Chicken is tasty (Guest post by Luke the Labrador) - Gluten Free Chicken Recipes

Hi all! I've come back to write a post about my favorite food, chicken. Concetta (my owner) says I have to make it gluten free, too. I guess I can do that.

Photo by Richard Elzey.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side, of course!

Why did the turkey cross the road? The chickens were too busy laying eggs. 

Why did the duck cross the road? It was the chicken's day off. 

ROTFLAO! Silly things, chickens. Yet oh so tasty! So here's a list of my favorite recipes from the last month or so of eating chicken. My humans say they won't eat chicken every night, but I wish they would!

Paleo Pan Fried Chicken - I don't know what Paleo means, but pan frying anything is good. 

Buttermilk Fried Chicken - Light and crispy skin that's lovely to bite into

Hobo Chicken - Whatever hobos are, they have great taste in cooking. Foil packets keep the chicken nice and juicy!

Slow Cooker Chicken - baked slow throughout the day, this is great entertainment to watch for me! 

Cornish Hens - these are like mini chickens, kind of like how I'm a mini dog. 

Chicken with White Beans and Tomatoes - my owner is Italian, so she makes stuff like this a lot. Simple and easy to chow down!

Cumin Chicken with Black Beans - this reminds me of the burrito bowls at Chipotle, my favorite! 

Kung Pao Chicken and Rosemary Chicken - this article has TWO great chicken recipes. I love the Denver Post! 

We love enchiladas in our house - there's an abundance of great, traditional Mexican restaurants where we live. But this recipe is one that makes a high rotation for being tasty. Authentic Chicken Enchiladas. This one does gluten free well, because it has you make a sauce, rather than the storebought sauces which all contain gluten.

My humans watch a lot of Alton Brown, and two of their favorite recipes have chicken in them: Buffalo Wings and Broiled, Butterflied Chicken.

My owner also loves her Martha Stewart although I think she takes FOREVER to explain something. Get to the chicken already! Herb Roasted Chicken with Vegetables is easy and tasty! 

Another Martha Stewart is Spatchcocked Chicken with Tomatoes. Spatchcocking sound funny! He he. "I'm gonna spatchcock you!" LOL

Martha also does some good things with rubs. Crispy Chicken with Rosemary Potatoes and Paprika Rubbed Chicken with Roasted Garlic is also tasty. My humans like smoked paprika, but sometimes they do it with the hot, Hungarian paprika. Then I have to drink a lot of water!

We watch a lot of Cooks Country and America's Test Kitchen in our house so I think I've had every chicken recipe ever from their show (as long as it was gluten free or fixable to be gluten free). Their website isn't super friendly to use though so its harder to link to their recipes. 

My humans also do this thing call Whole30 a couple times a year. I say, eat like a dog, you'll be fine. But it did inspire them to try some new chicken recipes, like Chicken Rolls with Asparagus, Brined Chicken, and Almond Crusted Chicken Breast.

Now I will stare at you as you cook dinner until you give me some! MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Luke

30 days of thanks doesn't have to be serious, of course, so I thought I would start out the continuing series on the Adventures of Luke by giving thanks for Luke. Do you see him above? Luke is my constant travel companion.

Luke is a Beanie Baby keychain (sorry Annie!) that comes with me wherever I go. He like chicken and guard duty (his "job" is guarding my keys"), car rides, riding on the Vespa, and running through the grass. Often he escapes my pocket and decides to go for a walk on his own - or so he "says". 

He even occasionally takes his own "selfie" with my cell phone camera.

Many people ask me what a grown adult is doing with a stuffed animal. I look at them and say "Why don't you have one?". Here's the thing: this little dog helps me get out of my own head. Suffering from anxiety, I often need to look outside myself to realize I'm worrying over nothing and need to stop the cycle. At the same time, sometimes you need to escape to help yourself to see a solution to a problem that you're facing.

For example, I was recently working on a new weighted scoring model for work. Instead of thinking about it from my perspective, as a member of the design team, I put myself into Luke's place as a scorer. By thinking that way, I designed a scoring model for the leader of the design team to present that met the needs of the scorers so that the solution would work, rather than just be "designed". Yes, it might be silly to think of a stuffed dog as using a scoring model but the concept is better than just telling someone to abstractly think of the end user - this way gives them something identifiable to use and makes the concept more concrete. You don't want to disappoint a cute little doggie! How would he feel if you designed something that didn't work? This little dog has made it much easier for me to think outside the box and put myself solely into the role of an end user in many of my projects, and that's a valuable skill to have.

Adults too often lose the skills that we develop as children. Sometimes you need to hold onto those to make yourself a better adult, and that's what makes me thankful for a silly little dog named Luke.