Friday: Chicken Vegetable Soup with Brown Rice

As we draw to the end of the week, I feel like I've been doing pretty good on my grocery haul. Thanks to some scary flu symptoms I downed several gallons of chicken bone broth yesterday (seasoned with ginger and lemon) and I feel infinitely better. I still have three eggs, two lemons, some ginger, some olives, a handful of salad greens, half a head of broccoli, one carrot, four stalks of celery, one tupper of cooked chicken, half a jar of chicken juice, and one unopened carton of blueberries in the fridge. The goal is to "spend down" all the perishables every week, so we're doing ok. But after today, I think we'll be in better shape, because I'm making SOUP.

When I was growing up my grandma always used to collect any uneaten salad from family gatherings and take it home to make a soup. The thought terrified us kids. While I don't hope to go quite that far, I like to think this soup draws some inspiration from her thriftiness.

Leftovers.

Ingredients:

1 carrot, chopped finely
2 stalks celery, chopped finely
1 tupperware of precooked chicken meat
2-3 cups chicken juice from roasted chicken (note: salty!)
1/3 cup frozen corn
1 head broccoli, chopped
Handful of salad greens and parsley
Bay leaf
Peppercorns
1/2 cup brown rice

Instructions:

1. In a large pot, bring chicken juice, 6-8 cups water, carrot, celery, chicken, frozen corn and brown rice to a boil. Add bay leaf and peppercorns, reduce heat to a simmer.
2. Throw in chopped broccoli, salad greens, and parsley. Cover and set timer to 20 min. After 20 min, remove cover and simmer for another 10-15 min or until rice is done.
3. Serve, with croutons if that's your thing, and eat.

Optional: drop an egg into the bowl before serving; add more salt & pepper & parmesan to taste.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

Prep time: <10 min. 

Servings: 4-6
Agony rating: 3/10. Cooking needs watching/multiple steps.
Taste and stuff: It's a little bland, but light, and surprisingly filling.

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

Again, it's hard to parse out the cost of the ingredients since these were all remnants from other recipes this week, but it's mostly about the cost of the chicken. $10? $12? $15? I have no idea. 

Now, what to do with the leftover blueberries and ginger? (Edit: solution found.)

Wednesday: Chicken Egg Drop Soup with Ginger (Low FODMAP)

I've gotten into the habit of cooking a whole chicken every Sunday, and saving the juice/meat/bones for uses later in the week. Last Sunday I made both a huge batch of bone broth (using frozen bones from 3 chickens, 1 turkey, set at 24 hours in the crockpot) and also made a whole roast chicken in the crockpot (1 organic chicken, rub with salt and pepper, set on low for 8 hours) I'm having fun coming up with uses for all of it.

To top it all off I came down with some sort of bug, and it being January and all, it's the perfect time for variations on chicken soup.

I drew on this post from the Kitchn for inspiration and added a few other goodies, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's a little on the light side for dinner, but served with the right side dish could make for a good staple. 

Ingredients (per serving):

2 cups chicken broth

1/2 cup precooked chicken meat

1 egg, whisked

Crushed fresh ginger to taste

Optional:
Handful of salad greens

Fresh squeezed lemon juice to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Soy sauce to taste

Hot sauce to taste

Green onions (not for low-FODMAP diets)

Instructions:

1. Heat up chicken broth and chicken meat. Add ginger, salt and pepper, salad greens if you're using them, and stir. Bring to a boil and turn off burner.

2. Stir in whisked egg.

3. Add lemon juice, soy sauce, hot sauce, and anything else your heart desires and your gut can tolerate.

4. Serve and eat fast.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

Prep time: 10 min.

Servings: 1
Agony rating: 2/10. 
Taste and stuff: 8/10. Bonus points for being super healthy and warming!

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

It's hard to parse out the cost of the ingredients, but I'll approximate this was $2 worth of chicken and stock, $0.70 per egg, and $0.50 for little dribs and drabs of everything else - or $3.20 per serving. A little more expensive than I'd thought, but it's mostly about the chicken. 

Sunday: Green and Red Bell Peppers with Sausage and Celery

This week's grocery haul, for $99.33:
-3 green bell peppers
-3 red bell peppers
-1 bag celery
-1 bag organic carrots
-1 bunch parsley
-1 head broccoli
-5 tomatoes on the vine
-1 box prewashed baby spinach
-1 bunch bananas
-1 carton blueberries
-1 jar pitted Kalamata olives
-Small bottle of low-sodium soy sauce
-1/2 lb roast chicken and 1/3 lb pepperjack cheese from the deli
-3 Fage yogurts
-4 cans Sixpoint Sweet Action Ale
-2 bags tortilla chips
-1 whole organic chicken
-1 package (5 links) pork sausage
-1 box instant oatmeal, variety pack
-1 can unsalted roasted peanuts
-6 organic eggs

I carried it all home on my back, like a sherpa. I'll probably need to get more salad greens later in the week, along with ginger, lemons, and anything else I forgot.

Yesterday's dinner was pretty slapdash, as in, I made it up on the fly, but I'm happy enough with how it turned out.

Green and Red Bell Peppers with Sausage and Celery

Here are the ingredients:

Ingredients:

1 pack sausage
2 red bell peppers
2 green bell peppers
2 stalks celery
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes, unsalted
Rice (5-6 cups cooked)
Not pictured: canola oil, pinch cumin, pinch oregano, pinch cayenne, salt and pepper, hot sauce, chicken stock

Instructions:

1. Cut sausage links into small pieces. I like slicing quarters. Brown in large saucepan in a neutral-tasting oil, like canola.
2. Chop celery into small pieces. Add to sausage, stir, and let soften.
3. Chop green and red bell peppers into small pieces. Add to the pot, stir. Wait 2 minutes.
4. Add can of diced tomatoes and 1/4 cup water. Add spices as you like.
5. Make large amount of rice using leftover chicken stock.
6. Serve with hot sauce.

I served this after a hefty Super Salad (spinach, celery, olives, tomatoes, carrots, parsley, olive oil and vinegar) and it made for a quite satisfying, almost-too-heavy meal.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

Prep time: 20-30 min. Chopping, chopping, watching football, chopping.

Servings: 4
Agony rating: 3/10. 
Taste and stuff: 7/10. 

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

I, um, threw away the receipt by accident, but the sausage was $5.99, the can o'tomatoes $2.99, so it's safe to estimate the total cost was no higher than $14 including the vegetables (and that's aggressive) or $3.50/serving.

This afternoon I'm making bone broth in the slow cooker, with a freezer's worth of leftover chicken and turkey bones. At the recommendation of a Ukrainian friend, I removed the bones after 24 hours and pounded them with a meat hammer (er, really an ice cream scoop) to let some of the marrow out. Then I put them back in. Eventually I'm going to add some bay leaves, peppercorns, etc but I don't want things to get bitter.

At some point I'm going to slow roast a whole chicken in there, to give us meat for the week... and more bones!

Meal plan for the week:

Breakfast: Bananas and oatmeal (him) broth, berries, and yogurt (her)
Lunch: Sandwiches (him) ??? (her)
Dinners: Peppers and Sausage with rice; Superveggie salad with roast chicken and hardboiled eggs; Use leftover rice and chicken to make chicken and rice soup (with lemon and ginger?) or egg drop soup

Sunday: Easy Delicious Low-FODMAP Lemon Rosemary Chicken With Zucchini and Arborio Rice

The temperature in Brooklyn dropped precipitously the past few days, and I have a hankering for some hot comfort food. This recipe for One-Pot Lemon Chicken and Zucchini with Rice from Simple Bites is one of my favorite recipes of all time and fits the bill perfectly. It' super easy to make, consists of simple ingredients, and tastes amazing. And it's a one-pot recipe from start to finish, using a Dutch oven, and leaves minimal dishes to wash afterwards. I modify the recipe slightly to accommodate for low-FODMAP needs and I just use regular lemons since my grocery doesn't have Meyer ones. Plus it's one of zillions of uses for chicken stock, which I still have plenty of from the past few weeks. Note to self: DEFROST the chicken stock well before...

Ingredients:

1-1.5 lbs deboned skinless chicken thighs
Canola or other light cooking oil
1 cup arborio rice
1 1/4 cup chicken stock
2-4 zucchini, sliced in rounds
2 lemons
Dried rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated parmesan cheese (optional)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Coat inside of a 4-quart dutch oven with a neutral-tasting oil.
2. Rinse rice until water comes out clean, then pour into the dutch oven. Add broth and stir.
3. Arrange chicken on top of the rice, and season with salt and pepper.
4. Slice 1 lemon into rounds and arrange on top of chicken. Add the zucchini on top of the lemon. [NOTE: if you're cooking with garlic, add the garlic to the zucchini.]
5. Halve the other lemon and juice half over the top, reserving the other half for serving, if desired. Top with rosemary sprigs and cover.
6. Bake in oven for 45 minutes. [NOTE: The original recipe calls for 35-40 minutes, but I like mine a little slushier.]

Remove lemons (or at least tell your diners they're just a garnish!) Sprinkle with Parmesan before serving, if so desired. Makes 4 servings. 

Tuesday: Low-FODMAP Thai Chicken Noodle Soup with Fresh Carrot, Cilantro, and Lime

Today I went all high culture and made a low FODMAP variation of this recipe which I found on the back of a Thai Kitchen box of rice noodles. It took virtually no prep time--because I already had the chicken stock made, thawed, and chicken meat cooked.

Ingredients:

1/2 package (4 oz) rice noodles

1 1/2 cups cooked shredded chicken meat

2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

1 cup water

4 cups chicken stock 

1 carrot (peeled or julienned)

2 tablespoons Thai Kitchen fish sauce (ingredients: anchovy, sugar, salt)

2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lime juice

1 tablespoon sugar

Salt to taste

1. Boil 8 cups of water; remove from heat. Add rice noodles and let sit for 3 minutes. Strain and rinse with cold water; set aside.

2. In your serving bowls add chicken and cilantro; add noodles. Set aside.

3. Bring water, chicken stock, carrot peelings, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, and salt to a boil. Stir well and remove from heat. Pour over chicken, cilantro, and noodle mix and serve hot.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

  

Prep time: 10 min. Boil water, chop cilantro, squeeze limes, peel carrot. 
Servings: 2 (makes 4-6 with more noodles and doubling measurements)
Agony rating: 3/10. 
Taste and stuff: 7/10. Very light and could use a little hot sauce.

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

Rice noodles: $4 per box, and I used half a box, so $2
Organic carrot: $0.75

Cilantro: $0.99 bunch, used about a handful so $0.25
Limes: 5 for $1, so $0.20
Cooked chicken: left over from weekend, but probably around $5 worth
Chicken stock: left over from weekend

Total cost of stuff I had to buy special: $8.20
Cost per serving: $4.10

VERDICT: SUCCESS. 

Low FODMAP Chicken Tortilla Soup with Cilantro and Lime

This week worked out well in terms of all the food prep I did Sunday. On Monday we had chicken broccoli bake leftovers. Tuesday was beef stew leftovers. Wednesday was spinach salad with cooked chicken (from the stock-making Sunday,) olives, and pumpkin seeds. Thursday was the least successful - I made quinoa pasta and covered it with the faux celery pesto, olives, more cooked chicken, olive oil and parmesan. That was kind of meh. Celery leaves and parsley are VERY overwhelming-tasting, it turns out. 

So tonight I wanted to use some of that rich chicken stock as well as the rest of the cooked chicken.

I got my inspiration from this post on The Kitchn which features six easy ways to turn chicken stock into dinner. They all sound great, especially the rice and egg soup. But since I had all this cooked chicken already I decided to give this one a try. It's low-FODMAP and low sodium if you decide to keep it that way (if you have a light hand with the tortilla chips, that is.) This turned out great and I can't wait to try all the other chicken stock recipes.

Ingredients:

Chicken stock
Shredded chicken
16 oz can unsalted diced tomatoes
1/2 cup frozen sweet corn
Shredded cheddar or Mexican cheese
Chopped cilantro
Crumbled tortilla chips
Fresh lime juice
Salt, pepper, cayenne to taste

Heat chicken broth until simmering. Add shredded cooked chicken, corn, and can of diced tomatoes. Heat until hot. Pour into bowls and top with crumbled tortilla chips, shredded cheese, lime juice, and cilantro.

FACTS AND FIGURES 
  
Prep time: 10 min. Open can of tomatoes, chop cilantro, and slice and squeeze limes. 
Servings: 4.
Agony rating: 1/10. Super easy if you have the cooked chicken already.
Taste and stuff: 8/10. Delish.

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

Organic diced tomatoes, salt-free: $1.99
Garden of Eatin' Yellow Tortilla Chips: $2.99
Kraft shredded Mexican cheese: $2.50; about half a bag so $1.25
Frozen organic sweet corn: $2.99/10oz, so about $0.50 worth
Cilantro: $0.99 bunch, used about a handful so $0.25
Limes: 5 for $1, so $0.20
Cooked chicken: left over from last weekend, but probably around $14
Chicken stock: left over from last weekend

Total cost of stuff I had to buy special: $7.18 without the chicken; $21.18 with
Cost per serving: $1.80/$5.30

VERDICT: SUCCESS. 

FODMAP Free Sunday

This weekend I got busy in the kitchen making FODMAP-free foods for the fam.

#1: Whole Chicken Chicken Stock (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

Organic whole chicken including giblets
Handful fresh parsley from farmers market
3 stalks sad little celery from farmers market
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1/2 carrot from the farmers market

Put it all in the crockpot with a buncha water and set to 20 hours on low. Results TBD. I'll take the cooked chicken out tomorrow and use for salads/sandwiches.

#2: Chicken Broccoli Cheese Bake (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

1 cup brown rice
Organic chicken cutlets
Olive oil
1/2 head broccoli
Parmesan cheese
Cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper

Cook rice, cook chicken in dutch oven. Steam broccoli. Mix it all together and bake for 15 min. Went over well. But will it reheat? Probably four servings.

#3 FODMAP Friendly Pumpkin Bread (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

1 cup canola oil
2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups canned pumpkin
2/3 cup water
3 1/3 cups quinoa flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove)
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix oil, sugar, eggs, pumpkin, and water; add flour, bp, bs, salt, pumpkin pie spice and vanilla; stir a little. Preheat oven to 350. For muffins, bake for 35 min. For bread, 50 min. These were DELICIOUS. Half the muffins are already gone. Probably all that sugar + oil! {NOTE: The bread was a little squishy near the middle. Might need to bake it longer at a lower temperature.}

#4 Fall Beef Stew (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

1 lb organic beef chunks
1/2 cup or so of quinoa flour
salt and pepper
olive oil
1 16 oz can salt-free diced tomatoes
2 carrots from the farmers market
5 turnips from the farmers market
5 red potatoes from the farmers market
1 tiny celery stalk chopped up real small
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 2/3 cups water
1/3 cup dry red wine
1 tsp thyme

Coat beef chunks in flour, salt and pepper; brown. Add liquids and stir in the rest of the flour; add veggies and spices; bring to a boil and pop in the oven for an hour and a half at 350 degrees.

The beef was really tough, there were too many turnips, and while the carrots and potatoes were perfect consistency the turnips were very soft. But the flavor of the sauce was great. Wish I had beef stock and more wine on hand. Makes roughly four to six servings.

#5 Poor Woman's Pesto-like Power Spread

Is there such thing as a FODMAP-free garlic/pesto substitute? I made this one up. It's pungent and thrifty, but who knows if it will actually get eaten.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups turnip greens, celery leaves, parsley, broccoli
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt
Pepper
Parmesan cheese
Balsamic vinegar

Boil water. Dip greens into the water for 30 seconds. Blend in blender. Add olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper,  splash of balsamic vinegar, and parmesan cheese to taste/consistency. Apparently this is very nutritious, if somewhat overpowering, and I probably should have cooked the turnip greens. Will try on pasta or crackers (?) Maybe a sandwich spread? Next time add kale, spinach, basil. Call it Soylent...

FACTS AND FIGURES
 
Prep time: I spent about four hours preparing everything, but that includes chatting with a friend and doing all the dishes.
Servings: Hard to tell; probably 4 each of the entrees.
Agony rating: 7/10. Peeling and chopping; browning meat; measuring ingredients for pumpkin bread; ay ay ay.
Taste and stuff: So far, so good!

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

I tossed the receipt, and bought many other things at the grocery, but the cost of all this food probably came in around $70-$80. That includes the fancy organic meat and the organic farmer's market vegetables and eggs. So overall this will probably come in around $6-$8 a serving once I use all the chicken in the slow cooker, which while not stupendous is certainly doable.

VERDICT: A day well spent. We will have breakfast and dinner for almost a full workweek. SUCCESS.