Last night I once again threw together a supper from stuff that was around the house. I had a big hunk of pork loin in the freezer -- just over two pounds worth. I had bought a whole pork loin on sale several months back, stuffed and roasted a piece of it, and stashed the rest in the deep freeze. Pork has a pretty limited freezer life, so I needed to do something with it before it started tasting nasty. (Even well-wrapped pork shouldn't be left in the freezer more than 4-6 months at the very outside. It develops an off-flavor that all the spices and sauces in the world cannot hide.)

When I got back from Jimmy Moore's Low Carb Cruise, I wrote about discovering new low carb snacks down south. In particular, I discovered that I much prefer "pork cracklin' strips" to the standard pork rinds.

1/4 cup of salted peanuts -- 7 grams carb, 2 grams fiber -- mixed with a few Carb Smart sugar-free chocolate chips (see ad at the left of the screen.) Yummy!

I roasted a pork picnic shoulder Saturday evening, so we've got leftover pork in the house. I also had a fresh pot of homemade chicken broth. So last night I improvised a pot of soup using leftover pork. Here's how it went:

I put some chicken broth in the pork roasting pan, and dissolved the nice brown pork drippings. Poured this into my big saucepan, and added about a quart or so of broth. Put this over medium-high heat, while I cut some leftover pork in strips -- probably between two and three cups full. Dumped that in, too.

Breakfast:

Sausage patties and fried eggs

Lunch:

A couple of leftover chicken drumsticks

Dinner:

Soup I made from leftover roast pork -- I'll post about that in a minute.

Snacks:

Sliced leftover pork
Sugar-free dark chocolate

Beverages:

Tea (both hot and iced! It's warm here!)
Sparkling water
Dry red wine

Totals: 1782 Calories; 113g Fat; 104g Protein; 17g Carbohydrate; 5g Dietary Fiber; 12 grams usable carb

My very best Valentine's Day was in 1990. That Nice Boy I Married and I had had our first date the previous October, then, due to complications that would be way too much to go into here, were not together for a few months. We got back together on January 14th, so Valentine's Day was our first "monthiversary."

Before Breakfast:

I was hungry as soon as I got up, so along with my tea I had a low carb brownie I had leftover in the freezer from the project I turned in last month.

Breakfast:

Monterey jack omelet with chunky salsa

Lunch:

Roasted chicken thigh
Coleslaw

Dinner:

Two more chicken thighs
Coleslaw
Leftover Fauxtatoes

Snacks:

Cinnamon Splenda pork rinds
Sugar free dark chocolate

Beverages:

Tea
Sparkling water
Dry red wine

Totals: 2206 Calories; 129g Fat (62.0% calories from fat); 136g Protein; 41g Carbohydrate; 12g Dietary Fiber. 29 grams usable carb

Yes, I know this is very late. There's a simple reason for this: We pay no attention to professional sports. (Well, really to sports at all; I believe That Nice Boy I Married and I are the only people in southern Indiana who don't watch the NCAA Final Four every years.) We've even been known to host a "Let's Ignore the Super Bowl" party.

As a result, I only learned this past week that tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday. Sorry!

Still, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of Super Bowl Sunday Snack Strategy.

First of all, sit far away from the chips.

Do any of you read the Ask Amy column? She's headquartered at the Chicago Tribune, but I generally read her in the online Washington Post. I usually think her advice is pretty good, but today I had to take exception:

That Nice Boy I Married and I, finding commercial air travel almost as much fun as a colonoscopy, drove to Galveston and back for the cruise. As a result, I added Arkansas to my list of states I've been in. I also discovered that southern convenience stores have snack foods that this Yankee has never seen before!

Finally! A month after Christmas, and we got down to the bone of that whopper-sized Christmas ham. (No, it did not smell bad, nor did it have mold growing on it. Promise.) It was time to make soup!

In the past (now the distant past) I would have made split pea soup from a meaty ham bone, but it's way too high carb. Even half split pea/half green bean soup put weight on me, as I wrote here a few months back. (Also was even worse than maltitol at making me socially offensive.)

So here's what I did with the bone:

Breakfast:

Frizzled leftover ham
Fried eggs

Lunch:

Hamburger patty with a little toasted onion powder

Dinner:

Shirataki Carbonara, YUM!

Snacks:
Celery
Pork rinds with cream cheese and Herbert D. Focken's Sweetened Jalapeno Bites, from 500 More Low-Carb Recipes.

Beverages:
Tea
Sparkling water
Dry red wine (this is getting boring, isn't it?)

Totals: 1965 Calories; 115g Fat; 126g Protein; 29g Carbohydrate; 6g Dietary Fiber

Embarrassing confession: I baked a 17.78 pound ham for Christmas. What's embarrassing about that, you ask? It was only me and That Nice Boy I Married for Christmas dinner. Unsurprisingly, we're just now working our way through the very end of the leftover ham. Thank heaven leftover ham keeps well.

So I was looking for something new to do with leftover ham, and found a recipe I could adapt for low carb. The decarbed version came out like this:

Shirataki Carbonara

16 ounces tofu shirataki
1/2 medium onion, sliced paper-thin
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 tablespoons butter

Breakfast:

Pepper jack omelet with chunky salsa

Lunch:

Roasted chicken leg and thigh

Dinner:

Another roasted chicken leg and thigh

Snacks:
Pumpkin seeds
Peanuts
Sugar-free dark chocolate

Beverages:
Tea
Dry red wine

Totals: 2206 Calories; 120g Fat ; 180g Protein; 27g Carbohydrate; 7g Dietary Fiber

I measured those pumpkin seeds and peanuts! They're carbier than most tree nuts, and I didn't want to go overboard. Hit the 20 gram mark exactly!

ARGH! IT HAPPENED AGAIN! A stupid freakin' article just showed up on my screen misusing the term "glycemic load!" In this case it was referring to soba noodles. NOOOO! Soba noodles have a low glycemic index -- 42 (actually lowish, but not dirt-low.) But a cup of them -- surely a reasonable serving, especially at a "health food" restaurant, where these were being touted on the menu -- has 43 grams of carbohydrate. 43 x .42 = 18, which is NOT A LOW GLYCEMIC LOAD!

Sheesh.