Mozzarella~Artichoke~Tomato~Olive Salad

For the life of me I couldn't think of a name for this so I resorted to calling it exactly what it was!   And it's delicious!  

 One jar of Artichoke hearts  One can of whole olives, drained
Cherry tomatoes, washed and patted dry
Soft mozzarella, cut in cubes (I used 8 ounces)
Greek Vinaegrette or dressing of your choice

Drain artichoke hearts and olives and put into bowl.  Cube the mozzarella cheese and add to bowl.  Add tomatoes.  Shake and add desired amount of vinagrette.

Toss until all ingredients are coated.  Cover and refrigerate.

I'd be a bit mindful of the carbs in the artichoke hearts and olives, but this definitely can be worked in to a low carb diet.  

44 grams total carbohydrates.  Divide by numbers of servings for carb content.

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Chic on a Shoestring Decorating The Country Cook

Chicken Sausage Zucchini Lasagna

6 zucchini, (chopped in coins or lengthwise like lasagna noodles)

chopped onion (if desired)

garlic (chopped) 

fresh basil leaves, chopped up

8 ounces spaghetti sauce 

1/2 pound Italian Sausage  and 1/2 pound ground chicken 

3/4 cup to 1 cup cottage cheese

Shredded Mozzarella~  enough to cover casserole

Grease 13 by 9 pan with non stick spray.  Cook sausage and chicken and onion together and drain off fat.  Make sure meat is well cooked and browned.   Add garlic and basil and cook till leaves are wilted and garlic is smelling good.  Add layer of zucchini covering bottom of pan.  Add layer of meat and another layer of zucchini.  Top with spaghetti sauce.  Bake for 30 minutes or until zucchini is cooked through.  

Because the zucchini has so much water content, drain the casserole by pouring out as much water as possible.  (I imagine that next time I could salt the zuchinni and let it sit to pull the water out.  I don't know if I'll do it because I really liked this just as it was.)  

Add dollops of cottage cheese to top and spread around.  Add mozzarella and bake (or broil) till heated through and cheese is bubbly.  

  This really was a GREAT dish!  

The sausage and basil gave it a really super flavor.  

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Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

The Country Cook 

Low Carb Mini Cheesecakes

These are good.  Very good!  They were so good that I had to give away some of them lest I eat them all! 

I love the fact that the ingredients are simple and they are fast to throw together and bake.  A muffin tin is neccesary to make these or you can use a ramekin with some cupcake liners in them.   Even though these are sugar free and low carb, I'm sure regular sugar and ordinary flour could be used for them for a regular version.

Preheat oven to 350*.  

Cheesecake: 

16 ounces cream cheese 

2 eggs 

1/2 cup xylitol 

1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract 

2 Tbsp almond flour

Topping: 

3 Tbsp of sour cream 

1 tsp. of Xylitol 

Line cupcake/muffin tin with cupcake liners and spray just a tad with non stick spray.  Set aside.

Beat cream cheese till it loosens up and is easy to blend.  It will take a while.  Add eggs vanilla and continue to mix till lumps are gone and, once again, easy to mix.  Add in flour and mix well.

Put batter into a plastic ziploc bag and snip corner.  Pipe equal amounts into 12 muffin tins.  Flatten with spoon.  Bake for 20 minutes.  

Mix together sour cream and xylitol and top each cheesecake with a dollop.  Spread out with spoon and allow to cool.  Refrigerate overnight.  

ENJOY!!!

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If you'd like to get updates from my facebook page please click HERE to follow and get notifications.  I'd love to hear from you here on the blog as well so please leave a comment!

Have a Lovely Day!!!

 I've added a few tweaks of my own this recipe but the original can be found at   Healthy Living and Weight Loss.  Please stop by there and leave a comment!  

Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

The Country Cook

Cauliflower Fried Rice

This might seem an odd recipe~  but I can't begin to tell you how GOOD it is. If you're trying to cut down on your carbs and eat more veggies then you need to try this!  It's also a great recipe for those who are diabetic.  Who doesn't need more veggies in their diet?  

There's no hard and fast ingredient list for this~  you can go digging in your ref for whatever you have on hand, but you'll definitely need 4 things~  

1 cauliflower

3-4 eggs, mixed together and set aside

soy sauce

oil

Other ingredients you might have on hand in your refrigerator might include: 

Boneless Chicken, Pork or beef cut up in small pieces

chopped up onion

chopped up celery

julienne zucchini 

sliced mushrooms

green onions

frozen peas, defrosted

frozen mixed veggies, defrosted

sesame oil for flavor

...and the list goes on...

It's a good idea to do all the prepping and slicing for the above ingredients and keep them ready to put in the pan.

I'm using chopped up spanish onion,  shredded zucchini,  

shredded carrots and celery.  

 Chop up your cauliflower into small rice sized bits.  If you have a food processor you can make it very fast and easy.  Because it tends to get very messy, I use my food processor inside of the kitchen sink with an extension cord (no water running and the spigot turned off to the side) so afterwards I run the overflow into my garbage disposal. (It makes cleaning up easy peasy!)

 Please forgive my crusty trusty wok.  :)

It's seen better days but it's what I have to work with.  

Saute, onion till brown  Add carrotts, zucchini, celery and other vegetables and saute over high heat till cooked through.  

 Add cauliflower.   At this point I thought I was making a huge mistake because there was so MUCH cauliflower in my pan and it didn't look right.  Add oil as neccesary and soy sauce to taste.  I really like to add some sesame oil since it has the most wonderful flavor.  You can even add a touch of water instead of oil and cook on low heat till cauliflower is done.  

Push all of your cawliflower rice to the edges of the pan and make a well in the center.  Add a bit more oil if neccesary and pour in eggs.  Scramble the eggs, cooking till desired doneness and mix all together.  

Serve it up and enjoy!  It's very good and keeps well in the ref! 

 
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Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

The Country Cook 

Amish White Bread

This bread takes about 65 minutes from start to finish including rising and baking.  It's definitely one of my faves.  

With every batch (25 pound bag of flour) that I buy, I have to do a bit of adjustment to the amount of flour I use and I'm sure you will have to as well.  Other factors also include altitude and what kind of yeast you use as well.   5 1/2 cups of flour 1 1/2 tsp salt  2-4 Tbsp yeast  1 1/2 - 2 Tbsp Oil  2 cups water at 120 degrees 

In glass bowl add the warm water.  Sprinkle yeast in water and let proof for 10 minutes.  I've got to be honest and say I never let my yeast proof.  Add oil, salt and about half the flour and stir with a wire whisk till mixture is glue like.  Spread the remainder of flour on counter and pour mixture in center.  Work the flour bit by bit until dough starts becoming tacky and flour is incorporated.   Spray two bread loaf pans with Pam spray.  Cut loaf in half and form into a loaf.  Press loaves in glass pan, coating the dough with oil and turn over greased side up.   Let rise for 30 minutes.   Half way through rising (at the 15 minute mark) I turn my oven on to 350 degrees so it's good and warm.   Place in top shelf of hot oven for exactly 25 minutes.  You might need a few more minutes cooking depending on your preference and how dark you like your loaves.  

If you would like your bread larger and more sandwich~like then increase your rise time.  Baking time will remain the same.

The Country Cook

Grilled Zucchini

If you've seen any of the recipes that go around on Pinterest or Facebook and tried any of them,  many times it's a given that they NEVER turn out like the picture or taste palatable.  Today's experiment was to try and make zucchini chips.  They didn't turn out like chips but they were still delicious. Cut up 2 zucchini into thin slices.  

 Season with your choice of seasoning.  I used a sea salt grinder  pepper grinder with other spices as well.  I tossed them in Sesame Oil.  

Bake at 200 degrees until nice and brown about 20ish minutes on top rack.  Some of my smaller pieces were getting pretty brown so I pulled them out of the oven before the whole batch did the same thing.

I would definitely make this again.  Definitely.

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