Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Living as a Diabetic; What is wrong with a chicken Thigh?


Strange breakfast, my coffee as normal and 5 Ak Mak crackers with 5 chicken livers. The liver was in the freezer and I have to shop fresh and track all my prices to live as a diabetic on a food stamp budget. (Beginning May 11)of course I had my coffee. Before heading out I had cup of the cabbage soup. Breakfast and my snack totaled 35 grams of carb.

With everything I had to do I could not get home for lunch so I headed to this really good Chinese Restaurant for their famous 5 dollar lunch 4.95.

While I had my complimentary egg roll I pondered the menu. Then I called Stephanie my supervising dietician.

"What is wrong with chicken thighs?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Every daily menu you have given me says chicken breast, 222  calories for 4 ounces. If a thigh is only 235 for the same serving and has a lot more B vitamins and Iron, why is it always the breast on your menus?"

"For people who are watching calories that can be important."

"13 calories? Really?"

We soon ended the conversation and I order the steam fry chicken with mixed vegetables which was made with delicious, nutritious chicken thighs. I ate all my vegetables and had 1/2 cup of the rice...I am sure it was 1/2 cup as I borrowed a measure from the kitchen and set the rest of the rice aside.

My vegetables gave me 18 grams of carbohydrate, but my little portion of rice 21 grams making my total 39. Safe, but if I had eaten more rice...very bad.

So for dinner I turned my diet on it's ear.

Chicken breast, sliced tomato, shredded cabbage, 1/2 cup cottage cheese. Boring beyond belief.

2 chicken drumsticks
2 roma tomatoes
1 spicy chicken sausage
1 cup shredded cabbage
4 cloves garlic
Salt and Pepper
Cayenne Pepper
1/2 cup cottage cheese

Season and brown the chicken cooking as close to through as you can. Add in the crumbled sausage and chopped garlic and when the sausage browns toss in the tomatoes and cabbage cook just until the tomatoes soften. Put the chicken in an oven proof bowl and top with the tomato and sausage mixture then the cottage cheese.

Put in a hot (425) oven for about 30 minutes til bubbly. Something wonderful happens. The liquid from the cottage cheese oozes down into the tomato and sausage making a succulent sauce.

This is a great dish. Even though it would easily serve 2 I ate the entire dish, with my wine. The entire dish is 440 calories with 15 grams of carbohydrate. To serve two you could add in some Quinoa and still be under 40 grams of carb. Most important, it tastes great.

1, 527 calories for the day. Carbs were 24% for the day.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know it has nothing to do with your topic but I just wanted to give a public Thank You to President Obama.

p.s. I love the dark meat on chicken.

truthspew said...

Yes I like thigh meat too.

And thank you for this series. It is very enlightening as you address he challenge of living on SNAP benefits and living with diabetes.