My daughter will eat very little in the way of variety...she asks me every night "what's for dinner?"...she's 20 and I find this question very annoying at this stage of her life. Considering that I spend the better part of the last 20 years working hard to make sure that "Miss Picky" would eat...I have had a somewhat restricted diet too. I also work five days a week and cooking during the week becomes a chore. I love to cook and refuse to have it become a chore. So, we eat a lot of sandwiches on Fiber One bread (something that I plan to do myself one day too) and fix big pots of stuff over the weekend and eat that until it is gone.
My step-son's birthday was Friday and he came down to visit with us for his birthday last night. I made the oven stew (I have made some adjustments to that too that I will share...my goal was to keep the wonderful flavor and cut the sodium) yesterday so that dinner would just be ready when he got here and made vanilla bean white velvet cupcakes with the icing that he requested. We went to the meat market down the road for the roast yesterday and they had chicken tenders really reasonably priced so I picked up two pounds with the intention of making baked chicken strips and freezing them so that Hannah can quit asking me "what's for dinner" and I know she will be eating good for her food.
I had bought some orange cauliflower last week and I decided to surprise her with low fat mac n' cheese and baked chicken strips. I have seen lots of recipes for both and I have tried a low fat mac n'cheese recipe and thought that it was decent but that I had some different thoughts about how I wanted to do it.
So here are my recipes (I as usual, did not take pics of the process but the finished products will go on here).
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| Baked Chicken Strip |
Baked Chicken Strips
2 lbs chicken tenders
3 cups bread crumbs (I used the heels from my Fiber One bread and tossed in the last two pieces of garlic bread for additional flavor)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
2 cups butter milk
2 Tbs hot sauce
4-6 egg whites
1 clove garlic minced
I mixed the buttermilk, garlic, and hot sauce in a bowl and put my chicken tenders in to soak for 1 hour (I would have left them longer if I had thought to do it earlier). I took the heels of my bread and garlic bread and put them in the food processor and then added the parmesan cheese to the mixture and pulsed it until mixed well and all very fine (I then took out about 1/3 of a cup for the mac n' cheese). The soaked chicken tenders are then dredged through the bread crumbs, dipped in the egg white, and dredged through the bread crumbs again. I had sprayed my cake cooling rack with non-stick spray, heavily, and put this on top of a cookie sheet to catch any droppings.
Bake at 350 until cooked through.
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| Low Fat Mac n' Cheese |
Low-Fat Mac N' Cheese
2 cups boiled elbow pasta (al dente)
2.5 cups shredded cheese (I used every package of left over shredded cheese in my fridge so it was a big mix)
1 head of yellow cauliflower (maintains the color of the sauce) steamed until very soft
1 Tbs of butter
1/3 cup of skim milk
1 egg
2 Tbs hot sauce (just to kick it up a bit)
1/2 tsp salt
I put the shredded cheese, steamed cauliflower, milk, egg, hot sauce, and salt into my food processor and processed until I had a very creamy cheese sauce. Mixed with the al dente pasta and put it in a casserole pan sprayed well with non stick spray. Top with bread crumb mixture.
Bake at 350 until hot, bubbly, and bread crumbs are nicely browned.
Both turned out lovely! They were very yummy and both kids and adults had seconds! I took some spicy mustard and added honey at the last minute to dip the tenders in...wonderful!!
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| High Fiber Low Fat Baked Chicken Tender |
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| Low Fat Mac n' Cheese |
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