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Sunday, November 21, 2010

A New Kind of "Meal"

I am a huge breakfast fan. Anything from pancakes, french toast, eggs, bacon, toast, scrambles, muffins... everything! Though I do create times where I can consume most of that (in my refeeds or cheat meals), I have done a few things with a new favorite ingredient of mine that mimics breakfast in a way. Mostly in the form of a pancake or english "muffin" like you would use for an egg sandwich.

The ingredient is Almond Meal.
I have been switching back and forth between Trader Joe's brand Almond Meal and this Bob's Red Mill package. The taste might be a LITTLE different but nothing to harp on. Bob's is 160 Calories per 1/4 cup and Trader Joe's is 180 Calories per 1/4 cup so alter according to your goals.

So on to a few things I have been making with this new ingredient. The first is a pancake style "muffin". (seen pictured below)

Here are two pictures that I took after making these meals. It is basically an egg sandwich (one looks a little cleaner than the other) and they were DELICIOUS! So here is what you do to make this Almond Meal Pancake/Muffin:

1/4 cup Almond Meal
1/2 tsp of Baking Powder
1 Egg (or 2-3 tablespoons of egg whites)
*cinnamon optional, this gives more of a pancake taste.

Whisk all of the ingredients together until you get a "pancake batter" like substance. Cook on a skillet with a little butter or coconut oil. Boom! There you go... a low-carb alternative to flour/gluten containing products. This might work well for those on a "rest" day who are trying to go lower on the carb side of things but still want something like this to eat. By the way, I obviously enjoyed both of these "open-faced" style. I put another cooked egg over the top with some sliced tomato and avocados and onions.

Another option to use almond meal for is breading chicken!! (check out below):

So I basically did the same thing you would do in order to bread some chicken and throw it in a skillet. Follow these instructions to create what I did above:

1/4 cup of Almond Meal
1 Egg or 3-4 tbsp Egg Whites
Chicken Tenders or Chicken Thighs (I used Organic Thighs from Costco here)

Setup 2 shallow plates near your skillet. Put a couple tbsp of coconut oil in the skillet and set it on med-high heat. Smother the chicken in the egg plate so that it is covered and then move it to the Almond Meal plate and cover the chicken entirely with the almond meal. Put the chicken in the skillet and cook for about 4-5 minutes per side until the almond meal seems to have set and harden. I enjoyed this chicken with a simple array of steamed vegetables.

Boom! There you have it, breaded chicken. It reminds me of chicken fingers without the wheat flour and whatnot. I will probably try this with coconut flour as well and see how those turn out!

I hope you get a chance to try these recipes out and give almond meal/flour a try and let me know what you think! It might be a good idea for you during these non-carb intensive months. :)


In Health,

SMS