Healthy COPYCAT Chick-Fil-A with Raising Cane’s

Yep, you read that right. In this recipe we’ll be making a healthy version of the Chick-Fil-A sandwich – and then smothering it in a copycat Raising Cane’s sauce; this is a copycat recipe, and so obviously there will be no MSG, and for this healthy version, we will be using a flax and ancient grains gluten-free flour mix for the breading, and will be semi “deep-frying” the chicken in a mixture of avocado oil and coconut oil. There is no need to deep-fry in this particular kind of oil; you may use peanut oil or another oil with a high smoking point.

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Butternut Squash Soup – RV cooking

Living in an RV doesn’t mean that you can’t cook meals for yourself and your family. It just means you must make do with conventions – for this reason, high-speed blenders, instant pots, and crock-pots are the kitchen tools of choice for preparing meals in a limited space. The same goes for my family and I; six people in a small RV makes meal prep slightly different than those in houses with full sized kitchens.

In this recipe, for example, we’ll be making an extremely easy and quick to make soup with butternut squash, onions, garlic, and a few other healthy and basic ingredients. The soup will be piping hot and silky smooth, and all we’ll be using is a pan to saute and boil, and a Vitamix for pulsing everything into a smooth concoction.

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Melt-In-Your-Mouth Salmon

If you prefer Chinese or Japanese cuisine such as spring rolls or Chow Mein, you probably enjoy the Teriyaki sauce that is common, especially in Japanese foods, and consists essentially of Soy Sauce, sake (or mirin), and sugar.

In North America, this sauce has been used in multiple ways, and any sauce resembling traditional Teriyaki is called “teriyaki” even though it may not have sake or mirin, or if garlic is added (which is not typical in Japanese cuisine).

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Garlic Mushroom Gnocchi

Merry belated Christmas! Christmas baking is done for this year, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves – New Year’s is just a few days away, and more cooking must be done. An amazingly cheap and fast dinner that the whole family can enjoy is Gnocchi, in all of it’s related recipes.

This particular Garlic Mushroom Gnocchi is extremely time-and-cost efficient, healthy, and full of flavor. Gnocchi takes only 3 minutes to boil, and don’t cook it too long otherwise it will get chewy and harder to consume.

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Breakfast Burritos

Cook up these sausage, bacon, egg, potato & cheese breakfast burritos and freeze them ahead of time for complete and healthy breakfasts.

 

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There isn’t much of an exact recipe to these and you can choose how much of each ingredient you use. If you are more of a meat person, you can feel free to significantly increase the amounts of bacon and/or sausage in your burrito; just keep in mind that you may need more eggs to hold everything together. On the other hand, if you prefer more eggs to meats, then you can just as well increase the amount of eggs in your burritos.

Not only this but burritos allow the freedom to choose whatever toppings you desire. (Note: Toppings such as fresh chopped tomatoes and avocados won’t freeze well with the burritos; however, you can put them on your burritos just before eating)

ONIONS are probably the one thing most people would add to this recipe – I didn’t use them because I personally don’t like onions as much as most. Tip – Caramelize your onions before you cook the sausage. Then just leave the onions in the pan as you pour in and cook the sausages.

So have fun and enjoy!


Breakfast Burritos recipe – – – – PRINT

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Protein Sandwich

Hello all, thanks for tuning in on today’s recipe! This one is a really really awesome sandwich that you can make at home–it is full of healthy good protein and offers a healthy lunch.

You also have the option to make-ahead if that’s how you like doing things. The protein in here is simple: Boiled eggs and meat. (In this recipe I use pastrami, but you can use whatever meat you so desire.)

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This method of eating is important for those of you who, admittedly, rarely eat wholesome foods because (like me) you are picky, or are constantly on the go and simply grab whatever is within reach.

A tip for those who like throwing things together quickly: Boil lots of eggs and slice them ahead of time. This way, you can simply throw everything on your sandwich when it’s time to consume.

OK, now for a bit of NEWS. As you might know, not only do I like making food, but I like writing, so I decided to shake things up a bit on my food blog and and start including not only a recipe but also a poem I wrote before I give the recipe (below):

Ok here it goes: (if you hate poetry you can skip down to my recipe)

 

The Seasons by Michael Metzler JR

 

Spring grows most plants in rocky soil,

It takes new life to withered things.

Death defying through turmoil,

And to new life it spreads and clings.

 

Summer swathes the world in heat

It drapes the land around in glow

It bakes the clay and warms the feet

It is not spring and is not snow.

 

Autumn brings a yellow air,

It scatters orange like the sand.

Sprinkling leaves as though to share.

It is most glorious and grand.

 

Winter veers around the bow

With clutching hands and stale breath

It swarms the earth in clear-white snow

It brings no warmth and sometimes death.

End.


 

Here’s the recipe for my PROTEIN SANDWICH:

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Protein Sandwich recipe   –   –   – PRINT

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Breakfast Quiche

​Looking for a quick, healthy, and easy make-ahead breakfast recipe?

Among other things, eggs are an awesome way to go, and if you are tired of simply making scrambled or fried or poached eggs every single morning, then quiche is an amazing use of eggs. Quiche is easy to whip up, and works great as a make-ahead breakfast. This means you can freeze it at least a month ahead of time. Because of this, you have the option of making a few quiches and storing them in the freezer, bringing one out each time you need one. Plus, it tastes delicious!

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This particular quiche recipe isn’t anything fancy; merely a whipping up of eggs, milk and spices, and then poured over a couple essentials: ham and cheese. But this recipe can give you a base to build off of. You can improvise and add spinach and/or broccoli, and certainly bacon, or turkey, you name it. There are countless ways to tweak quiche to your taste.

So try this quiche recipe and let me know how you like it!

Breakfast Quiche Recipe   —-   PRINT

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Breakfast Egg Muffins

These Egg Muffins are an awesome way to have a quick and healthy breakfast. You can also make these ahead of time, and plan out a few mornings worth.

They are relatively easy and quick to make and require basic ingredients like hash browns, lots of eggs, cheese, and sausage.

Enjoy!

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Breakfast Egg Muffins recipe – – – PRINT

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Hot Cross Buns recipe

Hot Cross Buns are sweet bread rolls, traditionally made for Easter, and have icing drizzled in the form of a cross. The bread is moist with a hint of cinnamon.

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This recipe is different from others because of the two egg yolks that are added to the dough. Make sure to save the 2 egg whites in two separate containers, though: you’ll need one for the icing, and one to spread thinly over the rolls just before baking them.

It makes around 18 rolls, but you can make them alot smaller if you want to serve them to a larger group of people. The balls of dough initially look small, but after their second rise time on the baking sheet, they should grow more than double in size, and get even larger in the oven. So don’t be fooled by their previously small appearance.

The ones in the picture (above) started at 1-inch balls of dough–so you can see how much larger they got.

Be sure to make these delicious rolls for your Easter celebration! And, although they are traditionally made for Easter, they make great rolls anytime of the year if you simply desist from adding the icing (WARNING: icing is a strong temptation). Remove the icing cross, and you have made these into multi-purpose baked goods.

Enjoy!


Hot Cross Buns Recipe                                                                Print

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Chow Mein

Chow Mein is a great make-ahead-of-time lunch. This recipe uses normal spaghetti noodles, which are easy to find and cook.

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INGREDIENTS:

1/2 a head of cabbage, shredded

2/3 cup of soy sauce

1 (16 oz) pkg. of spaghetti noodles

1 Tbs. Brown Sugar

1 medium sweet onion

3 cloves of garlic

4 carrots, peeled and grate

2 tsp. chopped fresh ginger root

 

DIRECTIONS:

First, peel the ginger root to get skin off. Then chop into small chunks.

Then peel garlic cloves (in picture, note I used a silicone sleeve thingy to peel the garlic cloves, it works really well), and chop into medium chunks, too.

Place Ginger, Garlic, Soy Sauce, and brown sugar into wet-ingredient blender. (you can use a blender, or whatever else works, too.) Blend for 20 seconds, or until everything is finely chopped up.

NOTE: To make things much easier, you could possibly buy cabbage already shredded, and carrots, already shredded, but I just did it manually:

Peel all the carrots with a vegetable peeler, and cut the ends off. Shred with a food processor shredder attachment.

Next, peel outer leaves off cabbage for sanitary reasons, and cut half (the half you’ll be using) into small chunks, small enough to fit in the processor’s chute. If you prefer to chop the cabbage, then do it.

If not, use the easier way: the food processor. With the blade attachment, shred cabbage, and place into a bowl for keeps until you need it.

For onions: Cut onions into inch long thin segments.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Break your raw noodles in half before placing them in the boiling water. Cook for the time indicated on the back of your package. (9 min, average).

WHILE your noodles are boiling, pour two tablespoons of olive oil into a large skillet over medium heat.

When heated up, Put carrots and onions in, stirring, until cooked mostly, about 3 minutes. Then place cabbage in, and stir for one or so minutes. Remove from heat–but be sure it’s warm for when you want to use it.

When noodles are done cooking (you’ll know if they are tender when bitten) then take them out, and pour into a colander in an empty sink to drain. Pour into large serving bowl.

Finally, pour soy sauce mixture into Vegetables, and stir until combined. Then pour the whole vegetable thing into the prepared noodles, mixing until combined. If you wish, you may pour more soy sauce in for more flavor.

See my original post of this recipe on instructables

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Traditional Hot Salsa

Salsa makes a good snack served chips for any occasion with lots of people. This particular salsa instructable makes alot of salsa, so be sure that you plenty of people to eat it!

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While this salsa is rather hot and spicy, it is easy to change the ingredients to make it mild or medium.


 

Ingredients:

1 (14.5 oz) can of tomatoes, with juice

3 whole tomatoes

4 large clumps cilantro

4 large cloves garlic

2 jalapeno peppers (for milder salsa, use 1 jalapeno)

1 medium onion (use less for milder salsa)

½ teaspoon sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 lime, juiced

 

DIRECTIONS:

Cut your fresh tomatoes into large chunks.

Pour HALF of the tomatoes from the can with their juice into the blender. Leave the OTHER HALF in the can.

Coarsely chop the garlic, as shown.

Remove the leaves of the cilantro from its stems, and throw the stems away. Its the leaves you want.

Cut open the pepper(s), and dump the seeds out. Then cut into smaller pieces.

Also prepare the onion, so that it looks like it does in the picture.

Throw all this prepared produce into the blender.

  • Lime juice into blender, and the sugar and salt.
  • Then Blend all the ingredients on medium speed until thoroughly combined.

Now that you’ve combined all the other ingredients, and pulsed them on medium speed:

Dump in all the fresh tomatoes and THE OTHER HALF of the canned tomatoes.

Pulse on LOW speed for a bit until the texture is coarse and chunky. I learned to do this the hard way, and pulverized most of the salsa….

You can store your salsa in the fridge in an airtight container.

Take out to serve at parties, lunches, dinners, breakfasts, and whatnot.

See step-by-step picture instructions on my original post of this recipe on instructables.

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