Thankful for Turkey Noodle Soup!
Everything these days seems to be GO GREEN and I have also adapted this methodology in just about everything I do. From the Wal-Mart plastic bags, to the empty soup cans and milk cartons. What about left-over food items? Well I am always combining left overs in the fridge to make custom casseroles and this years Thanksgiving turkey carcass was no exception. One thing I have been doing more of recently in the kitchen is my homemade chicken soup. I really feel like I have perfected the recipe and decided to use the leftover turkey carcass just for this application. Here is my personal home-made recipe for you. It literally is the best home-made turkey soup I have ever had. You can make this same soup using a rotisserie chicken carcass should you choose.
Before you go to bed take your turkey or chicken carcass and remove any meat you can get off the bones and put those aside with your other leftover turkey meat. This is good for turkey or chicken sandwiches you can eat while making this soup. The entire process can be up to 24 hours so you will get hungry along the way. Place the carcass in the crock pot and fill the pot about an inch from the top with chicken broth. Make sure the entire carcass is submerged in the liquid. Leave for the night to cook on low heat and covered.
The next day you will get a large bowl big enough to hold all the liquid from the crock pot. Use a strainer to pour the liquid into the bowl and catch-all the meat and bones. When this cools you will have to go through the strainer to pick out the meat and put back into the crock pot with the liquid while tossing the bones into the trash. Cut up 2 bundles of celery into your size of preference and toss into crock pot. Cut up 4 small/medium-sized onions (white and yellow) and toss these into the mix. Cut up a quarter of a cabbage and toss that into the mix too. Personally I like to get the vegetables smaller so they mix well together. I like tasting a bit of everything in every bite. Add a can of Original Rotel and some salt and pepper to taste and slow cook for another 4-6 hours.
Pick up a pasta of your preference and add this to the mix. I used gluten-free rice noodles because not only are they good for you, contain no wheat but they also do not soften up in the soup like flour noodles. You must be careful here though because if you cook it too long they can turn to mush and ruin your soup. Test the noodles often. Once the noodles have reached an "Al dente" feel and taste turn the crock-pot or stove off and move the soup to a cool. While the soup cools the noodles will soften up even more but not too much.
Ingredients:Turkey Carcass
Extra Leftover Turkey Meat
Celery
Onions
Original Rotel
Salt & Pepper
Gluten-Free Rice Noodles
I hope this soup will blow your mind as it did my own. It's a great way to use the left over turkey carcass and you will make so much of this you will have leftovers for days that do not get old. Also, this soup is a very healthy option, low in calories so you can eat it all week and not worry about gaining a pound. In fact you just may lose some weight!
To make it even thicker and healthier, cut up more cabbage and toss it in. I always find cabbage to be a good soup filler! If you have any questions feel free to call Paul comment!
Gluten Free Must Haves!
Throughout the process of the HC3 Trim Diet and Reset Program, Paul and I have learned a new kind of lifestyle - which includes natural and gluten-free foods! Paul has psoriasis, which is an auto-immune disease, and the nutritionist recommends that he stay away from Gluten, so we are both planning to avoid it. Some of the things we have come across and have gotten recommendations on along the way that are absolutely wonderful include, but are not limited too...
Glutino Pretzels - They are absolutely delicious! During our 500 calorie phase it was a nice snack option, but now it's a great option for dips like Guacamole Dip! We love it!
Cindy's Kitchen All Natural Salad Dressings - These salad dressings are All Natural and Organic. Cindy's salad dressings are available in Sugar Free, Dairy Free, Fat Free, Organic, and with enhanced Omega-3 and Lutein. A great product that can be used as a gourmet dip, sauce, dressing and marinade (which are great for grilling) We recently purchased the new Avocado Vinaigrette - We got this at The Fresh Market in Suwanee, GA, and it is amazing! We love it, and it's pretty reasonable as far as calories go!
Peanut Butter & Company Crunch Time - I've never really like "natural" peanut butter, but this stuff is a "no-stir, glutton free, all natural peanut butter! YEAH!!! And it's super yummy! We also got "Smooth Operator," but I haven't had the pleasure of trying that just yet! You can buy this in Kroger, Publix and natural food stores as well as online! It's awesome!
Stevia and flavored stevia extracts - 
are zero calorie all natural sweetener. It's pretty darn wonderful!
Pamela's Ultimate Baking and Pancake Mix - the best all-around all-purpose baking and pancake mix. It features buttermilk and almond meal. You can use Pamela's mix as a one-to-one sub for wheat flour in gluten-free baking. I love to bake so this is definitely a must-have when the holiday's roll around!
Udi's Frozen Gluten-free Pizza Crusts - a ready-made gluten-free pizza crust. Udi's gluten-free crusts are easy to use with good flavor. And they recommend using a preheated pizza stone to bake gluten-free pizza if you favor cracker-crisp New York-style pizza. Paul and I love to make home-made pizzas so this will be another thing we will be picking up soon!
Member's Mark Spinach and Asiago Cheese Chicken Sausage - This is a nice and easy lunch or dinner option, and it's Gluten Free! and delicious! We eat them as your typical sausage, but have also cooked them in soups, and it's a great protein and lower in fat considering it is a sausage!
Oh and a great App for finding Gluten Free places is "Find Me Gluten Free" and I'm fairly certain it's a free app!
You should check them out for sure!
Phase II: Metabolic Reset Begins
Paul and I started the Metabolic Reset program today, and we couldn't be happier! It's the first time we have had eggs in over a month! YUMMM!
So here's how it goes, we begin higher calories, 1200 for me and 1300-1500 for Paul. In the program manual there is a list of all the foods to eat freely, those to limit, and those to avoid at all cost. Kelly, the nutritionist at Optimum Health, has decided to start our first week without dairy and then we can start to add that in during week two.
So here is the overall daily consumption guidelines:
- Three to Four Proteins daily, 4 oz per meal (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and a small snack) - All lean meats still, but we are able to obviously add in eggs, salmon, tuna, turkey and others as we see fit!
Two Plant Fats daily - You can get this from Avocado, Pecans and Almonds, Salad Dressings (with olive oil), and Coconut Oil, etc.- Four to Six Servings of Vegetables daily - This ranges from salad lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, to celery, cabbage, tomatoes and so much more! Sticking mostly with items that are low on the glycemic index.
- Two Servings of Fruit - We get a wider variety, but still need to stay away from things like bananas and watermelon, etc. But we can have honey-dew melon and cantaloupe which I love!
We can now consume alcohol! FINALLY! We cheated a couple of times on HC3 and while it didn't cause us to gain, it definitely set us back on the weight loss. So it's not something to go hog-wild with, but it's not going to hurt us! The best alcoholic options are:
- Wines: - Anything Dry! The Dryer the better... Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet, maybe Pino Grigio... etc.
- Liquor: Best option is Vodka - Martinis, Vodka and Club Soda with Lime and even Flavored Vodkas are ok!
- NO BEER! Well it would have to be a treat, but Paul is not allowed to consume Gluten, so it looks like we will avoid beer, but we could try Red Brick Ale, if he must have beer...
After the first week, we can start to add in dairy! Only one serving per day... I LOVE Milk, so I will be getting my skim milk on, but we can also have cheese (low-fat, and non-processed). Kelly said low-fat string cheese and laughing cow cheese are good options for a small snack, and good for protein.
So the whole point of this phase is to get our metabolism, adrenals, and pituitary stable and working to our advantage. And the food recommendations also have a point as they don't want our blood sugar to spike, which causes hunger and bad habits! See the full diagram of "the point" below!
This weekend we are headed up to the North Carolina Smoky Mountains for the Labor Day Holiday and Paul and I are looking forward to widening our meal options as well as cutting loose a bit with a few drinks! YEAH!
HC3 Diet - Week One of 500 Calorie Limit
Week One went surprisingly well! It's unbelievable, but I was actually full after each meal and snack! The hormone actually was doing it's job! I wasn't hungry and I have energy, although we aren't supposed to work out at all. I took it easy and had fruits for breakfast, chicken, lean ground beef, or shrimp usually for lunch and dinner, fruits and veggies for snack, and occasional glutton free pretzels (which are surprisingly very good)!
As we started, we had to begin testing our ketone levels each morning on the ketone testing strips (similar to a pregnancy test). My ketone levels started off at a medium level and as the week went on they got high! The higher the ketone levels, the better the chances you are burning fat. Toward the end of the week I was supplementing fruit or veggie snacks for the Power Reds to manage the ketone levels so that the levels don't cause my body to go into a ketone-acidosis.
Toward the end of the week Paul was traveling for work, and that was when I felt more challenged! It's easier when you are doing something like this with someone else. And ironically, when you're alone and just watching TV or movies, you get the boredom eating syndrome. TV doesn't help with this either, with commercials for Dairy Queen, McDonald's, Domino's Pizza and more! 
The craziest part about it, my body wasn't hungry for those things, my head was! The pretzels and water helped, but this was the struggle I realized would be ongoing for the remainder of the 40 days!
At the end of week one, I lost a total of 4.8 pounds! It was the most I had lost ever in that period of time. Usually it would take me a month to lose 5 lbs, and I pretty much did it in one week! AND I resisted ALL TEMPTATIONS!
