A REMINDER

Just a reminder - this blog is now hosted at my new blogging site, www.VitaInVia.com. I no longer post here. The link provided will take you right to the main page where my blogs are listed, and you can select whichever one you want to read. The only blog I will be keeping here is My Nissen Fundoplication Experience (and that may eventually be mirrored at the new site). Please update your RSS feed or bookmarks. Thank you :).

I MADE KETCHUP!

And I made it Cheap'n'Easy too! Get the recipe and read all about it at my NEW site!

Moving Day!

I was planning to wait until Jan. 1st to move all of my blogs from blogger over to my Weebly site. Meanwhile, I have been frozen from blogging. By my own brain. Having to do things twice, or copy/paste, or decide which site to post what every time I wanted to blog. For the last 4 years, 2 months, and 1 day my brain just stops - or freezes when it is overwhelmed. And apparently all of this change has overwhelmed it because I have been unable to blog after the first few times caused a chaotic response (the "warning sign")... (Yes, I know, "but you seem so normal!" lol!)

So I decided that December 17th is as good a day as any to just do it. From now on, ALL of my blogging will be done at my new site. I will not be using blogger at all, and will eventually take the blogs down, once I finish getting my recipes copied over to Weebly. I will also archive the existing posts from here, and may make them available upon request.

I seriously need to be blogging. For a month now I approach both sites with fear and trepidation, literally, and simply can't think of what to post when I log in to either site (even though my mind is full of posts until I sit at the computer!).

Thanks for your patience. Once the logjam is gone from between my ears, the river should start flowing again! :)

#Lowcarb Boredom - Meal Ideas - Catching Up

(REMINDER this blog will be moving at the first of the year to my new site: http://www.vitainvia.com/cheapneasy-lowcarb-living.html - please make a note of it.)

Actually there isn't much catching up to do! For a week we ate cabbage soup and yogurt, with an occasional popcorn snack. But we were gone quite a bit also, so ate at restaurants several times. But almost exclusively, it was cabbage soup and yogurt until yesterday's supper.

For supper I cut a couple of pork tenderloin slices into small bites and cooked them in a frying pan in olive oil. When they were done I removed them from the pan and added a chopped onion plus a package of drained/rinsed shiritaki "rice", and let them fry up together with a little salt. When the onion was browing I added about a pound of frozen veggie mix (yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, green beans, red peppers) and a can of drained sliced mushrooms, plus some ginger (powdered) and some balsamic vinegar. Once this was all cooked together I added the meat back in to heat. The whole meal cost about $4 and was plenty for both of us.

Today for lunch I made a breakfast casserole with eggs, bacon, cheeses, and finely diced bread (a couple of Maria's sub rolls I've been making) as a crust on the bottom. Very good.

In the fridge I have a bowl of dough for ricotta gnocchi's which I will make up for supper in a little while. I actually combined recipes, because I didn't want to make up hundreds of the little things and roll them in flour and then find room in the fridge for the platter...so I made up the dough, and will drop them into boiling salted water when it's time. I plan to serve them with a creamy florentine sauce and some roasted chicken leg quarters. Since this is the first time I've tried these, I will have to let you know how they turn out.

Now that the soup is gone (but we still have about a pint of yogurt left) I will have to start actually cooking again! :)

#Lowcarb Boredom - Meal Idieas - Nov. 12-13

(REMINDER this blog will be moving at the first of the year to my new site: http://www.vitainvia.com/cheapneasy-lowcarb-living.html - please make a note of it.)

Yesterday was a one-meal day again. When we're eating adequate protein and all this fat, we just don't get hungry I guess.

Our meal was hamburgers on buns, with the remainder of the spinach from Sunday, to which I added cream cheese. Excellent meal!

Note about the buns: I used Maria's sub buns recipe that I've already linked to, and the last batch I made into 8 buns. They are about the size of hamburger buns, so are perfect for patties. We each had 2, plus the creamy spinach, and I didn't get hungry again until today.

Speaking of today...hubby got home from work this morning and made himself some hot dogs (no buns of course) so I had one of those and a thick slice of colby-jack cheese with him. Yesterday I made a gallon of yogurt, so we ate some of that today, and I made my biggest pot full of cabbage soup.

The yogurt is good and thick, not sweet of course, but no biting tartness to it, I used a gallon of whole milk mixed with a quart of heavy cream. Because my big thermos only holds a gallon, I just kept the remainder of the milk/cream mixture in the fridge for putting in our coffee. If you have never tasted homemade yogurt, you will never believe the difference between it, and boughten! They are like totally different foods, with the homemade being FAR superior. I just posted my method for yogurt at the new blog.

The soup: Browned 2# of ground beef with a large chopped onion in the bottom of a big heavy pot. When it was done I added a whole head of raw cabbage, chopped, 2 cans of diced seasoned tomatoes, a box of beef stock, a big can of tomato juice, about a tsp of garlic powder, about 2 tsp of sea salt, and some good shakes of white pepper. I covered it and let it all cook down over medium low heat. Meanwhile, I had a half-head of lovely sweet roasted cabbage that I'd done a couple of days ago and was saving for the soup. I chopped it up and added that for the last 15 minutes or so to get that beautiful sweet roasted flavor in the soup as well.

Tonight I made another batch of 8 rolls from Maria's recipe also...I'm finding that I'm making 2 batches a week. We are really loving hamburgers on buns again! Lots of fiber in 'em, so we're making sure to drink more too.

Cost-wise, it's all good too. The yogurt figures up to about $7 for the gallon. The huge pot of soup (way bigger than a dutch oven!) was just under $10. And, close as I can figure (very hard to figure out 1¼c of almond flour cost, when I take it out of a 5# bag that cost about $37 - barely makes a dent), the rolls are probably about a quarter each, or less.

Tomorrow will, no doubt, be a repeat of today when it comes to our meals, but seriously, how much more healthy could this food be? :)

Low Carb Boredom - Meal Ideas - Nov.9-11

Friday the 9th we had leftovers for lunch; supper was broiled steaks and mashed potatoes. Of course I had mostly steak, with just a small amount of potatoes, and lots of butter and sour cream.

Saturday we didn't until late afternoon, and just had one meal all day. I roasted some pork tenderloin, delicata squash, and cabbage/onions. We love that meal, so eat it often.

Today we had just one meal also, roasted chicken, cauliflower (tossed with olive oil/sea salt, then sprinkled with parmesan cheese when they were just about done, and shredded some asiago over them just before serving), and buttery spinach.

Tonight I made some of Maria's sub buns - I get 8 out of a recipe, and they're still plenty big enough for hamburgers or sandwiches - and custard since I had 3 yolks to use anyway. Here is how I did it:

The 3 yolks were in the smallest metal bowl of a 3-piece set I have. I added another whole egg, a dash of salt, 3T granulated splenda, 1/4t cinnamon, 1/2t of vanilla, and mixed it well with a whisk, then I whisked in cream until it was the right consistency - maybe 1/3c? but that's a guess. Then I put some water into the middle bowl of the set and set the small bowl into it and put it in the oven (which was on for the buns to bake anyway); it was fully set at about 20 minutes.

I roasted a huge half-head of cabbage, whole, yesterday, and will chop it up tomorrow to make a pot of cabbage soup. We love soups in the winter; today was 65 outside, tonight we're supposed to have snow, so I thought soup would be good. I'll use about a pound of ground beef, a big can of tomato juice, a box of beef stock, an onion or 2 (we love our onions!) seasonings of course...and I have some leftover spinach from today so i'll toss that in too, for color. And whatever else strikes my fancy :). Looking forward to it!

Low Carb Boredom - Meal Ideas - Nov.4-8

The week has gotten away from me! So I don't remember which day we had what. I do now that we went out to eat one day...Monday maybe? One day we had hamburgers and sweet potato medallions for lunch, then roasted pork country ribs with brussels sprouts for supper. One meal was simply Dreamfield's pasta with a simple sauce. Another meal was roasted chicken quarters with sweet potato medallions (trying to use my sweet potatoes!). Last night's supper was pork tenderloin slices browned in my big Farberware electric chicken fryer, then added chopped onions and cabbage, S&P of course, and let it all simmer in there for about an hour; the pan juices were more than adequate, although I did sprinkle some balsamic over it all for the last few minutes.

And that's about what we've been eating this week. Today we ate out at a buffet for late lunch/early supper so will probably have just a light snack this evening...popcorn or something. But Coyle's has their senior buffet for lunch on Thursdays, $5.50 for all we can eat (I don't eat that much but hubby can really pack it away - lol!) and now that we're down to one income for the winter, that will probably replace our weekly Friday night fish fry date.

#Lowcarb Boredom - Meal Ideas - Oct.30-Nov.3

Big clump of time covered in this post! But it won't be too bad actually. Because Tues., 10/30 I was gone all day, ate just one meal and that was at a Chinese Buffet.

Wed., 10/31 was also gone all day, but I took we took food with us so we wouldn't have to spend any money: Ham/cheese/lettuce/mayo sandwich on Maria's sub rolls, string cheese, cinnamon cookies (homemade), and sunflower seeds for snacks.

I was pretty miserable on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. My arthritis (spine, hips, knees, foot) was awful and I had full-body aches, vertigo, and a rotten headache. I didn't do much those days, but I can recall a couple of meals...one day we had salads with ham, tomatoes, cheese, and ranch dressing for lunch, and roasted chicken leg quarters with sweet potato medallions for supper. One day we had salads for supper, and hot dogs and hamburger (no buns) for lunch. One day we had broiled NY strips with some sort of vegetable (which one I don't recall).

So we've been eating ok, all is well, and definitely not bored with our meals.

The cookies I made for our trip on Wednesday I didn't write down how I made them, but I used mostly almond flour with some coconut flour, 4 eggs, a half-stick of butter, a lot of cinnamon, some baking powder and a spoonful of sour cream to work with it, some brown sugar sub, a few drops of liquid sucralose, and I think that's about it. They were very good, not too sweet (we don't like really sweet anymore) and wonderful with coffee!

Today I have some steaks out of the freezer thawing for supper, and plan to pan-fry some daikon and onions with it, and probably some green beans also. But that's just a guess; I may change my mind when I actually get into the kitchen! Not sure what's for lunch, am about to go into the kitchen and rustle something up :).

#Lowcarb Boredome - Meal Ideas - Oct. 27-29

Saturday the 27th we had popcorn - well-buttered (literally half a stick on mine, as usual) - for lunch. Supper was hamburgers. I made Maria's sub buns but shaped them as hamburger buns, brushed the tops with water, and sprinkled them with raw sesame seeds. They puffed up a LOT as they were baking, and the resulting hamburgers, served with fried onions and cheese, were AMAZING! I had been craving a good hamburger on a bun for a long time, and it more than satisfied me. I also made french fries from frozen (I have NO IDEA why there was a bag of frozen french fries in the bottom of my freezer!) but only ate about 4-5, myself.

Yesterday we munched on sausage and cheese slices on the way to church, and those tided us over through the afternoon until supper: roasted pork seasoned fairly heavily with seasoned salt and onion and garlic powders, with delicata squash (my favorite) with butter.

Today I was too busy to eat. Late afternoon - after 5:00 - I had a spoonful of peanut butter because I was starving. A couple of hours later I broiled a couple of steaks and cooked the bag of veggie mix I had bought (green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, carrots) quickly in a frying pan over high heat with butter and olive oil, seasoned with lots of onion and garlic powder, and sea salt.

And that's what we've been eating.

Tomorrow I will be out for lunch with my daughter; I will be too tired and painful too coo tomorrow night so it will be frozen pizza - yup, carbs. So be it :). I will eat a couple of pieces and that will be plenty, I'll be too tired to eat much anyway.

SHOPPING TRIP!!

You know I love to shop...and it's been about 7 weeks since I last did a big shopping, which I think was on September 8th - almost positive in fact. We haven't had to do any little grocery trips since then either, although of course have stopped for half'n'half when we've run out, and I did go to Bart's (produce) a couple of times and Aldi's once...but my last BIG Shopping Event was a long time ago...

Anyway, it was past due time, we had eaten our last package of meat and were down to just a couple partial bags of frozen veggies and half a box of Dreamfield's spaghetti.

And yesterday was our shopping day! I love seeking out the bargains, stopping at nearby thrift stores, lunch out, and most of all spending the whole day with my husband! We went to Steve's, my favorite meat store in the world, the Sav-a-Lot down in Harrison near Steve's (the Sav-a-Lot in our town could be renamed Spend-a-Lot and be more accurate), then on to Midland to go to Kroger's for their 10 for $10 sale, to Gordon's for the big bags of frozen vegetables, and finally to Meijer for daikon - and I was thrilled that they still had some delicata squash left! It is my favorite, and I hadn't seen any for sale anywhere since last month. I bought their last 4. We also picked up some Orville's because the last time we looked for it at Walmart they were out, and Orville's is the best of the best popcorn - half as much unpopped makes just as much popped as other brands.

We spent roughly $206. Of that, $108.89 was for meat:
- boneless pork loin @ $2.19/lb which they sliced free - I always get 3/4" slices
- 10 chicken leg quarters @ 59c/lb
- a boneless ham (without a bunch of junk in it!) for $1.99/lb
- a small slice of steelhead for $5.99/lb
- 10 polish sausages @ $1.78/lb
- about 5# of bacon @ $2.49/lb (Steve's has really wonderful fresh bacon!)
- country style pork chops for $1.49/lb
- 5# of ground beef for $2.29/lb (72/28)
- a whole NY strip loin (they sliced into 17 steaks, 3/4" each) @ $2.99/lb.
The meat averaged $2.22/lb, and it's high-quality meat too...I believe that's a great value by anybody's standards!

For fresh produce I just got the daikon, some tomatoes, some onions, a big napa cabbage, and the squashes. Frozen veggies - $28.20 - were broccoli, cauliflower, a vegetable blend, brussels sprouts, and whole green beans. They didn't have as much of a selection as some of the other GFS stores do, just one freezer section and most usually have two. But I got multiple packages.

I got mostly dairy at Kroger, so we have plenty of sour cream (YUM!) and cheeses. Plus some SF pudding mixes since the only ones we can get locally are chocolate and vanilla unless I want to pay over $1.00 for a small box of the name brand - which I most certainly do not! But I was able to get butterscotch and lemon, and only 59c for the Kroger brand.

And that was the food part of our day out shopping yesterday! I just love when I open the fridge and freezer and they're full...such a great feeling!

Low Carb Boredom - Meal Ideas - Oct. 26th

(Just a reminder that this blog will be moving to its new home at the end of this year.)

Actually, nothing to report for Friday. We were gone all day and I didn't cook at all. We went to a Chinese buffet for a late lunch/early supper (but lunch prices, just about $16 for both of us, that's $8 each for a whole day's food!) and that's all we had for the day. LOTS of shopping though...I'll write about that in another post :).

#Lowcarb Boredom - Meal Ideas - Oct. 24

(Just a reminder that this blog will be moving to its new home at the end of this year.)

Was given some ham bits and pieces today from carving a ham. We got the rind parts from the outside, and the bone. I don't do bean soup so not sure what I'll do with the bone - maybe just use it in some other kind of soup? Open for ideas.

So for lunch I just had bits of ham from the bag of pieces, dipped in dijon mustard.

Supper was chicken thighs. I had asked hubby to get some chicken thighs at the store, he bought boneless skinless - UGH! I was so disappointed, the crispy skin is the best part! Anyway, I slightly warmed (until soft) about 6 oz of full-fat cream cheese and mixed it with some horseradish mustard. After laying the 6 thighs in a baking dish I spread the cream cheese mixture across the top, then covered them with a couple of big pieces the ham rind (just for the flavor, not to eat). While that was roasting in the oven, I also roasted some broccoli; when it was starting to brown and time to turn it, I topped it with shredded cheeses - colbyjack and shredded cheddar - for the last 10 minutes or so.

I don't think I snacked on anything today - oh wait, I did have a dark chocolate square after supper - is that a snack, or dessert? Really when I eat plenty of fat and adequate protein, I don't have much of an appetite.