Coconut flour and Parmesan crusted chicken tenders.

       In addition to eating low carb, i’m trying to exclude wheat and flour completely from my diet. I decided to experiment with other types of breading to make chicken tenders. This recipe uses coconut flour and Parmesan cheese as a base for the breading. You could use one of, or a mixture of, coconut flour, Parmesan cheese or even almond flour. I have also used crushed fried onion pieces and crushed pork rinds in the past. I may post some of those recipes in the future.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb chicken tenderloins - 0.0 Carbs, 320 Calories
• 4 tbsp of coconut flour – 6g Net carbs (16 Carbs -10g fiber), 120 Calories
• 4 tbsp of grated Parmesan cheese – 0.0g carbs, 75 calories
• ½ tsp of salt – 0.0g Carbs, 0 calories
• ½ tsp pepper – 0.0g Carbs, 17 Calories
• 1 egg - 0.6g Carbs, 78 calories

Total 6.6 net carbs and 610 calories

Procedure:

1. Create a dry batter mixture by combining the coconut flour, Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper together in a medium bowl.
2.  Crack the egg into a medium bowl and whisk with a fork. I like to add a teaspoon of water too.
3. Trim the chicken to remove all of the fat. Additionally, I typically remove the ligament from the tenderloin. The ligament is a white string-like piece running through the center of the chicken tenderloin. Some people will leave the ligament in the chicken as long as it’s not too tough or large. Removing the ligament from all the tenderloin is a little extra work, and I end up losing some good chicken meat in the process, but I think it’s worth it.  You could also just slice a chicken breast into strips and save yourself the trouble ;).
4. Add peanut oil to a frying pan. I try to add enough oil so the tender is ½ submerged into the oil. The oil temperature should be 350-375°. You could substitute peanut oil for safflower oil, sunflower oil, or canola oil as they all have a high smoke point.
5. Place the chicken into the egg (that sounds funny..I wonder which came first haha). Then dredge the egg covered chicken into the dry mixture. Be sure to thoroughly coat the chicken in the dry mixture. Finally, place the chicken into the hot oil.
6. Fry until both sides are golden brown and the chicken is cooked thoroughly. 

The curse of the creepy Furby

The curse of the creepy Furby-

My daughter decided to spend some of her Christmas gift cards on a new toy. After searching the store for something she would like, she decided to get a Furby Boom. She looked at all of the models they had available and decided to exclude any model if the had more then one in stock. Finally, she settled on the blue one with orange stars. 

These toys are quite interesting. They speak to you and interact with speech, touch, or with a smart phone app. My daughter was able to connect the Furby with her iPad app pretty easily. From the app, you can care for your Furby and even give it a name. Bee Boo, as her Furby would be named, exhibited a sweet female voice. It was almost child like and had a sort of innocence when it replied to an "I love you" with a mousey "Really". That was until the sweet voice turned into a gruff male voice that sounded a bit like Homer Simpson. Its funny how much the voice change effected the personality of the toy. Even the LCD screens in the eye sockets changed from cute hearts to flames. Thinking the toy already sucked the juice out of the four AA batteries, I changed them in hopes to restore the once cute voice. Even after new batteries, Homer continued to haunt the toy.  My daughter was disappointed. After searching around a bit, I was able to return Bee Boo to her once cute state. 

Here is how to cure the Furby from the deep male voice:
First put your finger in the Furby's mouth and hold down the tongue button. Next, turn the Furby up side down. Finally, pull and hold the tail away from the Furby's body. If you do all these things for about 3 seconds, the eyes will go dark. The default sweet personality will return when the eyes light back up.

My daughter was delighted! I'm just glad I didn't have to bust out the Crucifix and the holy water ;)