Blogs
The Low Carb Thanksgiving Update
Submitted by Dana on Thu, 2012-11-15 17:11As I write this, Thanksgiving is just exactly a week away. I've been busy writing a Fat Fast cookbook, and finished just two days ago. I figured I'd better run over here and say something about Thanksgiving, fast!
The nice thing about having written for fifteen years or so is that I have a backlog of work to fall back on. I've written quite a lot about Thanksgiving in the past -- here's last year's menu, and an article I wrote about
Coconut-Flax Bread
Submitted by Dana on Sun, 2012-10-28 19:30Okay, I have officially impressed myself. This bread has rapidly become a staple item in my house, and That Nice Boy I Married and I regularly eat Yummy, Scrummy Toast (YST.) With good pastured butter, of course.
The Coconut Bread Mark II is awfully good, but it's somewhat sweet, and quite coconutty; we found we didn't much like it in grilled cheese sandwiches, or with fried eggs. Something about the flax makes this more "grainy" tasting, and cuts the sweetness. This is great with fried eggs! Come to think of it, I should try it in grilled cheese sandwiches tonight.
A Halloween Reminder
Submitted by Dana on Sat, 2012-10-20 16:46I know I've been quiet lately. I've been working on a fat fast book, and have a deadline at the end of this month. Still, I thought I'd take a break and remind you of the basic rules of getting through Halloween without completely blowing your low carb plan:
1) Do not buy candy early. I don't care how good the sale is. Wait till the last minute. Why put yourself in the position of sharing a house with roughly 60 million extra grams of carbohydrate for a week or two? I know people who put a bowl of Halloween candy out a week or two before Halloween. This is madness. Don't do it.
Coconut Butter Bread Mark II
Submitted by Dana on Sun, 2012-09-16 21:38The first Coconut Butter Bread was quite tasty, but crumbly. The chia and glucomannan add moisture and cohesiveness.
Coconut Butter Bread Mark II
1 tablespoon chia seeds
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup Coconut Butter
7 eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons glucomannan
In a custard cup, combine the chia seeds and warm water. Let them sit for half an hour.
Various Notes on My Recent Low Carb Life
Submitted by Dana on Mon, 2012-09-03 14:23I don't have a brilliant article idea, so here are some random notes:
* That Nice Boy I Married and I bought a side of grass-fed beef from our friend Scott Merritt, who raises it in Texas. Scott's main business -- selling tee shirts to gaming and science fiction fans -- was bringing him to Indianapolis anyway, so he grabbed some big coolers and brought us a metric buttload of beef. So far we've eaten two sirloins, two rib eyes, and some ground beef, and it's all wonderful -- tender and full-flavored. I'm looking forward to a winter of short ribs and pot roast!
Gelatin Again
Submitted by Dana on Sat, 2012-08-25 14:52Long-time readers here may have noticed a repeated phenomenon: Dana needing to learn the same lesson more than once.* You know, like how I went hyponatremic -- low on salt -- last summer, and then managed to go badly hypo on the Low Carb Cruise this year, despite knowing how important salt was/is.
Recipe: Swiss "Rice" Casserole
Submitted by Dana on Sun, 2012-08-19 16:30I've been working on recipes that will work for fat fasting , or, in larger portions, fit in with my aim of keeping fat, as a fraction of my calories, ultra-high. I came up with this last night, and it was superb. Great for breakfast, too, warmed up with fried eggs on top.
Omigosh, What A Breakfast!
Submitted by Dana on Sat, 2012-07-21 11:59It was a spectacularly beautiful morning here in Southern Indiana -- warm but not scorching, light breeze, crystal clear, brilliantly blue sky. That Nice Boy I Married and I went out for a walk first thing, taking our caffeine-of-choice along. (He had a car cup of coffee, I had a sports bottle of iced tea.) It was lovely.
In The Interest Of Full Disclosure...
Submitted by Dana on Thu, 2012-07-19 13:08I got basic blood work done a few weeks back, and I thought I'd share the results with you. I wanted to C&P it from the patient portal website, but I can't figure out how to do that, so I'll just tell you. I'm 53 years old, and have been eating a low carbohydrate diet for 17 years. I have, in the past several months, been deliberately increasing fat and decreasing protein as fractions of my diet, while keeping my carbs very low, generally under 20 grams per day.
My lipid panel is as follows:
Total cholesterol: 202 (Oh, nooo! It's hiiiigh!)
What's-Kicking-Around-The-Fridge Omelet
Submitted by Dana on Wed, 2012-07-18 13:22For the past three days I've had the same magnificent breakfast, and it's all because I just happened to have some stuff in the fridge:
Last Thursday night, my Toastmasters club had our annual Bash-at-the-Lake. Not only did I wind up with some leftover cucumber salad and grilled chicken -- my contributions -- but That Nice Boy I Married, unbeknownst to me, snagged a huge pile of leftover pulled pork, brought by my good friend Virginia, a native of Kentucky, where they know their pulled pork.
New Writer at CarbSmart!
Submitted by Dana on Sun, 2012-07-15 20:39Hooray! I've recruited my first low carb columnist! That makes me a really, truly Managing Editor, right? And I'm so sure that she's right for the job, too. I feel super-smart right now.
Is a "Home-Cooked" Meal Superior By Definition?
Submitted by Dana on Sun, 2012-07-15 18:35Have you seen the latest Hamburger Helper ad? It's about how life interferes with your making good nutritional choices, leading to your picking up a "big bag of greasy, deep-fried easy." It's a great line, actually.
Then, in standard advertising form, they present you with the solution to your problem: Hamburger Helper, of course! It's the quick-and-easy way to serve your family a "home-cooked meal."
Clean-the-Fridge Asian Pork Soup
Submitted by Dana on Tue, 2012-06-26 20:55Here's what I had in the fridge, needing to be used up:
The remains of a pork shoulder roast, with maybe 4-5 ounces of meat left on the bone.
The drippings from the pork, which I'd saved in a snap-top container on the grounds that they were way too tasty to throw away.
A Tupperware(tm) container of good, strong homemade broth, made from both chicken and turkey bones. Probably about 6 cups worth, but I didn't measure it.
In the fridge, but not so urgently needing to be used up were:
Two packets of traditional shirataki
Some mushrooms
Scallions
So here's what I did:
Can You Afford To Eat Low Carb?
Submitted by Dana on Fri, 2012-06-22 14:43I hear it often: "How can I afford to eat low carb? It's so expensive!" My unvarying response is "Any food that makes you fat, tired, sick, and hungry wouldn't be cheap if they were giving it away."
But is low carb food really so expensive? Where are Americans actually spending their food dollars?
Turns out they're spending it on exactly the stuff we should be whacking out of our diets. Take a look.
The Swedish "Low Carb" Study
Submitted by Dana on Sun, 2012-06-17 18:10Worried about that Swedish study "proving" a low carb diet causes high cholesterol, raising heart disease risk? Don't be.