Sunday Chicken Dinner and other stuff

I made a very simple, gluten-free and fairly low-carb dinner tonight.

I started with 4 very large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (maybe 1/2 lb per breast) that I cut in half.

I found out recently that Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing (Original flavor) is gluten free, so I added 2 T. of Pamela's Baking Mix to about 1/2 C of HVR dressing.

Next I dipped the chicken breasts in the dressing mixture, placed them on a baking sheet sprayed with non-stick spray, and sprinkled them with a mixture of grated sharp cheddar and Parmesan cheeses.

I baked the chicken breasts for about 25 minutes at 375 degrees, and served them with a salad on the side. Yummy! If I do say so myself! :)

Another recipe for cheese muffins that I made recently uses coconut flour. As it turns out, coconut flour is very low carb! There is a book out by Bruce Fife (Cooking with Coconut Flour) which has TONS of recipes that use coconut flour as the ONLY flour, so those recipes which have no added sugar (such as his cheese muffins) are OK for the low carb diet! In fact, according to my calculations, each muffin has about 2-3 grams of digestible carbohydrate. Not only that, but coconut flour is high in fiber, which is also very helpful to those of us on a low carb diet.

So it would seem to be possible to still have "bread" occasionally and still be low carb and gluten free!

Hooray! :)

Here's the recipe:

Cheese Muffins

3 eggs
2 T butter or coconut oil, melted
3 T coconut milk (I used heavy cream instead)
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder (I used more like 1/4 tsp)
1/4 tsp onion powder (I used a tablespoon of dried onion flakes instead)
1/4 C sifted coconut flour
1 C sharp cheddar cheese, grated (I used a bit more than that)

Blend together the eggs, butter or oil, coconut milk and seasonings in a medium bowl, then add the coconut flour and mix until there are no lumps. Fold in 3/4 of the grated cheese, and distribute the batter amongst 6 well-greased muffin cups. Top the muffins with the remaining cheese and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

These muffins may even be legal on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, since I know that both coconut flour and coconut milk are legal, and these particular muffins do not use sugar or baking powder.