That LOVELY Bread - Again! (lovely photo) #lowcarb

I continue to make the bread about which I recently posted, usually 2 loaves a week will give us what we need for the week. I like a piece of toast every so often with lots of butter, a schmear of cream cheese, and some SF jam. Pete takes sandwiches to work for his lunch. And it makes a great grilled cheese sandwich too! This weekend I will see how it does for french toast, but I have no reason to believe it won't be excellent also!

Today I was watching Guy's Big Bite and he made a sandwich with cream cheese, bananas, and sliced strawberries, pressed it all together, dipped it in the egg/milk, and fried it on the flat top. I am thinking I would positively swoon for a sandwich like that! Only I would just do the cream cheese and berries, or even just my jam. It is something I just might try for a treat this weekend...and it will still be very low in carbs - under 10 for the entire sandwich but I will only be able to eat half at a time anyway. It is the SF syrup that would be my downfall, but I probably won't have to use it at all.

Anyway, going back to the bread that I had written about here: I had taken a photo of this perfectly beautiful loaf while it was still cooling in the bread machine pan, and I wanted to post it here. That's the only reason for this post :). Doesn't it look absolutely divine????

So...90 days Post Op, my Low Carb Diet Is...

...pretty normal. I've of course written more about that in my Nissen Fundoplication blog, but for the first 3 months I ate mostly low carb and still ate some other carby foods because many days I had to eat what I could, or what felt right, and occasionally that involved carbs.

But I'm back to normal as far as my diet goes, so I will probably start reporting what I eat, and any recipes, again. I'll just start with March 1st. Which was a carby day :). I wasn't home much, so had to eat 2 meals in restaurants. Since I still can't eat a full plateful of food, and I did make mostly good choices, the damage probably wasn't too bad :). Then yesterday I had leftovers: roasted chicken thighs, steak, and creamed spinach. Today I had half a grilled cheese sandwich (using the great bread I recently posted about), a dish of SF butter pecan ice cream, some roasted chicken breast, bacon, and green beans cooked on the stovetop in butter and olive oil, seasoned with garlic and onion powders, and garlic salt. I craved milk today, though, and drank probably 3 cups of whole milk. Still, I was probably at about 50gN for the day and that's fine with me.

So that is March so far :).

Made #Lowcarb Bread Today - YESSSSSSS!!

The basic recipe is here but of course I never follow a recipe exactly. In this case, I used Bob's Red Mill baking mix in place of the soy flour, and added 1/2 tsp of salt, plus 1 tsp of sugar.

I put the hot water, yeast, and sugar into the bread machine first, closed the lid, and let the yeast proof. Meanwhile, in a bowl I mixed all the dry ingredients. When the yeast was ready, I added the egg (beaten) and butter, then the dry ingredients, and set the machine for 1#, light loaf.

I read that someone, to avoid the apparent difficulty that many have in trying to remove the loaf from the pan, let the bread machine do most of the work, then removed the dough and baked it in her oven. I might try that the next time. Even with a nonstick breadmaker pan, and even after letting the loaf cool completely, I still had to spend several minutes trying to coax it out.

Another complain was that the bread is spongy. And that is valid, although it isn't nearly as spongy as I thought it might be. I rarely eat bread that isn't toasted since my surgery though, and it was AMAZING toasted with lots of real butter! In fact, our supper tonight was just steak and toast!

I will probably need to make a loaf of this every day. I could only get 8 slices out of it, and between toast and my husband's sandwiches that he loves, I don't know that it will last more than a day. But it is so easy that will be no problem. And at less than 20gN carbs per loaf, it is something that will want to have around anyway!

Recipe: Corn Bran Muffins! #lowcarb

Leelan (my 22MO grandson and I) just made WONDERFUL corn bran mini-muffins! They aren't exactly like corn bread but they're more corny than a typical muffin, not exactly sweet but not exactly savory either - somewhere in-between. This recipe makes 24 of them, and I've got to hurry and write it down before I forget it!

2 large eggs
1/4c heavy cream

Whip together with whisk attachment on mixer until doubled in volume.

1/4t salt
1t baking powder
1/2t baking soda
1/4c polydextrose*
1/4c almond flour
1/4c golden flax meal
1/2c corn bran*
1/4c Ideal granulated sweetener
1/4t granulated onion
1/4t granulated garlic

Blend dry ingredients in a separate bowl with a whisk, then mix into egg/cream mixture on low speed; add
1/2t vanilla extract (probably would be fine without this)
3T melted butter

Continue mixing until thoroughly blended, scraping down sides as needed.

Divide into 24 well-greased mini muffin cups, filling NO MORE THAN 2/3 of the way. These rose a lot, and the tops came off of the ones that overflowed when I was removing them from the pan. (Perhaps if you use paper muffin cups this wouldn't be an issue?)

Bake at 325 until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the biggest muffin comes out clean. In my oven, this was about 25 minutes, but I had started them at 350, then noticed the tops browning too quickly after the first 10 minutes and turned the heat back to 325.

* can be purchased at www.honeyvillegrain.com and are both staples in my cupboard - the polydextrose in sweet baked goods, and the corn bran as part of a good coating for fried chicken and fish and to dust the pan when I make pizza crusts...and now to make these lovely muffins!

Mmmm...Chocolate Cookies! ( #lowcarb )

Today my 21-month-old grandson and I made cookies. I don't measure anything but I'm fairly certain that the amounts given will be very close.

1 stick butter
1/3c xylitol
2/3c granulated splenda
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3T baking cocoa
1/4c polydextrose
2 scoops vanilla protein powder
1/2c whole oats
1/2c unsweetened coconut
1c almond flour
1/2 pkg. sugar-free chocolate chips

Beat the first 3 ingredients together until smooth and fluffy. Add next 2 ingredients and beat to blend. Add remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. Dough will be quite stiff; if it isn't, add a little more almond flour.

Drop by walnut-sized portions onto greased baking sheet, dipping spoon into water between each portion, then flatten with a fork, dipping fork into water between each portion. These will not spread, so you can put them fairly close together. Bake @ 350F until done. I used a baking stone, and they took 16 minutes. You will have to adjust your time if you are using a baking sheet.

These are a very heavy dense cookie that go really well with coffee or milk, and they are very filling. I got 52 cookies in my batch.

Lovely Supper (recipe) #lowcarb

Having some trouble with this, just too much cooked cabbage, but I WILL make this again, it was just lovely!

I made this in a great big deep electric fryer. It is really REALLY big. I could have also made it in a dutch oven, though, I think, on the stovetop.

olive oil
1c grape tomatoes
1 daikon radish, diced
2 medium yellow onions, diced
1 can chicken broth
1 can tomato paste
1# mild ground sausage
2 head napa cabbage, cut finely
sea salt to taste

Heated olive oil in the fryer, then added grape tomatoes, salted them, and stirred while they heated until they popped; removed from pan.

Added the onions and daikon to the hot pan, salted, and cooked until onions were translucent; pushed to one side, cooked the sausage in the other half, crumbling as it cooked.

Added tomato paste, stirring to coat sausage, onions, and daikon, then added the chicken broth and stirred together. Flattened out the contents of pan, then piled the cabbage on top and covered the pan; left it to cook on medium-low heat for 30 minutes, until flavors melded and cabbage got soft.

Tossed it all together and and served.

It was AMAZING!

(How am I doing on my eating, you ask? Just fine :). Back to my low carb eating, dropping weight like crazy (that side effect of my surgery won't last forever!), trying to get used to yerba mate but after my first 2 cups I had more energy than I've had in forever...also seems to decrease my appetite, I think? I'll keep trying to like it - kinda tastes like stale cigarette smoke to me but I won't give up until I'm pretty sure it's just not gonna work out between us.)

WOW! Poppy Seed Dressing! (#lowcarb link)

Grace2882 shared a recipe for Poppy Seed Dressing in her blog, I was thrilled to see it!

(and here is my comment on her blog:
I'm so excited about this! Poppy seed dressing has been my favorite ever since I first had it in the college dorm dining hall and is one of the things I have missed! Hopefully I'll be able to eat salads again and if I do I will DEFINITELY have this with it!)

The Art of Compromise #lowcarb

There are a couple of schools of thought among low carbers...well, more than a couple, but for the purpose of this post, I will mention 2: one says that if you find low carb substitutes for the carby foods you are used to, you will have greater success; the other says if you learn to do without the carby foods you are used to, you will have greater success. Obviously neither is absolutely true 100% of the time, but each is mostly true to whoever lives by it.

I started out, nearly 7 years ago, believing the latter. And did very well with it for the first year or so. Of course there were some things I felt I could not forgo completely - such as Chinese buffet restaurants - so I compromised, with a trip to one per month. Gradually I evolved to the first school of thought, and learned or created ways to have what I wanted but in a safe, non-carby way. And this is pretty much how I have lived ever since. I do still choose a carby food or meal - or even a day! - once in a while but overall, 90% of the time at least, I eat low carb equivalents to the carby foods I enjoyed before.

After my nissen fundoplication last month I knew I would have to undergo diet changes, and one of them is giving up the so-called "gassy vegetables". This includes cauliflower, which meant no more mashed "potatoes"! Cauliflower is a substitute for quite a few low carb foods, but mostly, for me, it was my mashed "potatoes".

For the first few weeks of my recovery, when I was eating very soft foods to allow my stomach to heal, I didn't think or worry about carbs. It was hard enough just getting nutrition into my 3- or 4-bite minimeals. And I wasn't eating enough food to gain weight certainly. A side effect of this surgery is weight loss, even though it isn't a WLS, so I had no worries - I just had to eat what didn't hurt me. And one of those things was mashed potatoes. I kept a box of instant because they are easy to make up just a tiny amount, and they worked so well for me that I still have some on hand. And, since I can't make the standard fauxtatoes, I have found a way to compromise on mashed potatoes.

(Let me note here that regular potatoes, mashed, are way carbier than instant.)

I haven't done the carb count - haven't actually counted my carbs in years - but here is how I am able to enjoy mashed potatoes with my meal, once or twice a week:

- 1/4c heavy cream
- 1/4c (1/2 stick) real butter
- 1/2c full-fat sour cream
- 1/2c water
Combine the above in a small casserole dish and microwave on high for 4 minutes; remove and stir until smooth.
- 2/3c instant potatoes (mine have 14gN per 1/3c) which is less than the directions on the box, don't let that throw you if you try these
- 1/2c finely shredded cheese (I've been using colby-jack)
- S&P to taste
Stir in cheese until melted; add instant potato flakes and stir until smooth; S&P to taste; return to microwave for 1 minute on high; stir one last time.

This makes 4 nice-sized servings. For the potato flake portion, that's 7gN carbs. Everything else that's in there is very low carb. I'm guessing maybe 10gN per portion. Which isn't a bad compromise at all!

Here is the disclaimer: If you believe you shouldn't consume any starches at all, then don't make this for yourself. If you are morally opposed to potato flakes, then please don't purchase them as your hard-earned cash will be supporting their continued use.

As time goes on and I am seeing that I need to alter my low carb lifestyle to fit within the limitations of my "wrap" (the affectionate pet name that most of us call our fundoplications) I am hopeful that I will be able to continue to eat as low carb as I have for so long. But if I need to get creative, I will not be afraid - I will venture forth and find new ways of doing old things. Because that's MY school of thought :).

Just a little site with some nice-looking #lowcarb recipes

I haven't seen many of these before so I thought I'd post it...

Low Carbing and My Hospital Experience #lowcarb

I mentioned that my doctor tried to keep me on a "heart healthy" diet in the hospital. All those grains and sugars (natural and otherwise) would have made me sick...but let me back up. As they took my history, both this time and when I was admitted for my surgery last month, the nurses always gave me an incredulous look both when I told them that I am not diabetic, and when I told them that I don't have cholesterol issues. I'm a middle-aged fat woman after all, how can this be?

I can tell you how it would NOT be, and that is if I were following a "heart healthy" diet!

The doctor finally consented to give me a regular diet, so I would "have more choices" (read: eat more fats!) And after that I chose real egg dishes (an omelet NOT made with fake eggs), real meats/fish, things with cheese on them, etc. What I ate isn't that important; what is important is that I was in charge of what I ate, and didn't have to choose my foods from the low-fat/high-carb menu.

Anyway, while I was in there, I had every heart and lung and blood test there is, in addition to a test to check the integrity of my wrap (the nissen fundoplication that was done on Dec. 1st) - everything was perfect...beautiful...all clear...words my doctor used.

(On a side note, the nutritional lady from the dietary dept. came up to my room at one point to ask me if I had an explanation for the 20# weight loss over the last month, or did they need to check into a possible cause? Weight loss is a side effect of the nissan fundoplication I had, as I explained to her, along with low carb eating - even though I ate some carby foods during the first couple of weeks after the operation.)

To me, this plus the fact that I AM a middle-aged fat woman without cholesterol or diabetes issues, is all due to the low carb (5-10% of my intake), high fat (75ish%), moderate protein (15-20%) diet that I have lived on for nearly 7 years, and nothing else...especially considering I DID have a "prediabetic" label stuck on me, and high triglycerides and LDL with low HDL, in the months prior to starting my lowcarb way of life.

Once again, for the bazillionth time, the low carb way of life has been vindicated.

About my "Diet"

Lots of things are going on but I will blog about those in chiachatter - I did discuss my "heart-healthy" diet with the hospitalist this morning though, and he told me that it was best. I told him that I would like him to change me to a regular diet, and without "getting into it" that I have eaten low carb for almost 7 years, and a couple days of sugar and grains wasn't going to do anything except mess up my blood sugar. He told me that he's got to advise his "heart-healthy" (ie, oatmeal with brown sugar, raisins, and skim milk for breakfast!) diet and I said I know that's what he believes and I realized I wasn't going to change his mind, but that he won't change mine either, I have lived the results of low carb eating in my own better health, so please don't make a big deal of it, just change my diet to regular so that I can choose the foods that are best for me.

He changed my diet order to regular.

(Of course, I'm still NPO until more tests this afternoon, but I will look forward to meat and cooked green beans - with butter or at least their excuse for same - for supper tonight!)

Back in the Hospital - UGH!!

I just blogged about it at my other blog, now too tired to blog here but please go there to see what's what. Not that they know yet...but it's all there...