Gluten Free, Grain-Free Chicken Nuggets

As long as you are using good quality ingredients (organic grass fed butter, humanely treated chickens, etc), I think chicken nuggets are damn good and healthy meal.

You can use bread crumbs if you want, but if you are finding out that you have a hard time digesting grains, even ones that are sprouted and soaked, this modified recipe is for you!

As you know, my week of no-sugar and no gluten was a big eye opener for me. Once I introduced gluten and sugar back in, I realized how horrible they both make me feel.

Now, I am on a mission to eat gluten-free as much as I can, eventually, I would like to be grain free for at least a period of healing as well.

So here's my recipe:

2.5 pounds of chicken breast meat (I bought chicken strips to save time on cutting the meat up)
1 cup of finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup of almond flour
Salt, Pepper, Thyme, Basil, to taste
1/2 cup butter

Mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl.  It gets really gunked up, so I like to put half in one bowl and half in another, so the crumbs stay crumbly longer.

Then melt the butter.

Dip the raw chicken meat in the butter, then the dry mixture, and place on cookie sheet.

Then put in the oven, at 375, for at least 20 minutes. Every oven is different, so keep your eye on them. Take them out when they are golden brown.  These freeze great, so when you take them out frozen, just heat them at 375, till they are warm.

Don't pay attention to how ghetto my cookie sheets are.  New ones have been on my wish list for awhile.  I realize in hindsight, why people have big weddings!!

Also, a side note about cookie sheets and non-stick pans, they have chemicals in them that leach into your food.  I use a cast iron or stainless steel to cook with when I use pots and pans, but my sheets are crap.  You can line them with parchment paper if you don't have stainless steal sheets.  But I always forget.  Got get better about that.

Enjoy! Both Peter and Penelope devoured these!  This is what your family plates will look like if you make these nuggets! And if you have kids, you know how much they love chicken nuggets.

Now, you have a recipe that you can 100% feel great about feeding them instead!

And check out Miss P.  She is a big girl now, no more high chair.  We were given this hand me down booster seat last week.  She LOVES being able to eat off the table like us.  She will actually sit in her seat now and eat (before she would stand up and do yoga, while eating).  Amazing.

How I Quit Sugar

For five days anyway.

Well, five days may not seem like a lot, but to me it was.  I have never gone more than a few hours without sugar (in any form) since I was 12 months old.  Maybe sooner, who knows when my parents starting giving me processed apple juice (aka SUGAR.)

Let me just start by saying, that sugar is bad.  Really bad.  I could write a whole book on the topic, in fact, many people already have.  Suffice it to say, sugar is at the root of all sorts of issues from high blood pressure, diabetes and even cancer (cancer tumors feed off sugar).

It messes with your digestion system, and if your digestion is bad, your health is bad. Period.

Seriously, I can't even begin to go into how horrible sugar is for you.  So just do me a favor and go read these books:  Nourishing Traditions and The Diet Cure.

The Diet Cure is an amazing book.  It's wonderfully written and makes it easy to comprehend the complexities of the human body, how it works and how what you eat (nutrition) affects every thing in your body.

I first read the book when I was focusing on quitting my caffeine addiction.  With the help of some amino acids, as recommended in the book, I have been caffeine free for almost 6 months.

Sugar was next on my list!

I knew I may have had a slight yeast overgrowth in my body, and that part of my powerful addiction to sugar, was from the yeast yelling at me to feed it more sugar, but what I didn't realize, until after reading The Diet Cure, is that I very may well be ALLERGIC to sugar as well!!

By end of day 2, I felt like I was going to die.  Like I had the worst kind of flu.  I am not sure if was drug (sugar is a legal drug people) withdrawal effects or if I was feeling the yeast die-off effects.  I was feeling much better by day 3.  By day 4 I felt great!

Typically, they say that you shouldn't do a detox while you are breastfeeding.  But from what research I did, I felt like a yeast detox is not the same as a heavy metal detox and would be ok.  And plus, I figured if I have yeast overgrowth, she does too from drinking my sugary, yeasty milk (sigh).

Here are the supplements I took to help fight off the yeast in my body:

• garlic
• oregano oil
• grapeseed extract
• licorice root (there is some controversy about this herb and whether or not it is ok to take while breastfeeding.  I went ahead with it and listened to my gut, because I felt my body could handle the hormonal fluctuations and I felt like it was really important to kill the yeast in my body now, before I get pregnant again and I can't take this herb then.) 
• Solarary (my preferred brand for all supplements and vitamins) actual makes a pill that combines all of the above, so I just took one pill three times a day to get all those herbs in me.
• additional doses of reuteri probiotics (normally I just take one a day, but I upped it to two a day for the two weeks I was abstaining from all carbs to kill off the yeast).

These are the supplements I took to reduce my sugar cravings and normalize my blood sugar:

• L-Gluatmine ( I took this 4 times a day, one with each meal and one before bed time)
• Chromium 3 times a day with meals
• Biotin, 3 times a day with meals
• Vitamin B1, 2 times a day with meals
• I also upped my prenatal vitamin to three times a day, previously I had only taken one a day.  But after reading The Diet Cure, I realized that you are supposed to take 3 to 6 pills in one day to get the full amount!  Check your bottle at home, it will probably say one serving is 4 pills!
• I also upped my calcium and magnesium.  This is not directly related to sugar cravings, but something I realized I was a little deficient in after reading about the amounts I should be getting per day in a supplement.

I continued to take my protandim, cod liver oil and extra vitamin D like normal.  I also still take GABA and Tryptophan to help restore my adrenals from a lifetime of sugar and caffeine addiction.  I will probably stop taking them in another month.

It's a lot of pills. I know.

And its expensive, I get it.

But once you have killed the yeast and freed yourself from your addiction to sugar you do not need to take anything other than your normal daily vitamins (which for me is a prenatal, vitamin d, now calcium and magnesium, cod liver oil and protandim).

So, I made it 5 days. No gluten and no sugar, no wine, nothing.  Day 5 I had a piece of chocolate cake. Day 6 some chicken tenders and beer.  Day 7 it just went down hill fast.  I pretty much binged on sugar for the next week.

I thought that I didn't loose any of my belly flab, but when I reintroduced sugar (read:stuffed my face) my belly almost instantaneously got bigger, flabbier, and more bloated.  If I could have stuck with it for a few more weeks, I know I would be prancing around in a two piece right now.

Those 5 days taught me a lot.

I now notice much more how shitty gluten and sugar make me feel ( my lymph nodes get swollen, I feel waves of extreme fatigue and irritability, and nasal drip and congestion).

I think my yeast is much stronger than I realized.  I also think that I am a much more of disordered eater than I realized.  For me, that means I rely heavily on food for emotional nourishment and to de-stress.

So I need do some more emotional work to get my head in a more stable place before I try this again (maybe its the yeast making excuses!)  I have been doing a new treatment for the past two weeks and I really think it is making a big difference. It's something called Trauma Release Exercises, and it is awesome. I will tell ya'll about it soon.

Back to the drawing board I go. Just putting one foot in front of the other.  At least going in the right direction and praying that one day I will quit my sugar addiction for good.

If anyone wants to do some more research, here are some good links that talk about how awful sugar is for you:


Insuline Resistance


Stop Sugar Cravings

Guide To Natural Sweeteners


Intestinal Belly Fat and Yeast

Freezer Cooking with Slow Cooker Recipes

Welcome, Pinners!  Please be sure to check out my Real Food tab at the top to find more slow cooker freezer meals!


Like I mentioned in my post the other week, the last time I did a big cooking day, I had big ah-ha moment.


Although, I had a blast with Lauren, it was logistically very difficult to accomplish, between the juggling of cooking and childcare, the prep work, organization and scheduling, it can be overwhelming.


So this latest big cooking day, I did it by myself and only did slow cooker recipes.  Basically, all I was did was chop vegetables and assemble ingredients.



Even with doing it this way, it was still a 3 hour affair, but during this time I was able to finish all the cooking AND the cleaning.  Most importantly my feet didn't ache at the end like they normally do.  I also didn't have any sort of panic or anxiety leading up to the big cooking day like I normally do. HUGE.

I chopped all the vegetables with Penelope in her Learning Tower before nap (which was really fun, I went through all the colors of the vegetables with her and talked about rainbows and made it a fun learning experience).


Then I assembled everything during her nap (thank you Jesus, I can now skip a pump session here and there and can do other things at nap time than sit in front of a computer) and finished cleaning up after nap, again with her in her Learning Tower.  


This time she played independently with a bowl of soapy water, she made a huge mess,  but the rags I used to clean up her mess where the same rags I used to clean up my mess so it wasn't that bad.

I just dumped the veggies into the gallon ziploc bags, then added the meat, then added the spices.


Once I was done and cleaned everything up, I felt like I had invented electricity!  I thought I was such a genius for finally (it took me over a year, people) getting once a month cooking down to an efficient and easy art form.

I am telling you it will change your life! Give it a try and tell me how it went!

Here are my recipes.  I use a ton of vegetables in each meal, because I don't tend to eat a lot of veggies through out the day, so I try and get them all in at dinner.  And Peter is more apt to eat veggies if they taste like barbecue or curry than as a plain side dish.


 
Healthy Mama Barbecue Chicken
3 medium unpeeled  sweet potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 large green pepper, cut into strips
1 large red pepper, cut into strips
1 zucchini, chopped
1 medium onion, sliced
1 tablespoon quick cooking tapioca
2 pounds chicken thighs or drumsticks
1 8-ounce can of tomato sauce
2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon yellow mustard (I wasn't sure if this meant actual mustard or the spice so I did a little of both)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt


Dump everything into two gallon freezer bags, shake it up, seal, label and put in the freezer.


Stephanie's Goulash
3 cups chopped onions
2.5 cups coarsely chopped green sweet peppers
4 large beets, peeled and diced
2 cups of carrots
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 pounds beef stew meat, cut into one inch cubes
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
4 teaspoons Hungarian paprika or regular paprika (I used regular)
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 cups hot cooked noodles
1/2 dairy sour cream


Dump everything into two gallon freezer bags, shake it up, seal, label and put in the freezer. EXCEPT the sour cream, that is for garnish after the meal is cooked.


Chicken Curry
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons curry powder
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1.5 pounds chicken thighs, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 cups chopped peeled sweet potatoes
2.5 cups baby carrots
2 cup coarsely chopped mango
1 cup chopped onion
1 zucchini chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 chicken bouillon
.5 cup raisins (for garnish)
.5 cup peanuts or cashews (for garnish)


Dump everything into two gallon freezer bags, shake it up, seal, label and put in the freezer.


To cook, take out of freezer and set on counter for about 30 minutes, then dump contents of bag into slow cooker. Cook on high for 4 hours, or low for 8 hours.

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