Great Week! And a GREAT Sandwich Roll Recipe! #lowcarb

I haven't eaten anything out of the ordinary this week but it all tasted so good! Probably my favorite meal was tilapia that I fried in butter on the griddle, and served with whole green beans that I'd sauteed in a frying pan with butter and olive oil, seasoned with onion powder and sea salt, plus some cubed roasted butternut squash. Was pretty too, all those colors on the plate...and cheap! Under $10 for the 3 of us.

I've been eying yet another lowcarb "bread" recipe for a while now but never made it. I cook by gut instinct, and don't follow recipes, but knew I could do something with this one. And a couple of days ago I found a lovely muffin top pan in excellent condition at our local thrift store for 50c (I'd been wanting one for several years but couldn't justify the expense) and was looking for an opportunity to use it, so I thought I would go for it with my revised (is it revised if you change almost everything in the recipe, one way or another?) version of the above-referenced recipe.

I made these earlier this evening, and just had a fried egg, ham, and cheese sandwich on 2 of them, and I am HOOKED! They don't fall apart, they aren't sticky, and most of all they are deliciously great! I will tell you how I made them, and if you want to further revise, please feel free, and let me know about it ok?

8 oz. soft cream cheese (full fat)
3 eggs
4 drops (equal to 4 tsp sugar) liquid sucralose
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2c low carb baking mix*
1/2c wheat protein isolate**
1/2c full fat plain yogurt

I mixed the cream cheese in the mixer until it was smooth, then added the eggs one at a time and let them blend in, scraping the bowl as needed. Added the liquid sucralose with the last egg. Stopped the mixer when it had become very smooth, and added the remaining ingredients in no particular order, then mixed on low speed until blended, and on medium speed until smooth and almost glossy.

Put a glob of batter into each WELL-GREASED well of the muffin top pan, and spread it from the middle to the sides; it filled the wells only halfway. (I did try a few more full but they made a heavier sandwich roll than I care for.) Baked them in a 325 oven for 10 minutes on the middle rack. (The fuller ones I tried took 13 minutes.) They puffed up to the top of the wells. Let them cool slightly - until they pulled away from the sides and unpuffed - before removing them to a cooling rack.

I got 14 out of the batch, but had made 4 heavier ones, so I probably could have gotten 16. And I will tell you that, as much as I have bragged about the lovely bread in the breadmaker, I like this much better for a sandwich! Not sure how they'd toast, I'll probably use the lovely bread for that, but I will go back to eating sandwiches now that I have these. They are DELICIOUS!!! (NOTE: I had my sandwich on 2 thin ones and I feel like I ate 3 sandwiches - very filling, you have been warned :).)

Oh yeah, about those asterisks...
* I have Bob's Red Mill, don't much care for it but I'm trying to use it up.
** I happen to have the 5000 on hand. Don't know if/how the 8000 would work.

About 2gN per, or thereabouts. (I always tell people to do their own math, there are variables in brands for example, so don't trust anybody else's math especially if your carb count needs to be exact.)

You gotta try these!

What I 8 Today - 3/20/11

Didn't eat before church so by the time I got home I was starving. Had some tuna salad, using Dreamfield's macaroni. No recipe really, just tuna and macaroni, hard-boiled egg, mayo, a squirt of mustard, some chopped green onions, and seasonings to my own taste - and a deviled egg. Several hours later at my daughter's new apartment I had a lovely salad, some roasted chicken, lots of asparagus with butter, and a small baked potato (scooped out most of the middle, the skin is the best part anyway!) loaded with butter. Wonderful afternoon there!

After I got home and took a nap, I ate a couple of deviled eggs, and made some chocolate bark. Again, no real recipe...melted down a couple of 85% cacao bars with some coconut oil and butter, roasted and chopped some raw almonds and some coconut chips and added them in, plus a mixture of xylitol and liquid sucralose, a dash of cinnamon, a touch of salt, and some oat bran (because I love oatmeal in my bark). It is cooling now.

I'm still hungry so I will probably eat something else, not sure what yet, but if I don't I will eat too much bark tonight! Right now I'm thinking a slice of buttered toast and a couple of fried eggs on top...guess I'd better go eat it before I get so hungry I eat too much!

What I 8 Today - 3/19/11 (Plus Some General Discussion)

Today was a delicious day from beginning to end! I started my day with a grilled cheese sandwich, using bread from the lovely loaf recipe I posted yesterday, and american, swiss, and provolone cheeses. Lots of butter of course, and < 10gN for the whole meal which left me quite full so I wasn't really hungry again until suppertime.

For supper we had simple broiled chuck steak; I took the half with the most fat of course. And I made some amazingly perfect rutabaga steak fries. I sliced them into wide sticks, then fried them in olive oil and real butter, simply seasoning them with sea salt when they were done. (NOTE: I like these cooked really well, and hopefully I'll even get a few black ones in the end! A little carbon puts hair on your chest!) Total carbs for supper were about 12gN for the rutabaga but there is a wide variety of opinion when it comes to these; every source has a different carb count, so they could be anywhere from 8gN to 15gN. I just picked the number 12 as a good guess for the amount I ate. And a couple for the low carb ketchup. (see photo below)

After supper Pete dished us up some no sugar added bunny tracks ice cream. He gave me probably 2 servings, maybe a little less, so that's 40g total carbs, less 6g fiber, and there are also 14 grams of Sugar alcohols. Whether or not to count them is up to you; since I'm not really counting carbs at the moment I don't care :).

Why am I not counting carbs? Well first I am dropping weight. I still don't want to lose weight, and I still hate what it is doing to my body (I am lighter than I have been in probably over a decade, which means I have more saggy flabby hanging skin than I've ever had - UGH!), but I told my surgeon that I would lose weight. I believe that my post-surgical weight loss - common and expected after a fundoplication - had stopped about a month ago, but I could be wrong; most people continue to lose for 5-6 months from what I've read. But I'd stopped for a couple of weeks, during which I was eating a little carbier than usual...this leads me to believe that I'm losing again because I'm eating normally again.

The other reason that I'm not counting carbs is that I haven't done so after my first year of eating low carb. I only buy foods that I know aren't carby, and I prepare and eat only what I buy. If I'm eating plenty of fat, and my intake is primarily non-starchy vegetables, meat, eggs, and some dairy, with only low carb ingredients in my baking, and adding as much fat as I can stand, and I'm good. As once again evidenced by my current rate of loss. I don't keep track, but once or twice a week I step on the scale - which isn't very accurate when compared to my doctor's scale but is good for showing trends - and the needle is lower every time. Plus, by the fit of my clothes and the size of my body and the amount of saggy disgusting gross skin I've got hanging off my frame everywhere, I know that I am losing even though I have no clue what I weigh.

So that's my report for today...and some rambling too :).

That LOVELY Bread - My Tweaks

UPDATED June 16, 2011 - ^ indicates ingredient changes (mostly amounts), resulting in a consistently more beautiful loaf, and also carb count reduced by almost 25% for the loaf!

As I've posted previously, I found this recipe for bread, made it, and it was the best one I've ever tried! But of course, after the first time, I had to mess with it. When I follow a recipe at all, I never follow it exactly, and almost always add more tweaks with each successive making of it. This has been no different. I've made the bread probably a dozen times since the first, and now I have a loaf that I like the best. It isn't as spongy (although there is still some sponginess to it) as the original, and I like the texture and the flavor better. So here is my revision of that wonderful original recipe!

- 1 tsp sugar
- 3 tsp yeast
- 3/4c hot water

I sprinkle the first 2 ingredients across the bottom of my pan, then add the water fairly slowly, all around, so that it mixes as it lands, then close the lid. As the yeast is getting happy, I prepare the remaining ingredients.

Into a medium mixing bowl I whisk together

- 3/4c vital wheat gluten^
- 3/4c wheat protein Isolate^
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2/3c baking mix*^
- 1/2c ground flax

Into a smaller dish I whip together until frothy:
- 2 eggs
- 2T plain full-fat yogurt^
- 10 drops liquid sucralose

In another small dish I melt
- 2T real butter

By this time, my yeast is mixture is foamed up and singing drunken sailor songs. I gently stir in the egg mixture with a spatula, then the butter. Then I add the dry ingredients. I set the machine to 1.5# loaf, light color, basic cycle (3 hours), and start it. Then I wash up the dishes I'd used, except the spatula, and by that time it is mixed pretty well, except for a fair amount of dry ingredients around the sides. The paddle and my spatula dance as I scrape that back into the dough, then I close the lid and leave it alone to consummate the loaf.

I don't touch it again until it beeps that the mixing/rising is done, when I wash my hands and lift out the dough to remove the paddle. I pat the dough back into the pan so that it's even all around, and let it finish.

NOTE: The dough won't be as risen as it will eventually get at this point. It will continue to rise as it bakes.

Once the bread is done, I remove the pan and let it cool for about 15-20 minutes, then turn the loaf out onto a plate, where I leave it, uncovered, overnight. This isn't an essential step, but it lets the crust dry out a bit and makes it easier to cut in the morning. I get 14 slices, about 1/4-3/8" each, out of each loaf, and that lasts us about 4 days. It is fine as bread but even more wonderful as toast :).

* I don't like Bob's Red Mill baking mix very much, but I like soy flour even less, so I'm using up my BRM until it is gone. I've also used a 1/2 and 1/2 mixture of oat flour and oat bran which works just fine. I don't think I would use carbquik with it since it has so much leavening in it, but if you try it and it works, let me know ok? :)

The parts of the sum (in net):
sugar - 5g (but I won't count these in the total since the yeast eats 'em up)
yeast - 6g
vital wheat gluten - 18g^
Carbquik baking mix - 4g^
wheat protein isolate - 0g
ground flaxseed - 0g (negligible, pretty much all fiber/oils)
eggs - a little less than 2g
yogurt - negligible, let's say 1g
sucralose - 0g
butter - 0g

Sum total of the parts is about 31gN or a little less, which is a little more than 2gN per slice when cut into 14 slices.

I hope that this works in other bread makers as well as it does in mine :). It sounds complicated when I write it out so completely, but like anything else, once you get the hang of it, it goes quickly. About 10 minutes, start to finish, twice a week is a small price for me to pay to have bread as lovely as this as part of my low carb life!

A Great Food Day Today, Too! #lowcarb

My beloved Petey made us ham and cheese omelets for breakfast today, really hit the spot!

Midday meal was tilapia, oven-fried in some olive oil and butter at a high (425F) temp until crispy around the edges and tender in the center, and green salads with shrimp and ranch dressing.

Supper was some Dreamfield's spaghetti with butter, just enough low-carb pasta sauce to turn it pink, and parmesan cheese.

Really a lovely day, with simple, inexpensive, but delicious food!

Leftover Cauliflower: A Recipe

I had about 2c of leftover cauliflower with cheddar melted on it in the fridge and wanted a side dish to go with my pork. So I whipped up a couple of eggs, pulsed the cauli/cheese in the processor until it was like rice (cold cheese chops up just fine), and added "bread crumbs" (my standard crumbs are 2 parts ground porkie to 1 part parmesan from the can). Mixed in some onion and garlic powder - it had enough salt already - and let it sit so everything would come together.

With the resulting mixture I first fried patties in bacon fat by dropping it by several spoonsful into the hot fat and pressing it down with the turner, flipping them once the bottom was brown and crispy (about 4-5 minutes) to let the other side also brown and crisp up. That used up half the mixture, so I did the rest as if it was hash browns; I added a little more bacon fat to the pan, then the cauli mixture, and stirred it around every few minutes.

I personally like the patties better, but the "cauli browns" were also very good!

Meanwhile I fried up some pork cutlets I had, also in bacon fat, seasoned with just sea salt and garlic powder.

I will make sure that, when I have cauliflower from now on, I will make enough to have leftovers so that I can make these again!

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.)