Celebrating a 4 pound loss this week!

I finally made it through a whole week without any wheat products. I had been able to keep the sugars and starches out for a few weeks but I had a wrap at clinicals a week ago and I think it stunted my losses. I was also frustrated with the scale just sticking in one place day after day, so I stopped weighing in every day and decided to start using Saturday mornings as my official weigh in day. Well, then without warning a family illness kept me up at the hospital for 24 hours and I ended up coming home at 3:00 AM this morning and wolfing down a giant fresh beef burger smothered in cheese. So - when I weighed in I was sure the scale was going to yell, Get off me Fat Ass!" But much to my surprise it showed a 4.1 loss since my last weigh in earlier in the week. I was ecstatic!

Well, what is an ecstatic fat boy expected to do? Celebrate!!!! I like to celebrate with food. No! I did not cheat on my diet, but I decided to kick it up a notch and make a giant egg roll, John Style! Here's how I did it:

First, I baked of a pan of bacon in the oven so the strips would be nice and perfectly long. Then I harvested them onto some napkins to drain and snacked on a few while I contemplated my next move.





Then I diced up some onion, green pepper, and baby 'bellas and fried them up in a skillet until they started to caramelize a bit.




Next I whipped up 4 large eggs and poured them over the simmering veggies.




This next step is when I added the perfect strips of bacon.




Then I topped it all with a blend of shredded cheeses.




The final step was pretty hard to do and took two flippers to accomplish rolling up the giant 12" egg roll. It was a bit messy at first and since it took two hands I wasn't able to grab any pics. But the end result was phenomenal! I grilled each side for about a minute and then plated it.  I ended up with a giant egg roll stuffed with cheese,  bacon, and veggies - all topped with more shredded cheese and Fage Greek yogurt. Success! Next time I might add a few more strips of bacon and some olives...

Low Carb Pancakes

I guess I can have my cake and eat it too! Well, at least I can have my pancakes...

My wife invented an awesome low carb pancake recipe using protein powder and coconut flower. I served them up with some bacon and eggs poached in hot bacon grease. I like my eggs on top of the pancakes and then I smother everything with sugar free syrup. Sometimes I can't believe that I get to eat this good and still continue to lose weight. I love living low carb!

MeatLoaf

My wife made me an excellent low carb meatloaf using Parmesan, Romano, and Asiago cheese along with ground cauliflower, onion flakes, eggs, and hot sauce. She mixed everything together by hand, placed it in a baking dish, and topped it lightly with low carb ketchup. I ate almost a pound of it about an hour later! I can't wait to enjoy the left overs...

Finger Food

Pictured above are the ingredients that I used to make a little low carb snack to eat while watching football. I had one Hormel smoked pork chop left over from breakfast this morning, so I decided to make finger sandwiches with it, but instead of using bread (avoid that evil wheat!), I used a new jalapeno raw cheese from Meadow Valley Farm. Here is the recipe to make great low carb football snacks:

1. Slice the cheese just under 1/4 inch thick - not too thin or it won't support the fixin's
2. Thinly slice one Hormel Smoked Pork Chop
3. Take a traditional tomato slice and follow the natural "pie shape" cutting it into 6 triangles.
4. Spread a thin layer of mayo on each slice of cheese
5. Squeeze unsweetened pickle relish on the bottom slice of each of your mini wedge sandwiches
6. Layer strips of the thinly cut pork chop onto the bottom wedge
7. Top the bottom wedge with three triangle tomato slices and place the remaining jalapeno cheese wedge on top to finish the mini finger sandwich


I served it up with a sliced Granny Smith Apple which provided the perfect cooling contrast to the super delicious hot cheese!

Rash Browns

Potatoes are not part of any low carb diet. For those in potato withdrawal there is a viable alternative when it comes to hash browns, little red radishes! Here’s how I make low carb hash browns or “rash-browns” as my wife calls them:

I started off by shredding a bag of small clean radishes using a a cheese grater. Radishes shrink way down so I grated until I had double the final amount that I wanted to end up with. Then I placed them in heated clean bacon grease on the stove top.


The next few pictures show the progression of the radishes as they went through the cooking process. As the bottom started to brown I added some butter to the top. The butter helped brown the top side when they were flipped and mixed nicely with the bacon grease.




When I took them out of the pan they were still a little soft and wet, but as they dried on the napkin they crisped up nicely, and they tasted like little potato crisps! I used these crispy rash-browns as part of a topping on a scrambled mess but they are also great by themselves. Until I find a perfect potato replacement that looks just like potatoes these little rash-browns will see a lot of action on my breakfast menu.

Quite Possibly my best looking Omelet ever!

I made this omelet a little differently than usual. Instead of mixing all the ingredients together I cooked the fillings in one pan and made thin scrambled eggs in a different pan. I sauteed mushrooms, sausage, bacon, and melted cheese over it. Then I stuffed the egg and rolled it over the meat, cheese, and veggies.

Homemade Low Carb Gyros

After looking everywhere for ground lamb recently with no success I finally asked the butcher at Meijer where I could get some and he was kind enough to order a shipment today. So I was able to make my wife her favorite low carb dish: Homemade Low Carb Gyros! I’ll post the recipe later but basically I mix together garlic and onion and some spices and then broil lamb burgers for 12 minutes.

Then I slice the lamb patties really thin and place them in a skillet with tons of white onions. Fifteen minutes in a hot cast iron skillet and you have the perfect gyros with sauteed onions! I made the cucumber sauce with Greek yogurt and spices and a twist of lemon this time.

My new favorite Low Carb BBQ sauce

This past weekend I grilled up some chicken quarters to kick off the 2011 grilling season. They turned out very nice and I ended up eating delicious leftovers all week. I have sampled some decent low carb BBQ sauces, but on the grill they seem to cook too fast and burn easily. Nature's Hollow Sugar Free Hickory Maple BBQ Sauce is the closest I have come yet to having the same results as Open Pit BBQ. It didn’t scorch easily and became nice and sticky after a few minutes on the grill. I was able the brush on the sauce at the beginning instead of waiting until the last minute, allowing the flavor get deeper into the meat.
Check out those perfect grill marks!

New Low Carb Burger

Today I threw some chicken and burgers on the grill:

I took two of the burger patties and sandwich a new flavor between them: Swiss Cheese, Nature's Hollow Sugar Free Hickory Maple BBQ Sauce, and crunchy hot pepper rings. I think I’m going to like this one!