"Protinis" A Great Snack When You Are In A Pinch!

I was in a pinch on Saturday. I had locked myself out of my office and had a meeting a half an hour after working out, I did not want to leave my protein needs in the hands of the gym staff and pay an arm and a leg for a carby protein shake. I hustled around town to the grocery store where I thought I would find a premixed shakes that are hot right now but Safeway only had cold chocolate milk.

I geared up to by some meat and dig in when I happened to pass by a new product called “Protinis” by Maple Leaf Foods. I was in awe. There are multiple flavours of “Protini” but I have stuck with the Glazed Oven Roasted Chicken & Apple flavor because out of all of the varieties at my local Safeway it is the one with the lowest amount of carbs.

I quickly downed both of the “Protinis” in the package; I was impressed at how good the cold chicken and dried apples were. Nutritionally there are 80 calories in each of the Glazed Oven Roasted Chicken & Apple packs with 5 grams of carb, 1 gram of fibre and 4 grams of sugar. Protein wise they definitely do not measure up to a shake but there are 11 grams of protein in each pack of the Glazed Oven Roasted Chicken & Apple.

They are a little pricey, but nice little treats when you are in a pinch. I plan on packing them for road trips, hikes and any instance when I know I am going to be hard-pressed to find low-carb quick food fixes. I hope gas stations start stocking them!

Here are all of the different flavours of “Protini” on the market right now:

 

From http://www.protinis.ca/en/product.html

Try them out and save a little money with this "Protini" coupon! 

Chickpea Almond Butter Chocolate Cookies

This was my first food experiment using chickpeas.

I think it went pretty well, it created tasty and moist cookies.

My boyfriend likes them fully cooled, I like them both warm and cooled.

Before you can even really start making the cookies you will need to soak your chickpeas for about 12 hours. Below are before (left) and after (right) photos of my chickpeas.

Yup, your chickpeas do not look appealing right now... we are about to fix that! 

Procedure
1 1/4 cup of chickpeas
1 half bar of 90% cocoa chocolate (50g)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup of warmed unsweetened, unsalted almond butter
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 tablespoon of unsweetened almond milk (I used coconut almond milk)
2 tablespoons of Fry's Cocoa Powder
2 teaspoons of vanilla

*dash of salt (if you have unsalted almond butter, if you use salted then don't worry about it)

Procedure
1. Soak chickpeas in water for at least 12 hours. I added a teaspoon of almond extract to the mixture hoping it would soak in a little bit.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. After your chickpeas have soaked drain them and put the chickpeas in a food processor.
4. Warm almond butter in the microwave for around 45 seconds.
5. Add all ingredients, but the chocolate bar.
6. While the other ingredients are mixing into one big ball of dough, chop up the chocolate bar into makeshift chocolate chips.
7. Once the ingredients are mixed into one big, even ball of dough (no chickpea lumps), move it into a medium bowl and hand mix in chocolate bits.
*If the mixture is not mixing well add another tablespoon of almond milk
8. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
9. Make rounded lumps of dough (around an inch).
10. Press each lump down with a fork.
11. Bake for around 9 minutes.
12. Let cool for around 5 minutes.

Each batch should make about 18 cookies.

Nutritional Information To Come...

Pork Rind Breaded Chicken Bites

We made these amazing pork rind chicken bites on a night when we had run a little tired of our normal
grilled chicken breasts.

They are super easy and you can vary the recipe by using different sauces.

For this batch we used Guy's BBQ Sauce (0 carb) and cut it with hot sauce.

We wanted hot bites, if you are making 'salt and pepper' bite or garlic bites you may not want to spice the egge mixture with cayenne pepper and chili flakes.

Ingredients
1 Egg
1/2 Teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper
1/2 Teaspoon of Chili Flakes
2 Chicken Breasts
A Dash of Salt and Pepper
1/2 Bag of Pork Rinds
2 Tablespoons of Coconut Oil

Procedure
1. In a small bowl mix together salt, pepper, egg and spices.
2. In another small crush up half a bag of pork rinds for breading the chicken breasts.
3. Cut chicken breasts into bite sized portions or strips.
4. Heat one tablespoon of coconut oil at medium heat in pan.
5. Dip chicken in egg mixture.
6. Coat chicken with crushed pork rinds.
7. We make them in two batches, frying half the bites at a time. Fry for about five minutes. Flip and fry for an additional 2 minutes.
8. Plate the bites and then spoon sauce over the bites.


You may not want to use sauce at all for coating the chicken bites. You can alternatively just use a dipping sauce.

Nutritional Information 
(will be updated soon)