Easy Shredded Chicken

If you like to cook in bulk, you'll love this! You can cook up a whole batch of boneless skinless chicken breast and have it shredded and ready to throw on a salad, in soup, or season up for whatever you'd like to eat.

Use your mixer! I use my kitchenaid mixer but a hand mixer will also work. I can throw the hot cooked chicken breasts right in and the mixer shreds them up easily. The key is to do quick bursts of the mixer, don't just turn it on full blast or it'll throw the chicken right out of the bowl. If you're doing a large batch, put just a few breasts in at once, pulse it until you like the level of shredding, then dump it into a large bowl to the side and do the next few breasts. Repeat until it's all shredded.

You can cook large batches of chicken in a crock pot, but it takes hours to cook them. Still better than boiling, but not super fast.

THEN I got my Instant Pot. Hello! Now I don't even have to deal with boiling chicken anymore OR waiting on the crock pot! I can cook 5 lbs of chicken at once - I just throw it in the instant pot with some water, set it to pressure cook for 15 minutes, and walk away.

I actually keep cooked, shredded chicken in my freezer now so I can use it in recipes as needed. I even keep some seasoned with taco seasoning to use on a taco salad or in a lettuce wrap. So convenient!

Some recipes from this blog that you can make with precooked shredded chicken:

Chicken Fajita (P3)
Chicken Apple Slaw (P2)
Chicken Spinach Tomato Soup (P2)
Enchilada (just sub chicken for beef) (P2)
Chicken Soup (P2)
Chicken Chili (P2)
Chicken Salad (P3)

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Preparing Food in Advance for Phase 2 and Phase 3

Most of the recipes in this blog are for a single meal, but many can be made in larger batches and then divided up into multiples meals that will be ready to heat and eat.

Phase 2 is often one of the more challenging times since your portions and ingredients are so restricted that you are probably cooking your own food and then may also be cooking for your family.


You can go ahead and mix up a pound of ground beef into meatballs, and then either cook them all and save them to be reheated, or freeze them raw and then bake them until done for a meal.  The same goes for meatloaf.  I made a batch of chicken soup and saved enough for three more meals.  Chili would work well for that, and even the sauce for zucchini spaghetti.

One of my favorite time-savers is to portion out my meat ahead of time so I can just cook it up without having to weigh it out.

Ground beef is great because you can get a package of it and weight it out, form it into balls or patties and freeze it for later use.  Then take out a couple at a time and put them in the fridge to thaw so they're redy to go when you're ready to cook.

I have also cooked a roast, then shredded it up while still hot so the fat separates easily, and portioned it into containers for individual meals.  The same idea works well for chicken breasts.

I have a hard time getting motivated to make myself a salad - when not on P2 and restricting how many/much goes in, I want a really hearty salad with lots of different things. I like to chop up lots of veggies, but it's time-consuming to get them all out, chop, etc. I don't usually want to do it just for myself. BUT if I can make a bunch of salads at once, it's totally worth it. I saw this idea on pinterest one day and loved it. It works great for me and the salads easily last at least a week in my fridge.

What have you made ahead or in larger portions?

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P2 Super Easy Marinara Sauce

This is my new favorite way to have marinara sauce ready very quickly. I'm able to make this and feed my family a regular spaghetti dinner, myself a P2 dinner, and my husband has enough to take to work the next day for lunch. Win!

Super Easy Marinara Sauce

First, make a batch of Pizza Sauce:

2 cups tomato sauce (1 14oz can is fine)
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp oregano
1 Tbsp basil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
10-15 drops Liquid Stevia, optional

You can freeze this in two portions, or make a huge batch with a giant can of tomato sauce, and freeze into a bunch of portions.

When you want marinara sauce, just take a portion of pizza sauce, add a couple of cans of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste, and heat it up. That's it!

Here is my lovely sauce over zucchini spaghetti and served with meatballs. Who knew eating HCG Phase 2 could taste so good or be so filling?!

The trick to the zucchini noodles is this amazing spirooli slicer.  You don't have to peel the zucchini first but I prefer it peeled.  Stick it in the slicer with the smallest blade inserted, and spin!

Awesome zucchini noodles!  I slice my zucchini vertically, about halfway through so I get a bunch of half-curls.  Spoon hot sauce over them and you almost forget you aren't eating pasta.

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Apple Day

Apple Day to the rescue! I had a busy long weekend (Fri-Sun) with family in town, and ended up taking an unplanned interruption from Phase 2. We were busy running around and I hadn't prepared meals for myself, so I was caught in restaurants having to do the best I could, and went off protocol. I also saw the new Harry Potter movie and made a conscious choice to eat some popcorn. The weekend left me up a few lbs, which I expected. OK it was 5 lbs. I know! Cheating is bad! Anyway, so I scheduled an Apple Day for Monday.

Apple Day sounds like it will be awful. Nothing to eat but six apples all day? It's not so bad, as long as you like apples. I just ate mine plain, though I suppose you could bake one with cinnamon for some variety. At the end of the day I was hungry, but not starving, and I knew I'd make it to morning, especially since I was expecting a nice loss on the scale.

I've done Apple Days a few times before, to get through a stall, and it worked - I'd lose a pound or so and be back on the losing track. I learned today, though, that it's also very effective to help with an interruption. I think it's something about the lbs that you JUST put on coming back off quickly when you get back on track. At any rate, my scale surprised me with a 4.3 lb loss today. That's almost all the weight I gained from the weekend. Hooray for Apple Day! Now I'm back on track for the second half of this Phase 2.

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A Note on Ingredients

I've had some questions about ingredients, storage, etc. so I wanted to post the information I gave to those who asked in case it will help others.

Nuts and Nut Flours

Specialty flours can be really expensive. I prefer to buy in bulk from Amazon (usually four 1-lb package per case) so the price is better, and store the extra packages in the freezer. The current package I'm using stays in the refrigerator. I haven't had any nuts or nut flours go rancid as long as I keep them cold. This really applies to all whole grain flours. Keep them in the fridge or freezer and they should be fine.

Here is a source for almond flour at a good price - it came recommended on a forum I read.

You can buy raw nuts and grind them yourself, rather than buying nut flours or meals. Almonds, pecans, walnuts, flax seeds grind into meal or flour very well and are more versatile and possibly less expensive. You can use a coffee grinder, and some blenders may be strong enough to do it as well. I personally have a Vitamix that I could not live without. Yes, a very big investment, but one I feel is totally worth it as I use my Vitamix many times per week, for myself and for my kids. It can pulverize whole lemons (seeds and all), grind nuts as mentioned, and make smoothies (which I then freeze into popsicles) for my kids in no time, complete with spinach and other healthy things they have no idea I throw in. Love the Vitamix. :)

Sweeteners

All of the recipes on this blog are sugar-free and many use sweeteners that seem a bit exotic at first. I haven't seen Erythritol (like Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Zero or Z-Sweet) in stores so it has to be ordered online, and Stevia, while available in some stores, especially as a powder, can be hard to find as well. I really prefer the NuNatural brand of liquid stevia, closely followed by SweetLeaf. I've tried others and they were definitely not as good, so if you have had a bad experience with liquid stevia and think it just isn't for you, I'd encourage you to try one of those brands.

Also, liquid stevia should be added one drop at a time, literally. Add a drop and taste. Add another drop, and taste. Keep going until it's right. If you use too much, and sometimes even one drop too much, the aftertaste will be bad and the whole recipe could be ruined. So just be careful and add very small amounts at a time.

I use liquid stevia in a lot of recipes, as well as to sweeten my coffee and tea, and to make lemonade (lemon juice, water and stevia - that's it).

I do not like powdered stevia. Some people do but I have a serious aversion to it. I can taste the stevia aftertaste every time and I just really don't like it. If you've tried powdered stevia and hated it, I'd encourage you to try liquid stevia and see if it might work for you. They are nothing alike, in my opinion.


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Introduction

Hello world! haha just kidding

I just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself and the reason behind this blog, so you know where I'm coming from and what to expect from me and from it.

I'm the mama of two amazing kids, Allen (6) and Alexa (2.5). I have a degree in elementary education, own and run the retail website Consultant Corner, am the webmaster/administrator for The Consciously Parenting Project, and do other various web design projects through My Web Makeover.

So I work from home, take care of and homeschool my kids, try to take care of the house and make food for my hard-working husband at least part of the time, and generally stay extremely busy.

One thing I am not so good at it taking care of myself. Everyone else comes first, and over the past 6 years since my son was born, I have not made the time to take care of myself. I was conscious to cook healthy foods for my kids, including options with veggies and other healthy things hidden inside as they have gone through their picky stages, but I was addicted to coca cola. I made amazing snacks and treats for them that I didn't mind them eating any time of day, but I was addicted to sugar and sweets myself. This ongoing problem, which went through both pregnancies, led to my being categorized by my Wii Fit as "obese" - ouch. I went from being in the lowest weight class on our high school girls' weight lifting team, to "obese" and that sucked.

I knew "the rules" about losing weight. "Eat right and exercise," and plan to lose a couple of pounds a week if you do it just right. Well I wanted to lose about 60 lbs. That would put me back to college weight - not ideal, but I couldn't imagine setting a goal of more than 60 lbs! At 2 lbs per week, that would take me two and a half years! Oh my gosh! It was too daunting to even begin. Not to mention that I had about zero spare minutes in my day to fit in any major exercise. Forget going to the gym - my kids won't do the childcare area, and I wasn't willing to give up the precious little time I have with my husband when he's home from work to go then. So there I was - stuck.

Then I learned about the HCG protocol. I remembered how I lost weight in the beginning of both of my pregnancies - 17lbs and 15lbs respectively. I've even joked about getting pregnant again just to lose weight, heh. Of course, I gained it all back plus 30 more each time. But the HCG plan made sense to me, and I decided to try it out, with homeopathic drops, just to see what would happen. I didn't really have anything to lose, besides the pesky 60 lbs I wanted off. With an average of half a pound per day for women, that could mean as few as four months. Wow, definitely worth a try.

So, to try to shorten this story, I started HCG at the beginning of December 2010, and here it is early February and I'm halfway there - 30 lbs gone, and 26 inches along with it (that I actually measured). That happened in two months. I feel amazing, am eating the healthiest I have ever eaten, and totally off of sugar, soda, everything. I am so glad I found this and gave it a try. It hasn't always been easy, don't get me wrong, but absolutely the best thing I've done for myself.

So if you're no familiar with the HCG protocol, you can check out the e-book "Pounds and Inches" by Dr. Simeons for the details (warning, it's old and was converted to pdf so there are about a gajillion typos), and you also might want to read my friend's blog about her journey with HCG.

For a quick reference:

Phase 1 is LOADING. I won't have recipes for loading, specifically, as I trust we all know how to get that high-fat food in. ;)

Phase 2, or P2, is the time during which one takes the HCG supplement, and eats only 500 calories per day from the list of approved foods. P2 should be a minimum of 23 days.

Phase 3, or P3, is the time after P2, where calories are increased, but still no sugar or starch is consumed. P3 usually lasts about 3 weeks.

Phase 4, or P4, is after P3, and is the time in which you can slowly introduce some starch and sugar back in, being careful to weigh daily to make sure you don't have issues with the foods you reintroduce (causing you to gain).

On this site, I will be compiling the best recipes I have found on my hcg journey, for use by those doing hcg themselves, and also by anyone else interested in healthy, delicious recipes. They are sugar-free, many are gluten-free, sometimes dairy-free, sometimes egg-free, low carb, and, as mentioned, delicious. Half the time when I'm cooking my own food, my husband or a kid or two will ask me to make the same thing for them. In fact, I'm getting ready to make my son's birthday cake for tomorrow, which will be an amazing chocolate cake with chocolate icing, totally low carb, sugar-free and gluten-free. Yum!

Even if you don't need or aren't interested in the HCG protocol, stick around because as I mentioned, the non-dieters and even the picky kids in my house are loving some of these recipes, so you might get some ideas for yourself. :)

http://www.myhcgcooking.com