Chicken & Turkey Sausage Gumbo

This is one of those everything goes meals. Whatever kind of veggies you have in the freezer or leftover in the fridge. You are only limited by your imagination with this type of food. Mine came out a little bit soupier than I like, so feel free to add more flour or even some corn starch to thicken it up. I can't remember where I found this recipe online, but I take absolutely no credit for it. If you've never tried gumbo, you should at least once in your life. Please don't be intimidated by the ingredient list, because this was easy to make.

.

Chicken & Sausage Gumbo

.

1/4 c unsalted butter

1/4 c flour

1 bag frozen gumbo veggie mix -12 oz (mine had okra, peppers, corn, and onions)

(or whatever veggies you like)

2 stalks celery diced

4 c water

4 tsp sodium free chicken boullion

4 oz tomato sauce

1 can diced tomatoes (14 oz) drained

8 oz cooked chicken -diced

4 oz cooked turkey sausage -diced (any kind you like or is on sale)

1 clove garlic -minced

1/4 tsp red pepper

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp paprika

a liberal sprinkling of dried onion flakes

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1 bay leaf

1/4 tsp file powder (also called ground sassafras leaves)

I could not find anything called file or sassafras, so I left it out.

.

Heat butter in a large pot over medium-high heat and add flour. Cook and stir until mixture is the color of an old copper penny; nice and dark. Add celery and veggies and cook for several minutes until they begin to sweat and smell great.

.

Mix the water and boullion and add slowly to the pot while stirring and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until veggies are tender (about 20 minutes). Add all tomato products, chicken and sausage, cover and simmer another 10 minutes. Lastly, add the seasonings (except for the file powder), bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer 15 minutes.

.

Turn heat off and add file powder, stir well, remove bay leaf and serve over cooked rice. Makes 8+ servings at 9.4 ounces each.

.

Now I know traditional gumbo is cooked over a long period of time, but this is a pretty good substitute for the bayou original. You might be tempted to use cajun seasoning, but look at the sodium content first. I looked at the ingredients on a bottle of cajun seasoning and came up with my own salt-free substitution. Mine came out pretty spicy but actually enjoyable (esp. considering I don't like spicy food). The amounts on the spicier seasonings above are half of what I actually used, so don't worry about it being too spicy. Feel free to kick the heat back up a notch if you like.

.

So, here's the breakdown: 1/2 cup cooked minute rice (yes, I'm still using up my stockpile of white rice and I'll make the switch over to brown), 1 serving of gumbo, fruit and milk came to 473 calories with 403mg of sodium. The gumbo by itself has 201 calories with 283mg of sodium.

.

I love tinkering with new recipes. If you have a recipe idea you would like me to post on here, please let me know.

Take a night off!!!!!

So, I will try to post information for restaurants if I can find it. I enjoy the fresco menu at Taco Bell, the petite burgers at Red Robin, and several items are decent at Applebees. That being said, I took the night off from sodium and calorie counting last night. We went to Cheeseburger in Paradise and I had mini crabcake burgers with fresh sweet potato chips. My, oh my was it good! Almost too good. I decided that once a month I'm giving myself a splurge night.
.
Anyway, the night before that we had freezer pizza as I didn't feel like cooking anything complicated. I found that the digorno garlic bread crust (square-shaped one) has the lowest sodium and is the most filling. I believe it's around 550mg per serving. Compare this to some of the other pizzas at over 1000mg per serving. Wow! Won't eat those anymore.

Chicken Parmesan -Kristin Style

Okay, so apparently I need to take lessons on food presentation and taking pictures of food. That being said, this was a mega delicious meal that I pulled out of thin air tonight. I didn't feel like making anything I had planned, so I went digging around my cupboards to see what else could be possible.

.

Yummy Yummy Chicken Parmesan

(the whole family is sure to enjoy)

.

1 lb boneless skinless chicken tenders

1/4 c plain bread crumbs (look for them by the stuffing section)

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp Italian seasoning (salt free kind)

1/2 tsp parsley

1 tsp dried onion flakes

1 egg white (or can use egg beaters)

.

Mix together bread crumbs and seasonings in a shallow bowl. Add egg white to another shallow bowl and begin coating chicken in the egg white and then dipping in the seasonings. If you use one hand for each bowl, it keeps the coating from getting too gooey. Place the coated chicken on a shallow baking pan and bake at 400 degrees for at least 20 minutes.

.

While the chicken is baking, boil water for the pasta. I used Ronzoni smart taste penne noodles which only has 5mg of sodium per serving. (I will eventually make the switch to whole wheat pasta, but this is a decent alternative for now.) I also used spaghetti sauce from the jar since I didn't have time to make any from scratch. Unfortunately, spaghetti sauce is horribly high in sodium, so I only used 1/4 cup on my portion to cut down on the sodium.

.

So, my meal consisted of 2 ounces of penne pasta, 1/4 c spaghetti sauce, 4 ounces of chicken, 2 tsp of parmesan cheese sprinkled on top (I put mozzarella cheese on top of everyone else's chicken and melted it in the microwave), green beans (no salt added), fruit and a glass of milk.

.

The entire meal added up to 593 calories with 750mg of sodium. Almost half of the sodium, 325mg, came from the cheese and spaghetti sauce so if you omit the cheese and make your own sauce you will lower the sodium drastically. As always, I budgeted my sodium intake for the day, so I had room for dinner.

.

Side note: I realize that traditional recipes call for the chicken to be pounded flat and I don't like to waste time on something that doesn't really change the flavor. Also, you might be tempted to use Italian flavor bread crumbs, but please look at the sodium content first. I opted for plain since it had the lowest sodium. When these are all used up, I'll switch to either panko or whole wheat or maybe whole wheat panko bread crumbs. We'll see....

Homemade Salsa and Chicken Quesadillas

So, I gave up my search for low sodium salsa a couple of months ago and have made mine fresh ever since. It is really not that hard to make and tastes way better than any store-bought variety!

>

Homemade Salsa

1.5 pounds roma tomatoes -chopped

1/2 c bell pepper -chopped (frozen is fine)

1/2 c sweet onion -chopped (frozen is fine)

1 TB extra virgin olive oil

1 jalepeno -seeded and finely chopped

1 tsp garlic powder

cilantro to taste (dried or fresh)

.

Saute the peppers and onion until nice and soft in olive oil and set it aside to cool. While it's cooling, chop the tomatoes and jalepeno. Stir together all ingredients and add cilantro to taste.
Canned sweet corn (no salt added) is a great addition but does bump the calories up a bit.

.

Next time I make this, I think I'll soak some black beans to add to the salsa. The canned variety has way too much sodium for my liking.

.

I love my quesadilla maker. It makes really crispy invidual pieces just like the restaurants do. I used flour tortillas I had in the freezer (when I run out of those, I'm going to make them fresh from a mix), mexican blend cheese, chicken and some of my salsa. It's fun to add all kinds of things from the fridge, but this is what I happened to have on hand. I also served it with more salsa and reduced fat sour cream for dipping.

.

So the total for my entire meal (including milk and fruit) was right around 600 calories with 815mg of sodium.

Sodium daily intake numbers

Here are the numbers broken down for you:


Daily intake of sodium should be within 1500 - 2300mg per day (the average american consumes around 4000mg per day)
People with health problems should stick to the lower end, while healthy people can go as high as the limit.


To figure out how many calories you need to eat to lose weight, first you need to figure out your basal metabolic rate.
The formula for female bmr is: 655 + (9.6 x (your weight /2.2))

+ (1.8 x (your height in inches x 2.54)) -(4.7 x age in years)

>

I'll plug in an example for you. I'm 169 pounds, 5 foot 6 inches and 35 years old. My formula would look like this: 655 + (9.6 x 76.82) + (1.8 x 167.64) - (4.7 x 35) = 1529.72

>

Keep in mind that this is the resting rate and you should multiply it by 1.2 for a sedentary lifestyle (charts online will tell you what to multiply by for a more active lifestyle). This means my sedentary activity bmr is around 1835. Any exercise or activity I do will add to this! A pound of fat equals 3500 calories so you need to burn at least that much if you want to lose a pound a week. (Always weigh yourself at the same time of day and only once a week.) You also need to keep in mind that muscle burns more calories and weighs more than fat so measurements are important as well.

>

If this is confusing for you, just head over to http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/calorie_calculation101.asp for the complete explanation. This is a free site to join and has a wealth of information from articles, to a calorie and fitness tracker, to a recipe database, and much more.

>

Remember that slow and steady wins the race. When you slowly lose weight, you will keep it off. Aim for no more than 1 or 2 pounds of weight loss per week.