Ingredients:
2 12 ounce packages of steam in bag frozen cauliflower
2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts
Seasoning to taste
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 packet ranch dressing
1 cup no sugar added barbecue sauce
1 package shredded cheese of your choice
1 package bacon crumbles
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Microwave cauliflower for five minutes. Cut chicken breast into small pieces and brown in a skillet with the seasoning of choice. I used my usual house meat seasoning. It’s ok if the chicken doesn’t get fully done, as it’s going to finish in the oven. Once it’s browned, on a parchment lined sheet pan arrange layers. Start off with cauliflower then add the chicken in a layer on top. Mix the Greek yogurt with the ranch packet, then spread it over top the chicken. Drizzle the barbecue sauce evenly over the top, then add the cheese. You can use fat free cheese if you want here, but I just had a bag of colby jack in the fridge that I decided to use up. Sprinkle the bacon crumbles on top, then bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.
This makes four servings, and this is the nutritional information Nourish gave me:
INGREDIENTS:
♥ 2 cups plain or vanilla Greek yogurt
♥ 1 8 oz. tub of sugar free cool whip, thawed
♥ 1 package zero sugar banana pudding mix
♥ 2 bananas, chopped
♥ 1/4 cup Catalina Crunch cinnamon square protein cereal (or any protein cereal of your choice) per serving
In a large container, mix the yogurt and the pudding mix until well combined. Fold in the cool whip. At this point it is fine to add any sugar free syrups you wish to add. I am a fan of the Skinny Syrups marshmallow sugar free syrup with this particular flavor profile. Mix everything until well combined, and then fold in the bananas. Cover and chill for at least a few hours. Serve one cup of the pudding fluff with 1/4 cup of your protein cereal.
MACROS:
Calories: 202
Protein: 21.3g
Carbs: 22g
Fat: 5.1g
Fiber: 5.7g These are estimated values, not exact science. They are close though! Used through Nourish AI
This is amazing for people with a sweet tooth that love banana! I’m going to experiment with other fruits and flavors. I have some more skinny syrups coming too for add-ins. When I tell you that a cup of it is filling, sweet, decadent tasting, and full of protein which is important on a weight loss journey, it makes dieting seem a little less daunting. I hope that you all get to try this!
I have the luxury of living close to Houston, Texas, which means I have access to the best grocery stores. Anyone from outside of Texas just doesn’t know how good quality HEB is. They hit different. My other favorite grocery store is Kroger because they have amazing deals. Their Buy 5 save 5 gets me every time. The digital deals? On point. If you’re a soda drinker you can find most weeks they have buy 2, get 2 free. My shopping and planning journey is pretty meticulous and it starts on Wednesday. I look at both of the sale ads for the week and use it plus recipes I’ve favorited and saved over the week to plan the meals I make. I usually leave one free night for take-out or easy fun stuff but other than that dinners are all planned out. My schedule starts from Saturday (the day I do grocery shopping) to Friday, I try to keep the dinners easier on the nights I play games with the bois and love utilizing my crock pot. Let’s go over this week as a great example!
Today is Saturday, and I got a microwavable brisket from Costco and I’m going to serve it with boracho beans from HEB and corn on the cob nuggets from Kroger. I like to cook the corn in the air fryer, brush it with butter and use the everything but the elote seasoning. Chef’s Kiss! The beans I got from one of HEB’s meal deals. They like to do a thing where you buy the protein advertised and you get like 4-5 things free. It’s a really good deal. This one was a family pack of sausages and I got corn (used last week), the beans, some HEB brand oreo cookies for free. They had sparkling flavored water but since it wasn’t sugar free, I opted not to grab it since nobody else would drink it. Kiddo will eat the oreos eventually so it was a good deal.
Tomorrow will be a recipe that I took from Southern Living Magazine. I have a bunch of subscriptions to cooking magazines. I get Food Network, Southern Living, Food and Wine, Pioneer Woman, and Real Simple. I go through the magazines when I get them and tear out recipes that I think are interesting, and then I set them aside. If I make them and it hits, it goes into rotation. This dish is an “in rotation” one. It’s stuffed pork loin with bacon and greens. HEB had a sale on pork loan, the large ones. I managed to cut it into quarters for four different meals, wrap up the other three individually and put them into the freezer It calls for mustard greens but I prefer turnip greens, so I got those. Bacon I had from a sale last week. It will be served with mixed brown and wild rice and peas and carrots.
Monday comes from the Food Network pasta edition. It’s listed as fettuccine with carrots and peppers. This is one that I’m going to alter for weight loss purposes. I’m going to substitute the fettuccini with Banza spaghetti (made from chickpeas). I’m also going to add some of the leftover sausages I put in the freezer from the HEB meal deal. This has carrots, squash, and bell pepper in it as well. I’m very excited to try this one!
Tuesday is an egg roll bowl, so I grabbed a package of cole slaw mix to save time and tears on my part. It’s got the shredded cabbage already ready to go, along with carrots. I got some ground pork to season and got some ginger to throw in as well as garlic. This is a fun favorite one for me, but I have to alter it where it’s not as “Asian tasting” to keep the hubbers happy.
Wednesday is a favorite. I have chicken breasts in the freezer already divided up for easy grabbing from a previous Costco trip. I saw a video on Tiktok where they made chicken tenders and fries that were around 550 calories for the whole plate, so I am going to recreate those. I am so excited for this one. I might try to make a low-cal version of the McDonald’s creamy chili dip to go with it.
Thursday this week is my free day. I have plenty to pull out of the freezer with the quick meal prepping I have done, and I can grab something fast for the boys. I am excited for this week and hopefully can post some recipes!
I live a crazy busy life. My alarm goes off at 6 am and I roll out of bed immediately and stumble to my home office and log into my work computer, and thusly my day starts. There’s a 6am rush that trickles down about 6:30, a 7 am rush that lasts about twenty minutes, then it’s a steady but random influx of work requests for the rest of the day. My first meal is grabbed around 8 am so that I can take my morning medicine and supplements with it, but I do not have the time to be away from my computer for very long. Whatever I do in the morning has to be fairly fast and something I can gnosh on while I am working at my desk.
Lunchtime isn’t really that much more leisurely; I like to take a shower or get tasks done on my thirty minute break, so that doesn’t leave much time for lunch. It’s funny because before my lifestyle changes and surgery I nibbled and let myself be hungry all day then binge ate when it was time to leave the house to pick up the kiddo. Taking him to school was my morning break and it almost always either ended in a coffee or McDonald’s breakfast run. Those habits are done for, thankfully — so I needed to do some stuff that was easy to get going and wouldn’t ruin what I was trying to accomplish. Enter, TikTok and Meal Prep.
My nutritionist stressed about how important it is to eat more than once a day. We focused on healthy, protein and fiber rich foods to eat. I grabbed some rotisserie chicken and supplies, and did meal preps for the freezer. This was what I grabbed for ingredients:
♥ Rotisserie Chicken (Costco or Sam’s Club memberships are great for this!)
♥ Carb Friendly Tortillas (I prefer La Banderita carb counter over mission. Lower net carb and higher fiber – and bigger)
♥ Greek Yogurt
♥ Low Fat or Fat Free Sour Cream
♥ Taco Seasonings
♥ Brown Rice, Cooked to instructions
♥ Mini Tri-color Bell Peppers
♥ Onions
♥ Mushrooms
♥ Jarred Salsa
♥ Black Beans
♥ Shredded cheese of your choice
These supplies will make two different dishes. First thing you want to do is remove the chicken from the bones, discard the skin (I like to keep the bones to make chicken broth with) If you sautee the onions, peppers, and mushrooms (add garlic if you wish for razzle dazzle) in avocado oil and mix with the chicken, drained and rinsed black beans, cheese and salsa, then it’s ready to divide up. I took the greek yogurt and sour cream, mixed it together along with the taco seasoning. For the bowls, I put a scoop of brown rice at the bottom, the chicken mixture on top, then topped with the yogurt and sour cream mixture. delicious!
For the burritos: I packaged these individually for the freezer so it could be easily pulled out and dropped into the air fryer. I laid out a large square of wax paper then placed a tortilla on top of it. I put a little of the yogurt and sour cream mixture, then the chicken mixture. I wrapped it into a burrito, then wrapped the wax paper around it. I then placed it into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and put them all into the freezer. When I want one, I will take it out and drop it into the air fryer at 375 around 9 minutes. I sometimes smear one of those individual things of guacamole on top of it for some “Freshness”. These things have been a staple of mine along with other quick meals, which I’ll save for another post!
