The Keto Roll

Japanese food - usually thought of as a lean choice, but that craving for sushi flavors could not be squelched.

We've posted before about low-carb sushi.  Where I come from, the strong Mexican influence means sushi contains many non-traditional ingredients like avocado, cream cheese, and spicy mayo (actually my three favorite sushi ingredients - guess I am not into authentic sushi!).  Do those ingredients sound familiar?

A crab salad is used to boost the fat and proved to be the trickiest ingredient.  Beware of canned crab (added sugar) or crab sticks (full of carbs!).


Ingredients:


spicy crab salad:

114 g cooked blue crab
40 g musa olive oil mayo
5 g sesame oil
5 g cholula hot sauce

50 g avocado
50 g philadelphia cream cheese (or waitrose)
2 sheets nori
rice vinegar

10 g soy sauce (carrefour)
1 g wasabi


Start with your cooked blue crab.  I buy Ocean Isle Premium Claw Crab Meat from Morrison's which is pre-cooked and very convenient.  Any cooked crab will do, so use what works for you!

Add the mayo, sesame oil, and cholula hot sauce.  Cholula hot sauce is an authentic Mexican brand of hot sauce.  I was shocked and pleased to find it in a UK supermarket.  Also one of the few hot sauces with detailed nutritional information.

Weigh your avocado and cream cheese.  Divide them in half, along with your spicy crab salad, since you are making 2 rolls.

Take one sheet of nori.  Brush on rice vinegar to moisten the nori.  This will make it easier to seal and cut later.  Make sure you do not use seasoned rice vinegar, this has added sugar.  Rice vinegar is similar to wine vinegars, but slightly less acidic.  Since you are using a small amount of something very low-carb, I considered it negligible in the calculations.

Spread your crab salad along the length of the nori down the center.  Place half inch thick strips of avocado and cream cheese down the center also.

Roll up your sheet of nori, sealing with more brushed on vinegar if needed.  I do this without bamboo sushi rolling mats, so it can be done.  It's not particularly easy though!  Don't over work the roll.  It is very soft and moist from the crab salad and will tear easily.

Repeat with 2nd sheet of nori.

Slice into inch thick slices.

In a small dish, put 1 g wasabi and 10 g soy sauce.  My soy sauce has 3.2 g of carbs per 100g.  If yours is more carb-y, try watering it down with a little water - it may just be stronger.  Or you can also use less soy sauce.  The roll does not absorb much when dipped, and invariably there is some left behind in the dish - so don't stress!

fat:  63.1 g, protein:  26.8 g, carb:  3.1 g

ratio: 2.1:1

Steak and Asparagus with Blue Cheese Sauce

We travelled to England this weekend and stayed with friends, where we needed more than just strawberry salad to feed our hosts (Tristan likes to force everyone to eat what he eats).  With only five ingredients, turns out this meal is equally perfect to cook for friends when you're at someone else's place.

Ingredients:

90 g ribeye steak (cooked)

130 g asparagus (raw)

5 g butter

Blue cheese sauce:

40 g double cream

20 g blue cheese

20 g butter

Pan fry ribeye steak in butter over medium high heat for 3 minutes on each side for medium-doneness.  Ribeye was chosen for having a high fat content.  It is also readily available and cheap!  Make sure to weigh the portion after it is cooked.

Sauté asparagus in pan with butter over medium high heat until tender and lightly browned.

For sauce, combine double cream, blue cheese, and butter in a sauce pan and cook over medium low heat allowing the sauce to come to a simmer to thicken.

Pour blue cheese sauce over steak and asparagus and enjoy!

fat:  67.3 g, protein:  29.5 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.1:1

Note: values will vary somewhat depending on the particular blue cheese used.  Make sure your blue cheese is .1 g carb or less per 100 g.

Strawberry and Goat's Cheese Spinach Salad

This salad is our go-to meal for eating out at a friend's house.  When someone invites us over to dinner, we offer to make them something at their place.  This salad works as a starter or main (after all, when we have it, it's our whole dinner!) and with a few tweaks, it is quite palatable to non-keto people as well.  'The acceptable face of keto' we call it.  Also, it is easy to put together in an unfamiliar kitchen with ingredients that are pretty easy to find.

Ingredients:

40 g baby spinach

25 g avocado

30 g strawberries

100 g Eroski goat's cheese

28 g olive oil

7 g red wine vinegar

2 drops stevia

Note on goat's cheese:  Make sure your goat's cheese is <0.1g per 100.  Besides Eroski's home brand, Capricorn goat's cheese (UK) is good (although you can't find the values on the outside of the package, trust me), and Trader Joe's (US) also carried some.

Cut the avocado, strawberries, and goat's cheese into thin slices and toss over your bed of baby spinach.

For the dressing, combine the olive oil, vinegar, and stevia and pour over your salad.  Adjust the olive oil as needed if you use a cheese with different values.

fat:  63.1 g, protein:  22.7 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.5:1

Variations:

Toasted pecans are another lovely addition to this salad, and allow you to cut out a bit more olive oil or cheese.  Make sure you adjust down your carbs elsewhere, such as by going down to 35 g of spinach.

Blue cheese also works well on this salad if you can't find an appropriate goat's cheese (like in south Texas).  It's too strong for my tastes, but Tristan likes it even better!  Alternatively, we've even used brie on this salad in a pinch, which is much milder.

Bacon!  I tried it on a strawberry salad in Austin and became a believer, so if you need a bit more protein in your diet, sprinkle some on.  Like the pecans, most bacon has carbs, so adjust your spinach (or other carb) down a bit to compensate.

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Avocado Egg Salad Lettuce Wrap

Another great summery lunch!  Cool avocado and egg salad wrapped in a crisp iceberg lettuce leaf for a bit of crunch.

Ingredients:

175 g eggs (3 1/2 medium eggs)

50 g mayo (Musa olive oil)

35 g avocado

2 g yellow mustard

2 g lime juice

0.3 g paprika

30 g iceberg lettuce leaf

Hard boil eggs (boil for 6 minutes and immediately run under cool water) and peel.  Chop into bite size cubes.

Chop avocado into bite size cubes and combine with egg.

Mix in mayo, lime juice, mustard, and paprika until well incorporated.

If using freshly boiled eggs, chill for at least 30 minutes to get cold egg salad.

Wrap it all up in a large outer iceberg lettuce leaf and enjoy!

fat:  62.7 g, protein:  23.7 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.3:1

Note:  I recommend making this in a double batch, otherwise you're left with half a boiled egg!

Coconut Fruit Pops

Tristan is meant to have a snack or dessert every day, so it's good to have something easy around.  Frozen treats are also good since its getting quite hot these days!  Pictured here are two flavors of coconut fruit pops, lime and raspberry.  I use frozen raspberries, again for convenience, and the nutritional values are based on those printed on my frozen raspberry bag from Carrefour.


Ingredients:

Coconut Lime Pops

60 g coconut cream (blue dragon)

18 g lime juice

2 g coconut oil

4 drops liquid stevia

Raspberry Coconut Pops

60 g coconut cream (blue dragon)

24 g frozen raspberries

3 drops liquid stevia

In the case of the lime pops, the ingredients only need to be stirred together and poured in popsicle containers which can hold at least 80 mL of liquid.  Be warned, these pops are very lime-y so decrease the lime juice if you don't enjoy sour sweets.

fat:  13.5 g, protein:  2.1 g, carbs:  2.5 g

ratio:  2.9:1

For the raspberry pops, combine ingredients in a blender and pour.  It's better to use slightly bigger pops if you can find them.  The consistency is quite like a very thick smoothie or milkshake, so another alternative way of serving would be as a frozen drink.

fat:  11.8 g, protein:  2.3 g, carbs:  2.5 g

ratio: 2.5:1

Variations:  I've also made a strawberry version, and I'm sure lemon or blackberry would work too (or combinations?) depending on what fruits you like!

Choco Squares Flax Cereal

Cereal for breakfast is a real miracle on the ketogenic diet.  For one, if you are not a morning person, it means getting an extra 30 minutes of sleep when you have morning commitments because it is storable and easy to put together morning-of.  It also means a break from scrambled eggs.  For Tristan, it is a real treat.

My fruity flax loops recipe was a big hit with Tristan and the blog as well (although still a dearth of comments!) based on views, but it was exhausting to make.  This recipe rectifies the labor-intensiveness of the last recipe by making a sheet of squares and utilizes the greatness of double cream to make the perfect breakfast!

Ingredients:

Cereal:

80 g ground flaxseed

30 g egg white

25 g melted butter

5 g Cadbury's cocoa

4 g truvia

50 g water (approximately)

Milk:

75 g Alpro unsweetened almond milk

50 g double cream (50.5% fat)

Combine ground flaxseed, egg white, melted butter, cocoa, truvia, and water in a bowl, mixing until combined.  You may need more or less water based on climate (from my experience).  Use the amount you need for the dough to be fully moistened but still a dough-like consistency.

Spread the dough thinly on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  The easiest and least messy way to do this is to spread it between two layers of parchment paper.  Oh the wonders of parchment paper!

Using a butter knife, score lines into the dough, making squares.

If you want to be done in a hurry, bake at 350 F (175 C) for about 20 minutes.  Be aware that if you want it crunchy, you run the risk of over-toastiness!  The more patient among us should give it a try baking at 150 F (65 C) until crispy which will keep away any chance of burning, but be high enough to fully cook the egg in the dough.

Serve with cream/almond 'milk'.

fat:  81.9 g, protein:  20 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  3.6:1 (heck yeah!)

Note:  Despite chocolate being a pretty strong flavor, the overwhelming taste here is still flax.  If you can afford more carbs or a lower ratio, you can try adding more cocoa - no promises!  I also tried using cinnamon and vanilla as the flavor instead of cocoa, which Tristan liked equally well (still tasted like flax) so a good alternative for someone who doesn't like chocolate - like me!

Chocolate!

I love chocolate. Everyone does.

Well, I suppose Samantha doesn't. She likens its taste to that of 'burnt dirt', a flavour we are of course all familiar with.

Unfortunately for me though, normal person chocolate contains way too much sugar for someone on my diet, so while on the road I was without the dirty burnt tasting goodness for months.

Once settled in one place, we searched the web and found some stevia and erythritol-sweetened chocolate made by New York based Lucienne's.

Stevia, produced from the leaves of the stevia plant, is a carb-free sweetener in its pure form.  Erythritol has only about 1/20th the carbs of sugar and is therefore not too shabby either. Chocolate itself is not devoid of carbohydrate, so no bar will never be carb-free, however as a rule, the darker the chocolate (these are 83%) the less carbs it will contain.

Based on our estimations, each square has 0.5 g carb, 0.5 g protein and 2 g fat, adding up to a decent 2:1 ratio. Most importantly though, despite being a bit more bitter than what I would usually choose, all three flavours (mint, orange, regular) are really, really tasty, with orange currently the marginal favourite. The cocoa content is high, but you tend to appreciate a more intense chocolate hit when you're only allowed a couple of squares every few days!

Stevia has been slow to enter the European market, so these or similar chocolates are relatively hard to find over here, with shipping from the US tending to be on the expensive side. Luckily, Samantha seem to have her eye on a bag of cocoa butter at the local health food shop, so with my Lucienne's supplies running short I'm hoping we'll see a chocolate bar recipe on here sometime soon.

The Wonders of Double Cream and Gibraltar Living

Tristan has already written about the hope and disappointment of US keto-shopping.  Just as we had viewed the upcoming groceries stores of America as a keto-utopia while we were in England, our return to the UK also was being seen as rosier and rosier with every passing week we spent in America.  

We longed to return to double cream and nutritional information standardized to 0.1 g and per 100 g, regardless of the item.  We would know exactly what he was eating and be able to get more fat in him than ever!  

As with most things though, our return home was not the perfect paradise we had imagined.  We arrived back in our home after a total of 7 months away to find that the refrigerator is broken!  Back to living life out of an ice bag!  We were dismayed by our inability to stock up on keto-rific products from the local grocery store and begin the process of finding the very best cheese, sausages, and what not, but headed to the grocery store anyway as a sort of re-con mission and also pick up our life saver, double cream.  

One of Gibraltar's Macaques

Lo and behold, does the only British grocery store in Gibraltar, Morrisons, have double cream?  No.  They are out.  'Perhaps try again in a few days time. '  For anyone not British and in the know, double cream is essentially a Britain-only dairy cream product which contains about 50% fat and only 1.5 g carb per 100 g.  It tastes great, and makes our life so much easier when we're in a fat-pinch.

The sausage section had also been reduced to a gaping hole in the refrigerated aisle, and with Tristan's temperamental tendencies, it is a miracle one of us wasn't reduced to tears or found assaulting a Morrison's employee.  This time, I wouldn't have blamed him.  

One punched laptop later (someone was bound to get hurt, but the laptop took it quite stoically), we now finally have a working fridge, even if it is white and not sleek brushed metal, and we have also visited more grocery stores (Eroski carries some Waitrose products!)  Everything is actually going to be ok.

For the time being, there is no perfect keto-paradise.  Everywhere we have been has its pros and its cons.

America is stocked up on its low-carb wonders (still bugging Tristan to review his new favorite chocolates), and unusual ingredients like guar gum.  I have also come to realize what a true 'melting pot,' as it is so often called, America really is. Being from Texas, for instance, I take for granted the normalcy of having German sausages next to Italian next to Polish. Most of the cheeses in the 'fancy cheese section' as I call it may be imported for a hefty price, but cheese from all different European countries are a part of my normal cheese life.  It never would have occurred to me that it could be any other way.  These are great things, but I dont have to tell you, there are downsides to my side of the pond as well.

We are lucky in Gibraltar that we get the benefits of both British and Spanish products.  So for the next while, expect to see some British and Spanish cooking!

Protein Powder Pancakes

My recipe for Cinnamon Crepes is pretty low in protein, so I wondered what would happen if I added protein powder to the batter.  Adding more protein to the recipe meant I would need more fat as well, so I also added some butter to the batter.  What I got seemed a lot like pancake batter.  It cooks up thicker for a heartier version of the breakfast.

Ingredients:

Pancake Batter:

28 g cream cheese

52 g egg (about one)

12 g protein powder

22 g european butter

0.5 g cinnamon

5 g truvia

10 g european butter

50 g heavy whipping cream (40%)

5 g walden farms pancake syrup

Warm up your cream cheese until softened, or use room temperature cream cheese.  Mix well with the egg.  Add the protein powder, melted butter, cinnamon, and truvia.

Heat a skillet over medium low heat and add remaining 10 g butter to the pan.

Pour batter onto pan into three evenly sized pancakes.  Cook until bottoms are starting to brown and are stable enough to be flipped.

Leave pancakes to cool at room temperature or in fridge.

Whip the cream until stiff.

Spread the whipped cream in between the layers of pancakes leaving a dollop on top.  Spoon over 5 g of pancake syrup.

fat:  62.7 g, protein:  19.8 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.8:1

Variation:  If you don't want to your pancakes with whipped cream or quite so much whipped cream, you could always add that cream to a coffee instead and enjoy them with just a modest amount of pancake syrup.

Sensational Sausage Stir-fry

For anyone who knows me well, it should come as no great surprise to hear of how excited I was on discovering of a truly excellent brand of sausage the other day. Innuendo and pun-tastic double entendres aside, I am, and always have been, a proud exponent of the humble sausage, perhaps even a sausage connoisseur, if you'll permit me this condescension. Whilst my options regarding this greatest of foods have become more limited since I began this diet, I have still managed to find plenty of high fat, zero carb sausages out there, particularly varieties like Bratwurst as produced by our good friends the Germans.


You will recall from a previous blog post that sausage, served with sauerkraut and mustard, was one of my standard 'go-to' meals whilst on my travels, however this meal always needed to be accompanied with a decaf coffee containing a rather hefty serving of heavy whipping cream as I simply could not get enough fat into the meal. 

That was until last week, whilst on one of our many wild goose chases around McAllen (zero carb goat's cheese on this occasion),  when we found ourselves at Ruben's grocery store. Located in what I have been told, is the slightly less desirable part of town, Ruben's stocks a veritable smorgasbord of imported foods from the Caribbean, South and Central America, and of course Mexico. It was here that I found Chappell Hill's Smoked Beef sausage. 

This amazingly tasty zero-carb sausage is actually made in Texas, and is not only high fat, but also relatively low in protein, meaning that I could eat 155g of sausage and still be within my 24g-a-meal protein limit. This also yielded me a massive 50g of fat, meaning that I did not need to 'waste' my carbs on heavy whipping cream and could liven it up with a stir fry of green peppers and spring onions. 

Ingredients:

155g Chappell Hill Smoked Beef sausage

60g green pepper

16g spring (green) onions

12g chopped pickled jalapeños 

13g olive oil

Simply chop up all the ingredients and sautée them in a little olive oil, garnishing with a few chopped picked jalapeños once done.

fat:  63.5 g, protein:  23 g, carb:  2.8 g

ratio:  2.5:1

Naturally not all sausage will boast numbers as good as the legendary Chappell Hill's. The recipe can therefore be amended by either adding a little more oil, which may be difficult to get down, or better still, by adding a creamy coffee to the mix, although note that it will add carbs so you will need to cut down a bit on those 'greens'.

Dining out: Rio Grande Valley style

I have mentioned in previous posts the concept of 'borrowing' protein from one meal so that I can have more flexibility for the next. Generally speaking it's not something which I should be doing often and never with more than 4-6g of protein. There are occasions however, such as when eating out, when this is the only way to go.

Two such dining-out events which would lure me into this breakfast of self-sacrifice are lunchtime trips to two of my favourite restaurants in McAllen: 'Taco Palenque' and 'Kumori'.

Unfortunately, and no doubt very much to the chagrin of the scientist lying beside me, I will be exposing the unscientific nature of my calculations when eating out in these places, and apologise in advance to those of you that thought me completely infallible.

Taco Palenque

Living in the Rio Grande Valley, there are no shortage of taco joints. They are as ubiquitous as you would expect for an area of the US which has an (unofficial) 95% Mexican population. The family are very clear however that none are better than Taco Palenque, and I was lucky to savour the full experience, tortilla and all, in November before I started my wacky diet. A distant memory though that may seem now.

Things are different nowadays obviously, but there are still plenty of elements to Mexican food which  allow me to put together a fairly balanced Tristan-approved meal. I tend to order a sizzling beef fajita  plate or a couple of beef, chicken or 'carnitas' (pork) tacos, which provide me with about 85g of meat and a side plate of guacamole (45g). Though I don't weigh them exactly, I am starting to get an eye for these things and put together a salad from the side bar, made up of lettuce (35g), green cabbage (25g), cilantro (10g) and a few slices of pickled jalapeño peppers (25g). I obviously eat these without the tortillas, beans or rice and drench the salad in olive oil (45g) to bring the meal up to scratch.

fat:  63 g, protein:  25.3 g, carb:  3.1 g

ratio:  2.2:1

Kumori

My visits to Kumori are probably the closest I come to a pure 'cheat meal', in that it is impossible to calculate the precise amounts of the ingredients in the various rice-less 'sushi' rolls on their menu. Yes, 'rice-less' and 'sushi' rolled into one, well rolled into three options actually at this pseudo-sushi restaurant in McAllen which panders to the (un)exotic tastes of Valley diners. 

The 'San Francisco' (pictured at right), 'Golden' and 'Paradise' rolls all contain cream cheese, avocado, spicy crab, salmon, 'fresh' shrimp and white fish in varying amounts, held together by soy paper or cucumber. With only limited amounts of these ingredients in each roll, I feel I cannot be far from the mark when it comes to protein and carb content, and since all three are served slathered with what must be high fat 'spicy mayo', I don't need to go crazy on the coconut oil when I get home. I will say that these rolls are about as far removed from actual sushi as it is humanly possible to produce, however if I close my eyes and dip them into a soy sauce and wasabi mix, I am transported, even if just momentarily, back to my sushi-eating days.

Realizing that there are undoubtedly carbs in home made mayo and the soy paper and also no real way of knowing what exactly Kumori is labelling as 'white fish' or 'spicy crab', I have lately been tempted away from the dark side and have ordered the 'fresh tuna salad', served with cucumber strips and green onion and drenched in sesame oil and ponzu sauce. This seems to banish the raw fish cravings with a more controlled list of ingredients, surely keeping me within the meal's prescribed carb and protein limit. I do, however, still need to supplement the meal with a tablespoon or two of coconut oil when I get home in a bid to hit the required fat levels but consider this just a small price to pay for a delicious raw tuna meal.

Texas Style Pimento Cheese

Apparently pimento cheese is a southern food, but to me, growing up in Texas, it was just food.  The family recipe, passed down from my Great Aunt Erma Lee, includes pickled jalapeños, which gives it a bit of a twist and tiny kick.  In this keto-version, I've left out the pimentos from which the name comes, and left in the pickled jalapeños which are quite low-carb. Tristan tells me that the Spanish word for pepper is 'pimiento' so I'd say it's still pimento cheese, even without the specific pimento/pimiento pepper from the name.

Pimento cheese is typically eaten with crackers or in a sandwich, so crackers, or rather 'flackers', are what I paired it with here.  The avocado just adds another yummy layer.

Ingredients:

25 g savory flackers

30 g avocado

Pimento Cheese:

56 g Boar's Head Canadian Cheddar

30 g Philadelphia cream cheese

30 g Hellman's mayo

7 g pickled jalapeño

3 g green onion

0.3 g garlic powder

Nothing too complicated here, just shred your cheese, chop up your green onion, and combine all your pimento cheese ingredients together in a bowl.

Divide the pimento cheese between your crackers and top with sliced pieces of avocado.  Enjoy!

fat:  66.1 g, protein:  22 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.6:1

Variations:  

I realize that store-bought flackers are probably not available to everyone.  Tristan and I found these Dr. In the Kitchen brand 'flackers' at Wheatsville Co-op in Austin, Texas and decided to give them a try.  If you can get them, I would recommend them.  They score major points for convenience, and they are also quite tasty.  They use whole flaxseeds and are raw, and hopefully I will get a chance to try to recreate them myself.  If you can't get flackers, you can make your own flax crackers as well.  

This recipe for pimento cheese can also use different cheeses.  If you choose a different cheddar, make sure it is 0 carb, and aim for as much fat as possible.  It is also really delicious with smoked gouda.  I will try to post a smoked gouda + homemade crackers variation sometime soonish.

Stir Fry Chicken Salad with Soy Lime Dressing

This is officially Tristan's new favorite meal, so definitely a must-share.  Asian foods are some of the hardest to do on this diet and what Tristan had been missing most, so I was determined to come up with something.  This salad really hits the spot.

Ingredients:

35 g spinach

15 g mung bean sprouts

5 g green onion

20 g salted roasted macadamia nuts

5 g fresh basil

75 g chicken thigh (cooked weight)

stir fry oil for cooking

Dressing:

4 g soy sauce

4 g lime juice

5 g toasted sesame oil

10 g stir fry oil

25 g olive oil

1 g truvia

Arrange spinach, bean sprouts, and chopped green onion on your plate.

Chop the macadamia nuts to desired fineness and sprinkle over your salad.

Cut fresh basil leaves in strips and scatter over salad.

Cut raw chicken thighs into 1 inch strips and fry in stir fry oil until fully cooked with crispy bits.  Stir fry oil is a combination of usually soybean oil, ginger oil, garlic oil, and sesame oil.  This is essentially to give the salad ginger and garlic flavors without adding the extra carbs.

For the dressing, just combine all ingredients and pour over salad.

fat:  62.9 g, protein:  24.2 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.3:1

We ate this salad warm, but Tristan suspects it would be equally, if not more, yummy served chilled, so make a double batch and try it both ways!

Samantha's Favorite Breakfast

We've done a lot of bacon and eggs combos.  Tristan tends to like to grab bits of any ingredient in the kitchen and throw them into breakfast in one skillet, but I am a flavor purist.  I want to savor the taste, individually, of each food.  

Ingredients:

30 g  or 2.5 slices thick cut bacon

50 g white mushrooms

105 g or 2 eggs

10 g heavy whipping cream (40%)

23 g bacon fat

9 g european butter

20 g heavy whipping cream

decaf coffee

Fry up the bacon to your liking and reserve the bacon fat.  If you are not using american bacon, you will not have the copious amount of bacon fat left in the skillet.  To achieve similar results, increase the butter to the necessary amount of fat and fry the bacon in some of this butter.

Cook sliced mushrooms in bacon fat/butter.  Salt to taste.

Scramble eggs with 10 g whipping cream.  Cook in remaining fat that has not been soaked up by the mushrooms.  Make sure you allow the fat to cool a bit so that you do not fry the eggs immediately.

Use remaining 20 g of cream in a creamy decaf coffee.

fat:  63.6 g, protein:  23.9 g, carb:  3.1 g

ratio:  2.4:1

I was never much a fan of scrambled eggs, but whipped with cream and lots of butter and bacon fat, these are delicious!

Venison Steak Salad

I'm stealing a march on Samantha here, writing this from bed as she sleeps, her face nestled into her pillow beside me. Boris the Samoyed is also in the room, snoring away, or at least one of them is snoring away ... Though its the absolute definition of simplicity, I thought I would write a short post about a meal I prepared for myself yesterday.

Our good friends, twin brothers Eric and Chris own a ranch a couple of hours from McAllen giving them access to a seemingly endless selection of the freshest fish, vegetables and meat. Foods that that they had either caught, grown, killed or bartered for themselves and that they were kind enough to share with us over the weekend. 

Unfortunately my keeper did not allow me to get too close to the carbohydrate-heavy leeks or sweet onions, and I only got tastes of the free range chicken, or of the trout and fresh-caught tuna. However this was all immaterial as I had almost free reign of the venison steaks, and they were delicious. 

Venison is a relatively lean meat, so I needed to figure out how to eat it to get the correct fat content into my meal. The pictured meal shows 63g of venison meat, as I was saving some protein for my next meal, however a nicely sized 79g steak would do the trick for the requisite 24g protein.  Not being as creative as Samantha, I simply stuck to what I knew, employing all the now standard ingredients.

Ingredients:

79g venison steak

40g baby spinach

13 green onion

75g avocado

25g European butter

35g olive oil

5g vinegar

15 g heavy whipping cream (40%)

Pan fry the steak with the butter and the green onions. On this occasion the venison steak had already been cooked the night before on the barbecue, seasoned only with salt and a bit of pepper, so I cut the steak into strips and 'buttered it', placing the onions atop and microwaving on full power for about a minute. 

The spinach and the generous portion of avocado was dressed with the oil and vinegar mix, and the venison steak strips, together with the onions and melted butter were placed on top once they were done. 

Having some carbohydrate 'left over', I made myself a cup of decaffeinated coffee with the heavy whipping cream.

fat:  80.6 g, protein:  24.1 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  3:1

The twins were nice enough to give us about another kg of venison steak, so I can repeat this meal again, together with some venison mince (ground meat) which we will be using to make some burgers in the weeks to come. 

Home is where the fat is

We are finally back 'home' in Texas, with the family and other animals. 

Those of you who know me well, know that I never tend to be happier than when I am on the go, enjoying fresh experiences and forcing people to like me in exciting new places. I would normally have added something about food to that list, but things stand somewhat in reverse these days as its my return home which brings with it the potential for new gourmet experiences.

Running to the freezer in Beth's home as I did the moment I got to McAllen, I dug out the remnants of the last batch of vanilla pecan ice cream which Samantha had made me before we left on our road trip. There was only about a quarter portion left but I hungrily lapped it down like a famished goat. No surprise there really, since the only sweet foods I had eaten in the 2 months I had been away from Texas, has been the small portions of the 'big three' berries (straw, black, rasp - in that order) that I had been having daily with heavy whipping cream for dessert.

I promptly chained Samantha to the ice cream maker and got her working on a batch of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Not only delicious, but like all dishes created in 'our kitchen', very fatty. In fact it contains more than three times as much fat as my usual dessert on the trip of 25g of strawberries (that's one medium sized strawberry to you and me) and 20g of cream, not to mention, to get technical, a far better fat to protein/carb ratio of 5.5:1. I also get to lick the spoon and scrape the bowl on the day she makes it, which I assure you, cannot be a pretty sight to behold.

an unlikely kitchen helper

Having done most of our cooking either in campsites, or the unfamiliar kitchens of our new friends, or hostels (or motorway rest stops, motel bathrooms, parking lots), the return to Beth's kitchen was a welcome treat and also meant time to get started on those delicious fruity flax loops which I adore so much, providing, as they do, a welcome relief to the egg-and-bacon-rich breakfasts I have almost every other day of the week. Each batch (providing one bowl!) takes almost an hour to make, so I am yet to break the news to Samantha that she should not make any plans for Sunday this week.

Whilst we did exemplarily well in keeping the precision going over for three meals a day over almost two months, it was however the potential to experiment which we have most been missing. Not to mention the fact that there is also a limit how many strawberry and goats cheese salads or sausage suppers the human body can take before it screams 'no more'. Since our return, Samantha has already been flexing her creative muscle and, aware of how much I was missing Chinese food, created an 'Asian Chicken Salad' which quickly shot up my list to become, quite possibly, the best meal of all time. There is also a salmon salad with fresh raspberry vinaigrette in the pipeline and I am literally licking my lips in anticipation of this dish as I type. You will have to 'watch this space' with regard to both of these ...

Last night, we had 'sushi' of the rice-less variety at Kumori, a local restaurant which claims that the food it serves is contemporary Japanese, and a trip to Taco Palenque, the family's favourite taco joint, is also on the cards in the days to come. I suspect another blog post by me about 'Dining in the Rio Grande Valley' might be coming along soon also. So there's another space for you to watch,

people. 

Hats

I am aware that the title of this blog suggests that we will be writing about more than just my desire to eat as much fat as is humanly possible, so I have been encouraged to write a little something about 'hats'.

I've never been a reluctant hat wearer during my lifetime and certainly haven't been in the last few years, my vast hat collection of hats bearing testament to this fact. However when your head has received a dose of radiation larger than any human being should receive during their lifetime, hats become less a matter of fashion, but one of medical necessity.

Spending the first few months of my partial radiation-imposed baldness in the UK, I made sure that Samantha kept herself busy by knitting me a selection of wooly head warmers, which I appreciated enormously as we did our best to survive the cold English weather.

the ubiquitous choob

However these would simply not be feasible for when we arrived in Texas, so I made what turned out to be the shrewd purchase of a 'choob', a multi-purpose lightweight garment which could be worn in a variety of styles including in a beanie style. Ever-present, stretched down to my forehead to protect the extremes of the radiated area, it provided me with the flexibility to combine it with hats which would otherwise have offered less protection than my head required.

It is weather resistant, designed for outdoor sports, so is also suitable for hanging around the pool or going to the beach. Those in the know appreciate that you can't rely on sunscreen to keep that sensitive skin protected. If you're receiving harsh UV exposure, a small error in sunscreen application can be quite detrimental. Then there's the cocktail of chemicals I would be slathering onto my cancer-afflicted head ...

What is less commonly known is that you are not entirely protected from UV radiation in the car. On a long car ride, it is still important to keep your head covered because, even though you can't sunburn in the car because UV A is blocked, UV B is not, and penetrates the skin deeper than UV A. I suppose, given my projected life expectancy these days, we can hardly blame the doctors for not focussing on long-term radiation effects. However, unwilling as I am to throw the towel in to the ring just yet, I may as well do my best to stack the odds in my favor.

Scrambled Sausage and Eggs

Believe it or not, but you can actually get sick of bacon.  The ketogenic diet can do that to you.  When that happens, this breakfast is such a yummy respite.

Ingredients:

Scramble:

55 g breakfast sausage

15 g green onion

20 g european butter

100 g eggs (2)

10 g heavy whipping cream (40%)

Creamy Coffee:

50 g heavy whipping cream (40%)

1-2 mugs of decaf coffee

Brown the breakfast sausage in a pan over medium heat with chopped green onion, breaking into smaller pieces.  The values used here are for Owens brand of breakfast sausage, but when we're on the road we look for any brand which shows "0" for carbs, and some of these have even more fat or less protein.

Whip together the eggs and cream and add to the pan with the butter turning heat to medium low.

Cook until eggs are done to your liking.  If you use salted butter, then it doesn't even need seasoning!

For creamy coffee, simply add the cream to the amount of decaf coffee you prefer.  Tristan didn't like coffees before, but now that they're full of cream, he quite enjoys them.

fat:  65.8 g, protein:  25.1 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.3:1

Because a lot of the fat in this meal comes from the cream in the coffee, it means your breakfast isn't so greasy, which is also really nice.

Keto Snack Pack

This is another non-recipe.  When you're on the road, the simpler the better.  We do a lot of hiking, so this is the lunch we pack for a day on the trails, but it works just as well for a day walking around a new city.

Ingredients:

70 g dubliner irish cheddar and/or dutch gouda

32 g macadamia nuts

32 g brazil nuts

This particular snack pack combination is especially good for a day of hiking because it's an even higher ratio than usual.  That extra fat comes in handy when you're exerting yourself!  You can also find even fattier cheese brands than what I've put in here at some grocery stores to really knock it out of the park. (Tristan especially likes Trader Joe's Double Cream Gouda.)

fat:  68.4 g, protein:  23.9 g, carb:  3 g

Ratio:  2.5:1

Variations:  We have also used green olives, pecans, and pork rinds in various snack packs, so try any combination you like.

Speaking of travel, don't forget to check out our keto travel network suggestion!

Bratwurst with Sauerkraut and Mustard

Hostels with kitchens - a big help for keto traveling

Another travel-friendly meal!  Sausages and hot dogs are pretty standard fare when camping, so we needed a way to make it keto-friendly.  Don't be fooled, the hot dogs and sausages you find at gas stations and little small town groceries are unlikely to cut it.  We only buy sausages that say 'carbohydrate: 0' on the nutritional label, which are few and far between.  Usually, those are bratwurst.  Boars Head makes a low-carb bratwurst, which we use as our carb value for calculating purposes, but it has proven to be quite elusive!  We made an exception for Trader Joe's very fat-tastic bratwurst coming in at 'less than 1 carb' which is not currently in the keto-calculator and which I am using for calculations here.

With the sausage sorted, we had to figure out a way to make it a meal.  Tristan was craving sauerkraut and mustard, which make a perfect accompaniment to a bratwurst and are wholly keto-approved.  Score!  If you aren't adamantly opposed to mayo with a sausage, it would be another great way to bump up your fat. (I love hot dogs with mayo.)  

To finish off the fat, pair with a creamy decaf   coffee (not pictured).

Ingredients:


Sausages:

2 Trader Joe's Hofbrau Brats
45 g sauerkraut
14 g yellow mustard (or 2 sachets nicked from a fast-food chain)

Creamy Coffee:

40 g heavy whipping cream (40%)
cup of decaf coffee

This is not strictly a recipe as such but more of a meal idea, so no real explanation needed.  Cook your sausages as you like (boil, pan fry, roast over a fire).  Just make sure they're cooked all the way through!

fat:  66.7 g, protein:  27.8 g, carb:  2.9 g

ratio:  2.2:1

Note:  Less fatty sausages (as most others, including Boars Head will be) will likely need a spoonful or two of supplemental fat to hit your desired ratio, so make sure to take into account the values for whatever sausage you use!

Spinach Salad with Bacon Vinaigrette

This salad is one of our go-to recipes.  In fact, the picture to the right was taken during our road trip, so its easy to put together when you're somewhere unfamiliar!  It is also a warm salad, so good for cooler weather when the idea of a cold meal is unappealing.

Ingredients:

Spinach Salad:

25 g sliced white mushrooms

50 g spinach

10 g green onion

50 g hard boiled egg

55 g bacon

Bacon Vinaigrette:

3 g yellow mustard

10 g red wine vinegar

1 g truvia

38 g bacon fat

Plate the spinach and arrange sliced raw mushrooms and chopped green onion.

Boil egg for about 6 minutes or until hard boiled.  Slice and place on salad.

Fry bacon to desired crispiness and crumble over salad.

Weigh your remaining bacon fat to get desired amount.  If you are outside of the US, then your bacon may not render a frying pan full of fat (yes, fellow Americans, I too was shocked that there is bacon that does not yield buckets of bacon grease!).  In that case, add as much olive oil as needed to the pan to reach the 38 g.

Over low heat, whisk in vinegar, truvia, and yellow mustard.  It may help to comine the ingredients before adding back to the pan.

Once rewarmed over the stove, pour over your salad, making sure to hit those mushrooms, so they soak up all that dressing!

fat: 63.4 g, protein:  24.5 g, carb:  3.1 g

ratio:  2.3:1

Variation:  If you are bothered by the idea of raw mushroom on your salad, you can always add it to the dressing when you are cooking it on the stove.  However, when you pour the hot oil on the salad, it does act as a sort of partial cooking.  Also, if you don't need quite so much protein, just use less bacon.  As you can see from the picture, there is bacon to spare!

Fruity Flax "Loops"

Cereal is one of Tristan's big 'misses' on the ketogenic diet.  I had seen a few different keto breakfast cereal recipes floating around the internet, but each had their drawbacks.  For instance, a paltry child's handful of brightly colored fruit loops might taste nice, but they would never satisfy as a meal, nor contain enough protein for an active adult man.  Instead, I combined the best of every recipe I found, along with a couple of twists of my own.  The resulting cereal has a very 'healthy' flax taste to it, but according to Tristan, is my most ingenious creation yet!

The other upside to cereal is that it doesn't need to be kept cool, and the hours of advance preparation aside, can be put together very quickly the morning it's eaten.  Good news if you're packing up a campground!

Cereal Ingredients:

28 g european butter

2 g truvia

2 g sugar-free jello powder (strawberry banana)

10 g raw egg white

15 g vanilla soy protein powder

43 g ground flax seed

1/3 C water

'Milk':

50 g heavy cream (40%)

50g unsweetened almond milk

Melt butter and add all other remaining cereal ingredients.  The 1/3 C of water makes the batter easier to work with, but does not need to be precise, whatever works for you and your climate!

Pour batter into a plastic baggie and cut off one of the corners.  Remember, the size you cut from the corner dictates how much comes out when you are piping.  Bigger holes go faster!

If you are going for loops, pipe into loop shape.  However, if you are making a big batch like I was, you will quickly end up saying f*ck loops, you're getting blobs!  I promise that blobs taste just as good as loops, so give your hand a break if you need to!  Stick to about 1/2 inch in size.

Bake at 350 F for about 15 minutes.  Time will depend on size.  They should be crunchy and golden when ready.

Serve with the cream/almond 'milk.'

fat:  63.4 g, protein:  24 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.4:1

Variations:  I chose strawberry banana jello flavor which gives it a nice banana smell when it is baking. In the end, flax is the overwhelming flavor, but if you want to try other jello flavors, go for it!  Our protein powder is all the way from a Holland and Barrett in the UK and the lowest carb option was vanilla soy, but I imagine any protein powder should work, just make sure it is low on the carbs!

The Land of Low-Carb Opportunity

I had spent many a long (short?) English winter day looking forward to my arrival in the good ol'  US of A. Not only a land of the 'Free' which provides homes for the 'Brave', whatever that means, but also a return to 't-shirt weather' amongst a nation of people supposedly obsessed with 'fad diets'. It was an utopian future which I was envisioning, elbow deep in all sorts of low or no carb products, making kitchen life, nay life in general, so much sweeter. I had already seen the evidence online after all, so I knew these products existed. Recipes and blog entries showing how easy it was to eat 'low carb' as well as specialist products made for people like me. I just had to hunt them down and was sure that they would taste like manna handed down directly from the Gods.

My optimism was short lived.

Firstly, I found that all this talk of 'low' or 'no' carb was more a case of incorrect labeling that anything else. To describe the provision of nutritional information on US food products as simply 'inaccurate', does not do justice to the grand magnitude of lies being peddled to the American public by US food producers each year. I would go as far as to say that whoever is in charge of policing the US food labeling system has a hell of a lot to answer for, for the information provided is simply not accurate. 

By way of background, back in Europe, every product must show the complete nutritional information for 100g of the product sold to the nearest 0.1g (Note that 100g is just under 4oz for those of you still living in the Victorian era - hey, I'm just saying!). The values for (usually smaller) serving sizes can also be shown, but the 100g benchmark is always kept to and there is no possibility of rounding the figure up or down to the nearest gram. 

On the other hand, the US's system does not require a standard serving size to the listed, but rather leaves this at the discretion of the food retailer, allowing said retailer to also round down the values as they please. Therefore for example: A retailer who produces Product X which has 2.4g of carbs per 100g  may deem the appropriate serving size of its product to be 20g. The amount of carbs in 20g of Product X is 0.48g of carbs, which after a quick round-down equals 0 Carb. "Wow" says the innocent though uninformed shopper: "Product X has zero carbs, I can eat a gallon of this stuff and still get a pat on the back from Dr. Atkins". 

In an effort to try and overcome the rather creative approach food companies take to their nutritional labeling, we started to read more into the ingredients listed in the products we found in supermarket products. Unsurprisingly, what we saw only served to further confirm that this was not the Land of Low Carb Opportunity I was hoping it would be. 'Sugar', 'corn syrup', 'high fructose corn syrup', 'glucose', 'cane juice', 'refined sugar cane' - lots of different words which essentially mean the same thing --- that its almost impossible to find unadulterated food products in US supermarkets. Bacon, once a staple of mine contains sugars and therefore carbs. Turkey breast slices - carbs. Bratwurst sausage - carbs. Jerky - carbs (lots of them!). I also found there is no such thing over here as Double Cream, the closest being a less fatty 'Heavy Whipping Cream' which contains far more carbs also. 

I was distraught, but not inconsolable, because, leading me nicely into the subject of this post, I was placing all my eggs (about the only product in the US which doesn't have sugar added to it by the way) in the Walden Farms basket. 

I had been reading about this brand of condiments almost since they day I had to cut carbohydrates out of my life. This miracle company, no doubt, I thought, run by supernatural beings with divine agency, boasted a range of zero carb products which were meant to ACTUALLY contain zero carbs. Having read through their products' ingredient lists, I knew that 'nutritional' information on these products was clearly a misnomer to begin with, however such is the desperation of those on a low carb lifestyle, that I was ready to try their tomato sauce despite the fact that it contained not a hint of tomato in it. 

Chancing upon these products in the local health food store, I remember Samantha noting that I was buzzing with excitement, like a little boy with a sweet tooth in a sugar-free 'candy' store just before he found out that the candy was sweetened with sugar alcohols and therefore out of bounds also.

Buoyed by the actual sight of these products for the first time and a 2 for 1 offer on all Walden Farm products in the store, I started my spending spree, purchasing a range of Walden Farms products ranging from pasta sauce to peanut butter to pancake syrup, ketchup and barbecue sauce. I could hardly wait to get home and dip my little fingers in each of them. It was when I did that my whole world came crashing down on me. The crack team who were put together to formulate the flavouring for the tomato and basil pasta sauce and the tomato ketchup had clearly never been near tomatoes in their lives. The two varieties of barbecue sauce I tasted were completely unpalatable, a complete affront to the fine art of the BBQ - so much so that if Mr Walden had the audacity to set foot in the State of Texas, he would surely be hung, drawn and quartered. A missed opportunity really, since making him swallow a tablespoon of his awful sauce would be a far worse punishment. Finally a more than dishonourable mention goes to the so-called 'peanut butter'. The way that Mr Walden raped and pillaged this stalwart of the American sandwich is completely beyond any type of reproach. To get the taste and texture of peanut butter so completely wrong is perhaps the only 'miracle' which Walden should be laying claim to on his website, and I personally think a special section of hell should be reserved for him and his team of apes for building up my hopes as much as he did on this one. 

Ok, so you must be wondering about the pancake syrup. I suppose I must respectfully alight my high horse of criticism and negativity to admit that a small bow must go to Walden on this one. In small amounts and added to Samantha's special pancakes or cereal, it does provide the (tricks-me-into-thinking-it's-a) sugar rush I have been so desiring. But other than that, shame on you Walden you naughty, naughty man, I will certainly not be trying your chocolate sauce for God only knows what that vile brown mush will actually taste like …

One further note on Walden Farm products is that they are actually not zero carb at all, adding 'dishonesty' to the list of crimes Mr Walden should be answering to.