Low Carb/Keto Capered Chicken Recipe with video

My husband challenged me to make a Yucatanean Meal, then added, "but of course, you can't make it low carb."  Huh. I showed him.

 The recipe I've linked to in this post was the entree. I will also be sharing the other recipes I used in that meal.

All the recipes I used were:

• Capered Chicken (Pollo Alcaparrado) from Rick Bayless
• David Sterling's sautéed chaya with smoked bacon: Chayas fritas / Tsajbil chaay
• Pork Rind Tortillas 1 carb each
• Achiote-Rubbed Butternut Squash Tacos

This Capered Chicken recipe came from Rick Bayless, and actually needed only one change to make it keto, and that was leaving out the raisins. I made a few changes to use what I had on hand or what was in season, however. And it turned out great!  A very successful dish. I'm sure I'll cook it again.

Rick Bayless is a TV chef and cookbook writer, who has traveled in the Yucatan. We've watched him on YouTube.  

Here is his website: http://www.rickbayless.com/

And here is the link to the recipe for Capered Chicken: http://www.rickbayless.com/recipe/capered-chicken/

And finally, here's a link to the video I made about cooking low carb Capered Chicken:  https://youtu.be/WqNsOT8-5i4

Happy Eating!!!

Here are some of Rick's cookbooks:

(with links to where you can purchase them)

This post may be sponsored or contain affiliate links. My opinions are always my own. If you purchase a product through an affiliate link, I make a small commission – at no cost to you – which helps keep this blog running, my recipes free, and supports our efforts to bring information about the low carb lifestyle and the experience of moving to Mexico to you.  

Mexican American Pavlovas for the 4th of July: Recipe

I eat and cook low carb. I have high blood sugar that I control with diet. I'd like to lose weight, but that hasn't really happened, but I am not gaining.... At 64, I guess I should feel lucky about that.

So when we were invited to a 4th of July pot luck, I faced a challenge. I know other people need to eat low carb too, so when I attend events such as this, I try to contribute something that all low-carbers can enjoy without breaking their diets.

This time I chose a dessert idea that I learned about in Australia: The pavlova. Yes, it's named after the ballerina, and New Zealand and Australia squabble about who invented it. It's really just a meringue topped with whipped cream and fruit, but it's great for hot weather and fairly low-carb. If you don't add a lot of sugar, which I don't.

I use Swerve as my sweetener of choice. It's not 0 carb, but low carb. It's made from 100% monkfruit, which is sourced in Europe to keep it GMO free. It tastes great. Just don't overdo it.

Here's the recipe for the Pavlova shell.

Ingredients:

•  6 eggs whites

•  ½ cup Swerve

•  2 ½ cups heavy cream

•  A dash of vanilla

•  A dash of lemon of lime juice

1.   Preheat oven to 250°F.

2.   Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

3.   Separate eggs, and put egg whites into a metal or glass (not plastic) bowl.

4.   Beat until soft peaks form.

5.   Gradually add Splenda and beat until mixture is thick and glossy - at least 5 minutes.

6.   Spoon heaped teaspoonfuls of the meringue onto baking sheets. Use a large spoon to make bowls.

7.   Bake for 20-25 minutes or until crisp and just lightly browned.

8.   Cool in the oven with the door ajar.

9.   Top meringue with whipped cream, and decorate with berries.

10. Serve immediately.  They will last about an hour before they start getting soggy.

I used fun little American and Mexican flag picks on mine, which I purchased on Amazon.  

 

Here's the YouTube video I made of creating these cute little desserts:

So have fun cooking low carb!

This post may be sponsored or contain affiliate links. My opinions are always my own. If you purchase a product through an affiliate link, I make a small commission – at no cost to you – which helps keep this blog running, my recipes free, and supports our efforts to bring information about the low carb lifestyle and the experience of moving to Mexico to you.  

From Cubicle Rat to Digital Nomad

What a whirlwind.

I lost my job.  It was inevitable. The company was bought and sold three times in three years. The final company who bought it to keep it rather than to just repackage it to sell to someone else "restructured," and they already had a forty-person communication team in Palo Alto or somewhere, so I was, they determined without even consulting my supervisor, "redundant."

Do I sound bitter?  Eh, not really. I want to become a digital nomad anyway. So I can work from Mexico or wherever. I never want to be a cubicle rat again.

Well, maybe just a little bitter.  I did post this when I was near Palo Alto the other day

A certain company, located in Palo Alto, CA., really pissed me off recently, although they may have actually done me a favor in the long run. Anyway, here I am, one hour away from their corporate headquarters, and my buddy, Dino, insisted on making a very significant gesture in their general direction. I really appreciate that gesture, but the hotel room really stinks now ! 

So why was I near Palo Alto when I live in Oklahoma and plan to move to Mexico? How did I get so far off my planned route?  Two days after the "big news," my husband woke up with a brilliant idea. We've wanted to take a trip out to California to visit my stepson for ages. I didn't want him making the drive without me, so here was our opportunity.

And what a trip it was!  We planned it in four days. We worked out a timetable and made all our hotel reservations. We even made dinner reservations at the Grand Canyon.  The trip took two weeks. We drove approximately  5,000 miles!!  We saw many places that one or both of us had never seen before.

We packed up our trusty BMW X3 with all the goodies we thought we'd need, and it worked out well.

And we packed our dinosaurs, which was a really great idea. I ordered them on Amazon, and they were well worth the price for fun travel photos. They will travel with us from now on. 

Our other great purchase for this trip was a plug in cooler. OK. I'll admit it. We bought it because we wanted cool wine when we got to our hotel rooms at night.  It worked great!  We kept it plugged into the car while we were driving and unplugged it if we turned off the car for any period of time, and plugged it in in the hotel rooms at night. 

And it came in handy for other stuff. In California, where we stayed three days, we bought some supplies and took leftover meat and cheese and tortillas along with us when we left, which came in really handy for a road lunch and even a light dinner when we pulled into Taos really late and didn't want to bother with a restaurant. We just wanted to sleep. And drink chilled wine, of course.  We think this cooler has a bright future, including accompanying us on our drive-down trip to Mexico when we move.

But now we are home and it's time for me to start figuring out how to be a digital nomad.  I have so much to do. 

• I need to re-brand the novel I already have published. I let my husband convince me it wasn't a romance. It is. And it needs to be labeled as one and look like one.
• I need to post some of the YouTube videos I made on our trip.
• I need to find a new home for my online art.
• I need to finish my new webpage.
• I need to write this blog more often!!!  (I will write some blog posts about the places we visited on this trip. It was a fascinating ride!)
• I need to really pay attention to our diet and create some "Fine dining with KETO" videos and post some recipes. 

So here goes!  Cubicle Rat to Digital Nomad.  THAT'S ME!!!!

This post may be sponsored or contain affiliate links. My opinions are always my own. If you purchase a product through an affiliate link, I make a small commission – at no cost to you – which helps keep this blog running, my recipes free, and supports our efforts to bring information about the low carb lifestyle and the experience of moving to Mexico to you.  

Not waiting until Mexico to get healthy: Keto biscuits

On an expat board, I asked how expats' lives changed when they moved to Mexico. We don't see ours changing that much. I mean, we lived much the same in Australia as we do now in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One soon-to-be expat explained that she saw their lives changing a lot. For one thing, they are looking forward to a healthier lifestyle.

To some extent, we too are looking forward to a healthier lifestyle, but we aren't waiting until we get to Mexico to make changes. In fact, we've been trying to live healthy for many years now.  For one thing, we eat very healthy food. I have high blood sugar, and don't want to take medication for it, so we eat a very low-carb diet. It doesn't keep me skinny, but I'm not fat either.

We eat very few processed foods and NO fast food. Most of our meals are cooked at home. This summer we have a great crop of tomatoes, peppers and basil. We also have apricot and an peach trees.

This Saturday morning, the first day of a four-day 4th of July holiday weekend, I am trying a new recipe for low-carb biscuits. We're going to have it with some homemade apricot jam (spoiler-it's not really keto because it's fruit, but it's sweetened with Swerve, so much better than anything we could buy.)

Here's the link to the recipe: https://snapguide.com/guides/make-low-carb-biscuits/

I didn't have sour cream, so I used a softened package of cream cheese. That made them a little firmer, but I put them in muffin pans anyway.  Also, since I wanted them for jam, I added a pinch of Slap Yo Mamma seasoning instead of the salt and garlic powder. You couldn't really taste it, but I guess it gave them just a little spicy edge. I also used mozzarella cheese. Cheese is optional in the recipe.

I cooked them in the toaster oven, and left them in just a tad too long. Maybe 400 that the recipe calls for might be a little hot. I'll probably try 375 or 350 next time.  The recipe made twelve muffins.

They were a success. Nice texture and tasty Great with my apricot jam.  I think this recipe is a keeper.

Maybe I'll do Keto

I've lost some weight. About 10 lbs since I quit drinking completely.

Why did I do that? 

Because we are planning to move to Mexico within the next year and our last move almost killed me. I am on a healthy living kick to get strong enough for a BIG move. Now that I am healing from hip replacement, I should soon be able to exercise more and more. Unless I decide on knee surgery too. I might. And I might not.

But my small weight loss has whetted my appetite....for more.  No, I don't really look like Melisandre as an old woman (for Game of Throne fans), but when I look at my 64 year old body in the mirror (my birthday was Saturday), I almost feel like I do.  Actually, I'm pretty hot for 64. A girl at Sprouts this week thought I looked like Stevie Nicks. Well, I am younger than she is, but I'll bet she's spent a lot more money on her face than I have on mine (no plastic surgery here, although if I were rich....)

So...a friend of mine recently showed me photos of her daughter-in-law who has been on the Keto diet and has lost loads of weight. Then another friend joined a Keto group on Facebook, so I decided to jump in too and see what it was about. And people on that group are always posting pictures to show how much weight they've lost and I am impressed.  Plus I have high blood sugar, which I control with diet, and so this is right down my ally. 

So the Keto ( or ketogenic) diet is another low-carb diet. We've all done those at some point, right? It's supposed to cause your body to produce ketones in your liver and use them as energy. Why is that good?

Normally, I guess, your body gets its energy from glucose, which the body produces when you eat carbs (and mine produces WAY TOO MUCH of). It ignores the fat stored in your body and gobbles up that glucose. "Yum!" says your body. But it doesn't like the fat as well, and so it stays in all those wrong places, and your clothes show your bumps and budges. 

When you really, really cut back on carbs, though, your body goes into a state of ketosis. That's what your body does when it thinks you are starving. It starts to produce ketones from breaking down fat in your liver. And since you aren't producing much glucose, your body, goes, "OK. I'm hungry. I'll eat these." And the fat goes away.

Starvation? Ugh. 

NO! You are not starving yourself of yummy calories or of fat, just of carbs. Getting rid of those carbs puts you in keto and you start to lose all that ugly fat.

So that's my plan. I don't think it will be that hard for me. I already <somewhat> eat like that. I don't eat processed food or sugar or very much bread/wheat. That's a good start.  And I cook from scratch. This week, I've made eggplant Parmesan and hobo stew that would have fit into the plan. Tonight is a roasted chicken and cauliflower.  But I'm going to get serious about this thing. And start adapting and sharing recipes that I cook. Maybe even make some YouTube videos. 

Interested? Follow me down the yellow brick path of Keto.

(Also more about getting ready to move to Mexico, writing a book about a time traveler to Queen Victoria's Scotland and my art!) So much too do. So hard to work my 40 hr. job and find time for everything else too. 

BTW. this is the picture on my art gallery that's been getting the most comments lately. I think people are ready for springtime!  See the little ladybug on the cherry blossoms?