She's Fast, She's Lean

A quick-style low carb Tortilla Soup

Made with rotisserie chicken, chili powder, jarred salsa and thickened with corn meal and crushed corn chips.  

I simply cooked carrots, celery and onion, while toasting the chili powder and cumin.  Then added chicken stock, shredded chicken and salsa. Bring to a boil and add the corn meal and crushed tortilla chips.  Simmer until thickens, top with fresh cilantro, Mexican cheese, avocado, squeeze of lemon or lime. Less than 30 minutes and it does taste like it simmered all day. 

can you see me?

After the Boys of Summer Have Gone

Cucumber Sushi

End of summer, farewell to cool sides, like this shaved cucumber wrapped guacamole.  So as not to waste food, I cut the remainder of the cucumbers into squares, added onion and apple cider vinegar, olive oil,a pinch of sugar, lots of pepper and salt to make yet another side salad to serve with this spicy roasted chicken. 

Rollin' Up the Pieces of My Life

Smothered Pork Chops and roasted vegetables

Spicy fried pork chops would be on my top 50 list of dinner favorites.  It's just enough meat, but the experience is more like bacon where tiny bites pack a giant punch and compliment everything that is pure on the plate, like potatoes or in this low carb take, a stalk of roasted broccoli or a sweet red onion.  

Edamame with tons of garlic, soy sauce and sesame oil needs no help to be fabulous.

To ensure I'd have a veggie lunch for the next day, I roasted some seasoned tofu along with the vegetables. Delicious success!

A little corn starch and yogurt made a rich tasting gravy that mocked flour, milk and butter.

That morning a Mexican crew began working at 7am taking down two-year-old scaffolding, having finished painting one of the trio of matching buildings across the street.  Another crew abandoned the work so long ago.  

I watched them all morning, their work a synchronized dance for 5 hours, stacking and disassembling these heavy pieces of metal onto a flatbed truck with such precision.  

I wanted to feed them all pork chops.