Sweet Potato Topped Chicken

Since I have had to learn how to cook again, I have been scouring for the internet looking for things to cook that fit my dietary requirements and taste good too. I am not a fan of boring food! So, I found this recipe on the Better Homes and Gardens website for Sweet Potato Topped Chicken. This recipe has cream in it, but since I can't have dairy, I had to modify it a little. I didn't buy canned sweet potatoes - I peeled, sliced, and boiled fresh sweet potatoes. I personally think they tasted better. I also didn't add butter to my potatoes. I made the mashed potatoes with my almond milk and some salt and pepper and they were tasty. And I used sweet potatoes, not yams. Yams would be fine, but yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing. In place of the Cream of Mushroom soup, I used some chicken broth and mixed it with some almond milk and some rice flour just to thicken it up. This tasted really well in the recipe! If you like Cream of whatever soup, that would be fine too!

I assembled the recipe in my enamel coated dutch oven. It made the dish yummier and since the dutch oven is over safe, I was able to put it into the oven in the same pot when I was ready to broil it.

After I had assembled the dish, I turned on the broiler and broiled the dish just to kind of give the potatoes a little bit of a crust so this would feel more like a chicken pot pie only without the crust. I will definitely make this again, but I would probably use more almond milk and rice flour in my cream substitution next time so the mixture is a little thicker. I think I will also use rotisserie style chicken next time too. And if you are a vegetarian or vegan, you could easily omit the chicken and just add more vegetables to the mixture and use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I always like dishes that can be switched up!

I didn't take a picture of my attempt at this dish, so you will have to be satisfied with a stock photo. Tonight's recipe is called "Lime in the Coconut" Drumsticks! I am looking forward to it!


Sweet Potato Topped Chicken:

Day 18: Almost There!

Three days, people! Three days! While I know next week I won't be able to go back to eating whatever I want, I do know it will be a little easier just for the fact I will be able to have a little bit more variety in my diet. One of my favorite breakfasts of all time is hashbrowns, sausage, and fried eggs. Well, I have been able to eat chicken and turkey sausage and the potatoes, but no eggs. Starting next week I can have eggs! I crave protein in the morning more than any other time of the day. I don't want carbs - I just want protein. In fact if I go out to breakfast to like IHOP or Denny's, I will always be the one at the table that orders the all meat and egg breakfast - bacon, sausage, chicken fried steak - all the meat and eggs! It's really the only time I am a huge meat and protein lover!

So, this is why I am glad I will be able to have eggs again. Eggs are so versatile and you can do so much with them. I know there are a lot of people out there who don't think eating eggs is right because it is an animal product, but if a chicken doesn't lay her egg she will die as I have witnessed first hand. You also cannot leave the unfertilized eggs with the chickens or they may get cracked open and if a chicken tastes the egg they go crazy! They will do anything in their power to get the other eggs and eat them - they basically get Mad Chicken Disease and have to be removed from the rest of the flock or put down. So this is why I am not opposed to eating eggs and this is because I have seen firsthand why it is important for the hens to lay their eggs and secondly why they need to be removed. The eggs I eat come from free range chickens. The eggs themselves cannot be considered organic because these chickens do not eat organic feed and they also eat all of the fruit and veggie leftovers my mother has. I think since my father got chickens my mother has not had to throw away and fruit, veggies, or bread away. The chickens eat it all!

I am also looking forward to eating tomatoes as well. One of my favorite things to make is my own fresh salsa - well I like tomato based salsas better than any other kind of salsa, so I am very excited about having salsa again and marinara sauce. I will be able to make meatballs again now that I can have eggs. I make these awesome Italian inspired meatballs and I have tried other things to get them to stick together and nothing really works better than an egg.

I also found a recipe online for buckwheat flour drop biscuits which I am itching to try. That would make a delicious breakfast option. Serve some of those bad boys up with almond butter and a slab of turkey sausage - yumness!

I keep talking about how I crave protein for breakfast in the morning - well, today was an unusual day. As I getting ready for work I found myself craving a bowl of fruit. So I stopped and a local bakery and cafe here on my way to work and ordered their bowl of fruit. It had cantaloupe, honey dew, pineapple, and red grapes in it. It was delish! Once in a while I crave lighter fare, but most of the time I like meat!

Have a great weekend everyone! I know I will!

Day 17: Bacon Burgers Are Better With Cheese!

I tend to like to celebrate little occasions when I can. I don't necessarily need to celebrate them in a big way, but I don't like them to pass quietly into the night. So yesterday was my two month anniversary since I started dating the boyfriend and I wanted us to have a special dinner. Well, everything that we would have normally done could not be done because of this diet, so I had to get creative.

In the booklet thingy the doc gave me there are recipes and one of the recipes was for bacon burgers. I decided to do those. I also purchased some sweet potato fries from the grocery store and made sure they were okay to eat. They were good to eat and since I baked them I didn't have to worry about any oils or anything like that as well.

So for dinner, I cooked up some turkey hamburger patties and then also cooked up some turkey bacon as I could also eat that as well. After the meat was done, I took the patties and put each one inside a big lettuce leaf and then topped it with some bacon. I then put chipotle Tabasco sauce, cucumbers, and a couple of fries on my bigger and then wrapped the rest of the lettuce around the burger. My boyfriend did the same but also added mustard and onion to his as well. We then served the burgers with the fries. All in all things tasted fairly well, but the while I was eating I kept thinking that it would taste better with a big fluffy bun, cheese, tomatoes, and ketchup as well.

It's nice to know that when we hit the three month mark in our relationship, I should be able to eat more things again. I have four full days left in addition to today, and I am very much excited to be done. Today when I speak with the doc I am hoping to find out what they would like me to add back into my diet starting next week. The end is near!

I shall continue to blog about this because I find it has helped me a lot. I suspect that if I hadn't had this blog, I probably would have failed all over the place. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my words and support me in this endeavor quietly. It has been very much appreciated!

I Like Cake! Potato Cake That Is!

So sorry it has been almost a week since my last blog post. I have been battling (yet again) the sinus infection from the unmentionable place. Hopefully I am on the mend this time!

For tonight's dinner I made Potato Cake With Bacon, Sour Cream, Apples, and Kale. This was probably a recipe I was hesitant to try, but I persevered and made it anyway.

The potato cake did not look so cakeish to me, but that could be because I cooked the potatoes in my cast iron casserole dish and not a skillet. I don't have a skillet deep enough for this recipe, so I had to improvise. The potatoes did get cooked all the way through and they had a very nice bacon, salty flavor to them.

I have never really had cooked apples outside of apple pie. These were quite interesting. As they cooked in the pan, the apples released their sugars and so they got all sorts of caramelized. It was pretty good! I would have saved the extras, but I left the bowl with the apples in them on the stove while I had the broiler going and they got all mushy. If you do have left over apples, make sure you take care of the extras right away so you don't end up with mushy apples.

I am not a huge fan of dark leafy greens because I tend to get sick when I eat a lot of them in large quantities, but I still tried the kale. Surprisingly, the kale had a flavor similar to celery or romaine lettuce. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The sour cream was to be served with both the potatoes and kale. I felt like the sour cream took away from the flavors of both, so I preferred to eat the rest of this dish without the sour cream. Of course if you like sour cream, then you will like it in this dish.

Well, that is tonight's critique. Tomorrow I will be hitting the grocery store for ingredients for a new set of recipes. So watch this space for more exciting recipes!

Potato Cake in pan:


Potato cake out of pan:


Potatoes, Apples, and Kale: