It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving here in the US, and I’ve put together a list of what I am going to make. As is the case with me, I am the only person at the table doing low carb, so the recipes have to be acceptable to them – or it be realistic to run similar dishes side by side – there’s just so much time and space in the kitchen.

Here goes:

Turkey – You saw that one coming, right? No problems here. We don’t deep-fry our turkey in batter. It does get a LOT of butter shoved under the skin and usually an apple shoved in the carcass – both these maneuvers prevent it from getting dry.

Funny story: early in my marriage, my wife and I cooked the turkey upside down. We were terrified that we ruined it, but it was a particularly good bird. My speculation as to why was that the white meat – the leanest and dryest part of the bird was in the juices the whole time. We have never had the guts to try this experiment again, but I’ve always had the urge to.

‘Mashed Potatoes’ – No, not really. Rather, it’s my cauliflower ‘mashed potatoes’. These are pretty darn good, though I overdosed them in garlic the last time I made this. I’ll probably cut back a wee bit on the garlic this time, or perhaps saute it a bit to soften the flavor. I might be the only one eating this, though.

Gravy – You know what, the store-bought gravies ain’t that high in carbs, believe it or not. Three grams of carbs for Heinz Turkey Gravy isn’t bad. Yeah, I’d rather not have the modified corn starch, but I also want a few minutes not cooking to play with the kids. I’ll take the tradeoff. The family is OK with it, too, so this one doesn’t jump out as low carb.

Cranberry Sauce – I only tried this last year and fell in love with it. Take a bag of cranberries, cover with water in a small pot , and cook on the stove til they burst – you got cranberry sauce. Then add just enough Splenda to cut the tartness – but not enough to tick off the anti-Splenda faction at the table. Yes – there’s carbs here, but these are about as healthy a serving of carbs you can get – at least that’s what some research says.

Spinach Casserole - I haven’t made this in a while, but I have fond memories of it. This I can squeeze in the rack below the bird in the oven. Everyone liked this when I cooked it last, so I won’t mention that it is low carb and ruin it for them.

Brussels Sprouts – The entire family likes these brussels sprouts, so they don’t stand out as a ‘low carb’ dish (like the cauliflower mashed potatoes). I’ll buy some sour cream – I think it makes a great topping for the sprouts, oddly enough.

Stuffing – I make my kids a great homemade stuffing out of leftover bread. I soak it in chicken broth overnight, then fry up some onions and yellow squash in olive oil. Mix the bread and the fried veggies together, add whatever seasonings strike my fancy at the time (always salt and pepper), and bake until the top is nicely browned. I think I’ll experiment with making some of my low carb bread a bit stale in the oven, and trying it with that.

I’ll have regular stuffing as a backup for the family.

Ricotta Cranberry Cream Pie – My new favorite. Now I can have a dessert to keep me satisfied while everyone else chows down on their sugar and starch laden goodies.

Red Wine – Alcohol slows weight loss. Alcohol, in moderation, is also good for you in a number of ways – especially with the other compounds found in red wine. Enjoy a little – it’s Thanksgiving.

I Search for ‘Simple’ and Got This

Simplicity is the name of the game here. It’s meant to be a recipe for when you don’t want to cook.

• 3 or 4 chicken thighs – I get mine ‘IQF’ – ‘Individually Quick Frozen’, which means I pull a bag out of the freezer, grab some thighs, and I’m done. Trader Joe’s has great thighs.
• Olive oil
• Poultry seasoning – this is a pre-mixed seasoning that prevent you from having to think about it. I used a Trader Joes no-salt version of the stuff
• Salt

Preheat oven to 400. Place thighs on a cookie sheet that’s been sprayed with non-stick spray. Drizzle olive oil over the thighs, sprinkle a liberal amount of the seasoning over the olive-oil-covered thighs, then add a bit of salt.

Place in oven for 25 minutes. Optional: set oven to broil for 5-7 additional minutes.

Chicken thighs have more flavor than breasts because of the higher fat content. They also tend to be less dry. They are also typically cheaper, since the average person’s fear of fat keeps the cost of thighs down.

The flavor can sometimes be a bit…strong, for lack of a better word, but this way of preparing them gave them a terrific flavor.

Safe for induction, a great meal for folks just starting Atkins, and a nearly idiot-proof recipe. The only thing that can go wrong is that you forget to turn off the oven and burn down the house.

I can’t help you there.

I purchased some wild caught cod and wanted to make my own sauce, which I typically make from mayo, parm cheese, and butter – but I had already made the Ricotta Cranberry Cream concoction and didn’t feel like pulling out another bowl.

I had bought Bertolli Alfredo sauce for my kids – it was sitting on the counter. I took a look at the label, and the carbs were pretty low. So I used that.

Here’s the ingredient list:

• 1 large piece wild caught cod
• 1/2 cup Bertolli Alfredo Sauce
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• fresh ground pepper

So, with countertop convection oven at 450, I put the cod in for about 10 minutes, then took it out, poured enough of the alfredo sauce to cover the fish, then sprinkled the parm cheese on top and finished up with the fresh ground pepper. I then put it back into the oven until the sauce browned – about 7 minutes or so.

While I might have overcooked the fish a wee bit, the flavor was pretty good. Next time, I’ll cut back the first tour in the oven by a few minutes.

This should be fine in induction – it did not impact my ketosis.

It’s a few days later, and I finished up the cod as my lunch. When I’m time-strapped, this is a great meal 20 minutes from the table for prep, cooking and cleanup.

UPDATE: I made it 11/15 and added the picture. I also fixed the recipe – forgot the cinnamon.

I actually don’t know if this is technically a ‘pie’, a ‘tart’, or some other culinary species that I am aware of: I just know that I took a stab at the below concoction, it came out good enough that my daughter has had it for breakfast (willingly) two days in a row, and I am making it again – certainly for Thanksgiving.

It also came out of the oven looking pretty good – not normally an aspect of my cooking, but I’ll take it. I would have liked to take a picture of this one, but I didn’t – maybe next time. UPDATE: I did make it again – the pic is above.

First, I preheated the oven to 325 degrees, then mixed the following in a mixing bowl:

• 1-1/4 cups whole milk ricotta
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup ‘fresh’ cranberries (actually frozen since last Thanksgiving)
• 1/3 cup of the granulated Splenda – the stuff that measures like sugar – not the packets.
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

I mixed all of the above ingredients together and placed in a greased 12 inch circular pie dish, and into the oven for 1-1/2 hours.

Now the last ingredient – the baking powder – was supposed to get the thing to rise a bit. I read up on the stuff: baking powder is supposed to work by releasing gas when it gets wet, so you are supposed to add this last to a wet mix, and not stir too much afterward, as you might stir out all the bubbles. There is also a double-acting baking powder that releases bubbles when it gets hot. I did not use that.

I have to say the jury is still out on whether the baking powder did anything. There was no dramatic rise in the concoction, though the cranberries did rise to the top of the mixture. Maybe I used it wrong, maybe my baking powder was too old, maybe baking powder just doesn’t work with my selection of ingredients. I’ll probably experiment with the double-acting stuff next time.

UPDATE: I bought fresh double-acting baking powder and as one reader suggested, I let the mixture stand for 15 minutes before putting in the over. It did rise a bit, but not much – maybe there’s only so much I can expect.

Anyway, it came out pretty, and I let it cool then put it in the fridge.

We’ve been eating this cold, and the amount of sweetness gives it just a hint of sweet rather than bowling you over with high-octane, in-your-face sweet. If that’s what you are into, I recommend bumping up the Splenda a bit.

Cranberries added something to it – though they are a bit tart, I liked them in this, and while they are not something that is typically included in a diet that is aiming for ketosis, the amount in this recipe has not interrupted my ketosis.

As I mentioned, I think I will be making this again in the very near future. UPDATE: I did make it again – can’t wait for it to cool. Yum.

I love when I find articles that confirm my personal biases. No deep thinking or cognitive dissonance required, no need to try and refute the conclusions. Life is good.

Anyway, a pair of articles came to my attention this week. The first, from Science News Daily, cites research on worms that concludes that excess sugar can shorten lifespan by 20%. Here’s my fave line from the article:

Kenyon says she read up on low-carb diets and changed her eating habits immediately — cutting out essentially all starches and desserts — after making the initial discovery in worms. The discovery was made several years ago, but had not been reported in a peer-reviewed journal until now.

While this research has only been on worms, the article goes on to answer the obvious question: yes, these insulin regulating mechanisms studied in the worms are an awful lot alike to mammalian, and human mechanisms, so there’s a strong possibility that these findings might apply to mice and men as well as worms.

Yep – the obligatory ‘more research is needed’ line was mentioned, and don’t hold your breath waiting for these to come out – longevity studies, for obvious reasons, take a long time.

The second article might be even worse bad news than the first one: sugar can make your skin wrinkle. In a nutshell:

At blame is a natural process that’s known as glycation, in which the sugar in your bloodstream attaches to proteins to form harmful new molecules called advanced glycation end products (or, appropriately, AGEs for short). The more sugar you eat, the more AGEs you develop. “As AGEs accumulate, they damage adjacent proteins in a domino-like fashion.”

If you continue to read the article, the proteins most vulenrable to attack are the collagens and elastins that keep our skin young-looking.

So maybe the advice is: ditch the skin cream AND the brownies – maybe if you don’t eat one, you won’t need the other.

A brief update. For the first time in ages, I’ve been in ketosis for almost three weeks. I don’t think I’ve had such a long, unbroken run since I lost my weight originally – 6 years ago.

Maybe – just maybe - this time might be the one that I peel off the extra pounds and get to my goal weight?

We’ll have to see.

The first question I have is ‘why now’? I’ve tried and failed so many times – why am I in the groove now? I personally think it’s not that I am doing anything all that different – it was just a combination of trying (and failing) every day, and finally finding that one day where it finally connects.

I think of it like a train that arrives at a station, but there’s no schedule. You get there and wait and wait.

It never comes.

But instead of being discouraged, you keep coming back – beyond the point where most sensible people would have given up – and eventually – eventually – the train comes.

Maybe the keys are patience, persistance – and forgiveness of one’s own weakness. I’m not an advocate of teeth-clenching ‘willpower’ – I just don’t think it sustainable for a lifetime. Humans just aren’t made that way – at least most of us. I’m no Superman.

As to weight, it’s trending lower, but slower now. I expected that – it’s OK – rapid weight loss is not healthy. If I’m eating good, then my weight should eventually come off. I’ve given myself the month of November to get below 200. It’s a realistic goal – and would be a welcome achievement just because I’d have a whole bunch of clothes that would fit again.

I feel OK, though maybe a little headachey. More energetic, mostly. Less heartburn. Little desire for sweets. Halloween came and went without a single piece of candy. In fact, I brought a whole bunch in to work and left it on my desk for coworkers – and didn’t have a piece.

Also avoided the pizza that got ordered last night. Had some of the wings and tuna salad instead.

This routine is pretty much what I’d call ‘punching the clock’ – there’s a daily routine, you show up, and go with it. Maybe a little boring, but ‘dramatic weight loss’ is not sustainable. The ketosis reduces hunger – and my craving for sweets. I have been eating a lot of the same thing  - which I have found – for me – helps.

I have found a correlation between these sorts of posts crowing about some success usually are followed by some backsliding – let’s see if that happens again.

Somewhat off topic: many, many years ago I stumbled across this site – a labor of love by a writer from the midwest. He’s a fellow with a number of curious interests, and one of them is collecting old cookbooks.

The result is the ‘Gallery of Regrettable Food‘ – a fond (and maybe not-so-fond) look back at some of the awful things Americans were encouraged to feed their families in the middle part of the last century.

It was a time of great contradictions, where Julia Child enlightened Americans to the complexities of French cooking – and yet, there were recipe books on how to cook with Dr. Pepper.

I encourage you to check out his site. Note that there are many more ’subjects’ that he covers on the site – check out the entire Institute for Official Cheer, which covers the same time period – and proves that there was something deeply wrong and disturbing lurking in the human psyche in the middle of the last century.

Of course, we’ve moved on to other deeply wrong and disturbing things, but that’s another off-topic post for another day.

My Perception of Your Standard Low-Calorie Diet

I’ve been lax in journaling – I promised I would do so some time back.

Apparently I lied.

Anywho, I have been quite adherent to an Atkins induction-style diet, and have been in ketosis for about 8 days straight. When I started this, about 10 days ago, I had puffed up to 218.6 due to a ‘what-the-hell’ attitude, which I find I sometimes have to indulge to an extreme to exorcise it.

I believe: if you give in to ‘what-the-hell’, don’t do it half-hearted – go for it!

You will probably feel like crap the next day – a great way to steel one’s resolve and get back to your diet.

Last night I got on the scale and was 207.8 – nearly 11 lbs. down. Yesterday I was able to actually fit into a pair of pants that 2 weeks ago were cutting off circulation to my lower extremities – a nice indicator of progress.

So what have I been doing?

First things first, as I’ve mentioned before, I can’t lose weight and drink alcohol, so I’ve ditched the wine. When I reach my goal, I can have wine, because I can maintain, but I cannot lose if I drink wine regularly. It’s a simple equation: if I have wine, my diet will stall, so deferring this pleasure will provide me the larger gratification of fitting in a pile of clothes that I’ve had to abandon ’cause I can’t jam my fat ass in them anymore.

If I look back on what I have been eating, there’s been a lot of organic beef and eggplant – both my pseudo chili and my Italian stew included it. I’ve also made some cod in a mayo/parm/butter sauce, which was great. See this recipe for the details (I just used cod instead of tilapia).

I’ve still had some low carb bread, and maybe a tad bit more cheese than Atkins recommends, but again, I’m 10 lbs. down in 10 days – maybe not as rapid a weight loss as I’ve had in the past, but I’m getting older and my body is pretty used to low carb, so I can’t expect the same kind of rapid weight loss I had when I started as was going from a diet with over 200 grams of carbs per day.

I’ve also had bologna, what I consider to be a ‘crap’ food, but it is acceptable on a low carb diet. I’ve found foods like this help me transition to healthier eating – call them crutches, but since when are crutches a bad thing? If your legs are weak, they help you get where you want to go. When your legs strengthen, you don’t need them anymore.

So why are crutches a bad thing?

I’ve also been having an Atkins shake and my vitamins every day about 9am. I had experimented with life without vitamins – big mistake – I felt worse.

I have also been drinking a pot or more of coffee with heavy cream – maybe up to 8 tablespoons a day.

And – I am still using the nicotine lozenges to reduce hunger, with focus on the evening, when I have the most potential to become truly gluttonous.

I have not:

• Eaten regular bread or other refined starches
• Exercised at all
• Drank water other than for thirst

I have also been watching my blood glucose – not that I am diabetic, but my doctor’s prediction is, with my family history, I will be.

I’d like to prove him wrong.

Well, each morning, it is just a few digits above 100 – at least 20 points lower than when I eat a lot of carbs. This is considered normal by both American Diabetes Association, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American College of Endocrinology – at least according to this article.

Now here’s an interesting thing: there were 2 days where it was below 100 – once it was 93 and once 87.

On both days, I had carbs the previous evening. Grapes one time and store-bought whipped cream in a can the other. Neither time pulled me out of ketosis – the amount of carbs was small, but it was not the slow-absorption carbs – it was the high impact carbs of sugar.

Now – two events don’t make for much of a pattern, but it does seem odd that a small amount of carbs before bed appears to make my blood sugar go down the next morning. Actually, I have noticed this in the past.

Geez – Matt Stone mentioned in a comment on this post something about carbs helping insulin response – is there something there? I’ll have to continue to keep tabs on this one.

I’ve also been checking my blood pressure and it’s fine for a guy who has hypertension and drinks a pot of coffee every day. Even after a lot of coffee and 2 hours sucking on a nicotine lozenge, my BP the other day was 116/72 with a pulse rate of 80. As your body supposedly acclimates itself to caffeine, and low carb brings on a tendency toward hypotension (or so I’ve heard – I have no sources for this), the resultant blood pressure numbers might not be all that odd.

I have noticed some unexpected bursts of energy, which usually come during ketosis periods – as well as mild headaches, which I don’t treat (I don’t take aspirin, Tylenol, or NSAIDS). I’ve also noticed my Tums usage drop to near zero. In the past, both a low carb diet and being under 200 make heartburn completely disappear.

I’d like to think if I can keep this up through November, I can pass through that dreaded 30.0 BMI – I HATE the word ‘obese’ – and just be ‘overweight’ – and actually see a number under 200.

With the Halloween candy Orgyfest on Saturday and the holiday season approaching, it ain’t gonna be easy, but what am I going to do – give up?

“Junior, drink your bisphenol A – it’s good for you.”

For those of us under 50 who need an excuse for being fat, here’s a good one: it’s not me, but the chemicals that I was exposed to before birth that made me fat.

I’ll let you read the Newsweek article yourself – I don’t feel inclined to do a book report at present, but to summarize: there is an epidemic of obese 6-month-olds, and since these babies don’t have the ability to go on a White Castle run or hit the cookie aisle hard, we can’t exactly blame them for being fat.

They’ve even come up with a new word of the day: obesogens. These are a family of chemicals they found that can trigger obesity in these wee folk – at least that’s the thinking in the article.

As being fat in this culture is synonymous with some sort of character flaw, usually lazy, sometimes stupid – always gluttonous – it really cheeses moralizers that cute, innocent babies might be getting fat.

Maybe the fat person that says they eat like a bird isn’t lying? And that there is no moral superiority in being thin over being fat?

Anyway, the real challenge in this article is what to do with it. I mean, if I was exposed in the womb, now I got a reason/excuse for my fatness, but I’m still fat.

It doesn’t really help me get thin here and now.

For woman planning to have babies it provides some food for thought on avoiding chemical exposure during pregnancy. Even if the article is totally wrong – it might be a good idea.

For thin folk who  put down fat folk, it’s an argument that maybe you shouldn’t be all that superior – if we ate like you, we’d still be fat. Fact is though, there are people who need to feel superior to others, and as fat folks are so easy to spot and demonize, I expect the contempt – and self-contempt – against people who are fat will continue unabated.

But for us folks who are fat, it’s a distraction. If you are playing cards, it doesn’t matter why you were dealt a particular card – ya gotta play it.

So for those of you so inclined to self-pity, I recommend: read the article, then feel sorry for yourself – for 10 minutes.

Then start/continue/restart your diet.

This is NOT a picture of the recipe below, but it looks pretty good.

This recipe is a variation on the ‘chili’ recipes that I’ve been making the past few weeks – I just varied it to be more ‘Italian’.

• 1 lb. Trader Joe’s Grass-fed, Organic beef
• 1 large eggplant, diced
• 1 small can olives
• 1 sweet onion
• olive oil
• 1 can pizza sauce
• oregano
• basil
• garlic powder
• salt
• mozzarella cheese

I was in a rush, so this was put together quick – it did come out quite good, however.

First, in a large pot, I browned the meat in olive oil while I chopped the veggies. After the meat was browned nicely, I broke up the meat, then added the rest of the ingredients and stirred. I let bubble away on high heat for about 10 minutes, then turned down the heat to a simmer and let it stew another 20 minutes.

A word about the pizza sauce. For some reason that escapes me, the jars of pasta sauce always have added sugar – the cans sometimes don’t. Contadina, for example, has cans of sauce that run WAY lower in carbs than any of the jars. Read your labels, and make sure you check serving sizes if comparing to the sauces in jars – they tend to double the serving size, so you have to do a little math for a side-by-side carb comparison.

Oh – by the way – this should be safe in induction as I am in ketosis and have been eating this for 2 days. I’ve also taken off 2 lbs. in 2 days. I’m not saying that this is some magical ‘lose-a-pound-a-day-magic-stew’, but rather that it has apparently not stopped weight loss or fat-burning (so far).

It might be higher in carbs than you are comfortable in induction, but I have noticed that I can take in more than 20 grams of carbs per day, stay in ketosis, and lose weight – if they are high quality carbs and not junk.