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.

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'.

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.

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.