Homemade Broccoli, Bacon and Cheese Soup with a BLT Wrap

It's cold and rainy and nothing sounded good the other night except for Broccoli Cheese Soup and I decided to add some Bacon!

I just used my standard go to combination for a sauce base.
1 stick of butter
16 ounces of Heavy Whipping Cream
2 cups of shredded cheese (I used Cheddar here)

For an Alfredo I use an Italian Blend of whatever I have on hand.
Just melt the butter, melt the cheese, add the cream and stir while bringing it to a boil. Keep stirring and let it simmer until it thickens.
Once the sauce is done cooking then I added the steamed broccoli and crumbled the bacon.

You could also pair this with a BLT made on a low carb tortilla or a lettuce wrap or a BLT salad. 
I decided that it was too much food for me for one meal so I just went with the soup and then ate the wrap later.

 I don't eat soy because of my PCOS so I will only use one brand of low carb Tortilla. All of the other ones that I have found are made with soy flour. I use the Mission Carb Balance tortillas, they do have a small amount of soybean oil but that doesn't bother me like the soy flour, soy lecithin or soy protein does.

Soy basically mimics estrogen and was causing problems for me so I stopped eating it altogether last summer. Most ladies with PCOS already have high estrogen levels and should not eat soy and should try to eat more broccoli because broccoli naturally helps to rid your body of excess estrogen.

Dreamfields Low Carb Rotini

 Dreamfields Rotini pasta with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic and ground beef.

 Once again I want to stress the importance of following the cooking instructions exactly! I boil the water, set the timer (but don't hit start yet), measure out the portion size of pasta that I want to cook. Hit the start button and drop the pasta in the boiling water. As soon as the 8 minutes is up I immediately remove the pasta from the stove and drain it in the sink while rinsing with cold water to stop the cooking process. I always measure out the portions and don't over cook the pasta and I haven't had any problems with this pasta. It might not work for everyone and if you notice that it stalls you when you haven't had any other carbs then I would suggest not eating it until you're on maintenance.
 

I separated the dry pasta in to 6 servings and cooked 2 servings, 1 of those servings is in this bowl for dinner and the other one is in the fridge for tomorrow.  I store the sauce separate from the noodles so that I can reheat the sauce without reheating the noodles. I don't want the noodles to over cook because then your body will absorb more of the carbs that should not be digested and would increase the carb count. When cooked properly, one serving is 5 carbs plus whatever is in the sauce and veggies that you add.

I made a simple sauce with bell pepper, onions, garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, black pepper, Italian seasoning and a little parmesan cheese. You could easily use frozen onions and peppers like shown above or fresh ones if you have them available. You can use canned or fresh tomatoes depending on their availability as well. Garlic powder can also be used instead of fresh garlic. You can also cook up the ground beef ahead of time and used it the next day. This is also great which grilled chicken or even an Italian sausage that's lower in carbs. You can also skip the low carb pasta and just layer meat, sauce cheese in a pan and bake it like a lasagna. I have pictures of that in other posts. If you have high carb eaters in your house you can easily cook them some normal pasta and serve them the same sauce.

Mac 'n Cheese with Bacon, Broccoli and Grilled Chicken

Hello Everyone, 

It's been a while since I last posted so I thought that I would share what I cooked for dinner yesterday. I cooked homemade Mac 'n Cheese with Bacon, Broccoli and Grilled Chicken. And yes, it's Low Carb! :)

I've posted about Dreamfields pasta before and as always it's very important to follow the cooking directions and only boil it for 8 minutes and then immediately drain it and rinse it with cold water so that it stops cooking. I separate it into  portion sizes and keep the sauce separate from the pasta. I will reheat the sauce and meat but I won't reheat the pasta.

Now for the sauce! I just melted 1 stick of butter and melted 2 cups of shredded cheddar and then added 16 ounces of heavy whipping cream and stirred it while cooking until it came to a boil and then reduced the heat to simmer until it thickened and kept stirring. Then added the cooked chopped broccoli and some crumbled pieces of bacon.

I portioned the pasta into 6 servings and saved the other 5 servings for later. 

 This is 1 serving of pasta, 1 serving of broccoli and 4 ounces of grilled chicken. I should have added more bacon though.... LOL

I hope everyone is doing well!