Food is an Important Part of a Balanced Diet.

Best Friend is fortunately enough to have been selected to a fitness study, but due to said study, the next 3 months, are gonna be tough on her. She has to hit the gym with her trainer 6 days a week and can only eat the food provided to her through the study. She gonna get super fit....and probably grouchy as she enjoys cooking and eating much like I do. So I decided to support her and put myself in the same sort of uncomfortable situation. In other words, back on South Beach diet and begin training for my 10k 4 days a week plus my two fitness classes I am already doing.

I figure I am accountable to her and Husband through the next 3 months as well as to my scale and my box of clothes that are a little too small for right. I am not going to focus on the number, and instead on the consistency of working out and sticking to the diet with simply logging the numbers.

To kick off the diet this week, 

I am making my pork stew a la crockpot with no starchy veggies or other ingredients not allowed on the diet:

http://my-pinterest-board-live.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-wonderful-magical-animal-pork-part-2.html 

Also,  I will be making pizza stuffed mushroom. My portabella mushroom cap pizza, just done like bagel bites instead:

http://my-pinterest-board-live.blogspot.com/2013/11/you-may-die-of-misprint.html

And I am trying out a new recipe: Pesto Chicken, which for husband will have some rice underneath and for me, will be served with a lovely side salad. This lovely recipe comes from:

http://www.kalynskitchen.com/2010/09/easy-recipe-for-baked-pesto-chicken.html

Baked Pesto Chicken
Ingredients:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
salt and fresh ground black pepper for seasoning chicken
1/2 cup basil pesto
2 oz. (1/2 cup) grated low-fat mozzarella cheese
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375F. Trim all visible fat and tendons from chicken pieces, then cut each chicken breast lengthwise into 2 or 3 pieces. (I cut the larger ones into 3 strips and the smaller ones into 2 strips.)

Spray a 9" x 12" (or 8.5" X 12.5") baking dish with non-stick spray, then spread 1/4 cup basil pesto over the bottom of the dish. Lay chicken strips over the pesto, then spread 1/4 cup more basil pesto over the chicken.

Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil (or use a baking dish with a tight-fitting lid) and bake the chicken for 25-30 minutes, just until chicken is barely firm and cooked through. (Don't cook too much at this point, or the chicken will be overcooked by the time the cheese is melted and browned.)
When chicken is barely cooked through, remove foil and sprinkle chicken with 1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese. Put dish back into the oven without foil and cook 5 minutes more, just until cheese is melted. (If your broiler is separate from the oven, start preheating it when you take the chicken out.) After I melted the cheese for 5 minutes I switched my oven to broil and broiled for 5 minutes more, just long enough to get the cheese lightly browned.
Serve hot. There will be some flavorful juice in the bottom of the dish when this is done, so you may want to serve with rice, couscous, or quinoa to soak up the juice, but if you're eating this for phase one, just spoon the juice over the chicken.

As always, this was changed a bit from the original recipe. I used about 8 tenderloins as that is what I had in the freezer. The other change was simply using grated Parmesan as I had an abundance of it in my fridge versus the mozzarella.

As I had used tenderloins, it cooked for 20 minutes only and came out perfectly moist and full of flavor. Also I just put everything in the dish and put it in for 20 minutes with out any sort of cover. This was possible only because of the littleness and thinness of the chicken cuts I used and the lack of burnynes from the style of cheese I used.

All in all, Husband was most happy with this meal as a whole. The chicken, as mentioned, was beautifully moist and the pesto we got from Trader Joe's was super excellent. This will be made again when I can have whole wheat pasta again.

As you can see there are Stuffed Tomatoes on the side. You will see that recipe on Monday! They also turned out uber yummy and the best part is that Husband had the idea for them from something he had at crafty on set a while back.

Until the next low carb meal...


**Today's title is read in full: Food is an Important Part of a Balanced Diet - Fran Lebowitz**