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I gots a new dog! He is a puggy, and his name is Dexter. He's almost three, and was being rehomed because he lived in the city, and loves to run. His family had already had one pug hit by a car, and were scared for him.

I still miss Nick something awful, but Dexter is a sweet, cuddly, licky, charming boy.

That Nice Boy I Married got up today to discover that Nick the Pug had died overnight. He had been doing so well since his last surgery, full of energy, just tearing around the place. Yesterday he asked to go out and run around the yard at least a dozen times.

About the new book, and about Dr. Rob's book: Dr. Rob doesn't use the decimal point in glycemic indices, so his glycemic loads come out 100 times the ones I'm used to. So don't freak out when you read his book, and my book with him, 'kay?

My author copies of The Glycemic Load Diet Cookbook are here! And they look great. They'll be in the bookstores and at Amazon at the end of the month.

So having explained the difference between the glycemic index and the glycemic load recently, let me explain The Glycemic Load Diet.

Of all my recipes, the one I've published the most times is Dana's No-Sugar Ketchup, which appeared in... oh, goodness, 500 Low-Carb Recipes, 500 More Low-Carb Recipes, 15 Minute Low-Carb Recipes,The Low-Carb Barbecue Book, 200 Low-Carb Slow-Cooker Recipes, and quite possibly another I'm not thinking of.

Which makes it a tad embarrassing to admit that I've improved it. I mean, I've put the old version in all those books, and now with one simple change I've really made the recipe noticeably better. It's a d'oh! moment, that's for sure.

The original goes like this...

My pal Jimmy Moore, of Livin' La Vida Low Carb, wrote to me:

I wrote a blog post today about whether a zero-carb diet for a pregnant woman is advisable to instigate a conversation and somehow it turned into a debate about why I suddenly believe in zero-carb instead of Atkins. I'm not sure how people made that leap, but I'm prepared to remedy it by doing a follow-up post asking the question, "Is a zero-carb diet healthy or not?" In it I will express what I believe about a no-carb diet--namely that it is deficient of essential nutrients, variety, and healthy ingredients humans need.

I'd like to get YOUR reaction to that question for inclusion in the blog post. Anything you send to me will be quoted in the column, so please feel free to share your specific answer to the question "Is a zero-carb diet healthy or not?" THANKS!

Is a zero-carb diet healthy?

The Pillsbury Toaster Strudel ad, where they show how their nasty, sugary sugar-and-flour blob comes with icing you squeeze on out of a packet, and therefore is much, much better than Pop Tarts? The tag line is "The one kids want to eat!"

Um... have kids been refusing to eat Pop Tarts? Which kids? Where?

And why, oh, why, does anyone want to make crappy, overpriced, health-destroying junk food more attractive to children? Shouldn't the tag line be "Because you want your children to be even fatter!"?

Ads for diet foods, especially Special K, forward the notion that a good "diet" breakfast should be 250 calories or less. I couldn't disagree more; breakfast is quite genuinely the most important meal of the day. Why shouldn't it supply a third of your daily fuel, or even more?

I have found that a big breakfast, high in protein and, yes, fat, results in my eating far less during the course of the day than a light breakfast would. Accordingly, it's a rare day I have less than three fried eggs or a two-egg omelet with some sort of yummy filling.

What with the economy doing its best impression of the Titanic, the question of the cost of real, nutritious food becomes more pressing every day. So I thought I'd share my latest score with you -- because you might just be able to duplicate it.

It is an inevitable consequence of becoming a big geek about some subject that, when marginally knowledgeable people write/speak about your area of interest, they make errors which have the mental effect of Freddy Kruger's hand running down a blackboard. For me it is the misuse of nutrition terminology.

As I've mentioned, I'm going on Jimmy Moore's Low Carb Cruise in January. I'll be teaching a class in decarbing your recipes and menus. So talk to me! If you were going along on this cruise what would you want to learn? What's your biggest low carb cooking challenge? What are you still confused about? What was the most valuable lesson you learned when you first started low carbing, something you'd pass along to newbies? Talk to me!

Hey, Gang --

Thank you all for the good thoughts, wishes, and prayers. I've been home for just over a week now, and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm moving slowly, can't drive, and am strictly limited in what I can lift, but I can get up and down without help, fix a meal, load and unload the dishwasher, that sort of thing.

Just a quick note to let you all know that Dana came through the surgery with no troubles, and is here in her hospital room watching What Not To Wear. I'd say we're well on our way back to normal! ;-) The doctor and nurses are agreed that she is doing remarkably well already. But damn, was this thing big! Makes it all the better to have it gone!

Anyway, she sends her greetings to all, and should be back online in a couple days.

--Good Old Whats-His-Face (that Nice Boy she Married)

Pasta and I parted ways a long time ago. The traditional white flour pasta is nearly devoid of vitamins and minerals, low in protein, and way too carb-heavy for me. Whole wheat pasta is modestly better, with a little more fiber and a few more nutrients, but it’s still awfully rough on my blood sugar. The low carb soy “pastas” that showed up a few years back were expensive and nasty.

As you may have gathered, I do my best to be a bargain shopper. Part of that is buying what I can at Save-A-Lot, one of those limited selection grocery stores where most stuff is the house brand, and everything is pretty cheap.

Well, I was at my local Save-A-Lot yesterday, stocking up before I go to the hospital on Wednesday, and made a happy discovery: My Save-A-Lot has started stocking Hunt's Traditional Spaghetti Sauce with No Sugar Added. Previously they only stocked the kind with sugar.