Zucchini pasta with chicken

Some time back we started a diet program called the Fast Diet.  It was based on research that indicated that intermittent fasting was good for the body and helped it to lose weight.  Under this plan, you restrict your calorie intake two nonconsecutive days each week.  During those two days males get 600 calories and females get 500.  I get all 600 of my calories at supper and a bit of popcorn later.  My wife eats about 50 calories worth for breakfast and the rest at supper.  You can watch the documentary about the Fast Diet here http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live-longer-hd_shortfilms and decide for yourself.



The beauty of this diet is that it is far more flexible and sustainable in the long run than most other diets.  Does a special occasion fall on a fast day, change days for that week.  Doing this diet and being more attentive to portion size on the other days I dropped 30 pounds in about 6 months.  I did gain about 5 pounds back because we got silly while on a vacation to celebrate our  30th anniversary.  I supposed if I did more consistent exercise I'd probably drop more weight.



The main challenge with this diet, to me anyway, is variety and eating well.  Which brings us to the object of this post.  I mean to show that you can eat well on a fast day and the technique can be used to increase the variety.



This recipe will be for one serving but it is easy enough to increase to serve as many as you want.



Ingredients:

4 oz boneless skinless chicken breast
3 oz mushrooms, sliced
2 mini sweet peppers, julienned
1 medium zucchini, julienned or spiralized
1 1/2 Tbs onion, finely diced
1/2 tsp sesame oil x2
1Tbs corn starch
1/4 cup chicken broth
salt
pepper
Worcestershire sauce

Slice the chicken breast into bite size pieces.  Put 1/2 tsp of sesame oil in a skillet and get it hot.  Put the chicken, sweet peppers, and onions in the skillet and cook till the chicken is just done.  Remove from skillet.

Put the mushrooms in the skillet and season with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.   There should be sufficient sesame oil and chicken juices remaining in the skillet but if not add a bit of sesame oil.  Cook till the mushrooms are just starting to brown.   Remove the mushrooms from the skillet.

Combine the corn starch and the chicken broth and set aside.

Add 1/2 tsp sesame oil to the skillet and get hot.  Add the zucchini to the skillet and stir around to start warming up.  After a minute add the chicken mixture and mushrooms, including any juices that seeped onto the dish, to the skillet and stir to combine.  Once the juices have started sizzling add the corn starch/chicken broth mixture and stir.  The broth should start to thicken quickly.  Stir the everything around to make sure it is well coated with the thickened broth.  Remove everything from the skillet and enjoy.

Uncle T