Low Carb Confidential

Last night as I was going through the grocery store sale papers in preparation for this week’s shopping trip, it struck me just how simplified my life has become since going low carb. 

One of my favorite things to do is shop.  Whether for food, or electronic gear, or something someone asked me to find a good deal on for them, it’s the thrill of the hunt that gets me every time.  Years ago, when I took over the task of doing the grocery shopping for my wife and myself each week, I learned that the best way to get the most out of our food budget was to “cherry pick,” that is, to take advantage of the best advertised deals at each of several local stores rather than shop one store exclusively.  Many people don’t want to spend the extra time it takes to scrutinize the weekly ads, figure out where to get what, and then make stops at more than one place.  For me, it’s a game; clip the coupons, find the best prices, plot out the route, bring home the spoils.

It was more of a big deal years back when the world was our oyster, food-wise.  Not much was out of bounds, and there was so much to choose from.  Going through the sale papers required a sharp eye, good memory, and the analytical skills of a financial planner.  When other shoppers were, for example, buying boxed potato side dishes for $1.39, I was stocking up on the 99 cent sales and getting dollars off with coupons to boot.  It seems like a small victory perhaps, but you add them all up and they amount to a substantial savings each week. 

How things have changed.  Most of the pictures of items in the ads get glossed over now as “not applicable.”  One chain’s weekly circular is very quick to go through since it now mostly consists of things like meal ideas, recipes, home furnishings, and overpriced high-end food items.  The other chains’ ads require more careful examination, but they are still easier to go through than in the past.  What catches my eye now is meat, poultry, seafood, certain vegetables and fruits, and staple items.

Here’s an example of what I would have been interested in before 2003, and now ignore: ice cream, frozen dinners, boxed pasta salad mix, orange juice, cookies, baked goods, french fries, frozen pizza, frozen waffles and pancakes, pie, garlic toast, yogurt, margarine, milk, chicken nuggets, pasta, canned fruit, rice, sugar, flour, cereal, brownie mix, beans, potato chips, snacks, crackers, fresh corn, grapes, pineapple, bananas, potatoes, apples, oranges, turnovers.  Wow.  I just breeze through that sale paper and hit the high points: Porterhouse steak for $6 a pound, bagged salad BOGO (Buy One Get One free), split chicken breast for $1 a pound, broccoli for 99 cents a pound, etc.

Not that there aren’t low carb versions of some of the above that we consume, but sales on those items are few and far between.  This week there is a sale on Breyer’s Carb Smart ice cream bars at one store, so there’s a few cartons that will go in the freezer.  Dannon, the only low carb yogurt maker I’m aware of, still makes their Carb and Sugar Control  version that I can get in one of two flavors still offered at one store.  Calorie Countdown  dairy beverage is still made by Hood and still available in the fat-free version at that same supermarket as the yogurt.  We rely on Dreamfields pasta (5 digestible grams of carbohydrates per serving) to be able to enjoy the splendors of Italian eating, as long as we’re willing to spend the money necessary to pair it with a low carb sauce (check out the net carbs in most of the popular brands and then look at the expensive ones, you’ll be stunned).

So what does a trip to the store entail now?  There are only a few fruit and vegetable offerings that need to be considered.  I know where I’m going to be buying the meat and seafood based on the sales.  Where I spend my time lollygagging now is the cheese department; as I’ve said before, this is the low-carber’s candy store.  A couple containers of parmesan crisps, a half pound of good prosciutto, butter, fresh eggs, frozen omelets, low-carb frozen entrees, and whatever cleaning supplies and other staple items I’ve planned for because of sales and coupons.

We had a departmental meeting at the office during the week; being a working meeting, lunch was provided.  As we waited in line at the buffet of offerings, I mentioned that my favorite part of these events was seeing just what, if anything, was available for me to eat.  As I went into “Crazy Uncle Larry” mode, some of my cohorts mentioned that they tried Atkins but couldn’t manage to get past the first two weeks.  Another said that it just didn’t seem sensible to be on a diet that excluded entire food groups. 

These issues seem to be hardships for many.  For me, it makes things so simple.  Once, long ago, it felt like I was having choices taken away from me.  Now I view it as having pressure removed from my life.  Thoreau was a big proponent of simplification:

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!  We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

With that, I take my leave of you for the while, and go to do my work: Shoppin’!  See you next time.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” - Donald Rumsfeld

We live in a time where we can pretend we know things. Before there was science, Mankind had to have some humility toward the Universe and accept that much of the world was unknowable.

Then we invented science, and it explained many things quite well - and gave us this whiz-bang world of technological marvels and medical miracles where we can reattach severed limbs and transplant hearts.

Problem is: we are confused about the limits of science to explain things, and many people - including scientists themselves - think they know things that in fact, they haven’t a clue about.

Put aside our ego-centric world view and realize the Universe and everything in it was not created for us to understand - the fact that we do understand isolated little bits - somewhat - is remarkable, but it also lead us astray into the belief that it all can be understood.

It can’t.

What can we understand? We are great at mechanics - the engineering world can apply known principles and create computers, reattach limbs, build skyscrapers and bridges - and be pretty good at it. There’s some rules for dealing with the unknown - in engineering, for example, if you are building a bridge to carry a load of 1000 tons, you might double that just to be sure.

Things begin to get murky as we get more into the softer sciences. Our own biochemical processes are a great example.

When you really truly understand how little can be known, the first reaction is to despair - what am I to believe in?

But if you push through this, you come to the realization that the only thing to believe in comes from inside you.

This can be useful in all aspects of your life, but in low carb, it is applied through your experiences. Is low carb healthy for you? Doesn’t matter what the research says - it might or might not be true - or it might not be true for you. How do you feel? How is your bloodwork? Losing weight?

I mention this because I read a scientific paper titled: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False by John P. A. Ioannidis. It’s a tough read - you might want to check out this link or this link for some translations of what he’s talking about.

We low carbers might feel a bit alone in the world, but maybe it’s because we know we have to question everything - we have to think, and thinking is something most people avoid as much as possible.

If you’ve ever heard the expression, “The muse has left me,” you probably heard a writer saying it.  That’s the way I’ve felt the last week or so, and is a crutch of an excuse for neglecting to post anything for many days.  Maybe I needed a break, a vacation of sorts, like LCC’s mental detox week.  He himself cautioned me to save ideas in a draft bank against the scourge of writer’s block, but I insisted on burning the low carb post candle at both ends.  Now I don’t feel like I have anything left to say.  But I’m also probably expecting too much from myself (comparing me to Hemingway doesn’t help, L), so here’s a little something that may get the juices going again.

To tell the truth, I haven’t felt much like a low-carb poster boy (no pun intended) lately.  While I was reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, I was fired up like an evangelist at a Saturday night rally, thumping my bible and ready to smack the wisdom of lords Atkins and Taubes into my congregation with force if need be.  I’m not to the point I feel I’m “losing my religion,” but I get the sense I’ve wandered from the flock.  No, I haven’t broken any “rules.”  Although I stopped maintaining a food log, calorie and carb-wise I’m probably taking in about what I was when I was recording everything.  But I’m gaining weight.  Despite the health advantages, low carb is supposed to help you lose weight, not gain it.

I wish I could find a way to put up a picture of my weight graph here so you could see the trends I’ve gone through since the beginning of the year.  My initial three week success was followed by a six week stall, to which I responded with the one month alcohol abstinence experiment.  There was an obvious decline in my weight during that four week period, which should have convinced me to continue on that course.  Instead, I talked myself into believing that I could keep the genie under control.  This is akin to a twenty-year smoker quitting for a month and then thinking he or she could enjoy one cigarette a day without a problem.  If anything, absence made the imbiber grow fonder, and it’s possible I was now drinking a bit more than before.  There’s no mistaking what the graph line has been saying for the past five weeks: let’s put it this way, if I were a company and this was my stock value, my shareholders would be very, VERY happy.  But I’m not a company, and I’m not happy about it.  When you have something staring you in the face and you have the ability to make a choice, there’s nothing left to do except crap or get off the pot.  I pick crap.

That being said, I’ll drop a post every now and then to keep those interested parties informed as to what’s happening, one way or the other.  I say this because some of the most-read posts on this blog have to do with alcohol and how it impacts low-carb dieting.  Though her weight doesn’t ever seem to be affected by her martini and wine consumption, Mrs.  Megamas has committed to join me this time as a measure of support, and I think she may be regretting that decision somewhat in these first couple days.  We’ll see.

Back to my thought on wandering from the flock:
Last night, I went out to dinner with my daughter, Young Megamas (hereafter referred to as “YM”).  She first suggested a new sushi joint around the corner from her house, and I used to love sushi, but I nixed because of the rice and all that, not to mention she said it’s so popular that it’s like trying to get into a nightclub.  I was being “Crazy Uncle Larry” again, to quote LCC.  YM seemed to recall that another nearby chain, Uno’s, had an extensive menu with low carb offerings listed on the menu, so we went there.  Maybe she was remembering this from a time when quite a few restaurants were trying to attract (or appease) the growing low carb community, because there was nothing on the menu I saw that was written in Atkins-ese.  We sat at the bar waiting for a table, she with her Blue Moon draft, I with a bottle of Mich Ultra, and she described the latest weight-control routine she and her mother were embracing: the “No S” diet. 

From a website advocating this scheme, the description is as follows:

There are just three rules and one exception:

• No Snacks
• No Sweets
• No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”

As YM chattered on about how easy it was, so much easier than Weight Watchers, for example, I listened as I’ve listened before while she described the myriad diets she’d been on.  Her best effort was WW, having lost 56 pounds; when I asked how much she regained (the almost inevitable result), she said she put back on over 30, but that’s still an accomplishment.  This “No S” diet, she said, could be the right one for her.  If she wants a milkshake, for example, she can have one on a Saturday or Sunday.  I continued to listen after we moved to a table and she dug into her Greek panini sandwich and side of mashed potatoes (I opted for the grilled chicken Caesar salad with anchovies but tossed the croutons overboard).  When I was able, I tried to interject some wisdom about carbohydrates, and insulin, and how the body reacts when a rush of carbs is forced into it.  Sadly, my descriptions sounded watered-down; there was no fire as when I was in the thick of reading my “bible” and pouncing on evil carbohydrate in all its forms, denouncing the devil insulin for what it was.  My verve was gone.  I was being met with the responses typically reserved for Crazy Uncle Larry in order to calm him down without really giving in (”Well, everything in moderation is probably the best thing;” “Everyone has to find what works for them;”), and I wasn’t coming back with anything meaningful.

So maybe it’s time to bone up on Taubes again, and make notes like I said I would.  The book is in my PDA, so going through it a second time can be done anywhere I can spare a little time.  I always used to wonder why so many people read the book actually called The Bible over and over and over.  I guess if you’re trying to convince someone else (or yourself) that what you believe in is so, you’d better be able to walk the walk AND talk the talk.

Briefly, rather than comment-reply to those posts of LCC’s in recent days, here’s my take on them:

• Crazy Uncle Larry - So true, but I don’t think I came on board the LC wagon because I’m a contrarian.  As far as the grumpiness factor goes, if anything, I’m less grumpy than I used to be.  That could be an effect of the alcohol, though; it was suggested to me by a therapist many years ago that I may be in a continually “medicated” state.  By the way, I answered all the test questions as “YES.”  Larry has left the building.
• Pickled Eggs - No, no, no, you don’t pickle them in a jar of pickle juice!  This is one of my wife’s old favorites, she used to make them once in a while when we were first together, maybe it’s time again.  She suggests you Google for a recipe, but basically it’s hard boiled eggs, vinegar (white or cider depending on your taste), pickling spices, and you can also put in cooked beets which turns the eggs a lovely shade of purple.  Yes, the longer you leave them to pickle, the more petrified they get.  We once had a couple left over in the fridge that we’d forgotten about for ages, and when I went to eat one, it was like a piece of wood.  Made properly, these are a delight, so give it another go, LCC.
• Dry Rubbed Ribs - Here’s another of Mrs. M’s specialties, but here’s how she does it: she mixes a rub concoction that she likes (located on the internet of course) and rubs the rack prior to cutting, wraps it in plastic wrap, and puts it in the fridge overnight.  The next day, early in the afternoon, we fire up the grill and brown the rack on both sides.  Then they get cut apart, put in a baking dish and covered with the lowest carb barbecue sauce we can find, which for us is Dinosaur brand.  Into the oven until they finish cooking, and let me tell you, I’ve never tasted better ribs ANYWHERE.  Serve with low carb coleslaw and you’ll swear you’ve died and gone to heaven.

All the members of the Low Carb Confidental Taste Panel love PF Changs Northern Style Ribs. These are a dry rubbed ribs - no gooey BBQ sauce here. We wanted to try and create this at home, but I couldn’t find a recipe that even claimed to be close to their recipe.

I decided to make up my own, based on what I had read about other dry rub recipes, and with the spices I had on-hand.

• 1 rack pork ribs (about 12-14 ribs)
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp granulated Splenda
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp white pepper
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup water

Preheat oven to 325. Mix all the dry ingredients together. In a large mixing bowl, place the cut ribs (yeah - cut the ribs apart), pour over the top 3/4 of the dry rub, then mix. Get the darn stuff under your fingernails - this is a messy process, but you want to coat these ribs well.

Now, in a baking pan, place a piece of tinfoil large enough so that there will be space along the edges - we’re going to make a tinfoil bag of sorts, so be sure to have ample edge all around when you put the ribs on the tinfoil. Curl the edges up - you need this tinfoil to hold the water you are going to add. Then coat the top of the ribs with the olive oil and place a layer of tinfoil on top and seal the edges together as best you can - you want the water to steam cook the ribs.

Cook for 2 hours.

The result?

Well, it sounded like a good idea, I suppose…

The flavor was good, but by no means were they ‘dry’ - perhaps the tinfoil bag wasn’t necessary.

Oh well.

This was over 3 months in the making. I stumbled across the notion of making an old fashioned pickled egg - I had heard that these ued to be a staple in bars in the early part of the last century, which somehow conjured up romantic images of simpler times.

It’s got to be good.

THE EXPERIMENT: As is usual, I threw caution to the wind and decided that:

• I like pickles
• I like eggs

Why not combine them both?

I had a jar of Calussen pickles that was almost finished. Only 2 pickles, but a lot of the brine the pickles float in. So I boiled up some hard boiled eggs, peeled them, tossed them in, and into the fridge they went.

This was January 15th.

Fast forward to April 15 - three months later. Except for an attempt by my wife to throw them away, they remained untouched in the back of the fridge. 

Out they came, and with the anticipation that comes from seeing the result of a 3 month experiment, I cracked the top, took out an egg and took a bite.

THE VERDICT: Bleech! The white of the egg had become hard, losing the texture that I didn’t know how much I liked until I bit into this thing. The process had also increased the flaky texture of the yolk, which also was an accentuation of a characteristic of a hard-boiled egg I don’t like.

Lastly, there was a hint of sweet to the thing that did not go well at all with the egg flavor.

I had created a culinary Frankenstein.

Into the trash they went. I knew not to bother giving them to the dog - she’s too smart.

Do you think of yourself as a crackpot, dear reader?

The survey that I put up 2 weeks ago shows that a lot of you have been on low carb for a while - and you’ve lost weight doing it. And part of the reason you visit the site is to hang out with other folks who are doing some sort of low carb diet.

I’ve been maintaining this blog for about a year now, and had little clue why people would read my drivel (I’m not including Megamas - the Hemingway of Low Carb - in this characterization). From the survey it seems that many of you enjoy the camaraderie - that there are other souls out there that understand.

What that must mean is that you’re not getting a lot of support from those around you. When you tear in to a greasy burger, but ask for it without the bun, you get that look, usually reserved for that crazy uncle Larry that you have to invite to Thanksgiving because he’s family.

Every family has a crazy uncle Larry

When you get that look, you have become crazy uncle Larry. You are the family crackpot.

Let’s face it: the conventional message to anyone who thinks about nutrition and health is that a low fat diet is the way to go, and fat, especially the modern bugaboo of saturated fat, will cause you to swell up like a liferaft and cause your arteries to clog up like a bathroom sink with a hairball.

Try to tell them that there is no direct proof that dietary cholesterol leads to serum cholesterol, and you’re uncle Larry.

This leads me to another thought: are we low carb adherents here because we are naturally contrarians, or have we become contrarians because of low carb? It’s the chicken/egg problem: some of us might have been attracted to low carb precisely because most people think it’s crazy.

And here’s yet another thought: one study I recently read mentioned that a ketogenic diet made people a lot more grumpy than a non-ketogenic low carb diet. Might going on a low carb diet cause a personality change? Especially for those of us who tough it out and stick to a low carb diet long-term - does it change us in mind as well as in body?

As crackpots go, we low carbers aren’t in the same league as this fellow who thinks cutting a hole in his skull has made him smarter, but we do stand out in a crowd, especially if we are at an event where food is being served - then it’s hard to hide.

Here’s some questions to ask yourself to see if you’ve become uncle Larry:

1. When I meet new people I usually mention that I live a low carb lifestyle.
2. When I see someone eating donuts or cake, I make a comment about blood sugar, insulin, or the production of tryglycerides.
3. Some of the things I cook scare family members.
4. I tend to correct people when they talk about saturated fat being bad for them.
5. I annoy servers at resturants by asking them obscure questions about how my food is prepared.
6. When asked to bring food to a gathering, it’s always low carb.
7. I always mention that the food I brought is low carb.
8. I try to convince people on low fat diets that they are wasting their time and ruining their health.
9. I feel guilty eating an orange.
10. I tend to use the word Splenda a lot.
11. I think everybody else is nuts - I’m the one who has the facts straight. 

If you answered ‘yes’ to at least 3 questions, you are compared to uncle Larry.

If you answered ‘yes’ to 4 to 7 questions, you are uncle Larry.

If you answered ‘yes’ to more than 7 questions, you scare uncle Larry.

When we last left our hero (that’s me), he was at the end of a one month experiment trying to determine to what extent his drinking habit had sabotaged his effort to lose weight after returning to a very low carb regimen.  After abstaining from his routine two or three martinis per evening for four weeks, he’d lost about another five pounds from his two-month-long standstill for a total of about 15 since the beginning of 2008.  But what would he do now that the experiment was over and seemed successful?  Let’s tune in…

“Dry gin martini, please, shaken, and three olives.”

It was supposed to be a small martini nightly, and just one.  That lasted a week.  Then it was two small ones.  The problem with small martinis is that since they’re so small, you often want just one more.  I kept track of food intake and calorie counts for two weeks following the end of the experiment, and noted that where my daily calories on abstinence averaged just under 2000, in the weeks afterward they averaged about 2700 (the 700 calorie increase is invariably from the alcohol).  On seven of those fourteen days my net carbs ranged between 25 and 35 grams instead of 20 or less.

In the four weeks following the experiment, I’ve watched my weight chart graph line sawtooth back up to the point that I’ve regained the five pounds lost during abstinence.  Instead of being at a 25 pound loss as I was on this day of the diet in 2003, I am barely down 10 and struggling to hang on to that.  In 2003, I had already been into Phase 2 of Atkins for some time, and this time around I am still basically in induction.  I’ve had no fruit since the beginning of the year, nor cereal, nor low-carb milk, and only a few spoonfuls of low-carb yogurt.  Except for three or four slices of low carb bread and several low carb tortillas, I’ve had no baked goods for four months.  I’ve cut out the processed deli meats like salami, opting instead for prosciutto.  Breakfasts typically consist of eggs, either in commercially-made omelet form or fresh with either sausage or bacon.  Vegetables that are served with a meat course are always low carb, and only a small serving.  I had been overdoing it for a couple weeks on sugar-free chocolates and nuts, but I cut those back this week.  I’ve been making smaller and smaller lunches, sometimes having just a couple ounces of hard cheese.  For a friend’s birthday party last weekend, we made spinach-artichoke dip, and I brought pork rinds for myself to enjoy with it.  Still the pounds inched back.

Not much of a morale-booster of a post, is it?  Of course, we all make our own conscious decisions about what’s important to us.  I still feel good that I’m eating low carb for the health aspects of the diet, but I want to lose another 20 pounds or more.  To do it, it should be clear to me by now that I need to put the bottles away for a while, and not just for a few weeks.  So which wins out, my need for “relaxation” or my wish to be thinner?

See you in the next chapter.

While LCC is outside getting his vitamin D and clearing out the electronic cobwebs, I’ll take a stab at entertaining our visitors who, by their presence, obviously need their fix.  This is a low carb blog, but some people turn up here for a variety of reasons, one of which is to be entertained in some manner.

I’ve read about this “week without stuff” (see the previous post) before, and on the surface, it sounds like a good idea.  Giving up anything for a while helps you appreciate it more.  If you’ve ever been in a situation where you didn’t have access to indoor plumbing and hot water for any appreciable time, you know how much you have to be thankful for with every flush and every time that heated spray drenches you.

Does “doing without” decrease our dependency?  In some cases, yes.  During the Writer’s Guild of America strike that ended recently, our choices of entertainment were drastically curtailed.  More than a few critics suggested that this extensive period without the television programs we had become accustomed to would change how a lot of us spent our time when these shows returned.  I had assumed, during that media dry spell, that I would wind up finding something to watch, even if just reruns.  Oddly, I found other things to do instead of sit in front of the television.  Now that my regular favorites are back, they get recorded on the new DVR we have and I’m building up a backlog of things I think I want to see that just don’t seem important enough to find time to sit down and watch.  Mrs. Megamas watches much more TV than I do, and has her own favorites in addition to the ones we both like, so the living room TV is usually tied up anyway.

Many of us are creatures of habit (I certainly am).  LCC has mentioned that if he changes something in his life, he usually replaces it with something else; this makes perfect sense, because you can’t eliminate something you were doing and then live in a vacuum during the time you used to devote to that thing.  You wind up doing something else, maybe something constructive, maybe something less distracting.  It might be reading a book, it might be writing one.  Could be gardening or exercising or meditating.

I’ve always thought of entertainment as a natural necessity of the human species.  Way back when, somebody came up with the idea of telling stories, maybe as a way to perpetuate historical events.  This involved acting, of course, and eventually, after the development of the written word, our world began to fill with all sorts of entertaining things.  Live performances were interactive events.  The advent of film, and later, electronic broadcasting, removed the audience’s ability to provide immediate feedback to the performers, reducing viewers to simple objects.  When I was a boy, I saw many a motion picture at neighborhood theaters that had been important venues for live performances years earlier.  Although we were all just watching a movie, at the end as the credits rolled, everyone would invariably break into applause unless the flick was just awful.  It was sort of our show of approval to each other that we’d enjoyed what we’d seen.  I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but at some point, we stopped applauding.  Maybe it was the realization that it didn’t make any difference; maybe we got so used to being mere objects at home in front of the small screen that it didn’t make any sense to react in front of a large one.  I’ve tried to start it off once in a while at the end of a really good movie, but nobody gets it, and I quickly settle down and plod out of the show with everyone else. 

What amazed me a few years ago happened on the first intercontinental flight my wife and I were on.  We were on our way to Italy for a vacation via an Italian airline, and the plane was loaded with natives apparently returning home from the west.  Neither of us speak Italian, so most of the conversations going on around us for the eight hours or so we were in the air went over our heads (no pun intended).  It was a pretty uneventful flight, so we were not prepared for what must be a custom in other parts of the world: as the wheels touched the ground, the entire plane broke into thunderous applause and shouts of praise obviously meant for the crew.

Where was I?  Ah yes, interaction.  So, after about a half century or so of learning how to be couch potatoes, along comes this wondrous thing called the World Wide Web.  The dead art of writing letters gets reborn as email.  People start blogs about all sorts of things, and other people read them and reply.  We still watch television, but now there’s a universe of interactive things related to what we’re watching in which we can take part if we so desire.  Want to learn a foreign language for free?  It’s on the internet.  Buy something from someone a half a world away?  Net again.  Need to find out how to fix that leaky dishwasher?  Nothin’ but net.  How about that low carb diet thing, what’s THAT all about?  Yup.  We’re interacting fools! 

So, out here in the old (or is it new?) blogosphere as they call it, if you want to entertain, inform, or inspire, you’ll find an audience.  Someone out there is reading, or listening, or watching.  And every once in awhile, I swear I hear someone clapping.

 The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you’ll be shocked at just how difficult - yet also how life-changing - a week spent unplugged can really be.

You can read more about this here. Long story short, I’m going to give it a try and give up as much of the ‘connectedness’ that infuses my life as possible for a week. It will all be there a week from now, so I won’t miss much.

For those of you who most definitely will NOT be participating, I would imagine that Megamas will probably have something for you in the week ahead.

For me, I’m posting this and putting Low Carb Confidential to bed until next Monday. It’s a nice day - I think I’ll get outside with the kids.

See ya.

As a kid, my family was not a beef stroganoff family. I don’t think my Mom ever made the stuff. I’d certainly heard the name, but had no idea what it was.

A while back I came across a recipe for beef stroganoff that used cabbage as ‘noodles’, which I thought interesting. I finally got around to trying it this past weekend. Of course, I can’t follow a recipe to save my life, so here’s what I did:

• 2 pounds ground beef
•  yellow onion
• 1/4 cup pasta sauce
• 2 tbsp ‘Better Than Bullion’ bullion
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• small head of cabbage
• sour cream
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

I fried the onions in a little olive oil until tender, then threw in the meat, bullion, garlic, and pasta sauce. I then added enough water to cover the meat, then let simmer for an hour until most of the water was gone.

While that cooked, I sliced the cabbage into thin egg-noodle-like strips and boiled that for at least a half hour in water with some salt and about a half-cup of cream. This was said to reduce the cabbage flavor a bit.

When both were done, I put some of the cabbage on a plate, covered with some of the meat, and put a healthy dollop of sour cream on top of both.

I thought the result was pretty yum. It’s been lunch for the week, and if I can eat something more than two days in a row and still enjoy it, it’s a keeper.