Clean Eating: Super Hot Chicken Jalapeno Dish

Super Hot Chicken Jalapeno Dish

*Best if prepared by marinating at least 24 hours*

Ingredients (serves my two guys who love the spicy stuff):
2 chicken thigh & leg pieces
8 Jalapenos, sliced in half lengthwise and seeded
6-8 oz. Neufchâtel
3/4-1 cup of 100% Pain Sauce

8-24 hour BEFORE your meal Directions:
Take your chicken pieces and put into a ziplock bag.  Cover with hot sauce & sit in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours (I actually left mine in for 48 hours because things kept coming up.  It was hot enough to make my hubby sweat, and he eats a LOT of spicy stuff!)

On the day of your meal:

• Bake the chicken in a covered casserole/pan at 300 for 45 minutes to an hour (or until almost done, our oven is new to us, I don't know ho accurate it is yet!)  *You can cook it higher for less time, but I was taking my time so that the chicken would be tender... and I actually thought ahead today, Yay me!
• While that is cooking, cut & seed your peppers.  Fill them with the Neufchâtel cheese.
• Remove cover and pour an extra serving of hot sauce over the chicken.
• Place the cheese filled jalapenos around the chicken and return to the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes uncovered.

Serve and watch your hot food loving family as their faces turn red, their eyes water and their forehead starts to sweat.  They may yell things suddenly, without warning, like YAAAHHHOOOOOOOO!!! (Seriously, my husband did).  My son even said, 'Holy COW, this IS hot' (and this is the kid who puts hot sauce on everything.  EVERYTHING.)

And they're ready for another day out in the ridiculous heat!  My husband says that on days after he's eaten a spicy meal, it always makes a noticeable difference in how he tolerates the heat.  So I guess spicy foods at least help him tolerate the heat.  Whatever I can do to help!

Sweet & SPICY Chicken with Broccoli & Rice

Sweet & Spicy Chicken

*You can find the original recipe here on My Recipes

Ingredients: 

(*I tripled the original recipe and made extra sauce for the rice & veggies)

• 6 boneless chicken breasts
• 2 Tbsp Coconut Oil
• 1/2 cup lime juice
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• 2 Tbsp grated fresh ginger 
• 
  
• BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
• I am SERIOUSLY LOSING IT HERE!!!!  
• OMG.  I just read the recipe on the computer screen and it says, "1/2 teaspoon of honey"
• When we printed this off, the / didn't show up so we thought it said TWELVE teaspoons of honey!!!  We adjusted it a little bit, but still, that is hilarious.
• Lol.  Wow.  Well, the recipe DID turn out yummy and seriously didn't taste all that sweet to me... so, onward...
• 
  
• 1/2 cup of honey or agave nectar
• 1/4 cup stevia or xylitol (although if you want less sweet, leave this out!)
• 6 Scallions/green onions, finely chopped
• 6 Tbsp cilnatro, finely chopped.
• 2 cups brown rice
• 1-2 bags of frozen broccoli

This is where I veer off even more from the recipe.  I was in the process of reading the recipe, and I have a BAD habit of getting distracted.  So I read, "Put the chicken on the stove and sautee..." I thought it was strange that it wasn't to be cooked in the sauce, but I wanted to follow the recipe, so I put the chicken on the stove, then noticed that it was time to pick up my girls from their friend's house.  I turned to my husband, who was right there, washing dishes anyway, and said, "Honey, can you watch this and make sure it doesn't burn?"

And out the door I went.

Thirty minutes later, I come home to find my husband turning off the stove.  "Well,  I imagine the chicken is done now.  How odd that the sauce isn't meant as a marinade or something, though"

So I get the recipe and read the rest of the sentence "Sautee for 2-3 minutes on each side... then add the...

Oops.

So we got busy making the sauce:

Paris helping me chop up the green onions

Using a pizza cutter for herbs works SO much faster than trying to use a knife!

I cut the now super tender chicken into small cubes and poured the sauce over.  YUM.

This was a disaster.  My son would come in the house and eat it all in one sitting.  

So, we made another double batch of the sauce and I made some brown rice to mix it in with.  

This stuff definitely has some kick to it!  It almost reminded me of a Thai food dish that I used to get at Pei Wei, but I can't remember what it was called.  I think its like a blend of sweet and sour and their spicy chicken.  I think it would be fabulous with those little white button mushrooms and some pea pods.   If I could figure out tofu, this would be a fantastic vegetarian dish!  I think I'll add this recipe to my once a month cooking list.  It would freeze & crockpot well, I think!

Viola!  My husband's lunches packed for a few days and my sons container to eat at home.  Now to make something vegetarian for my non meat eaters!

Verdict:  This recipe is GOLDEN.  I will definitely add it to our OAMC, because the sauce was a little tedious to make, so I'd rather make a BUNCH at once and freeze it, rather than have to get all that stuff out each time.  Besides, we never use a full bunch of cilantro, and I hate to see it go to waste!

What are your favorite go to dishes for freezing?  I'm going to try doing at least our dinners in freezer meals so I can just have one big cooking/cleaning day a month and save a LOT of work other wise.  Do any of you do this?  

Clean Eating: Easy Spicy Gluten Free Meatballs

Super Simple Super Spicy Meat Balls

Ingredients:

2-3 cups of Gluten Free cereal.  I used Rice Squares.

1 pound of lean ground beef

1 Tbsp Chili Powder

1 Tbsp "Extra Spicy" seasoning from Mrs. Dash (you can leave this out, but I love these spices!)

1 Tbsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes

1 can of diced tomatoes

2 eggs

I just crush up the cereal using my hands, but you can stick it in a food processor if you want.  I ended up pureeing most of the diced tomato when my picky girl said, "Ewww... you're putting tomatoes in it?" but you can usually just leave them in chunks.

I always bake meatballs on a wire rack in a pan to catch the grease, even with lean ground beef, this helps keep even more fat out.  I can't stand cooking ground beef where it is sitting in the grease... yuck.

Viola!  These were SPICY!!!  Dang!  I'm glad I made some without the crushed red pepper for Abyni and I because I took one bite of a spicy one and my mouth was on FIRE.  Of course Kainan actually ate his with extra hot sauce.  Go figure.  I served them with the goulash type dish that I kind of made up on the go.  It was a little liquid-y because I didn't get the beef broth until late in the game, but it was very flavorful!

Clean Eating #65: Vegetarian Stuffed Red Peppers w/Variations for the Carnivores

Vegetarian Stuffed Red Peppers

Vegetarian Ingredients:
TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein)
Coucous
Red Quinoa
Feta Blue Cheese
Swiss Cheese
Red Bell Peppers
Tomato, chopped
Olives, chopped if desired
vegetable broth

Non Vegetarian Ingredients:
Cooked Ground Turkey
Coucous

Red Quinoa
Feta Blue Cheese
Swiss Cheese
Red Bell Peppers
Tomato, chopped
chicken broth
Directions:
Prepare the couscous and quinoa with broth.
Cut Red Bell peppers in half
Add chopped tomato, cheese, prepared quinoa and couscous OR TVP (I added a little of both)
Top with shredded/thinly sliced swiss cheese

I fixed enough to fill a LOT of peppers, and we've made them three times now... just grab the ingredients out of the fridge, stuff and bake for about 20 minutes for a delicious, filling, healthy meal!

What I'd Do Differently Next Time:

Um... I'd probably use some green peppers in my hubby's peppers.  I didn't care for the TVP, but my son liked it, so that's good, since he is a vegetarian and it was a new source of protein that I hadn't ever used before.  What do you stuff your peppers with?  This was a really easy thing to make and my husband and sons and I LOVED them.  The girls didn't care much for it, but I fixed them a bowl with couscous and quinoa, topped it with some extra feta and just diced one of the baked peppers really finely to finish it and they liked that much better.

Clean Eating #64: A Love Story of Epic Hotness (Super Tropical Hot Sauce)

Hot, Burnin', Spicy Tropical Twist Hot Sauce

My husband loves really hot things.  That's why he married me:)

My son likes SUPER hot things.  As in SPICY.  Actually, most of us love hot things, and Squatch moreso than anyone.  Last year I bought some hot sauce that he loved. Not 'liked'... Loved.  Fell head over heels in love with. 

And then, of course, in the way of doomed teenaged love... the relationship ended.  His new 'hottie' was nowhere to be found.  Not online, not in the stores, nowhere.  NO WHERE!

I can't describe the agony that our whole family endured as he tried 'the other fish in the sea' to no avail.  None could compare to his first true love.

Therefor, being the true and wonderful mother that I am, I made it my goal this month to make the best hot sauce of all time.  My aim is to make that 'other' love disappear from his memory like a bad dream.

Today, my first attempt.  WAS. EPIC.

EPIC!

I found the recipe here at pepperfool

Ingredients:

2 Mangoes, peeled and seeded 3 whole kiwi fruit, peeled 4 Habanero Peppers, stemmed and seeded 2 whole limes, juiced 2 lemons, juiced 1/2 cup Orange Juice 1 cup water It was a HIT!  I touched my tongue to the spoon and my lip and tongue were burning to the point of being numb for the next 15 minutes.  I knew then that I may have found the key to healing my son's broken heart!   Nothing tastes as burning hot as SUCCESS!! Chop up your ingredients and put in your crockpot for the day.  Once everything is cooked fairly thoroughly, puree it in your food processor or blender.  Delicious.  Feed it to your spicy loving peeps and watch their eyes tear up with thankfulness.  I think it was thankfulness...