More Observations About a Family on a Diet... and a recipe for Boneless Skinless Chicken Wings

When we came home from vacation a few weeks ago, my weight was hovering ridiculously close to 160 pounds.  Eeek!  Today, my weight is hovering excitingly close to 150 pounds! Yay!

We are doing well with our new and improved healthy eating and exercise plans. I loathe the word "diet" because that infers something temporary... as in, "the diet will end when we achieve our goal weights."  Really, the changes we are making should be made into habits in our every day lives.

I would not say we've "cheated" on our diet, but lately we've tried to have a few of the dishes we've been avoiding since our return from vacation.  Chicken wings, burgers, and pizza!  Eeek!  We went to our favorite burger joint (a drive-in place with picnic tables... it's a dive but the burgers are GREAT!).  We had burgers; no fries and it was good.  We had a frozen Tombstone pizza in the freezer and we removed the super greasy pepperoni before baking.  It satisfied the pizza craving.  We have a huge bag of frozen chicken wing portions in the freezer so we set out to make chicken wings. We enjoyed the Buffalo Style Wings a number of times on vacation.  The boys are really into wings.  Me, not so much.  I know chicken skin is where all the fat and cholesterol lies.  I often make breaded Oven Baked Chicken Wings for the boys and I usually don't eat them... except for the samples for, uhhh... quality assurance purposes.  Hee, hee!  So we tried to figure out the calorie count in wings. The package says 220 calories for a 4 ounce serving if I am not mistaken. 

We opted to bake or roast the wings, seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper, in the oven in our shallow roasting pan for about an hour at 450 degrees. I turned the wings once.  We put the hot, cooked wings in a big plastic container, drenched the wings in Frank's Red Hot sauce, covered with a lid, shook the container to coat the wings, and then served the wings with a bit of Lite Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing for dipping.  It was pretty good I guess, but wow... so many calories.

Light bulb!

A few days later, I proposed this to the boys and it was pretty good. Here's what we did:

Boneless Buffalo Chicken Wings

3 - 4 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts or chicken tenders

salt and pepper

1/4 to 1/2 cup Frank's Hot Sauce Original
Lite Creamy Blue Cheese Salad dressing (for dipping)

Slice the chicken breasts into similar sized chunks.  I sliced the small breasts into 3 chunks and I sliced the larger breasts into 4 chunks.  Season with salt and pepper.

I cooked the chicken in my George Foreman Grill.  A grill outdoors or a non-stick skillet would also work.  In the George Foreman Grill, I cooked the chicken chunks for about 10 minutes (the chunks were kind of thick and I am paranoid about under cooking chicken).  I tossed the cooked chicken in a large plastic container, poured the Frank's Hot Sauce over the chicken, covered with a lid, shook the sauce and chicken together to coat, and then served with the blue cheese dressing for dipping.

Sorry no photo, but it was so tasty it was all gone before I could snap a photo!  The only problem I found with this dish is that the sauce doesn't really like to stick to the chicken. In traditional Buffalo Style Chicken Wings, the hot sauce is combined with melted butter. Maybe that helps it stick better?  I will never know.

Got to go... my steel cut oats are ready!