Chicken Veggie Soup

I totally cheated on this one, but it falls within the diet guidelines, AND the kiddos love it.

1 32 oz box of Low Sodium Chicken broth
2 cups of water
1 lb of chicken breast, fat trimmed (can even still be frozen, so long as the fat was trimmed before freezing)
1 bay leaf or two
Some Johnny's and black or white pepper

I tossed this on medium high heat while I diced veggies to get things started.

I added 2 thinly chopped celery stocks and a bag of frozen crinkle cut carrots, about a third of each type of onion: white, yellow and red. (Onion helps aid in the breakdown of fat before it can be stored in the body, so I'm trying to incorporate more of them into our diet.)

Just let it simmer, bring it to a boil and then turn it down just slightly from there and let it go for like an hour. You know it's ready when the chicken falls apart if you try and take it out of the pan. lol, if you're really determined to get the chicken out, you can shred it very easily, and then dump it back in and enjoy.

If you want it to get a little father, you can double the veggies and bump up the chicken to 1 and a half pounds. Use one box of chicken brother and then refill the box with water. You can always add a little chicken bullion to add a little more flavor.

17 Day Diet Recipes

Ok here goes, the 17 day diet is fairly restrictive in phase 1, but here are some of the things we've been enjoying:


Breakfast
Real Eggs - It's an egg substitute made with 99% egg whiles that actually tastes like scrabled eggs. A little more expensive, but worth it for the hubby's cholesterol, and my egg yolk intolerance. Sold at Costco, you get 6 little cartons of the stuff, but it goes pretty quick when you're feeding 2 people. We use them to make omlets, add leftover taco meat to make it a crazy scramble, or just make good old fashioned scrambled eggs. Sometimes my hubby eat real, whole eggs, which you are allowed on the diet, but he has borderline high cholesterol, so I've told him no more than 4 yolks a week to try and get his numbers down.

Yogurt - I only buy Lucerne Plain Fat Free Yogurt because EVERY other bottle I've looked at contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (aka, double sided sticky tape for fat) and if I'm dieting, I refuse to eat the stuff. No point in sabotaging myself from the get go. So anyways, Lucerne Yogurt, between a half cup and a whole cup (you'll figure out how much you need), mixed with an equal part of frozen berries. I defrost and then slightly heat the berries just to take the bite off the cold yogurt. If the berries are tart, I'll add some stevia to take the edge off.

Lunches and Dinners
These really are interchangable...I try and make lunch the bigger meal, but it doesn't always happen. The three things I've made so far that have been really big hits, I'll post the recipes to separately so you don't have to go through all this rambling every time you need to find them. But so far they are:

1. Chicken and veggie soup
2. Spicy Chicken soup
3. Taco meat (for it's versatility)
and 4. Loaded Burgers

Hiatus...

So my husband and I have started the 17 Day Diet, which means that most foods coupons work on, are off limits. I'm still going to try and get a basic guide to couponing together, but if you want to know what's big this week check out either of the blogs listed below.

www.thriftynorthwestmom.com

Or

www.frugallivingnw.com

I like these sites because these ladies are in the Pacific Northwest and know our stores don't double.

Good luck!

Rebecca