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!