Oh, well, I digress.
We are new on this Paleo food journey and after reading some research on Adrenal Fatigue, I discovered that it could take two years to get myself back to normal! Wow. That's a long time with no grain. But I am committed for the long haul, and frankly, I have been enjoying trying all these new foods (or rather new ways of preparing old foods). Which leads me to today.
At two o'clock I realized that there were no dinner plans in my near future and I better get a move on. I had my sights set on reorganizing and cleaning out the pantry and kitchen, but first I needed to get dinner going or there was going to be some serious caterwauling going on around here. I grabbed a recipe I had recently copied from, well, I don't really know WHERE I got this one from, but I did change it (of course) so it is not a direct copy (sorry)! This one is quick and easy and sure to satisfy those empty tummies!
Creamy Chicken Stew
3-4 chicken breasts (frozen ok),
2 T Italian Seasoning (it seems like I actually used 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp basil and 1 tsp parsley)
1 T basil
2 cloves garlic - pressed
1 can whole-fat coconut milk
2 cups bone broth (or really good chicken broth)
1/2 c white wine
salt and pepper to taste
Now here is the easy part! Mix together everything but the chicken in the crockpot. Add chicken and turn to coat. Cook on high 3-4 hours. Oila! Go clean out your pantry, or climb Mt. Washmore. Or take the kids for a bike ride...the sky is the limit! The house will smell great, and everyone will think you spent hours cooking! I love it when it works!
About 20 minutes before you want to eat you will want to toss together this quick faux rice to put under your tasty chicken. I had heard about "cauliflower rice" but was honestly pretty skeptical. I mean really, how can you make cauliflower taste like rice?!? I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Give it a try and tell me what you think!
The only changes I made were to put my riced cauliflower in a large bowl, and season it there, before I put it in the hot pan. I used salt, lots of dried thyme (since there is thyme in the chicken), garlic powder and onion powder.
Once you have the cauliflower steaming, remove the chicken from the crockpot and shred. When everything is ready, it goes together like this: Into your bowl you layer the 'rice', then shredded chicken and then put broth over the top. Your family will rave and you will sit back and admire your organized kitchen and the smiling faces of your loved ones, and chalk one up for the Crockpot Momma.
Now, there is one little thing you should know about. If you make this with a box of chicken broth, your tastebuds are not going to sing. You really need to put together a batch of bone broth which has so much more flavor and depth. You basically do that by taking a chicken carcass or two and cooking them 12-24 hours with onions, garlic, celery, whole peppercorns and lots of water. You can find out more by doing a google search for bone broth. And to be fully transparent, my two cups of bone broth were actually left over from a Chicken Marsala I did a few weeks ago, which had the wine in it, so it had cooked down really well. I do believe it added even another layer of flavor to our soup tonight.
