Kung Pao Chicken Tacos

I didn’t sleep well the night before last. So my alarm going off at 6:30 a.m. came and went. I had my lunch ready to go, but still needed to put my gym clothes and breakfast together. I got up at 7:30. Went to turn on my cell phone and two messages popped up – one secretary called in sick, the other was from the office manager asking if I can get to the office by 8:00 to notarize some documents.

Um, it takes me 30 minutes to drive to work. I was still in my pajamas! Guess what time I was in the car by?? 7:36! Yep, six minutes from sleep to driving – rest assured I did not look very pretty. But, I knew I was working out and my shower would just be delayed for a few hours. 😀

So after I finished what I had to do, I realized I needed to pick up something for breakfast. Subway is across the street, so I went there. Do you know about Nutritionix? It’s a Subway nutrition calculator. I ended up getting the black forest ham flatbread with egg white, provolone, cucumber, green peppers, banana peppers, spinach, pickles and hot sauce.

While this super filling breakfast sammie comes in at 420 calories, 13 fat, 47 carbs, 3 fiber and 29 protein, guess what else this sammie comes with??

2,000 mg of sodium!!

Skippy, if you are reading this, don’t ever go to Subway for breakfast – that’s your sodium intake for a week! But as I pick apart the sandwich, um turns out deli ham, pickles, banana peppers and hot sauce have a shit load of sodium. Let’s just say that I drank a TON of water yesterday. My pee actually had no color by the end of the day! Hopefully you aren’t eating your breakfast or lunch as you read that last sentence.

I structured my blood sugar perfectly so that it was 239 before my lunch workout. To get some more miles in my 170 mile six week challenge, and to increase my stamina, I did 3 miles on the treadmill. I started out with a 5 minute warm-up, and ended up walking 3 minutes, running 2 until I finished.

It will probably be a couple more weeks until I can run 30 minutes without stopping, but hopefully each day I’ll get a bit better. By the time I got back to work, my blood sugar was 85 – nice!

Holy amazeballs. My lunch was awesome. I hadn’t even flipped through my Cooking Light magazine yet before Nicole already posted this on her blog: Kung Pao Chicken Tacos. I like spicy shit. I like tacos. Winning!

I did switch it up just a bit to make two servings instead of four. Tony wouldn’t touch this with a 10-foot pole. So with the second half of the kung pao chicken I am going to have it with steamed brown rice and stir fry veggies. I also divided the chicken nutrition separate from the tortillas, since there are so many different ones out there. Mine are LaTortilla Factory low carb tortillas – two are 120 calories.

Kung Pao Chicken

• 2 servings – 338 calories, 17 fat, 17 catbs, 3 fiber and 30 protein

Ingredients:

• 10 ounces diced boneless, skinless, chicken breast
• 1.5 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce, divided
• 1/8 cup + .75 teaspoon cornstarch, divided
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 2 stalks of celery, diagonally cut
• 4 teaspoons dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
• .75 tablespoon honey
• ½ tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon sambal oelek (chile paste)
• 2 teaspoons sriracha (my addition, you knows I love the spice!)
• 1 orange pepper, sliced in strips

Directions:

1. Put the chicken in a bowl and toss ½ a tablespoon of soy sauce. Add 1/8 cup of cornstarch and toss to coat well.

2. Heat a skillet over medium heat with canola oil. Add chicken and sauté for about 6 minutes. Remove from heat.

3. Here’s how I did things differently: I then sautéed my pepper and celery, to make it almost like a kung pao fajita. Cook just until the peppers start to brown and wilt a bit – about 5-6 minutes.

4. Here’s the next thing I did differently: the instructions said to add the remaining cornstarch, soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, vinegar and chile sauce to a microwave save bowl and microwave on high for 1 – 1.5 minutes, until thickened, then pour over the chicken. The first time? It burned. I started over, cooked for 30 seconds, and it was still an unusable paste. Lastly, I mixed the cornstarch, soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, vinegar and chile sauce and just mixed well and added the sauce to the peppers and celery in the pan, then tossed in the chicken and cooked for an additional minute.

I served my tacos: 2.5 ounces chicken per taco, split the celery and peppers between the tacos, then added 1 teaspoon crushed peanuts to each taco, and finished it off with a bit more sriracha.

In my rush to get out of the house this morning, I forgot to grab my camera, but I hope this picture entices you to make this. Such a combination of flavors: salty/sweet/spicy. I never would have though to put Chinese food in a tortilla, but this was delicious. All together these two tacos come in at: 458 calories, 20 fat, 36 carbs, 16 fiber (thanks to the low carb tortillas!) and 35 protein.

I will definitely be making these again – soon!

Now that the weather is cooler, my mind immediately jumps to fall comfort food.  Tony loves beef stroganoff, so when I saw a recipe for stove top stroganoff, I was all over it.  Even though it’s a Cook’s Illustrated recipe, I decided to tweak it a bit.  I reduced the oil to 2 teaspoons vs. 4 tablespoons, and I cooked the egg noodles on the side and incorporated it in at the end.

The recipe also called for sirloin tips, which I couldn’t find, but I found this sirloin tip roast – only $6!  I ended up cutting up 1 pound in the meat and I’ll use the leftovers to make Italian beef sandwiches next week.

Guess what people?  I am starting to like mushrooms!  I’ve always loved the flavor and smell of mushrooms, its just been a texture thing.  The only problem with this dinner?  The sauce was kind of soupy.  It never thickened up, even when I pureed some mushrooms sauce and pasta to kind of thicken it up.  I told Tony later that maybe the reason it didn’t thicken up was because I skipped the step of adding the raw noodles to the sauce to cook – maybe the starch from the pasta thickens the sauce?

The flavor was there, but I am going back to the drawing board on this one.  My guestimate is this plate is:  456 calories, 20 fat, 40 carbs, 2.4 fiber and 26 protein.

And then I got snacky later on.  WTF?!  I ate a serving of sweet potato straws:

These took me by surprise because I expected a salty treat, but these are sweet and have like a cinnamon coating on the outside – good news is 34 straws is 120 calories!

But then I had a small sliver of carrot cake – I am finally taking it to work today to get it out of the house!  These two snacks added 300 calories to my total caloric intake.

Stats for Tuesday:

• 1634 calories, 62 fat, 175 carbs, 21 fiber and 93 protein
• 15 minute walk with the dog
• 45 minutes on treadmill – 3.2 total miles
• average blood sugar 155
• 165.8 miles left in 170 mile challenge

I have probably the best potato soup I’ve ever made for lunch today – come back tomorrow for the recipe!  And tonight’s dinner?  Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza!

Make it a great day!