I think I’m going to stop eating avocados as it seems they make me hungry. Though low carb and good for you, they might be one of those foods that I have an idiosyncratic response to.

I got the blood work back from the endocrinologist. Nothing worrisome enough to treat. Testosterone 614. A1C ‘slightly elevated’ at 5.9, fasting blood glucose 110. No mention of thyroid at all, so I suppose that nothing is wrong there either – I’m expecting the actual results in the mail this week and will review it for more detail.

Getting into ketosis was another big milestone – only took me 3 months…I do indeed suck at low carb – it’s just that I am persistent.

For the coming week I’d like to focus on:

• Continuing the exercise thing. Don’t get any more ambitious than I currently am. If I do this week exactly what I did last week, I’ve hit a home run. It’s not how many reps, on what machine, and at what weight that matters – it’s instilling a habit that becomes an unconscious part of my life that’s most important.
• Stay in ketosis. This can be tricky because the keto sticks don’t always measure ketones accurately, and sometimes too much protein can allow your body to produce enough glucose to thwart ketosis. Really, the focus is not on measurement as much as following a course of healthy low carb eating.
• Continue the calorie-counting. As much as I loathe calorie-counting and believe that it is part of a diabolical plan to make us eat processed food (explained in this post), I still feel that it a great guide to monitoring intake for a short period of time to allow one to get a better feel of what portion control looks like. Once you internalize what adequate portions are, you can drop the calorie-counting like a hot potato.
• Once again, bring my focus back to what ‘healthy eating’ is. The Atkins shakes have helped me as they do indeed satisfy my appetite and keep me feeling full and content way beyond the calories contained in them. I just don’t want to live my life dependent on processed foods. Being pragmatic, however, I don’t need to adhere to all-or-nothing thinking, and keeping these to one-a-day isn’t a big deal in the larger scheme of things if it helps me get to my target weight of 185.

Sunday, March 11, 2012 – 203.4

After my morning infusion of coffee, I had an Atkins shake at about 9:30, followed by a few leftover pepperoni from the pizza the other day. I had some kimchi, the Korean pickled vegetables about mid afternoon. I worked around the house, and exercised, and had a yogurt. I also had some roast beef wrapped in babybel cheese and then pork rinds with salsa.  I also drank a lot of water. Whenever I have this unusual thirst, I know the scale will be unkind. Something was amiss. I was a bit hyper, energetic – almost manic. Not in a bad way – just not my usual self, though.

About 5pm the bell rang and our neighbor’s son had sent over a tray of home-baked cupcakes for my daughter (they’re both 5).

I had one without thinking (Diet? What diet?) – and it was off to the races. I recall some Lindt chocolate, a slice of bread with butter and lots of port rinds with salsa.

As is usual when I do this now – I felt sick afterward. Not guilt or some emotional thing – just sick like I wanted to puke. I went to bed early. Oh boy, what’s the scale going to say tomorrow?

Total calories for the day (rough estimate): 2327. Fat: 165g, Net carbs: 92g, Protein: 117g (63/17/20%)

Monday, March 12, 2012 – 205.6

Progress! Last week’s blowout made me gain 7 pounds – this one only 2.2. Really, in the total scheme of things, one day out of the past 7, with calories still relatively low, this transgression isn’t all that much. Scale’s not happy, but I’ll recover. In general, I’m still going in the right direction. Weekends are always tough.

I awoke with numbness in my right arm this morning – notable only because this used to be a daily occurrence for me when I was fat – now it happens so rarely that it strikes me as worth noting here. Did the carbs last night have something to do with it? I have no clue.

The wife had made brisket the night before, and we also had some leftover zucchini with ham cooked in butter. I brought that for lunch and guesstimated the nutrition info. I had the shake at noon and the leftovers mid afternoon, and that left me satisfied for the day. Stopped to exercise on the way home, and cooked in the evening with the wife and kid. Hungry, I picked on stuff while they cooked – a bit of pork rinds with salsa, some kimchi, some of the sausage from the leftover soup, a can of tuna with mayo.

The wife and kid ate trout and zucchini – I was at my caloric max by then.

Total calories for the day: 1617.  Fat: 123g, Net carbs: 9g, Protein: 110g (69/4/28%)

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 – 204.0

Had a mean case of the hungries and the grumpies today. Had 2 shakes for breakfast – the first one didn’t seem to do anything. I even thought of stopping for a deli sandwich on the way in to work – I haven’t thought that in a while.

I resisted, though I did have a yogurt and 4 ounces of beef and half a stick of butter by 1pm. I had such a grump on I walked around the office building three times. I find myself looking to exercise (the pathetic amount I do) as medicine now. It helped a bit, but I still had work itself to get me all ornery again.

Came home, stopped to exercise, and it seemed tougher than yesterday. When I got home I wasn’t necessarily hungry as much as thirsty, so I grabbed a bottle of water – but before I did I tested for ketones and weighed myself. The keto stick was dark red and the weight was 202.2.

It was a perfect night for an Atkins shake and bed, as I was in no mood for anything – but my daughter felt sick, and I went to the kitchen to get her something…and all Hell broke loose. It was unconscious eating – 1/2 McDonald’s Hamburger, a leftover bit of bagel with cream cheese, then a pile of cream cheese on a piece of bread. Not satisfied – or a case of WTF setting in, I had maybe 6 lindt chocolates, 2 kit kats, and maybe 1/2 dozen of these thin almond cookies.

Now, as the LoseIt! app scans bar codes, it makes it easy to quantify this blowout.

Total calories for the day: 2450.  Fat: 158g, Net carbs: 120g, Protein: 100g (60/23/17%)

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 – 202.6

I’ve seen this happen before. Curious, isn’t it? The ‘eat candy and lose weight’ diet. While I’m happy the scale went down, I’m not trying to perfect the candy diet and I don’t believe candy is all that healthy for you – I just still can’t reckon having a relatively high-calorie, high-carb day (including candy) – and losing weight. Perhaps everyone is wrong about what brings about weight loss? Or maybe just a little statistical ‘blip’ that mean nothing. Tough to quantify when you’re an experiment of one – and a bad subject to boot.

The day actually didn’t turn out bad, I returned to my regular grumpy self (as opposed to extra-grumpy) at work, wasn’t really hungry, continued the daily exercise streak and it almost seemed I was going to go to bed with only 500 calories or so in me – 2 shakes and a can of tuna don’t add up to much. I thought that a bit low for health, even though I wasn’t hungry and had 2 hot dogs on lettuce, some pork rinds and butter and salsa, ans some asparagus.

I had mentioned ‘when hungry eat, when tired sleep’ as a goal last week – and broke it because I thought eating too little might be harmful…but is it? I’m trying to get thin – not get sick, but I have so little faith in the accurate interpretation of science surrounding nutrition and health that I wonder if it would have been totally harmless not to eat.

Total calories for the day: 1253.  Fat: 88g, Net carbs: 9g, Protein: 94g (64/5/30%)

Thursday, March 15, 2012 – 202.2

If I recall, the Ides of March wasn’t all that great a day for Caesar, either…

If you don’t mind, we’re going to have to put this day down as my 12-week plan version of a ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’. It was a very stressful day at work and while I brought healthy stuff, I needed a reward, so at lunch I went out and bought mortadella and american cheese. I feel sorry for people on strict low-calorie diets – what do they do – have an extra rice cake?

Problem was – I ate a bit much, and it made me awfully thirsty, so I had a diet soda – the first I can remember since last year. No biggie, but the appetite was not under control. I also forgot my keys in the car, which I never do – I think it reflects just how distracted and stresses I was. I’m also coming down with a cold. I exercised, but it was the hardest it’s been since the beginning. I had to drag myself there, and my self-talk that tried to talk me out of it had a hard time convincing me I couldn’t do 10 freakin’ minutes.

I had certainly eaten my fill by the time I had gotten home, hung with the kids and wife, and I went to bed, but hunger was gnawing at me, so I raided the fridge: pizza, baguette with butter, some home-made apple pie. A Lindt chocolate or 2. I also downed a liter of seltzer, which with all the carbs I ate, will slosh around in me for a few days.

When I’ve had blowouts before, when I tallied the calories, it really wasn’t all that bad. Regardless, I had too many itsy-bitsies, so I’m sure my tally is off a bit.

Summary: I fucked up – now to get over it and try again tomorrow.

One small ray of hope: my wife, who really has no need for a diet from a weight perspective, is going on the Ultramind Solution Diet to feel better – and this restricts sugar, dairy and wheat. Not a perfect overlap, but it might reduce the number of goodies I can find about the house when in the vacuum-cleaner mode.

Total calories for the day: 2,879.  Fat: 205, Net carbs: 104g, Protein: 141g (64/16/20%)

Friday, March 16, 2012 – 205.6 

The shake on the way to work, then some roast beef and butter. Early afternoon I found myself, seemingly helpless, going  to Dunkin Donuts for an extra-large coffee with cream. The thing is huge, and assuming 180 calories for the cream might be too low – and it’s not like the crack team at Dunkin Donuts uses a graduated cylinder to measure the stuff out. I also found my self – again, seemingly helpless, eating an emergency Atkins bar stowed away in the car.

My stomach not feeling at all well in the afternoon, I had another Atkins shake on the way home while wondering if anyone attempted to make a low carb White Russian with one of these by adding vodka. A passing idle thought, since I don’t drink at present.

At home I stopped to exercise and went through my routine rather quickly, though a bit sore. I ran through 2 rounds of the 3 machines rather quick – maybe too quick, as I found myself dizzy and winded for a brief spell, then finished up after a rest. I did calculate that the 70 pounds on each of the 3 machines at 10 repetitions is me hauling a little more than 1 ton each time – so I’m moving 3 tons of metal each workout.

When I got home, the wife wanted to get out of the house – she worked from home and was restless. We ended up walking the neighborhood, then took a ride for coffee for her and a walk in our nearby downtown.

At least 3 days this past week I’ve walked for at least 20-30 minutes, just because I felt like it. I think exercise leads to exercise naturally, which is perhaps why I am so conflicted about it: some people think it a moral imperative to exercise – I like to look at things I do in life in a joyful fashion. It’s all play – everything – when you approach it in the right way, and it’s a helluva less miserable and sanctimonious way to go through life.

Despite the fact I didn’t get home and settled in until after 9pm, I still went on a tear in the kitchen and had a mortadella and cheese sandwich – yes, with 2 slices bread, some pasta (it was sitting on the counter, just asking for it), some asparagus, and a huge portion – maybe 8-10 ounces – of skirt steak leftover from earlier in the week. I topped that off with the remains of the Lindt chocolate candy that I ate on my wife the other day – she can’t have it on her diet – so it’s like I was doing her a favor…right?

Total calories for the day: 2,966.  Fat: 198g, Net carbs: 85g, Protein: 175g (61/15/24%)

Saturday, March 10, 2012 – 204.0

Strange week, for a number of reasons. I started at 203.4, and ended at 204.0 – a 0.6 pound difference is insignificant. I also ate a lot, ate a little, was in ketosis – and wasn’t – and my weight stayed within a 3-pound range. If all this was simple calories in-calories out, I’d gain weight when I eat a lot of calories, and lose when I ate a few. Instead, the week shows that I ate more than I planned and lost weight – and ate less and lost weight.

When you look at it, really, it seems that nothing I do - short-term at least – matters. I can eat double the amount of calories from one day to the next and maintain my weight just fine.

Right at this moment I am wondering if I should try to go low-calorie next week or high calorie. Maybe I should try the ‘fat fast’ notion and get the fat up and eat near 3000 calories – just to see what happens. I’m toying with the idea.

As it’s the weekend after a very stressful week, it might be a good idea to tackle the ‘eating quality food’ issue, as I don’t think I really covered that this past week. Some of what I ate was OK, but I don’t consider Atkins shakes or pork rinds ‘health food’. I think they’re OK – a shake a day for convenience and the pork rinds as an occasional snack are fine – the rest should be real food.

To this end I’ve lined up the ingredients from this ‘Mexican kale recipe‘ but will substitute spinach and make a bunch – see if I can subsist on this for a number of meals this week. I’m also going to try a cauliflower pizza crust recipe one commenter suggested.

If I succeeded anywhere this week, it was in continuing the exercise habit, or the ‘practice’ of exercise. I keep relating it to meditation, and approach it in the same way – a practice, not focused on the quality, or counting, or really going anywhere with it at present. I do the same brief workout every day – and that’s it. I don’t bother to count the exercise in my calorie counter because I don’t believe that exercise helps you lose weight – and I’m not doing this: “I exercised X and burned X calories, and now I can eat the equivalent in Snackwells cookies.”

I’m not exercising to lose weight. I’m exercising to exercise. Might it help with weight loss? Might I get some muscle definition? Might it improve my metabolic rate? Might it lead to better health?

Maybe – maybe not. It’s not why I’m exercising. If I was doing it for any of these reasons and they didn’t appear on some expected schedule, I might stop exercising. It’s exactly how one should approach meditation. Does meditation help with focus, concentration, calmness? Maybe  - but that’s not why you meditate. You meditate to meditate. It’s the end in itself.

I am less happy with the goal of calorie-counting. Not because I didn’t do it, but because I did. Calorie-counting sucks, and the only reason I am doing it is as a feedback mechanism. It’s an interesting data point, and I am hoping that it will reveal info I can use. Right now it’s told me that when ‘I eat a lot’ – some times it’s not a lot. A quick look on the Internet says an average guy should eat around 2500 calories a day. My average this week – if I didn’t screw up the average – was 2,250. I also seem to eat about 60% fat without trying. As to carbs, even on a day with me eating chocolates, my carb level – 120 – is still lower than what my doctor considered a ‘low carb diet’ – 150. The average was 65 grams.

As to eating this day, as is usual for the day after a lot of carbs, I was hungry early and had an Atkins shake. I also had 1 fried egg – a leftover from the eggs I cooked my younger daughter. With the wife at the dentist, the kids and I headed to the store to get the ingredients for ‘Bangers and Mash’ – the English pub meal of sausages, mashed potatoes, onions and brown gravy that is awesomely good – but none for Daddy (hopefully) – this is for the wife and kids. I’ll stick to my concoctions.

Around noon I had some kimchi, and a bit after that I went to make a hot dog for my younger daughter, went to the kitchen and found my older daughter had left most of a hot dog before leaving with my wife for the afternoon. I offered it to my younger daughter, but her 5-year-old palate isn’t sophisticated enough for mustard yet – she’s a ketchup-on-hot-dog kind of gal.

Before I knew what happened – I ate it. WTF?!? Then it happened again. A piece of old cheesecake – gone, just like that. Then half a tub of Hagen Daz Blueberry Crumble Ice Cream my daughter picked out at our earlier shopping trip. I dutifully recorded it in my LoseIt! iPhone application. Ok…it isn’t going to be a low carb day by any stretch, but I might be able to keep the calories to a reasonable amount…

I then did some research to figure out what was going on – it seemed that I had lost control or something. A quick search turned up the answer: Alien Hand Syndrome. From the article:

Alien hand syndrome (AHS) is a rare neurological disorder that causes hand movement without the person being aware of what is happening or having control over the action. The afflicted person may sometimes reach for objects and manipulate them without wanting to do so, even to the point of having to use the healthy hand to restrain the alien hand.

I told my daughter this when I explained that I ate half her ice cream. She didn’t buy it and told me it was: “because I had no backbone.”

“That hurts.” I told her.

Seriously, though, what I found strange was that after the ice cream, I was satisfied for hours. Usually, carbs set me off for an uncontrollable hunger. This didn’t. All I had the remainder of the day was some weak coffee and half-and half, then I did have a bit of the ‘bangers & mas’h I made for the family – mostly the sausage, some of the fried onion, and maybe a tablespoon or 2 of the potatoes.

Total calories for the day: 1,743.  Fat: 118g, Net carbs: 64g, Protein: 79g (63/18/19%)

To be continued…

The name rang a bell.

I went to Lowcarber.ca, and – yes! – the same woman – a chef at The Fish House in Vancouver, Canada had, maybe a half-dozen years ago, posted a number of recipes. The site – and these recipes – are not easy to find as the site, while still active, has not really been updated in a loooong time. Don’t let the look of the site, nor the fact that there is a petition from 2008 fool you – the site is still active and a great resource.

I’ll bet these great-looking recipes are pretty hard to find if you don’t know where to look, however. Let’s see if I can help out.

The list is lifted directly from the site, but I’m not going to copy the recipes directly because, well, I think that would be wrong. I think I’ll be checking these out in the coming months.

If anyone tries these out – or has actually *been* to The Fish House, write me or leave a comment.

I came across this blog - Low Carb for Two – when Lauren, the blogger, left a comment here. This blog has only been around a few weeks, but in that time, Lauren has managed to whip up a slew of recipes, detail her successes and failures – and take a boatload of pictures of the cooking process to boot. She also has her meal plans, shopping lists, and insightful posts on low carb in general.

My biggest fear is that she’ll stop posting.

She’s using Dana Carpender’s 1001 Low Carb Recipies as her inspriation, so I hope she continues her exercise of trying her own versions of these recipes and taking copious pictures.

This is a public service as I, too, was disappointed in the book not because it isn’t a great low carb recipe book, but it doesn’t have pics.

We low carb folks need recipe ideas, and this resource she is creating is a welcome contribution.

Please visit her site and let her know there’s an audience for this.

The kid and I had planned to cook a recipe for brisket from one of the cookbooks put out by America’s Test Kitchen, a concern that does what I do, but only on a large-scale – buys lots of food and ruins a lot of it – in order to come up with the perfect recipe. We’ve tried a couple of their recipes in the past, and, by golly, they did come out good.

The problem was that the particular recipe did seem rather involved and we just didn’t find the time to pull it off last weekend. This past weekend, I decided to do something with this beautiful and expensive piece of meat, but I wasn’t going to follow their detailed recipe…I decided I’ll just give it a whirl.

My large oval crock pot seemed like an ideal cooking tool for this piece of meat. Brisket is a tough cut of meat that can be made tender through a long cooking process, then cutting the meat across the grain to eliminate any long strings. The potential for failure is large, though – if it isn’t cooked right, the meat will shred, giving you long stringy shreds that ruin it.

So, combining a few recipes I found, I came up with this recipe as well as this method. Note that while this recipe takes time, it does not take a lot of labor, so with a little planning and patience, you’ll end up with a pretty flavorful  pot full of brisket.

Ingredients:

• 1 4-5lb. brisket
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon smoked Spanish paprika (good stuff, but regular paprika should do the trick in a pinch)
• 12 oz. chopped tomatoes
• 2 large onions, chopped into large chunks
• 12oz jar of mushrooms packed in water with liquid (this exact item might prove tricky to find – feel free to substitute with something similar)
• 2 tablespoons garlic powder
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Set your large oval crock pot to low for 6 hours and add all the ingredients above except the brisket. Wash the brisket, then place in pot. It was a tight fit in a large oval crock pot, so be prepared for consternation if you try using a smaller one.

Push the meat down into the liquid so the liquid covers the meat, more or less. I had a few spots where it stuck up and I drove myself crazy trying to get it all submerged, then said: to Hell with it – the long cooking time is a great forgiver of imprecision.

Go away. Forget about the thing. Go shopping, bring the kids to whatever playdate/birthday party/art class they have. Ponder philosophically how the kids have more of a life than you do. Do laundry, go out and get coffee. Read.

At some point in the day, you’ll find yourself back in the kitchen and will be dimly aware that you were cooking something hours ago. Oh yeah – that brisket.

Grab some aluminum foil – I used 2 layers for the bottom, and take the brisket out and place it on the wrap. Place another piece on top, and wrap it up. Put it on a plate to cool.

Go away again. Putz around the house, trying to look busy for the wife so she doesn’t notice you’re trying to relax and assigns you some long-forgotten task to screw up your afternoon with.

Next time you wander into the kitchen, put the now-cooled meat in the fridge.

Go out to dinner. Make dinner, or don’t eat dinner. This brisket is not for this evening’s meal, silly – it’s for tomorrow.

At this point you might be wondering: what’s the point. Fair enough. A year ago, I would have said the same thing. This year, however, I am trying to bring more technique to cooking, and have more respect for the food I’m preparing.

Aside from sounding high-falutin’ and snooty, what does that mean? Well, for complicated reasons having to do with the effect of long cooking on the meat, if you were to cut this pretty expensive piece of meat when you took it out of the crock pot, it would shred, and all those long fibers would guarantee that if your dental work was not up to snuff, you’d spend a half-hour trying to dislodge these fibers from between your teeth. That was not  what I was going for.

What you are supposed to do is allow the meat to rest – something about this prevents it from being dry, or allows it to absorb moisture – or something. Look it up. So ‘respect for the food’ simply means having just a little understanding of what the Hell you’re doing with the ingredients you have.

So you’re going to refrigerate it overnight.

In the morning, take your brisket out of the fridge, and carefully cut it across the grain.

You’ll notice some shreds at the bottom right in the picture. I avoided the entire piece of meat being like that by letting it rest overnight.

We’re not done yet.

Take the meat and put it back in the crock pot, which you let sit out overnight. Cook on low for another 2 hours to allow the juices in the crock pot ingredients to slowly infuse into the sliced meat.

Now it’s done.

The kid made an audible and seemingly uncontrollable mmmmmm sound when she tried it – and the wife actually said to me the other night: you’ve gotten to be a pretty good cook nowadays. I thanked her for the compliment and she said: “I didn’t mean it to be a compliment.”

She doesn’t want me to get a ‘big head’, nor take on the maintenance of a ‘fragile male ego’. Bless her little heart – that’s my gal.

The family made short work of this, eating it with a side of mashed potatoes.

For us low carbers, it most certainly is something you can eat in the first phase of Atkins induction without fear of mucking things up – without the mashed potatoes, of course.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com

• A relatively small jar of Bubbies sauerkraut is $4.99. That’s a lot for about 25 cents worth of cabbage. It just bothers me
• A much larger and cheaper jar of Claussen sauerkraut contains additives ‘to preserve flavor’. I’d rather not do the preservatives – and it’s still way expensive for what is probably 50 cents worth of cabbage.
• I’d also like to be able to have my sauerkraut made from organic cabbage and avoid pesticide residues and GMOs – but that’s just me.

So I began to research making your own sauerkraut. It seemed kinda easy, only requiring cabbage, a little technique, and a little patience. I found a recipe on About.com and on Mark’s Daily Apple. I also found a link and a video for ThePerfectPickler.com which offers a nifty-looking kit that I might buy sometime in the future – but I wanted to experiment first.

Briefly, the science as I understand it. Please – if anybody reading this knows more than I do and I got it wrong, please correct me. The cabbage will ferment all by itself just by the naturally occurring bacteria on it. The fermentation process is an anaerobic process, however, so air is bad. The fermentation process, however, will create carbon dioxide gas, so there needs to be a way that gas can escape.

The problem here is that if gas can get out – air can usually get in. This problem requires some creativity on the part of putting the shredded cabbage in the jar. First, you want to keep the cabbage itself under the liquid to keep the air off of it and to ensure it ferments. With the jar open to allow air to escape, however, white mold can or will form as a film on top. This is supposedly harmless and can be skimmed off when it’s done. There’s a huge YUCK! factor to this, of course, and this, I believe, is solved by the Perfect Pickler and its unusual glass tube out the top.

The twisty glass or plastic tube (I don’t know which) can be filled with water and acts like the drain in your kitchen sink. The U in the glass will let gas out, but no air in, which I think keeps the air out, and the mold from growing.

Clever idea – but I wanted to try anyway without. So for this experiment I used:

1. 1/4 head of organic, locally grown cabbage, with one outer leaf washed and reserved (you’ll see why)
2. 1/2 teaspoon salt (which ended up being 1.5 tsp)
3. Old peanut butter jar
4. French rolling-pin – really just a flat stick
5. My mandoline – what I consider to be my most dangerous kitchen gadget

It patiently waits for me to be careless...

I first used the mandoline to shred the cabbage, being careful due to the fact that the mandoline, in order to use it, requires you to push your fingers toward a very sharp cutting edge repeatedly. That safety guard they sell it with? They don’t actually intend you to use it – it’s useless – their lawyers just make them put it in the box to defend against the lawsuits from people missing bits of fingertip due to these things.

I placed the shredded cabbage in a bowl, washed it, and drained it as best I could, then I salted it and mixed it about a bit. In one of the instructions, I think, it said to let it stand for a bit, but I don’t follow directions.

Ready to go: my French rolling-pin and peanut butter jar

Now, as the video on the perfect pickler website showed, I placed the cabbage in and pounded it with the end of the French roller:

The phrase 'pounding the cabbage' sounds risqué, doesn't it?

Once all the cabbage has been added, there is the challenge of keeping the cabbage below the level of the liquid. I borrowed a bit from the Perfect Pickler guy, but I’m lazier than him. He uses 2 layers of cabbage leaf, seemingly cut to high precision. Me – I just used the lid of the peanut butter jar to cut out 2 rounds of cabbage leaf.

Cookie-cutting, but with cabbage

This gave me 2 perfectly round cabbage-leaf  ’covers’ – these would help keep the shredded stuff under the liquid.

Well, as 'perfectly round' as one can make a cabbage leaf...

Now they went into the top of the jar to cover the shredded cabbage.

See?

The next thing was to make sure it was under pressure – pushed down below the line of the liquid. There is also the notion that the liquid will expand, and this also explains why it’s not filled to the top – to leave room for expansion.

To hold the stuff down, I found a little glass ketchup bottle – a mini size, meant for restaurants to give out to individual customers. I put water in and boiled it in the microwave to sterilize it. I knew it was sterilized when I heard a small ‘boom’ in the microwave and saw that the majority of the water had exploded out of the bottle, leaving it mostly empty.

I then put this in the jar on top of my circular leaves. Before doing so, I wiped the sides of the jar to remove the stray cabbage shred, thinking this might reduce the grossness later.

These two are going to be new best friends

Here’s the finished product, with the top only just threaded on so as to allow gasses to escape.

Ready for fermenting

I now had to find a place to put this so it will remain unmolested and at about 68 degrees. The back of my cupboard seemed to be a good place, so it went there.

The next morning, surfing about on the topic still, I noticed I made perhaps a fatal flaw – too little salt. I checked out the jar and honestly, it looked exactly like it did yesterday, and did not seem to smell of anything other than what shredded cabbage would smell like.

While less than ideal, I added another teaspoon, making the total number of teaspoons 1.5. I put the top back on and shook it, which I thought less than ideal, but the best it was going to get – I wasn’t going to take the entire thing out and remix at this point.

One week later I checked out the jar. It looked fine, actually. None of the harmless mold that I was told would form was there. I gave it a sniff – smelled like sauerkraut. I took out the little bottle holding the contents below the liquid line, wiped the inside surface of the glass above the liquid clean just in case there was any mold I couldn’t see, and stuck it in the fridge.

The next day I got up the courage to try it. I briefly thought of googling ‘death by improperly fermented cabbage’ but forged ahead and filled a small bowl with the stuff.

I ate some. Actually, pretty good. The salting was uneven due to my putting in more salt at the last-minute, so some parts seemed a bit salty, but other parts were just fine. The fermentation flavor I got was less intense than the store-bought types, but still prominent, with slightly different flavor notes, but definitely prominent, and not half-bad. I finished that cup and went back for more. Good stuff.

It’s the next day and I did not die in my sleep from improperly fermented cabbage, which encourages me to try this again. I now have some mason jars I got for $1.00 each, a technique that seems to work. I’ll have to try this again.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com

• 1 lb. grass-fed beef
• 2 yellow onions
• 12 oz. chopped tomatoes
• 1 pound frozen chopped kale
• 8 teaspoons Trader Joe’s Taco Seasoning
• 4 tablespoons butter

In a large pan I melted the butter while I haphazardly chopped the onions – it was too early for finesse. I threw the onions in and let them cook on high while I cleaned up the mess from the onions. Cleanup is part of every project, I tell my daughter, ad nauseam, and she can complete the phrase, along with a roll of her eyes, almost before I start saying it.

Parents are so lame.

Anyway, digression aside, I then threw in the beef and broke it up and let that cook until it had formed into nice-sized beef bits and had browned here and there. The addition of the butter inhibits the browning a bit because of the volume of liquid, but I just loves me my butter.

Next went in the chopped tomatoes, then the kale. I stirred these in until the kale had warmed and softened in the heat, then added the taco seasoning. I originally tried 4 teaspoons, but it wasn’t enough, so I bumped it to 8.

A few good stirs to get the seasoning infused throughout the dish, and I set the flame to low and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

The problem with lunch at work is that, like people in hospitals or on airplanes, you are in a sense, a captive audience. You gotta eat what you got in front of you. There’s no fridge stocked with goodies in case you change your mind about what you brought in the morning.

I hadn’t tasted what I made, except to adjust the seasoning, so I wasn’t sure if this was going to be something really enjoyable, or just another experiment that I never tried again.

My verdict was: Damn! This is pretty good. Kale is supposed to be good for you precisely because of its strong, bitter flavor. That makes kale a bit of a challenge for people new to the vegetable. This dish, with the taco seasonings blending with the kale, brought out all the positive flavors of the kale and mellowed the bitterness.

For those of you trying to get in or stay in ketosis as I am at the present, this didn’t cause any issues – consider this ‘Induction -Friendly’.

This one’s a keeper – I’ll have to do it again.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com

Binder clips - not just for papers anymore

This isn’t mine – I found this one over at The Fork Left Behind.

I tried this recipe and followed it to the letter – which I don’t usually do. I salted the bird and let it sit in the fridge for 3 hours, then let it sit covered on the counter top cover for another hour. Did the garlic bit and sealed it up with office binder clips (I didn’t have toothpicks). This was as *awesome* as the author described.

My wife asked why I just didn’t buy one of the roast birds at the store – and then she tasted it. My daughters loved it as well, my older one saying: “I don’t usually like chicken, but I like this chicken.”

Do yourself a favor and try this recipe – it is going to become a go-to recipe for me, certainly.

Check it out. This recipe ruined the notion of a store-bought roast chicken forever.

UPDATE: I asked the blog author if I could post the recipe verbatim here, and she generously agreed. Please don’t make that an excuse not to visit her blog – she’s got some interesting things cooking that are low carb-friendly – and some interesting posts as well.

Crispy Garlicky Roasted Chicken

•  One 3-4lb chicken
• 1.5 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 bulb of garlic, cloves separated but left unpeeled

1. Salt and pepper chicken as soon as you think of roasting on – sometime between 2 and 24 hours before. Return salted chicken to the refrigerator.
2. Remove chicken 1 hour before ready to cook and allow to come to room temperature, more or less.
3. Preheat oven to 400F and fill cavity with garlic cloves and seal cavity closed using a toothpick.
4. Using a small* roasting pan or dish, add a little olive oil to the pan and then add the chicken breast side up. Roast 20 minutes.
5. Turn chicken breast side down and continue to roast another 20 minutes.
6. Flip chicken once more and roast breast side up for the final 20 minutes.
7. Allow chicken to rest for 20 minutes so that juices can redistribute. Remove roasted garlic from cavity and serve alongside chicken.

*It is essential to use a roasting pan or dish or even pie plate approximately the same size of your chicken. This will ensure that the juices and fat that come from the chicken don’t burn.

It is extremely important to note that my wife specifically asked me to make this. I probably have 100 different recipes here – she’s asked me to make maybe 3 or 4 of them (the kale soup is one I remember offhand).

• 5 oz. package of baby kale the wife bought on sale and I could imagine no one eating
• 5 strips of bacon leftover from some other experiment
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 small zucchini, grated
• 1/2 cup of Argentine parmesan cheese (similar in flavor to the authentic stuff but softer) – feel free to substitute here
• 6 eggs
• 1-7oz container Fage whole Fat plain Yogurt
• 4 tablespoons butter
• Salt and pepper
  

I’ve been trying to involve my daughter in cooking as I think it’s an important life-skill to be able to cook at least a little bit, and it’s also great father-daughter time together. She’s usually willing to help – as long as I chop the onions. She took the stove duty while I prepped the ingredients.

First the butter was melted, then the onions went in. As she was cooking these, I tackled the bacon. The recipe I riffed off said to microwave the bacon.

Microwave? I’ve never seen that done, at least successfully, but hey – she pulled it off – I’ll give it a try.

Thinking the stuff would splatter all over the inside of the microwave, I placed the bacon in a single layer on a dinner plate, covered the bacon with a paper towel and cooked for 6 minutes. It worked perfectly. The paper towel soaked up some of the bacon drippings, but not all of it – good – that’s going in the Quiche.

I then used a pair of kitchen scissors to cut the bacon it bits – WAY less messy than transferring them to some surface and chopping them, making every surface greasy.

In the meantime, the kid had thrown in the baby kale and it had cooked nicely. I tossed the bacon and the drippings in the pan and the kid cooked it a little more. She put in salt and pepper. The salt she estimated at about a teaspoon and a half – the pepper was fresh cracked – maybe 4 or 5 turns.

I also grabbed a small zucchini and using a box grater, grated it over the skillet, which took about a minute.

I then put the grated cheese in a deep bowl and put in the 6 eggs. My daughter and I poured the contents of the skillet into the bowl and mixed them together, then the result was poured into a well-greased 12″ circular baking dish and popped in the preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

So where’s the pictures? It came out beautiful and rose nicely, and I wish that I had the *chance* to take a picture but my family descended on in like a flock of hungry ravens, leaving only a 1/4 of the thing left. Even my younger daughter, who would choose to live on candy if she could negotiate it, enjoyed it.

I had my reservations about using the kale, but it’s flavor went well with the others – I most certainly would use it again.

With a little help like I had, the prep is low enough that this can be whipped together after work if you’re feeling energetic. I can see myself doing this as a routine with my daughter, and no one in the family apparently would object.

As to carbs, I can’t imagine each piece having more than 2 or 3 grams – and all of them the highest quality. This is a fine recipe to get into induction with.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com

• 1 large head of cauliflower
• 2 whole bunches of scallions – yes – bunches
• salt
• 4 cups of water
• pepper
• 1 cup heavy cream

In a deep cooking pot, place the chopped scallions and the chopped up cauliflower head in 4 cups of water and bring to a boil, then simmer for a half hour.

Next, get out the handy immersion blender. A quick digression: while food processors are great, unless you’re a TV chef that has some poor intern to do your dishes for you, they are a pain in the ass to clean. You can find yourself using it for 2 minutes and cleaning it for 10. The immersion blender tackles a lot of the things a food processor is used for and cleaning is a breeze – I couldn’t live without my immersion blender. Just don’t clean it while it’s plugged in!

Be patient while you blend, fishing out all the little florets that missed the blades. It will turn a nice shade of light green. If you ignored my instructions to do this in a deep pot and did it in a shallow pot, be prepared to clean scallion-encrusted cauliflower goo off your walls and stove.

Next, with the heat off, stir in the cream.

Now it’s a matter of tasting. Depending on your feelings about salt, you might want a lot or a little. I ended up putting in way more than I expected, but the outcome was awesome – it brought out the flavor without overpowering it. I also added pepper.

I let that combo simmer a bit more, just to warm the cream – not too long, maybe 5 minutes.

Nothing but cream and healthy carbs here. No reason I can see why this wouldn’t be induction-friendly.

The reviews were generally positive. Given my crock pot chicken curry debacle, perhaps expectations aren’t high right now. The primary complaints were that it needing more varied seasoning – my older daughter added some additional spices to hers. That’s a philosophical issue, as one could argue I was trying to bring out the flavors of the ingedients and not tart them up with a spectrum of other flavor notes.

On another criticism I must agree: it was a bit too watery. It wasn’t bad, mind you – we just like thicker soups. I will try this again and probably add 3 cups of water rather than 4.

I could also see myself adding other flavor and texture notes in the future. Perhaps some clams and diced turnips to make a faux clam chowder? Maybe some bacon?

Sounds good to me.

I can also report that on the day after, the leftover soup has mostly disappeared, a good indication to me that the stuff I made is good.

I’ll have to try this one again

Last night I made this, it came out quite good, and I thought I would share.

This is yet another variation on what I’ve done before. It provides a meat and vegetable-filled dish similar to a chili or stew in consistency, and, covered in grated parmesan cheese, it not only awesome, but fills that hole left by foregoing both pasta and traditional pizza on a low carb diet.

This is more a technique than a hard and fast recipe. The basis of this for me is usually grass-fed ground beef. A pound of this, bought directly from the farmer, is expensive – $8.00/lb., but I also comes with a high degree of probability that the stuff is the real deal. The problem with food in general is that if you want ‘organic’, the good stuff looks pretty much like the cheap stuff, and fraud is an issue. Less so if you know the farmer himself – and see his kids at the market.

I don’t want to use this stuff in burgers – they’ll be gone in a flash, so I try to use the meat more as a flavoring.

Now for those of you who could care less about organic – the regular supermarket ground beef is just fine in this recipe.

The next part of the technique is to find the abandoned and forgotten food items – the can of whatever in the back of the cupboard, or the forgotten frozen veggies, or the middle-aged but still viable fresh veggie and give its brief existance some meaning as part of this dish.

The last part of the technique is a jar of pasta sauce. I have long searched for a pasta sauce that is low carb, organic, tasty, and cheap. The winner is Whole Foods 365 Brand Mushroom Marinara Sauce. While it has 6 grams of net carb per half cup, all of these carbs are from natural ingredients and not sugar – and since I’m on a low-carb and not a no-carb diet, I think that 3 grams of carbs from veggies and mushrooms per serving are fine – and I have also eaten this in the past during Atkins Induction and had not problem getting into or maintaining ketosis.

So – this particular time I ended up with as my ingredients:

• 2 lbs. grass-fed ground beef
• 1 jar Whole Foods 365 Organic Mushroom Marinara Sauce
• 1 can pitted olives
• 1 package of frozen asparagus
• 2 sweet onions, chopped into 1″ chunks
• 6 sun-dried tomatoes, packed dry, and cut into bits with kitchen scissors
• 2 teaspoons crushed garlic
• 4 fresh tomatoes, chopped into approx. 1″ chunks
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• oregano to taste
• cayenne pepper to taste (if desired)
• salt
• pepper
• Fresh parmesan cheese

The cooking is relatively straightforward. Melt the butter in a large skillet and place the meat in. I could have used 1 pound of beef and more veggies, but I had defrosted both and decided to make a meatier sauce. Cook the meat on high with a little salt and pepper added, breaking it up into bite-sized chunks. If you take the time to brown the meat for an extra flavor dimension, good for you – I didn’t – I just got it to the point where the bit-sized chunks were of a more or less uniform size and held together – I was in a rush as we were going shopping any minute.

Next went in the onions, which again, I tried to coat in the meat and butter flavors and cook a bit before adding more. Next up was the asparagus, which I microwaved to unfreeze. While it had a good flavor, it was wilted a bit having been frozen, and a bit stringy. As a sauce ingredient, it would be fine, but I did cut it crosswise at 1″ lengths to lessen the impact of any fibrous parts of the asparagus from ruining the dish.

The remainder of the seasonings and veggies went in then, and I let these cook together for maybe 7 minutes on high, stirring them to ensure nothing burned. This is when a nice fragrance began to come from the dish as the ingredients began to meld and cook.

The 7 or so minutes later, I poured in the jar of sauce, turned the heat to low, gave it a stir, and put the lid on. I let this simmer for an hour, with an occasional stir.

When done, I served it with large peels of parmesan cheese that I scraped off the block of cheese with a vegetable peeler. This parmesan cheese was a bit softer than the usual variety, so this worked out well and certainly grabbed the attention of the family – it apparently made for a nicer presentation, at least to them.

Alas, the kids, being anti-vegetable when it came to sauce ingredients, didn’t think much of it. To hell with them – I thought it came out great. This will get eaten, and I’ll make it again. It’s a great go-to recipe/technique.

While a little high in carbs, every carb in it is from high-quality vegetable sources – the kind you need, even on a low carb diet. And the past few days I have been going for Ketosis and showing a trace each morning – and after eating 2 bowls of this, I am still testing the same, so nothing wrong there.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com