• 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.

• 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

Image credit: The wonderful people at Despair.com

On Christmas Day, 2011, I ran out of nicotine lozenges. That was it. It’s over. A very expensive and annoying addiction to nicotine lozenges, started nearly 3 years ago when I got this hare-brained idea that: if people who stop smoking gain weight because they don’t have nicotine, can people lose weight if they take nicotine?

It took thousands of dollars and a nasty addiction to the stuff – including a delightful panic attack – to come to the conclusion: Nicotine lozenges will not help you lose weight. Don’t even try.

I am spelling this out because I still get traffic to the posts where I wrote about this in my enthusiastic, early trials on the stuff. While it did have an early effect of helping to stop overeating, the addictive nature of nicotine began to overshadow the endeavor as the effect on overeating diminished, leaving me with no positive effect on my weight loss – and an expensive addiction to boot.

Maybe you want to try anyway.

Like Dirty Harry, all I can say is: “do you feel lucky?” Substitute nicotine for 44 magnum in the clip that follows.

© 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

The other day, before the start of yet another meeting at work, someone brought up Dr. Oz. One person said: “I always used to think that drinking skim milk was good for you, but Dr. Oz said you should drink 2%.” It was said as a revelation, a shock.

I couldn’t help myself: “You know, fat isn’t necessarily bad for you. In fact, fat can actually help you lose weight.”

I got either nervous giggles or blank stares. I fell for it again. I shouldn’t have bothered and just kept my mouth shut. I learned long ago that while my coworkers seem to like me, those that know something about my predilection toward low carb tend to think I’m something of a loony.

I once had a very intelligent and medically-trained co-worker who knew me well professionally explain me to a new hire as we discussed diets: “You have to understand he has some peculiar notions about nutrition.”

The other day, I shoveled snow for about an hour. Not one for exercise (at least not yet – it’s a resolution for 2012), the exertion tuckered me out.  I collapsed on the bed to recuperate.

My wife, who by the way did not help with the snow and was instead laying  in bed, said: “Your way of life is poisoning you.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“The way you eat. Look at you – you’re exhausted!”

I said back: “So you’re saying that if I hadn’t gone on a low carb diet eight years ago and lost 60 pounds, and instead ate pie all those years that I would have shoveled the snow in front of our house and still had enough leftover energy to shovel out a neighbor’s house?”

“Yes.” She said, only half-facetiously.

I have been putting up with this for eight years. From everyone. My doctor, my co-workers, my friends, my older kid (indoctrinated by school as to what ‘healthy eating’ is) – even my wife, who saw me go from puffy, bloated and lethargic to slimmer and more energetic.

Even if they like and respect me, they seem to make a sort of  ’carve out’ in their heads to accommodate me, as if I was this really nice guy they know who just happened to think he had been abducted by aliens.

I have found that if I discuss low carb with some people, at times it literally makes them uncomfortable. So I’ve stopped, for the most part – and keep my thoughts to myself, to anyone interested (less than I could count on 1 hand in the past 8 years), and this blog.

Now, although this galls me to no end, I have made an uneasy peace with this.  I was already a non-conformist by nature before I went low carb, so people had already categorized me as ‘off the wide part of the bell curve’ already, so my  low carb lifestyle was only a change in degree rather than a change in kind.

I just became a little more wacky to them than before. I didn’t go from normal to wacky.

But what about people who identify with ‘normal’? I’m a pretty live-and-let-live kinda guy, and I don’t expect people to conform to my way of thinking or seeing the world. There are many people, however, that do want their friends and peers to think along the same lines as they do. They like the self-validation of being surrounded by like-minded people.

I suspect that these people have a terrible time at low carb dieting, especially an Atkins-style VLCD (Very Low Carbohydrate Diet) and ketogenic diets. If they were to go on a conventional diet, they have peers who are most likely doing the same thing. They watch their fat intake together and have lively discussions was to the relative merits of the different varieties of Snackwells cookies and Lean Cuisines.

However, if one of this pair were to go on a low carb diet, the camaraderie would disappear in a flash – they would have no common ground, no self-validation that what they are doing is the right thing – either of them – and if the low carb dieter were to assert that those Lean Cuisine frozen dinners were actually doing the other harm, they would probably cross a line in their relationship that could not be fixed until one of them came into alignment with the other.

Sadly, despite the fact that in the decade or so since the Atkins Carb Craze more and more research showing that low carb does indeed have benefits, in general, people still haven’t got the message.

Do you know how damned hard it is to find a yogurt that isn’t low-fat or no fat? It truly drives me batty.

I guarantee you - nearly every one is low fat and full of sugar

So while there have been some gains in the past decade – certainly the demonization of trans fats – for good reason – has taken hold with the general public and the food companies have responded by getting it out of a lot of products, there are still 100 products proudly labeled ‘low-fat’ compared to 1 product labeled ‘low-carb’.

So people who are comfortable in the wide part of the bell curve are going to have to deal with the social pressure of being an outsider – along with all the standard difficulties that come with a low carb diet – like finding products.

Even Gary Taubes mentioned this outsider feeling in an article he wrote for Prevention a few years ago:

 Perhaps the worst aspect of following a diet that most of your peers consider “a fad” is that you may often feel a compulsion to prove that you’re justified in doing so. This requires not just slimming down but actually living longer and remaining healthier than any of your friends. Because bad luck can be as much a factor here as genes and diet, you’re now in a delicate position, one that will last a lifetime (you hope). On the one hand, the temptation to treat your friends’ medical misfortunes as minor or even major victories is compelling, but you’ll have to keep this secret deeply hidden if you want to continue to enjoy their company. Then, of course, should anything unfortunate happen to you–”even moles in [your] front lawn,” as the New York physician Blake Donaldson, an early proponent of carbohydrate-restricted diets, noted in his 1961 memoirs–everyone will blame it on your diet.

Gary Taubes! The man has made this a career as well as his life’s work for over a decade and spent a good portion of that time doing serious research to justify his conclusions – and he still feels an outcast of sorts. Read the article in its entirety – it’s well worth it.

So…what’s the takeaway from all this?

I suppose if my hypothesis is correct that we can predict who has a better chance of succeeding on low carb and who has a better chance of failing on low carb by administering a psychological examination that tests for conformity. Doing a little research on tests of conformity brought me to The Asch Conformity Experiments.  Here’s a rendering of the test.

Participants were asked which line on the right matched the line on the left.

Easy, Right?

They were in a room with other people – all in on it with the researchers. When the group majority chose the wrong line, the actual research subject did so as well the majority of the time, meaning that a majority of people will go along with the group even if they are fully aware the group is wrong.

Do they do it to avoid conflict or because they want to conform? It doesn’t matter from our perspective – the Low Carb version of the Asch Conformity Experiment will probably see a lot of people bail not because low carb doesn’t work, but because they cannot cope with the social pressures from feeling the outcast.

Another takeaway is that we should be more generous to our brethren at the opposite end of the bell curve above – the vegans and vegetarians. Their way of life might be 180 degrees opposite of ours, but they go through many of the same issues we do in society, worrying about what is being served at some event so that they don’t go hungry for 6 hours, driving to 4 or 5 stores to find the ingredients they want – and then paying an arm and a leg for them, and having to endlessly endlessly explain their choices and their lifestyle to people who think a prefab microwaved TV dinner in plastic leaching chemicals into the food is ‘normal’.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com

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

Actually, it’s not just the good ‘ol USA that this is happening in, but the entire world.

Researchers don’t know why, exactly, so they trot this out – at least this is the summary from the reporter:

The reasons for the leveling off — like the sharp increase that preceded it — aren’t precisely clear, the papers say. Flegal and her colleagues cite the usual array of presumed factors: an expansion of the food supply, energy imbalance, the possible effect of environmental endocrine disruptors. But they say more research is needed into the factors causing the sharp rise, as well as the plateau now.

Coincidentally, 2003 coincides with the beginning of the Atkins low carb craze.

Just sayin…

This was inspired by a green chicken curry meal with coconut milk I had on vacation which was very good. I ordered it because it was something I would never order – I just wanted to try something different, and it was a wonderful mix of spicy and cool with citrus notes.

I wanted to try to come up with something using curry spices reminiscent of that vacation meal.

Silly me.

The ingredients were as follows:

• 10 chicken thighs
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon Taste of Thai Red Curry Paste
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 medium eggplant, chopped into chunks, skin left on

This was all put in a large crockpot set to high for 4 hours.

Ominously, as the hours passed and the food began to give off a cooking fragrance, it was not a good fragrance. At hour 3 I gave it a stir. It didn’t look that good, either.

At hour 4 I had some of the broth. The taste had all these off-notes, like a person playing the piano just fine in some spots, but mashing the keyboard with his fists in others.

In times like this there’s nothing left to do but start pouring on the spices. First more salt. A dash of soy sauce. Another taste. Better. The salt brought out more of the good flavors, but these off notes were still there. And it didn’t smell good.

I tried adding a few tablespoons of lime juice, which brightened the flavor considerably. It was again still better, but it hadn’t graduated to good.

My wife came in and tried some. “What was this supposed to be?” She asked. Not a good question to hear about a new recipe…so it wasn’t just me. I told her that it was an experiment.

“You didn’t follow a recipe?”

“No.”

“If you don’t follow a recipe, you’ll waste food.”

“Not true.” I said. “I’ve come up with a number of things that were pretty good.”

She snorted in mock incredulity. I did not try to defend myself further as the fragrance of the abomination I’d created filled the room and it would be hard to defend it with past remembered meals.

“Maybe the fresh cilantro would help. I got it for the dish.” I said. She tried some and said: “try it now.”

“Is it better?”

“You tell me.”

I gave it a taste and it was much improved. It had graduated to ‘edible’. She had some with rice and seemed to enjoy it – but then again she was hungry and it was the only prepared food around. (Not exactly true. The kid tried making muffins, but something went awry and the batter was viscous and climbed the mixer beaters like the thing in the movie ‘The Blob’ – and didn’t rise in the oven. Two failed recipes in one day.)

Despite it’s improvement, there was still a lingering aftertaste reminiscent of the smell. It was not pleasant. I had to wash my hands twice to get it off, and it still lingered in my mouth the next day.

I think it’s safe to say when you have a meal that makes you want to brush your teeth and wash your hands afterwards, you have failed.

Oh, well.

After a project failure of any type, if you are going to learn anything from it, doing a post-mortem on the project is important. Here’s what I think.

1. Although there are crock pot coconut milk red curry chicken recipes on the Internet if you search Google, that doesn’t mean that the crock pot is suitable for the dish. I think the crock pot is NOT the place to try this.
2. Part of the reason why I think is the off-note in the dish was the coconut milk. Now, I like coconut milk, and sweetened a bit, have drunk the stuff straight, but I think the long cooking time damaged it, and ruined the dish.
3. Curry and coconut milk are not part of my rudimentary cooking repertoire. An entire cuisine isn’t somehow replicated by a ham-fisted attempt to combine two primary ingredients and somehow expect I would be magically transported to Southeast Asia when I tasted the result. I need to FOLLOW DIRECTIONS on this one. At least at the beginning.

I still have a some of the red curry paste and coconut milk. I think I’ll take a different tack next time:

• If you go to A Taste of Thai website, there are a number of recipes and even videos. The fact that there are ‘videos’, in retrospect, should have clued me in that there might be an element of ‘challenge’ to use their ingredients to their best effect, and maybe I need to watch some.
• Wiser now, I can whip up the curry sauce in a separate saucepan and try pouring on to the meal – perhaps a better way to stat with ingredients I am unfamiliar with.

As to what will happen with this dish, it will probably crowd the fridge, a reminder of my failure for a week or so, then unceremoniously tossed in the trash.

Even if I had a dog, I’d hesitate feeding it to the poor beast – it might enter the territory of animal cruelty to do so.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com

This is one of my go-to recipes since conjuring it up in October, 2011. I’ve made it no less than a half-dozen times.

Now, however, I have made a resolution for the year to ditch artificial sweeteners, and have done well – but this recipe, I think, does need some sweet.

A reader recommended stevia, which I had heard of, but had heard some worrisome studies had come out about possible health effects. ‘Natural’ does not always mean safe, after all. I did a bit of research, however, and found this was based on some early, flawed studies – and I wasn’t going to be using a LOT of the stuff – the only thing I can think of at present I’d use it in is the pumpkin muffins.

I’ve modified the recipe here and there – here’s the most recent version:

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup coconut flour
• 1 can pumpkin
• 40 drops Whole Foods Stevia extract
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons nutmeg
• 1 7oz. tub of Fage plain yogurt (not low-fat)
• 1 cup cranberries

I put this in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes – the tops are slightly browned by that time. This makes about 14 of these things shown in the picture above.

Honestly, this last batch could have used even more sweetness. 40 drops of stevia was replacing 10-12 drops of EZ-Sweetz, and it isn’t enough to balance the tartness of the cranberries. Next time I’m going to add more stevia

The addition of the yogurt makes them less dry – the biggest complaint from the family, but these things can’t be compared to a traditional muffin which rises and becomes light and fluffy. These are dense little balls (I use an ice cream scoop to put them on the baking tray) that you can space as close together as you like because they won’t rise – there’s nothing in them that can be prompted to rise – and they are dense enough to use to defend oneself if attacked.

On the other hand, they are filling, and keep me satisfied for hours.

Are these a crowd-pleaser? Nope. Even sweeter, a palate used to a lot of sweets won’t find these alluring. This might be one of those recipes better for people with less of a sweet tooth, that like tartness. Honestly, I had to acquire a taste for the cranberries tartness. Family won’t go near ‘em.

These are good warm with butter on them. Me – I eat them as breakfast usually, or if I need a cake substitute.

© 2012, LowCarbConfidential.com