What's cooking?

Oy.  Neither my nor I felt like cooking tonight, so she stopped on her way home from work for fast food: for each of us a double cheeseburger, onion rings, French fries, and a salted caramel milkshake.  Now I ache.  But I think of it as stretching my stomach out for the upcoming Thanksgiving feast...

nothing wrong with indulging every once in a while!

Oy.  Neither my nor I felt like cooking tonight, so she stopped on her way home from work for fast food: for each of us a double cheeseburger, onion rings, French fries, and a salted caramel milkshake.  Now I ache.  But I think of it as stretching my stomach out for the upcoming Thanksgiving feast...

nothing wrong with indulging every once in a while!

Yes, but for me it had better be once in a long while.

That'll do it John.

We were discussing Thanksgiving Day dinner yesterday at cardiac rehab, food often comes up there, and one gent asked what the average caloric intake was for it (it has to be for the day). I'm just repeating what was said; 7000 calories.

Maybe at one time we were there, but as we age I get more pleasure in fewer things that bring back memories and that the both of us enjoy. Basically focusing on a few things. This year brings a special challenge since I now cook w/o carbs, but it'll get done and be delicious. I've been experimenting over the past few months, a little here, a little there to learn what I needed to for success. The past few years instead of a pumpkin pie I've been making pumpkin pie pudding. Again, at cardiac the discussion was desserts and specifically pie. Pumpkin was brought up (hard to do w/o carbs due to the pumpkin) and also mentioned was chocolate cream pie. Now I can do chocolate and cream in ketosis- no problem there! Making something chocolate with no carb' sweetness is easy. I immediately thought "pot de creme au chocolate", or I think that's what it's called. Think a cross between ice cream and pudding, but very rich. Unless refrigerated it will melt, so for me to call it pudding deserves 10 lashes. I ran it by the wife and she suggested just omitting dessert entirely. But now I have the bug, so maybe I'll make it for the weekend. Just because I'm in ketosis doesn't mean I don't get treats; as long as they are the right treats they're OK. The additional fat calories also slows down the weight loss and to my way of thinking that's a good thing. Fast weight loss means it'll come back on just as fast.

This is the recipe I've used in years past. Today I'd need to used unsweetened chocolate and sweeten it myself with additional no carb sweetener, probably erythritol. It's extremely easy to make.

Pot De Creme Au Chocolat

Ingredients:

1 bar 4oz.sweet cooking chocolate
2 TBLS sugar
1/4 cup light (20%) cream
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
½ tsp vanilla

Directions:

Heat chocolate, sugar, and cream over medium heat, stirring constantly until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Gradually beat into egg yolks. Stir in vanilla.

Pour into demitasse cups or other small desert dishes. Chill, if desired garnish with whipped cream.

4-6 servings.

Today I'll make the low carb bread for the dressing, and the cranberry sauce. While the grinder is out I'll grind the veggies for the dressing. Tomorrow the turkey, dressing, and yeast rolls, if the wife wants rolls, will be cooked. That's it. The dressing is heavy on the veggies (onions, celery, green pepper, parsley, pork sausage, eggs, and spices) and easily constitutes a veggie side dish. It is NOT a dry dressing.

I forgot the oyster dressing for today! Oh well...

I forgot the oyster dressing for today!  Oh well...

Bummer!

Where has my head been?

I didn't post an update on Thanksgiving dinner. I managed to cook a low carb dinner that would keep me in ketosis. A retired nurse at cardiac rehab suggested that I just go out of ketosis for the day, but I nixed that idea immediately. I wanted to make yeast rolls for the wife, but she nixed that idea. The same for dessert. I couldn't have eaten the rolls, but the dessert would have been keto and easy. But frankly we eat dessert very rarely, almost never. It's not that we don't like dessert, we do, and that's the problem. It's calories that neither of us need.

That left the main meal which was pronounced delicious by my wife. I think it's the first time she ever ate any meal that was ketogenic. Good thing I practiced various things before the day it was required.

Supposedly the average American consumes 7,000 calories on Thanksgiving Day. Clearly that wasn't us this year and hasn't been us for many years. We enjoyed the day and the meal and we weren't uncomfortably full after eating it.

I almost convinced myself to have a glass of scotch the day before, then on Thanksgiving Day decided I didn't really want one. I had a tablespoon of scotch instead. It was enough to give me the taste I enjoy, but not enough for anything else. Anything more than the first sip is wasted anyway as the taste buds are destroyed after that sip, and one is operating on the memory. A bottle of alcohol lasts a VERY long time for me now and I still enjoy my scotch.

Peach walnut crisp this evening.

Broccoli egg casserole, topped with avocado and salsa

John, you have me salivating and I just ate breakfast so it's not from hunger. Unless I miss my guess that would be Keto too.

I made it last night, ate some for lunch today.
I got the recipe from my Mom.

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Tomato Beef Barley Soup

6 cups (1420 ml) water to start.
6 beef bouillon cubes or OXO sachets, or 2 "tubs" of Knorr stock base.
Heat to dissolve OXO cubes. Alternatively, use 6 cups of prepared beef broth and omit the water and bouillon cubes.
Add:
1 @ 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes (I prefer the "no salt added" type)
1 @ 10.75 oz. can (315 g) condensed tomato soup
2 cups (220 g) shredded carrots
2 cups (300 g) shredded potatoes
1/2 cup (80 g) chopped yellow onion
1 cup (130 g) chopped celery
1/2 cup (116 g) pearl or pot barley
6 more cups (1420 g) of water
1 tbsp (15 ml) parsley flakes
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp thyme

Simmer for 1.5 hours
Meanwhile, brown 2 lbs lean grond beef or diced stew meat.
Add meat to the pot and simmer for another 1/2 hour.

It may seem a bit thin at first, but 12 hours later the barley will have expanded and will thicken it up.

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I prefer using a weigh scale in grams to measure the chopped and shredded ingredients because you can measure them before chopping or shredding. No error as a result of compressing it too much (or not enough) in a measuring cup.
As it turned out, since I had baby carrots and small potatoes, I chopped them instead of shredding them, so as to save my knuckles. It took quite a while. Maybe I should've used a mallet instead of a Santoku knife.

It's a great mid-winter recipe, but since we have cheap central AC I didn't have to wait.