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Spicy Coconut Chicken Drumsticks [Recipe]

In an effort to improve my cooking skills, I have decided to learn how to cook meat better. Drumsticks were on sale at Westerly (organic and free-range – score!) so I picked them up.

Spicy Coconut Chicken Drumsticks

Ingredients

  • 5 chicken drumsticks
  • 2 tablespoons coconut oil
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 tablespoon rice vinegar

Method

  1. Pat the drumsticks dry with a paper towel.
  2. Heat the coconut oil over high heat, add the chicken.
  3. Sprinkle the spices and vinegar over the chicken. Turn each drumstick over a few times to distribute the flavorings.
  4. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, uncovered, for 4-5 minutes.
  5. Flip drumsticks and cook, covered, for another 4-5 minutes, or until cooked through.

So good! And the house smelled incredible. Bobby approved.

Do you like white meat or dark meat better?

I love dark meat. I always have.

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Coconut Breakfast Cookies Recipe

Today is the day that voting opens for the Next Food Blog Star. Oh boy. I have been popping in at other blogs around the blogosphere reading their entries (see mine here) and I am so inspired to be the best food blogger I can be. I hope you will check out my profile (or others) and vote (please vote for me! but if you like someone else’s better, vote for them). I have discovered a lot of very cool bloggers thanks to this challenge.

Good luck to all! Go vote!

Now that I’m done being sappy, I will share with you the cool breakfast cookie recipe that I created last week – these little guys are fun to eat for breakfast. They’re coconutty, dense/moist, but not too heavy, and not too sweet. They’re not the ubiquitous “breakfast cookie” seen on nearly every single healthy living blog (yes I’ve made it); they are much different and do not involve oatmeal. (They do involve coconut; I am obsessed with coconut lately. Sorry Kim and Dad! I think it is delicious.)

These are also very cool because they use a method I like to call “stovetop baking“. I did this once before, and made soda biscuits – which reminds me – must make those again.

Maggie’s Coconut Quinoa Breakfast Cookie – Stovetop Baking!

Ingredients

  • 1 and 2/3 cups quinoa flakes (I am sure you can substitute with some other grain, but I had quinoa flakes and wanted to use them)
  • 2/3 cup grated coconut (unsweetened)
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon stevia (or more of a different sweetener – I used Trader Joe’s stevia here)
  • 1.5 cups almond milk (I used vanilla unsweetened)
  • 2 whole eggs

Method

  1. Preheat your griddle over low heat. (My griddle is nonstick, so I don’t use oil/butter when I use it. You should use oil if yours is not nonstick.)
  2. Mix together the dry ingredients – flakes, coconut, salt, stevia. Add the oil and almond milk; stir. Beat the eggs together and then add them in and mix some more.
  3. Drop 1/2 cupfuls of batter onto the griddle. Cook on the first side for 5 minutes.
  4. Flip the cookies and cook on the other side for another 5 minutes.
  5. Makes 15 breakfast cookies.

You can have about 5-6 of these for a good breakfast (they’re not that big) – very filling, and definitely a yummy thing to wake up to. I like spreading them with a little bit of butter.

Reminders:

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Eat Me, I’m Delicious (Healthy Coconut Pancakes Recipe)

Inspired by last weekend’s shenanigans, I wanted to make my own version of coconut pancakes. First I had to get myself an early birthday present (it was already wrapped, oddly enough!):

My very own griddle (Calphalon, from Williams Sonoma, if you want to get your own). This may be the best kitchen item I have ever bought. Better than this guy (which caused bleeding), and definitely better than this one. But without further ado…

Coconut Pancake Recipe

Ingredients (serves 2 – or 1 big breakfast – it’s about 500 calories total, without toppings)

  • 1 egg plus 2 egg whites (1 yolk, 3 whites total)
  • 1/2 cup coconut flakes
  • 1/2 cup flour (I used whole wheat)
  • 1 cup almond milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice (This is because I don’t have baking powder or soda. I don’t know if it did anything. Maybe you can just leave it out.)

Directions

  1. Preheat your griddle (low heat).
  2. Mix together the yolk, flakes, flour, almond milk, salt, and lemon juice. Set aside. This should sit for about 5 minutes.
  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
  4. Add the yolk and flour mixture to the egg whites; mix together gently.
  5. Scoop 1/2 cup-fuls of the batter onto the griddle. When bubbles start to appear and pop, it’s time to flip. Mine took about 3-4 minutes per side. (This is low heat, remember.)
  6. Top the coconut pancakes with: more coconut flakes, honey, peanut butter, whipped cream, or whatever you desire!

You can’t not make these coconut pancakes. This coconut pancakes recipe came out with 10 small guys; I think I had 6 and Bobby had 4 plus vegetarian bacon (which tastes delicious cooked on a griddle; I had a bite).

There were about 500 calories in the whole coconut pancake recipe, so it’s either a substantial 1-person breakfast or you can put on some toppings and split it between 2 people. Or save half for another day. I topped mine with more coconut flakes and honey.

I’m really into the coconut this week and I have another recipe to share with coconut in it later.

Do you like coconut? What’s your favorite coconut recipe? Have you made coconut pancakes yet?

Don’t forget – You have one day left to win some yummy stevia 🙂 **If you want another entry, go to my newly updated recipes page and leave a comment (on the stevia post) telling me what recipe you want to try!** And you have until the end of the month to use this stevia coupon.

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The Girl of Sandwich or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bread.

That’s one very long title. But I think it works. I’ve been digging the sandwiches lately. Nature’s Pride (I keep wanting to call them Nature’s Path, but that is a different company that was kind enough to send me goodies!) sent me a bunch of bread the other week and I’ve been dutifully eating it up. (I say “dutifully” as though it’s a chore; it is not! I love this bread.)

I discovered this fantastic lunch sandwich that is filling and probably the most delicious sandwich I have ever eaten. It is so simple and yum:

  • whole wheat bun (ideally from Nature’s Pride)
  • 1 laughing cow spreadable swiss cheese
  • tomato slices
  • lots of lettuce

I have had 6 of them I think and I am still not sick of the combo! I only have one more whole wheat bun left and that’s for tomorrow (Bobby had one of the 8 original buns for a PB sammy but then I told him to eat the white buns since I don’t like those as much and he has been polishing those off instead).

The other thing I have been making white the big rolly buns is my breakfast. I spread a bun with peanut butter and top it with coconut flakes.

How can you not love this? I make breakfast and lunch at the same time (in the morning before work), then I take my breakfast over to the couch and savor it before I leave for work. This big white poofy carb is the perfect brain food to get me through the day. I do love white carbs sometimes. Totally necessary.

Exercise of the day (free again): Exercise TV’s 6-Round Slimdown with Stephanie Vitorino. It’s a 40-minute strength/cardio/abs workout consisting of 6 5-minute rounds that each incorporate strength, cardio, and abs. You do need weights, which I don’t have. You’re also supposed to have a medicine ball, but I used a circular glass candle holder thing and it worked for me. I got pretty sweaty and I was only slightly terrified that I would hurt myself the the candle holder. The only odd thing is that some “5-minute” rounds are 3 minutes; others are 6-7 minutes. But it didn’t bug me.

Hump day’s over. Time to get ready for the weekend… Do you have plans for the long weekend? I am going to do WEDDING PLANNING and get brunch with Bobby and a friend on Sunday.

P.S. Did you notice I switched back to “Say Yes to Salad“? If you want to change your blogrolls back that would be lovely. The vote came in and I decided to go with what the people said.

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3 Wishes That Will Never Come True, and 4 That Already Are…

Here are 3 wishes of mine that will never come true no matter how much I want them to:
  1. Uncomfortable but insanely cute shoes make you burn infinitely more calories. (Nope, not true yet. I’ve tried.)
  2. Avoiding wedding planning will make everything magically fall into place on its own. (So far this hasn’t worked…)
  3. Staying up late adds hours to the day and you can still get 7-8 hours of sleep a night when you go to bed at 3am. (I cannot get this to come true no matter how many times I try.)

But here are 4 facts that I don’t even have to wish for, because they are magically true already. These are almost too good to be true.

  1. Avocado tastes sinfully delicious, but instead of being sinful it gives me boundless energy and good skin. This is the avocado shrimp sandwich from Souen in Soho (where I saw Dr. Cuddy). My mom got this on Saturday when she came in for brunch (which was almost too late to be brunch – it was close to 3pm).

  2. Macrobiotic meals are happiness. Like this macro plate with extra kabocha minus the rice. (Kale, kabocha, hijiki, beans, broccoli, carrot.)

  3. Smoothies with coconut milk kefir are good for your skin. Coconut fat is my very favorite fat for improved skin. It gets rid of my acne (my skin is *clear*), makes my tummy happy, and tastes delicious. Eating them in a jar makes them even better for you. (Okay, that’s not true, but it is a cool presentation. I drink everything from jars.)

  4. Healthy eating will make you and your spouse both live very long happy lives together. It makes me so happy to see Bobby eating food like Souen‘s Broccoli Tofu with brown rice, which is basically a macrobiotic vegan tofu scramble. I am so looking forward to the rest of our lives together.

What are your 3 wishes? My real wish is that I could have infinite wishes and then I’d wish for whatever I wanted all the time.

P.S. Operation Wedding is updated!