Dana's blog

Cooking Low Carb: Asparagus Salad with Lemon Basil Mayonnaise

It's spring! Okay, it's almost spring. Still, you're going to need recipes for festive holiday dinners, what with Easter and Passover coming up and all. This undeniably spring-y starter is very easy, delicious, and tastes great.

I have to add: Last year I ran a Passover recipe that included mayonnaise, and drew a very angry response from someone who was furious that I would run a Passover recipe that "wasn't kosher." Since I'd run that recipe by Rabbi Hirsch Meisels, (www.friendswithdiabetes.org) I was comfortable that it was, indeed, kosher. So no angry email, okay? There's kosher-for-Passover mayonnaise out there.

Hey Gang!

Yikes. How about this weather, huh? And January was so warm; what happened?

Oh, well. Just six weeks till spring. In the meanwhile, I'll hide out at home, and write and cook...

Read on!

--Dana

Going Back To Low Carb

I recently got this heartfelt plea from a reader:

Basic Breath Technique

This breath technique is used both in Body Flex and Life Lift (www.lifelift.com), and I have found it effective, and somehow oddly satisfying. Learn the breathing first, and then you can add stretches and isometrics to it. Warning: You will feel like a big old doofus doing this breathing at first. Ignore that feeling. Do it for fifteen minutes a day for a week, and see if your clothes get looser!

Vintage Lowcarbezine! - Valentine's Day

I wrote this article in 2000, the first year we were publishing, but it needed very little revision seven years later:

Don't look now! Just when you've really shaken that Holiday Five, here comes Valentine's Day! Surely you've noticed the heart-shaped satin boxes piled up at every grocery store, discount store, convenience store, and even truck stop. Yes, it's another all-American Junk Fest!

Cooking Low Carb: Frenchified Meat Loaf

This is the best meatloaf recipe I've tried in a long time! It's got something of a French accent, which is why we call it...

Frenchified Meat Loaf

1 pound ground chuck
1/2 pound mild bulk pork sausage
2 slices low carb bread, whole grain, in fine crumbs
1/2 cup chopped onion, fairly fine
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 egg
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (spicy brown will work if that's what you've got)
1/2 teaspoon dried savory
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon ground dried rosemary

Cooking Low Carb: Cheesy Chicken Soup

I made this the other day when I had a batch of truly wonderful chicken broth in the house. You'll see in the instructions I mention that the quality of your chicken broth is essential to this recipe. Use good, strong, flavorful (not just salty) broth, and the flavor of this soup will be balanced just exactly between chicken and cheese. Mmmm.

Cheesy Chicken Soup (or is it Chickeny Cheese Soup?)

6 cups chicken broth
2 cups milk
8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
guar or xanthan to thicken
3 cups frozen chopped broccoli (optional)

Hey Gang -

I'm on my way out of town to deal with yet more family business, oh joy. I get to fly to southern California for a whole 36 hours. That's way too much airport and plane time for too little sunshine for my liking, but duty calls, and all that. I wanted to get this out before I go.

So read on, and I hope you find it informative. Enlightening. Diverting. Or something like that.

And someone tell me I won't have to fly again soon...

Dana

Some Recent Research

Truth to tell, I didn't have a brilliant idea for an article this week, so I thought it might be useful to look at some of the recent research on low carbohydrate dieting. As I said last week, I don't care if my Way of Eating is fashionable, but some of you are facing friends and family who are sure that your "fad" diet is terribly bad for your health. Some facts to counter their scare tactics surely wouldn't come amiss.

From Metabolism, the current issue:

Column Reprint: Pork

Let's talk about pork.

Cooking Low Carb: Picadillo

True to my word, I've been trying new recipes. Wouldn't you know it, this is when my Master Cook program decides to hiccup and swallow my new results! I'll reconstruct them; the new meatloaf I tried, in particular, was too good not to pass on. But in the meanwhile, here's one from The Every Calorie Counts Cookbook.

Picadillo

This is my version of a dish that's popular all over Latin America - think of it as South American Sloppy Joes.

1 1/2 pounds ground round
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/3 cup green pimiento stuffed olives, sliced

Hey Gang -

It's me! Happy New Year! And, please God, may 2007 be better than 2006.

My personal stuff seems to have settled down for the moment, and I miss talking to y'all. So here I am again, making a New Years resolution to get this sucker out regularly. If everything goes to hell in a handbasket again, I may get thrown off-track. But for the moment, just sitting down and writing "Hey, Gang" again feels really, really good.

Thought of the Week

Put up in a place where it's easy to see
The cryptic admonishment "TTT."
When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb,
It's well to remember that Thing Take Time.

- Piet Hein

How are those New Years Resolutions coming? I'd like to add one to them for you, if you don't mind: Be patient.

Column Reprint: Tuna

I have to make what is, for a food writer, an embarrassing confession: my favorite fish, far and away, is canned tuna.

Yep, canned tuna, stuff of school lunchroom sandwiches and casseroles made with goopy canned mushroom soup. Love the stuff. Love, love, love the stuff. And I'm not alone. Tuna is the third most commonly purchased foodstuff in the country, after sugar and coffee. Canned tuna is served in more than ninety percent of American households, and accounts for fully twenty percent of all fish and seafood consumed in the US. That's a lot of tuna!

Cooking Low Carb: Flax Pancakes

I came up with these pancakes one lazy Sunday morning when pancakes and bacon just seemed like the thing. They worked out perfectly the very first time; my husband rated them a perfect 10. Four grams of non-fiber carb per pancake may seem a little high, but look at that protein count - one pancake has as much protein as three eggs! Between that, the fiber, and the healthy fats, these suckers will fill you up, and keep you full for hours and hours.

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