Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Football season is back. That means there will be an abundance of three things in this house: the Chicago Bears, beer and pizza. I don't know if you realize just how horribly high in carbs pizza is, but it's pretty bad. I'm here to rescue you! Totally keto friendly, gluten friendly, but most of all, delicious. It's a little time consuming and messy, but so worth it.

Ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower

olive oil

2 cups grated parmesan cheese

salt and pepper

3 egg whites

whatever toppings you'd like

pizza sauce

Preheat your oven for 400F. On a baking sheet, cover in tin foil and grease very well with olive oil. I used garlic infused oil for extra flavor. "Rice" your cauliflower. To achieve this, I put small florets in a food processor. Put your "riced" cauliflower in a large bowl. Mix in the 3 egg whites, 1/2c parmesan cheese and salt & pepper to taste. Spread onto the greased foil. Don't spread it too thin. Bake for 30 minutes. It should be slightly browned and bubbly. Now you need to flip the crust. The crust is very fragile, so I use the same method as I do for flipping cakes. Gently move the crust on the foil off of the baking sheet. Put a new sheet on foil on the baking sheet and grease with olive oil. Now flip this on top of the crust. Carefully flip the entire thing over. Now the crust should be on the new sheet of foil on the baking sheet. Use a spatula to carefully pull back the top foil. If the crust becomes split, just push it back together. Cook for another 10 minutes until this side is bubbly and browned. Now add your toppings and the rest of the cheese. DO NOT ADD SAUCE. The sauce will seep through the crust and make it too moist to pick up. Cook for an additional 10 minutes until your cheese is melted. Allow the pizza to sit on the counter for about 10 minutes, so that the cauliflower soaks up the liquid produced while cooking and has a more crust-like texture. Cut and serve with pizza sauce on the side to dip.

buffalo chicken - keto friendly

I don't understand why a lot of people use the excuse that all the "good" food is taken away if you make a healthy lifestyle change. That is so not true. One of our favorite things to eat is buffalo chicken. I could post up at b-dubs and never leave. Needless to say, I was THRILLED when I came across this keto friendly recipe for buffalo chicken. Not the best thing to eat when you have GERD, but I will take the few days of suffering for a really good meal. I didn't have tenders, so I just cubed it up after baking/before tossing.

Ingredients:

6 oz finely ground pork rinds

2 Tbsp parsley flakes

1 Tbsp garlic powder

 1 Tbsp seasoning salt

2.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken tenders

3 eggs

your choice of wing sauce (I use Moore's Buffalo Wing Sauce. 0 carb)

Two ways to go about making it, depending on how fast you want them. 

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk eggs in one bowl. In a separate bowl, combine pork rinds and seasonings. Cover chicken in egg and then cover with pork rind/seasoning mix. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Toss with your wing sauce and serve. 

-or-

2. In a heavy pot, warm about a gallon of vegetable oil to 350F. Cover chicken with egg and then with the pork rind/seasoning mix. Drop slowly into oil for about 6 minutes. Once cooked, set on a plate with paper towel to drain excess grease. Toss chicken in wing sauce and serve.

keto friendly: feta stuffed bacon wrapped meatloaf

There is no introduction to this. Just look at the picture.

Ingredients:

1lb ground beef

1/2lb Italian sausage, out of casing

one onion, finely chopped

olive oil

1/4 cup feta cheese, cubed

2 eggs

1 cup finely riced cauliflower 

3 Tbsp thyme 

1 Tbsp hot sauce

salt and pepper to taste

6 slices of bacon

Preheat oven to 380F. Put foil on a baking sheet and on a cooling rack. Poke holes in the foil on the cooling rack. The rack goes on top of the baking sheet, which will catch the grease. Saute the onion and garlic in some olive oil. Let cool. While letting it cool, place all ingredients except feta in a large bowl and mix together. Add feta in center and form meat into a loaf around it. Move the loaf to the cooling rack. Take 2 pieces of bacon and lay them horizontally on the loaf. Weave the other 4 pieces vertically. Tuck in the edges under the loaf to prevent curling. Bake for at least an hour or until the meat thermometer reads 160F. 

Keto Spaghetti

Recently we discovered the goodness that is the spaghetti squash. The first time we made it, we used a sweet sauce. None of us were a fan of that sauce. This time around, I went for a more "spaghetti" feel, using a recipe for Bow Tie Pasta (and just substituting the spaghetti squash for the pasta). The outcome was fabulous. Kid and husband approved. The only thing I couldn't add in was tomatoes.

Ingredients:

spaghetti squash

1 lb of sausage

1/3 tsp of red pepper flakes

1/2 cup diced onions

3 cloves of garlic, minced

28 oz Italian tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1.5 cups heavy cream

1/2 tsp salt

3 Tbsp fresh parsley 

To cook your spaghetti squash, preheat oven to 375F. Cut squash in half, lengthwise, and scrape out the seeds and pulp. Bake rind side up for about 35 min. I like to brush some butter on before baking. While your squash is baking, cook your sausage. Stir in your garlic and onions and cook until onions are tender. Stir in tomatoes, cream and salt and simmer until the mixture thickens, about 8 minutes. While that is simmering, pull out your squash and use a fork to separate strands. Cover your squash with the sauce and enjoy.

Keto Pork Chop Bake

Oh hey, so if you haven't heard yet, we're trying this new clean eating thing. More specifically, Keto. High fat, low carb lifestyle change of lots of fats and bacon. Did I mention bacon? Mmm. I'm in a group on Facebook for Keto and wrote down a ton of recipes to try out. Our first go was the Pork Chop Bake.

Ingredients:
thin cut pork chops (we used 8)
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
14 pepperoni slices, torn into pieces (I have no idea why 14. just because)
4Tbsp butter
6 strips of bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup broccoli, cut up
coconut oil
garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste

First things first, you need to cook your bacon. I cook mine in the oven. Line a baking sheet with foil, place bacon on it, set oven for 400F (DON'T PREHEAT) and pop the bacon in for 25 minutes. Lower the oven to 350F. While you wait for the bacon to cool, add a few Tbsp of coconut oil into a pan and fry up the pork chops. Place the cooked chops on the foil covered pan you just cooked the bacon on. In a medium bowl, mix the crumbled bacon, pepperoni, cheese, broccoli and butter together. Spread mixture over the chops and place in over for 10 minutes. Done!

another stuffed pepper recipe

We like experimenting with stuffed peppers. We've done traditional ground beef, mexican style, pizza style, philly cheese steak style and now... the "Amber" style. I had some cream cheese mixture left over from the bacon wrapped stuffed turkey tenderloins and no idea what to do with it. My plan was to make traditional stuffed peppers, but uhhh, I forgot ground beef. I put my thinking cap on and, tadaaa! Amber style stuffed peppers. I apologize that I had already started devouring the pepper before snapping a picture. It's that good. It looked a lot nicer before I started cutting it up lol.

Ingredients:

green onion and chive cream cheese

red bell pepper, diced

green onions, diced

2 green bell peppers

4 slices of canadian bacon

Parmesan cheese

chicken broth

Preheat oven to 350F. Cut the tops off of the green bell peppers and clean the ribs and seeds out. You can slice the bottoms to sit flat in the baking dish, if needed. Pour just enough broth to cover the bottoms of the peppers. In a bowl, mix your green onions, red bell peppers and cream cheese. Start with a slice of canadian bacon in the bottom of the pepper. Put a decent size scoop of the cream cheese mixture on top of that. I used about 2T. Put another slice of canadian bacon on top of the cream cheese mixture. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Put in oven, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Enjoy!

healthy peanut butter cookies

Healthy enough, anyway. I have an addiction to peanut butter cookies. This could possibly be because WIC gives you so many jars of peanut butter and I can't possibly use them all on PB&J's. I wanted to make some cookies for dessert tonight and realized I was out of eggs. Darn! However, I've had this scenario before and used applesauce. Guess what? I was out of that, too. However, I do have bananas. Thank you, bountiful baskets! So here is a recipe I found over at The Daring Gourmet. I tweaked it a tiny bit, but they deserve the credit. These are SO good!

Ingredients:

1/2c solidified coconut oil

1/3c honey

1c natural, unsweetened peanut butter

1 egg (or in my case, 1/2 of a banana mashed)

1t vanilla

1c whole wheat flour (I used almond flour)

1/4t salt

1/2t baking soda

1/2t baking powder

1T gound flax seeds

2T oat bran

Preheat oven to 350F. In one bowl, cream the solidified coconut oil, peanut butter, vanilla, honey and banana (or egg). In another bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Add in the oat bran and flax seeds. Stir the mixtures together until just combined. Form dough into 1" balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Press criss cross pattern with a fork. Bake 7-10 minutes (7 minutes makes them PERFECT for me). Allow to cool for 5 minutes before enjoying!

Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Turkey Tenderloin

Bacon. It is the perfect food. If I had to choose one thing to eat for the rest of my life, it would be that delicious, mouthgasming bacon. I had some turkey tenderloin and friends coming over for dinner, so I needed to figure out something that wasn't so... cliche. Sure, I could have made a stew in the crock pot, but then I saw the bacon. 

Ingredients:

Turkey tenderloin 1.5lbs

6 (or more) slices of bacon, thin slices work best

softened green onion and chive cream cheese

green onions

red bell pepper, diced

salt

pepper

Preheat oven to 375F. Line a baking dish with aluminum foil. Place tenderloin on the foil and rub with salt and pepper to taste. In a small bowl, mix cream cheese, onions and red bell pepper together. Carefully slice a pocket into the tenderloin and stuff with cream cheese mixture. Wrap bacon around the stuffed tenderloin. Lay with seam side down, or you can keep the bacon in place with toothpicks. Cover tenderloins with foil and cook for about 40 minutes, until turkey reads 170F. Remove toothpicks if you used them and enjoy!

This is a family approved meal! We will be adding it to our recipes for the future.

hard-boiled eggs.. in the oven?

Sweet Alton Brown, you are my hero! 

IT WORKS!! 

This is, hands down, the best batch of hard-boiled eggs I have ever made 

in. my. life.

I will never have to worry about ruining another dozen of eggs again. 

325F for 30 minutes.

10 minutes in a bowl of cold water.

Tap all over on counter to put cracks in shell.

Peel.

Also the easiest peeling I've ever done.

The little brown bits are from where the egg was against the hot tin. 

Still tastes just fine!