No – it’s not a meatloaf who gets a lot of junk mail.
It’s an old theme here. A fridge with various items and someone willing to put ’em together. There was half a can of SPAM in there, and I had defrosted some ground beef I needed to cook.
So I thought – why not?
Spammed Meatloaf
- 2 lbs. ground beef
- 1/2 can SPAM – diced
- 2 eggs
- 8 tbls. almond flour (almonds I pulverized in the food processor for 5 minutes)
- 1 medium onion
- 1/2 cup low-carb ketchup
Mix all of the above ingredients together in a mixing bowl, place in casserole dish. Criss-cross top with ketchup straight from the squeeze bottle and place in 375 degree oven for 1 hour 15 minutes, making sure the internal temperature is at least 165 degrees.
I bought a countertop convection oven – the Hummer of toaster ovens – for $70 a few months ago and used that. I find it faster and easier to use than our stove’s oven, and I think it encourages me to try more oven dishes. The nice thing about oven dishes is that once the prep is over you set the timer and the oven takes care of the rest.
THE VERDICT: I don’t know exactly what made this work, but the mixture of flavors worked well. The ketchup on the top made a nice pattern and added a lot of flavor to the meat.
It also ended up being a good place to dump the remaining SPAM.
You have to be careful eating in my house – you never know what will turn up where.
This will probably be my lunch more than once this week and is fine for induction.
Low Carb Confidential 
Now that I’m starting week four on re-induction, I’m getting brave like you and taking a closer look at recipe possibilities. Alright, I’m not a kitchen whiz but I am willing to try some experiments myself too. While clipping coupons yesterday, I saw a page with meal ideas using locally made dairy products including dips. I went to the website and some of the ideas sounded interesting. Sadly, there were no nutritional breakdowns and so no carb or calorie info, but I looked up the nutri panel on the dip, and it’s a net carb per tablespoon. Since most of the recipes required many multiples of that, it can add up depending on how many servings it yields, how much one eats, and what the heck else is in the dish. I chucked the idea for now but will revisit it when on maintenance.
The meatloaf sounds tasty, but when I was looking through my collection of Spam Singles in the cupboard (I had a lot of coupons for one free last year), I see it has 2 carbs per serving. You didn’t say you used lo-carb ketchup, so I’m wondering if you used regular, which has 4 net carbs per tablespoon. Regular ketchup, BBQ sauce, etc, are no-nos in my household, have been since 2003. It is getting harder to find 1 carb ketchup, just like all low carb foods, but Heinz still makes it thank goodness.
Progress update just for the heck of it: Down 8.5 pounds since Jan 2. Am still on track, still in ketosis. Read the article you linked regarding exercise making one fat and found it fascinating. I am hoping that while in ketosis my LPL in my fat cells is not sucking much back in.
It was low-carb ketchup. I updated the post to reflect that.
Honestly, I don’t think that the carbs in SPAM are all that important. At least that’s my take. I’ve eaten SPAM and stayed in ketosis without problem – and for me, it’s not as much a focus of staying away from carbs as a focus on keeping in ketosis.
Ketosis, I’d have to agree IS the key, but I also have to believe the good doctor knew what he was saying when he said to keep the daily net carbs to 20 or less during induction. I expect you’re probably doing that even though (I believe you said) you’re not measuring or recording. I didn’t continue using the ketostix once I left induction the first time around, so I don’t know how many carbs I could have and still stay in the big K. I should do that this time. Until I know better I’ll just have to keep my net carbs at 20 or fewer until I’m ready to go to phase 2.
Over the Atkins years I’ve eaten foods that are much lower in carbs than similar offerings, but you don’t really think much about the aggregate totals until you’re in induction and counting. Mornings for me used to be things like 2 oz of Special K Protein Plus, a cup of Calorie Countdown milk, and a half cup of raspberries or other low sugar fruit; that’s about 280 calories but it’s 24 net carbs, very low compared to a single bagel and yet well over what I can now have in an entire day! (The same meal made of corn flakes, skim milk and half a banana would round out to 48 net carbs and 340 calories.) I was probably eating an average of 80 net carbs and 2000-2500 calories a day during maintenance. I’ve been trying to find what the average American consumes, comparatively, but haven’t found a definitive article yet.