Not Quite Pesto

I love pesto but I didn't have everything in the house to make pesto, so I worked with what I had to make a tasty rub for my chicken. I took small handfuls of fresh, basil, thyme, parsley, and cilantro, as well as some raw broccoli, and dropped it all into my blender(or a food processor will do).

Add in some fresh garlic cloves, salt and pepper, and olive oil and process until you have a slightly clumpy mix. You don't want to add too much olive oil so it's too runny; you want to just be able to rub it on top of your chicken, (I could see this good on top of pretty much any meat), and let the chicken absorb the goodness. Let it sit with this rub on it for about 15 minutes at room temperature before you cook your chicken. This is fresh and delicious. Plus you could leave some separate and thin it up a little more and use it as a dip. 

Avocado Enchilada Filling

I  love avocados and had been wanted to try this recipe for Avocado Enchiladas from FoodieCrush.com. I've massively limited my grains, but I thought one or two corn tortillas for one night would not be the end of the world since I have limited myself by choice. This was super easy to make and I would just make the filling and eat it by itself in the future. 

The recipe makes about 12 enchiladas in my experience or a large  8 X 11 tray. I just made a small tray for dinner and then ate the rest of the filling. This was delicious. 

Coconut Lime Chicken

I like to plan ahead and on New Year's Day I knew I was going to want to eat but not going to want to cook, so I prepped a crockpot meal ahead of time. I got up to plug in the crockpot and lazily went back to bed. While my crockpot was cooking away this chicken smelled great but it didn't look that appealing because of the creaminess of the coconut milk.

When I came back to the crockpot in the afternoon the chicken had actually started to fall apart because it was so moist from the coconut milk. The basic flavor of this recipe is really mild because it's only coconut and lime but then you can enhance it with any kind of spice blend you want. You could even just use this recipe to make to the chicken super moist and then drain it and jazz it up with barbecue sauce at the end. I plan to do this again ahead of time before I make chicken enchiladas.

So here's what you'll need:

2 limes, juiced

1 can coconut milk

1 Tbsp vegetable oil

6 cloved garlic, minced

salt, pepper, cumin, cayenne, to taste

Chicken thighs (enough to fill crockpot 3/4 full is good)

Throw it all in the crockpot and cook on low for about 6 hours. Start to pull apart in the last hour, and adjust the seasoning accordingly. The flavor will be mild, but very moist. 

Source: The Big Book of Low-Carb by Kitty Broither & Kimberly Mayone