfish, steamed little-necks and buttery zucchini

It was Hubby's birthday this week-end and since he begged me for my scrumptious German's chocolate cake, I could not resist him. Also I could not resist the cake. I'm fighting these conflicting feelings but deep down, the reasonable Julie is winning. I had a small piece, of MY own, home made cake. Not some store-bought horror. I know how much sugar and flour I put into it and the size of cake I had wasn't gargantuan like it used to be. And now the leftovers are sitting in my fridge and they aren't calling my name. So in and all, I came on top. I simply refuse to call it cheating, why, because this is my life, it's not a get-skinny quick gimmick. A year ago now, I turned my back on the food life we had and never looked back. We had pizza once in a while, I took a few bite of cakes at Christmas, skipped my own birthday cake without any sorrow and last week-end, I had cake. This is my life.

Now cheating would be diving head first into a pile of jelly beans! My teeth ache just from thinking about it, that's the kind of things I would regret horribly. Live without regrets, said a wise man. A hard task but once that opens the doors to happiness.

Speaking of happiness, swordfish was on sale. What a wonderful change from CHICKEN. A nice quick marinade, at room temperature, that will leave your mouth with a happy feeling.

Zing-Swordfish

Chili Paste, is there anything you can't do?

Feeds 2

Marinade time: 20mins

Cooking time: 10 minutes

2 Swordfish steaks, about 1 ½ lb pound total

¼ c of olive oil

1 tbsp chili paste (sambal oelek)

1 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp fresh cilantro

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp salt

1 tsp fresh ground pepper

Marinating!

Mix all your ingredients together.

Marinade the fish at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Light up your grill on medium-high heat.
Cook the steaks for 5 minutes on each sides.

ENJOY!

 Now I don't have a grill, I use a cast-iron grill pan that does “just as well”.

Notice the air quotes? Yes I mustard-gased myself in my small apartment because of the chili paste. If you cook this on stove top, make sure you have a good ventilation. Also you could cook it under the broiler for maybe 4 minutes per sides no more, depending how thick your steaks are.

With tears in my eyes,

Hungry Julie