How & Why I Made Ghee

Jar of Home-Made Ghee

I made ghee for the first time yesterday. Ghee is a kind of clarified butter which originates in India. It removes the milk solids so some dairy-sensitive people who can’t eat butter can use ghee. It also has the benefit that it can cook at higher temperatures without burning, and it has a nutty taste that is different from butter and that some people like a lot.

I made the ghee from unsalted butter from the grocery store. I have heard that some people make ghee from grass-fed butter like Kerrygold which is healthier, but I don’t have the kind of income to do that. I used the ghee recipe from Fran McCullough’s Living Low-Carb (2000.)

The recipe makes 2 cups of ghee from 1 pound of unsalted butter. It says to melt the butter over medium-high heat and cook for 15-20 minutes to drive the water out of the butter.  Then you reduce heat to medium-low and cook for another 15 minutes until the milk solids at the bottom of the pan turn golden but not brown.

Recipe and Butter

I thought my milk solids got kind of brown at the end, but the flavor of the ghee was alright. I strained it into a canning jar, using a canning funnel and a ‘non-gauze milk filter’ which they use to filter milk on farms. I get those at the farm store— I used to keep milk goats— and I use them for many kitchen filtering tasks. You can also use a coffee filter.

I used the ghee in some fat bombs (high-good-fat candies) and in my morning bulletproof coffee which was half-MCT oil and half-ghee this morning. It adds a nice flavor to stuff. I have read the flavor described as ‘nutty’ and ‘like butterscotch.’

Ghee keeps for up to 3 months without refrigeration and 1 year in the refrigerator. It gets solid as a brick in the fridge, though. I took mine out of the fridge as I anticipate it getting used up well before it goes bad. If you don’t use much ghee at a time, you can make smaller batches, or divide your ghee supply into smaller jars and keep most in the fridge or freezer. Write the DATE on every jar of ghee you make— you don’t want to push it in a corner by accident and eat it years after the expiration date.

Have you ever made ghee? Did it turn out the way you wanted it? Or have you purchased store-bought ghee? What do you like/dislike about ghee? What do you use it for?

Starting to Make Ghee

Midpoint in Making Ghee

About to Strain Ghee

Put On Your Low-Carb Colored Glasses

A lot of people fail on Low-Carb, Keto or Atkins because they lack information. Dr. Jason Fung started asking his patients to fast because when he put them on a low-carb diet, they were coming back and reporting that they had given up bread and started eating pita bread. He would have his patients fast for three days right away— without doing Keto * Low-Carb and getting in ketosis which would make the fast painless.

We need to get to the point that we pick up a package of processed food, gaze at the ingredients list, and right away spot the ingredients that make the food not-for-us. We need to be able to look at a recipe and spot which ingredients are full of carbs. We need to put on our low-carb colored glasses.

The way I learned to do that is that I had an old copy of Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution (1972.) I got it in a thrift shop in Iron Mountain, Michigan, at a time when low-carb and Atkins were considered just an old fad diet. There is a chapter in that book called: The Revolutionary Never-Hungry No-Limit Steak-and-Salad-plus Diet. (There is no chapter number in that edition, but there is an index in the front so you can find the chapter in question.)

This book chapter is essentially a diet sheet, probably based on one Dr. Atkins handed out in his practice. It tells you which foods you can eat in unlimited quantity, which ones you can have in restricted quantity, and which ones were out-of-bounds. I read that chapter multiple times until I had the content almost memorized, still read that chapter from time to time, and therefore I pretty much know what foods I can and can’t have. You need to learn that, too.

I prefer this old Atkins books to newer books because it is very practical for patients that didn’t keep food diaries, consult carbohydrate gram counters, or use modern apps to calculate macronutrient percentages. It doesn’t have you counting your carb grams, which means you are not tempted to give up your salads and your cheese and heavy cream rations to use those carb grams on a tiny portion of a high-carb food you are addicted to.

UNLIMITED FOODS

These are mostly zero-carb foods, and as such are mostly meats, poultry, fish and seafood. Eggs, which do have less than 1 gram of carbs, are also included as an unlimited food. Butter and fats, salt, pepper and spices, and water and carb-free drinks are also unlimited.

LIMITED FOODS

You are allowed the juice of ONE lemon or lime, four ounces a day of any hard, aged cheese, 4 teaspoons of heavy whipping cream.

FORBIDDEN FOODS

These are the foods that made you sick, or fat, or carb-addicted in the first place. Bread, biscuits, candy, cookies, bananas, baked beans, milk, macaroni and potatoes, among other things. You need to learn what these are— by reading the list in the Atkins book, and by reading labels in the grocery store. If that new ‘high-protein’ cereal has more grams of sugar than Froot Loops, we need to give it a pass. 

OTHER RESTRICTIONS

Many people on Keto * Low-Carb have given themselves many other restrictions— they don’t eat soy products, or green beans or alfalfa sprouts because they are ‘legumes’ just like baked beans, or they abhor ‘canola’ rapeseed oil. Sometimes the additional restrictions are based on good science. Other times they are arbitrary— such as not using butter or heavy cream because Paleolithic man didn’t keep dairy animals. Don’t jump in to following a rule just because you heard it on a podcast or read it in a keto online forum. Ask for the peer-reviewed scientific study that backs the new restriction up.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

Get out your copy of Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution (1972,) if you don’t have one, buy one. Find the chapter I mentioned above and bookmark it. Every morning for two weeks, start your day by reading this chapter through. You might each day pick out one kind of allowed food to buy and eat— things you already like and something new. And pick out each day one food from the ‘forbidden’ list, look up the carb count to see why it is so bad, and perhaps find substitutes for the ones you love the most.

Have you had any difficulties learning the rules for Keto * Low-Carb? Have you made mistakes and learned better? What makes you stick to it even when it’s hard? Drop me a comment!

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Recipe: Ground Bison (Venison?) Patties with Cream Cheese

Ground bison? No, ground GRASS-FED bison. And I bought it at the Walmart in Marinette, Wisconsin. It comes in 1 pound packages like the grass-fed ground beef. Ground bison is leaner, though, and super-lean meat is not part of the Keto * Low-Carb way of life. So I concocted this recipe, based mainly on some old German meatball recipe I only half remember. But it turned out good. I would also try this recipe on ground venison if I had any (I have some frozen venison I might thaw and make into ground meat in my Vita-Mix) or ground turkey or ultra-lean ground beef or anything else that might bring your daily fat total too low.

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound ground bison (or ground venison, or other ground meat) [0 grams carbs, 0 fiber, 0 net carbs]

4 oz. cream cheese (Philadelphia or similar) [4 g carbs, 0 g fiber, 4 g net carbs]

1 egg (I used a jumbo egg) {0.4 g carbs, 0 g fiber, 0.4 g net carbs]

2 TBSP (tablespoon) ground flaxseed meal [4.04 g carbs, 3.8 g fiber, 0.24 g net carbs]

DIRECTIONS:

Put on disposable plastic gloves, and smoosh the ingredients around in a small bowl until mixed. Divide meat into four equal portions and form into patties. Cook the patties just as you normally cook hamburger patties, or put them into individual freezer bags to freeze them (I used 1 pint freezer bags.) These make nice-sized patties, if they come out too big for your tastes, divide the recipe into 5 portions. OPTIONAL: place 2 TBSP of home-made vinaigrette dressing in the bag and marinate for a few hours or overnight. I used the Italian Vinaigrette recipe from 500 Low-Carb recipes by Dana Carpender— it has garlic in it. Garlic is life!

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION

Whole Recipe: 8.44 g carbs, 3.8g fiber, 4.64g net carbs

1/4 recipe— 1 patty: 2.11g carbs, 0.95g fiber, 1.16g net carbs

GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL INSTRUCTIONS

If your patties are frozen, thaw them overnight. Use the level (not slanted) setting and use the Baking Pan on the bottom and the Steak Plate on top. Spray with olive oil pan spray and set grill to Medium and preheat. When grill is heated, cook patty for 5 minutes. One instruction booklet I have for my grill gives Medium as the heat setting for burgers, the other instruction booklet FOR THE SAME GRILL says ‘High.’ Both say 3-5 minutes. Ground turkey, on the other hand, is 8-9 minutes on High. 

I had some grilled mushrooms in the fridge and set them on the grill with the meat patty to heat them— they came out maybe a bit overdone but I liked it okay as a burger topping. You may also add low-carb catsup and any other burger toppings you really like. DON’T eat it on a bun or bread, but with a knife and fork. (My flatbread recipe is too fragile to serve as a burger bun— maybe if you made them with 3 TBSP batter instead of 2? That would equal 1/4 cup, by the way.)

If you have a cheaper model of George Foreman grill or contact grill (cooks from both sides), use a tile or something to make the grill more level. If there are no replaceable plates, of course you can’t use the Baking Pan. If any significant amount of fat escapes into the Drip Tray (fat-catching tray), top the burger with it or part of it when cooking is done. 

If you have any comments or ideas about this recipe, please drop a comment. If you make this recipe, stop back here and tell me how it turned out. I love to hear from  blog readers! Well, not so much spam comments or mean trolls, (unless they are funny) but everyone else.

Adventures in Meat Freezing

Recently I made a foraging expedition to Gary’s Market in Stephenson, upper Michigan, and bought a family pack of boneless pork chops, two rib eye steaks, and a package of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. So I had to get busy packaging them for the freezer.

I have two freezers, really. The one on the top of my fridge, and an upright freezer on the back porch. Now, any book on food preservation will tell you that the freezer on/in your fridge is not great for food storage. It’s best to have a dedicated freezer for that. I’ve heard that upright ones are easier to use than chest freezers. If you are low-income like me, the money to buy a freezer may worry you. But you may be able to save by buying in bulk or direct from a farmer if you only have a freezer to put your meat in.

I do sometimes use the freezer compartment in the fridge to store some meat and veggies I am actively eating. But I worried about the temps— some ice cubes melted and then refroze in there (just when I needed them for a smoothie.) I got a pair of freezer/fridge digital thermometers which not only tell the current temp, but the high and low temp. I put one in each freezer. The freezer compartment is temperamental, in part because I often accidentally pull it open when closing the fridge door. 

The thermometers came in pairs and I didn’t need four, so for my fridge I put in one of the thermometers I use in my egg incubator (I make my own baby poultry at home.) I find that when I set the fridge to the cooler temp I prefer, it makes an unholy racket from time to time, usually at 3 am, and so I fear that my fridge will need replacement soon.

FREEZER PACKAGING

There are many ways to pack food for the freezer. I use canning jars to freeze single portions of soups/stews/curries. For meat, I use plastic freezer bags. I get gallon and quart freezer bags at the dollar stores, and pint freezer bags, which are harder to find, at Gary’s Market. 

I put a single portion of meat into the smallest bag it will fit in, and put several bags of the same type of item (pork chops, beef steaks, bison meat patties) into a bigger bag, often a gallon bag. I write the DATE and type of food on every bag. ALWAYS DATE YOUR FROZEN FOOD! Frozen food doesn’t last forever and you don’t want to eat something you should have thrown away in 2004.

USING FROZEN MEAT

Be sure and regularly USE your frozen meat. Every evening at bedtime take out the amount of meat you will be using the next day, and put it in the fridge. You might put a bit of vinaigrette dressing on some of the meat as a marinade. I use the vinaigrette recipes from Dana Carpender’s 500 Low-Carb Recipes (2002.) I’ve been grilling my meat most days on my George Foreman grill, using the Baking Pan for the bottom plate so I won’t lose any of the healthy fat I pay good money for.

BUYING MEAT IN BULK?

The next move for me is to buy some meat direct from a farmer, in whatever quantity I have to buy. I’d want some beef— grass-fed if I can get it. I also might get one of my lambs butchered if I can find out where to go with it. (I think my Serbian-American friends who have butchered for me before might be getting too old for it, and plus they don’t cut it up enough or package it well. Though they DID do it for free when they did it, and they have also been known to give me free frozen venison or pork.)

I never used to be a big meat-eater before I went low-carb— I was too busy being addicted to carbs to learn to cook meat— but I’ve found I really enjoy some of the meat I cook— even more than I enjoy Rice-a-Roni, and I used to eat that stuff all the time. 

There is No Such Thing as 'Plant Butter'

The food processors who produce a popular brand of ‘spread’ now have come out with a product that they have misnamed ‘plant butter.’ It comes in varieties that contain olive oil or avocado oil, but the one I looked at online ALSO contained the dreaded ‘canola’ oil (a trade name for rapeseed oil) and ‘pea protein.’ 

OK, here’s the thing: I live in the dairy capital of upper Michigan, Menominee county. My home is a former dairy farm, as are the two homes nearest mine. There are several currently-working dairy farms on my road. And so I know: butter is a DAIRY product. It comes from cows’ lady parts (or goats’ lady parts or sheeps’ lady parts, or I suppose yaks’ lady parts) and there is no such thing as a ‘butter plant’ with udders you can squeeze to get ‘plant butter.’ 

It used to be that dairy farmers were more defensive of their product. They would raise a fuss if imitation soy based drink was called ‘soy milk.’ They would give out awards to local restaurants who used real butter and not margarine or spread. 

I grew up eating margarine as a kid because of our society’s fat-phobia. Now I learn that the butter-substitutes we used back then were very unhealthy— full of trans-fats, hydrogenated oils, and over-refined cheap oils. 

Now we know that healthy fats are important in the diet— see the 1957 study from Kekwick and Pawan ‘Metabolic Study in Human Obesity with Isocaloric Diets High in Fat, Protein or Carbohydrate’ in Metabolism Clinical and Experimental, a scientific journal, which shows that diets high in fat were more effective in producing weight loss. 

My answer to the ‘plant butter’ scam: eat real butter. Grass-fed butter like Kerrygold is good if you can afford it. If you are dairy-sensitive, try ghee, which is made from butter. You can make it yourself at home, and I’m planning to write a blog post about it once I try making some myself.

If you want extra-virgin olive oil or avocado oil on your food, don’t buy ‘plant butter.’ You can just brush some of the actual oil over your food. You can even do this with low-carb gluten-free bread substitutes such as ‘Atkins Diet Revolution Rolls’ or one of my own recipes (I will share the latest version on this blog, soon.)

RECOMMENDED READING:

Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, 2008 Reviews the science behind dietary theories like low-fat and low-carb.

Real Food Keto by Jimmy Moore & Christine Moore, NTP, 2019 Chapter 4 will educate you about fats— the good and the bad.

Ketotarian by Dr. Will Cole, 2018. If you just have to do a ‘plant based’ diet, you can still do keto. Author was a podcast co-host with Jimmy Moore.

In Search of a Few Good Keto/Low-Carb/Paleo/Carnivore Podcasts

Jimmy Moore and his fat pants

I used to listen to all of Jimmy Moore's podcasts quite often, but now that he is on hiatus, well, I still listen to HIS podcast but I'm trying to expand my list.

I'm open to any recommendation that my blog readers might have. Just add a comment to this post with a link. Any podcast that seems good-enough to be useful to others I will add to my 'podcast' blogroll. Sadly, it's hard to find podcast links that actually update properly in my blogroll, but I leave podcasts on as long as the link leads to something.

I have tried a few other podcasts such as 'Fat Burning Man' and 'Two Keto Dudes' but I'm always willing to try something new. If you yourself are a podcaster, do mention that with your link.


In Other News
I'm planning, in spite of my low-income, to get a new (or used) dishwasher to help me with my cleanup process. I'm hoping it will help me keep cooking so I can keep eating keto and improving my energy level, my blood sugars, my weight and my general health.

You may have seen that I am trying to blog more on this blog this month. If you want to encourage that, you can make a comment on this blog, and perhaps share the link to a good post on your social media. (Thank you!)

Using a George Foreman grill on Keto * Low-Carb

Let’s face it: the George Foreman table-top grill is pushing a dietary approach that is the opposite of ours: reduce fat, reduce fat, reduce fat, and ignore the harm done by carbs. But I love my George Foreman grill and use it often— to make low-carb, high-fat food!

MY GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL

There are different models of George Foreman grill. Mine is called ‘The Next Grilleration G5’ and has removable grilling plates. It also has a lever so you can change the position of the grill from tilted (so the fat drains off) to level (to keep the healthy fat you paid money for.)

It has a top plate called the Steak Plate and a bottom plate called the Grilling Plate. But you can also use a different plate called the Baking Pan to cook steaks, chops and the like without draining off the fat. Keep the Plate Position Lock Lever in the back position. 

I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO COOK MEAT

I could do a lot of cooking things— from making cookies to baking bread— but I never learned to cook steaks or chops or any kind of meat before I got my George Foreman grill. The grill’s instructions has a list of the kinds of meat, poultry, fish and other foods it can cook, the temperature (high, medium, low), and the number of minutes to cook. I always set the timer for this, so I don’t under- or overcook.  The grill cooks on both sides at the same time, so it cooks more quickly. The food is tasty, as well. 

I also use the instruction booklet when I am cooking steaks or chops in a frying pan— I use the time indicated as the time to cook on each side. 

ADDING FAT

When you are using the Baking Pan for the bottom plate, you can use avocado oil or other healthy oil on the plate to keep food from sticking and to add fat. Also you can use a fat-containing sauce or add a bit of sour cream to the finished food. 

RIBEYE STEAKS

I got some decent ribeye steaks and I marinaded it in a plastic bag with low-carb vinaigrette dressing (from 500 Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender.) I cooked them on the grill, set to High, with the Baking Pan and the Plate Position Lock Lever  in the back position. I used EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil) on the grill to prevent sticking and add fat. It turned out really tasty.  I intend to cook some boneless pork chops in the same way (except the booklet recommends the Medium setting and a shorter cooking time.)

BACON

I like my bacon crisp. Not quite as crisp as my mom does, who tends to like hers a bit cremated, but still…. Bacon cooked in a pan in its own fat isn’t quick to get crisp, so I use the grill with the Grilling Plate and with the Plate Position Lock Lever to the front position and a clean drip tray in place. 

After cooking the bacon, I pour the hot or warm fat through a coffee filter into a canning jar and save the fat for various cooking uses. I’ve even made mayonnaise with bacon fat!

GRILLED ONIONS

A yellow or white onion of 2.5 inch diameter is 10 grams of carbs and 2 grams of fiber, so plan your portions accordingly. I slice mine about 1/4 inch thick, sprinkle it with Himalayan pink salt and/or Spike or Vegesal, Use the Baking Plate and the Plate Position Lock Lever set to the back position, and use EVOO or other healthy fat on the plate. Cook for the recommended time of 2-3 minutes on High, or go as much as 4 minutes. I used to be a big eater of onion rings, mainly because of the high carb batter, but I like these plain grilled onions very well. 

CHICKEN THIGHS

I used bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, and actually cooked it 2 minutes beyond the 7 minutes recommended, and it still was a bit under-done. I ate it with a tablespoon of low-carb Hoisin Sauce (recipe from 500 Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender.) Heavenly, and the bone went in the freezer bag for chicken bones, to become part of some chicken bone broth some day. 

I did some searching online about cooking bone-in chicken, and the only useful suggestion I read was to beat the chicken thigh down a bit with a meat mallet. I don’t own a meat mallet, but will cover a heavy aluminum ice crusher in a plastic bag and smash the chicken with that next time.

CLEAN UP

The grill needs to be unplugged and cool down before you remove the removable plates for washing. Sadly, these plates have to be washed by hand. I use my biggest dishwashing pan and fill it with soapy water. I use the gentle sponge that came with the grill— never use scouring pads on the non-stick finish. I understand, from doing some research, that the dishwasher-safe plates meant for a newer model also fit my current grill. When I get a working dishwasher in the house, the new plates are a planned purchase.

The base of the grill must never be immersed in water. Wipe it with a soft cloth or sponge, and dry with a dry cloth. 

If you hate kitchen clean-up as much as I do, get in the habit of cleaning your grill promptly instead of letting it sit there dirty, getting harder to clean. 

Do you have a George Foreman or similar indoor grill? Have you used it for Keto * Low-Carb cooking yet? What have you cooked on it so far? 

Keto * Low-Carb Salad Dressings

I was never a salad dressing person. I wasn’t even a salad person at all until I started Original-Atkins Induction for the first time. When I had little to eat but meat, cheese, eggs and the like, my two allotted daily salads were a treat rather than a chore.

Dana Carpender (author of many low-carb cookbooks) called store-bought dressings a ‘bad fat minefield.’ What’s a bad fat? For us Ketonians (people on Keto * Low-Carb), we follow the science. Heavily refined vegetable oils, though cheap and beloved of food manufactures, are not good fats. Bad fats cause inflammation which causes diseases that none of us want. Chapter 4 in the book Real Food Keto (link below) covers the skinny on fats. 

Some good fats are things like the fats in meat, particularly that in grass-fed meat. (I’ve made home-made mayonnaise with bacon fat instead of some other fat— it was great.) EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil) is a fat even your conventionally-oriented medical person will allow you to have. Coconut oil and MCT oil are good for getting you in ketosis. Since you will be refrigerating your salad dressing until you finish consuming it, you won’t want to use the coconut oil since it is solid at room temperature (except in a warm summer) but MCT oil, though pricy, is a good choice. I often use about a tablespoon of MCT oil and the rest EVOO when making dressings. Avocado oil and toasted sesame oil are also acceptable choices if they are COLD-PRESSED. (Not ‘cold-processed.’) Butter, when made into ghee, is a good fat which you might also use. (When I make ghee, which I plan to do soon, I may try adding some to a salad dressing recipe.)

I have found recipes for salad dressings in many of my LC cookbooks. Here are the results from some I have made:

RANCH DRESSING (500 Low-Carb Recipes) 

I used avocado mayonnaise for this one, and buttermilk powder and water for the buttermilk. It came out very thin and watery. Next time, I will add a Tablespoon of sour cream and use less water. This recipe gives a 1 Tablespoon serving but does not say so.

FRENCH VINAIGRETTE DRESSING (500 Low-Carb Recipes)

I made this recipe not to put on my salads, but to use as a marinade, as in the recipe ‘Steak Vinaigrette’ in the same recipe book. The steak was great, and for my next trick, I drizzled some of this dressing on one of my daily sprout-based salads. I liked it! 

ITALIAN VINAIGRETTE DRESSING (500 Low-Carb Recipes)

Similar to the recipe above but with different seasonings, including crushed garlic and one drop of Tabasco sauce. I liked this one as well.

SMOKY PAPRIKA DRESSING (200 Low-Carb High-Fat Recipes)

I made this one with avocado mayonnaise (and now I need more avocado mayonnaise) and used regular paprika as I don’t have smoky paprika in the house at the moment. Good enough I’m making it again.

ANOTHER POPPY SEED DRESSING (200 Low-Carb High-Fat Recipes)

I made this one today— another winner! I used 8 drops of no-flavor Sweetleaf Sweet Drops instead of the amount of ‘liquid stevia’ mentioned. It was plenty sweet enough for me. You could use Sweetleaf in different flavors to vary the taste. 

HOW TO GET STARTED USING SALAD DRESSINGS

One thing to remember— a home-made salad dressing won’t last in your fridge forever! Maria Emmerich, in her cookbooks, tends to give such recipes a time limit of 5 days to 2 weeks in the fridge, depending on the recipe. So it is important to LABEL and DATE the canning jars you store (& make?) your salad dressings in. Also, if you don’t use that much (I tend to use one to one & 1/2 teaspoons per salad, even though most allow a one Tablespoon serving or more.) make a 1/2 to 1/4 batch.

To obey the use-it-up rule, you may need to add the dressing to each of your two daily salads, every day while the dressing lasts. If you actually prefer plain salads, or salads with just sea salt and Spike or Mrs. Dash, have that for a day or two after you finish a batch of dressing, before making more dressing.

I used to eat my sprout salads plain, right out of the Victorio sprouting tray, but having made a few dressings now and tried them, I’m getting used to non-naked salad. 

WHY SALAD DRESSINGS?

We use salad dressings because good fat is good for our health and helps us get into ketosis, and salad dressings are a way to get that good fat into our bodies— similar to the reason for making ‘bulletproof’ coffee and other hot beverages with butter or MCT oil in them. I can’t stand EVOO in my bulletproof coffee, but I love my salad dressings made with EVOO.

Salad dressings also add flavor to your salads, which may help you find them more edible if, like me, you’ve never been big on eating salads.

Also, just because they are called salad dressings doesn’t mean you can’t dip a bit of meat, celery sticks, or other food into it. 

BOOKS MENTIONED

(These are NOT affiliate links, because the kind folks at Amazon kicked me out of the affiliate program for not peddling enough books.)

500 Low-Carb Recipes - Dana Carpender -2002

200 Low-Carb High-Fat Recipes - Dana Carpender - 2015 

Real Food Keto - Jimmy Moore & Christina Moore, NTP - 2019

Keto * Low-Carb on a Budget

I am on disability, and I actually save money for the government because I control my T2 diabetes with my Keto eating plan and not with pills and expensive medical interventions paid for by Medicaid. But while Medicaid will pay for my pills, they don’t pay for the healthy food I need to stay on Keto * Low-Carb.

Poor people in general often feel the need to eat dreadful carb-filled diets because of poverty. How many times have you heard of a person who eats ramen noodles because of money issues. The problem with ramen noodles is this— it is just a lot of cheap carbs and flavoring chemicals. And when I have eaten ramen noodles, I can eat a full packet and be hungry for more just a little later. While if I have a bulletproof coffee, I may feel non-hungry for quite a long time.

We need to learn strategies for food buying that help us get what we need for our Keto * Low-Carb life at a low price. I have a few suggestions that may help you eat better and healthier even if you can’t afford grass-fed steaks every night.

DON’T FORGET THE EGGS

Eggs are good food— both the whites and the yolks— and can be prepared in many ways. Eggs over-easy or sunny-side-up, omelets or scrambled eggs, quiche without pie crusts…. You can even hard-boil an egg and mix it into your low-carb smoothie if you worry about raw eggs.

Grocery store eggs can be very low priced because the egg corporations exploit the egg farmers who work for them. Farm eggs are better, though a bit more expensive. If you have neighbors who keep chickens, you may be able to get some eggs in exchange for doing chicken chores.

Raising your own chickens is more expensive than buying eggs, because your hens will need food whether they are laying well or not. And no matter how well you feed and raise your hens, you are competing with cheap grocery store eggs when you try to sell your surplus. 

DON’T SHOP IN HEALTH FOOD STORES

Foods in a health food store are always higher in price. Most of them will not work on our Keto * Low-Carb way of life. Brownies with organic sugar and flour are still a health disaster, no matter how much you pay for them. There may be some specialty products in a health food store that you need— but if you can get the same product at Walmart or online, that will be better than going to a store full of expensive carb-filled temptations.

USE DAIRY PRODUCTS

It’s not Paleo, but dairy products such as butter, heavy whipping cream, full-fat cottage cheese, and sour cream can be a good part of our eating plan, if you are not allergic to them. If you would rather use ghee than butter, you can make your own ghee at home from grocery-store butter. I’ve found that Aldi’s has good prices on butter, but there are often good sale prices on the dairy products I use at my local rural grocery store.

WALMART HAS GRASS-FED BEEF

A lot of people look down on the poor folks who shop at Walmart for some reason, but that store has a lot of food we can use at decent prices. My local Walmart has grass-fed ground beef (and ground bison) at a reasonable price— more expensive than the regular over-lean ground beef at local grocery stores, but the health benefits of grass-fed are worth paying a bit more. I’ve also bought coconut flour, liquid and regular coconut oil, and avocado mayonnaise from Walmart.

FOLLOW THE USE-IT-UP RULE

The Keto * Low-Carb way of life will have you buying more perishable food than non-perishable processed food. And the big key to low-cost eating is to eat your perishable food before it perishes. If you buy a head of lettuce, eat lettuce in your salads every day til it is used up. Don’t skip your salads some days and let the lettuce get brown and yucky. 

Home-made foods you will really need to follow the use-it-up rule for. When I make home-made salad dressing to get more healthy fats into my body, I use some on each salad I eat until it is used up. When I sprout some salad sprouts, I have to eat my sprout salads every day or some of the sprouts will be wasted. Or fed to the chickens.

Having a good freezer is a good way to make low-carb foods and not have to eat your low-carb pork curry at every meal. I freeze portions in Ball wide-mouth canning jars, so I can eat my own home-made frozen food. (The freezer compartment on my refrigerator is not as good at preserving food as my upright freezer on the porch.)

DON’T FOLLOW KETO TRENDS

‘Keto’ is a word that sells food— often food that is expensive and not essential to your Keto * Low-Carb lifestyle. But you don’t need to spend a fortune on ‘Keto Chow’ or specialty keto products. Most of these products may not be available for long, anyway. Much better to learn to live on the ordinary low-carb foods you can find in regular groceries for regular prices.

SPROUTING FOR SALADS

On Original Atkins (a ketogenic diet) you are allowed about 2 cups of salad veggies a day even on Induction. Since salad greens are perishable, I grow my own at home, mostly in the form of salad sprouts (alfalfa, red clover, and a mix called Broccoli and Friends.) I also grow some pea shoots, lentil shoots and am starting some sunflower shoots/sprouts to add to my salads. 

The cost of my sprout seeds is not much when you think that I can get my daily salads from 1.5 to 2 teaspoons of sprouting seed daily. Also, I grow just the amount I need so I don’t have to worry about my salad veggies spoiling in the refrigerator. 

‘SHOPPING’ AT FOOD BANKS

If you are really hard up, you may end up having to turn to your local food bank for help. In my county, there is one food bank I am allowed to use, and I have to show some ID with my local address, to prevent folks from getting food from multiple food banks. 

At my food bank, you are allowed to tell them what you eat. I always tell the folks that I am on a special diet for my health, and can’t eat foods with sugars or starches. I can usually get a can of tuna or two, some cans of low-carb veggies, maybe even a can of Spam…. I also got some frozen venison once, and once a bag of lentils (which you can sprout to make sprouted lentil soup.)

Food banks are oriented to the majority, who are carb eaters, and so I find very little I can use there. I also get Food Stamps, which are more generally useful in meeting my food needs, and so I haven’t had to go to the food bank in a few years. 

Salad Sprouting in Victorio Sprouters for Keto * Low-Carb

Victorio sprouter in use.

If you are low income you may find our Keto * Low-Carb way kind of expensive— all those meats and fresh salad greens to buy. But the sprouting habit helps you get healthy salad into your body every day at lower cost— even in winter and without trips to the grocery store.

There are many sprouting tools you can use, but I recommend the Victorio sprouter. It’s neat, and the trays stack. I have a stack of 7 salad sprout trays right now, and have 3 other sprouting trays that I have also stacked— yes, 10 high. And a Victorio set is not that expensive— under $20 for four sprouting trays, a green base and a green topper. If you want salad sprouts every day, though, you probably want at least 2 sets.

My sprouting area is in my kitchen on the top 2 levels of a plastic shelving unit. This is because I have cats, and so far they have left the top 2 levels alone. 

The Victorio comes with a tiny packet of alfalfa seed, and that’s a good seed to start with. Pre-soak 1 to 2 teaspoons (tsp., t.) or 5-10 ml of seed in a lidded canning jar. (I use 1 pint or 1/2 pint size.) You may put some seaweed based fertilizer in with the soak water in the amount recommended by your brand of fertilizer. 

Soak your seed for hours, a day, or even 2 days in stubborn cases (I have some broccoli seed that’s a little old, and so I’m soaking it for 2 days hoping for better sprouting.) Pour it off into your sprouting tray. Be sure and LABEL your sprouting tray with the kind of seed, amount, and date. I used to use freezer tape for labels, but when I had my stroke and was away from home for a few months, the labels left behind residue that doesn’t wash off well. I used canning jar sticky labels which I had on hand, and now am using labels from my Dymo label maker, which I like best of all. (Because I hate my own handwriting even though I used to be a calligrapher and got PAID to do it once.)

Most sprouting seeds take about 7 days to reach eating stage. Some take longer— such as onion or garlic sprouts which take 14 days. Either you can sprout your garlic/onion seeds for 1 week and then add your 7 day salad sprouts. Or you can sprout your garlic/onion separately, or grow it as shoots, and add to your daily salads.

My sprouting shelves. Lower shelf has mung bean
sprouts, protected from light.

SUN FOR SPROUTS: Most salad-type sprouts really need some sunlight in the last few sprouting days. Put them in a sunny window, or in your indoor garden with artificial lights. 

KINDS OF SPROUTS: most commonly we use alfalfa, red clover, radish, broccoli, mustard, arugula or even lentil in our salad sprouts. I like a mix from Todd’s Seeds called Broccoli & Friends which has broccoli, alfalfa, red clover and radish. Very tasty! Though my seed supply is now old and I’m wondering if the broccoli in the mix is sprouting well. I am adding small amounts of black lentil seeds to my daily salad sprout mix. Black lentils are smaller and cuter than standard lentils. Both black and green lentils sprout like the dickens even if you get lentils from the grocery store. I bought ‘365 Everyday Value’ organic black and green lentils online and the black, at least, sprout great for me (I haven’t used the green yet since I still have other green lentils to use up.)

PLANT SAUCERS FOR YOUR VICTORIO SPROUTER: The diameter of a Victorio sprouter tray is 6 inches. Since there is only one base for every 4 trays, I bought some Dbell brand 6 in. plant saucers. Unfortunately they are less than 6 inches and so didn’t work, but they were so nice that I plan to shop for some 6.5 inch or 7 inch plant saucers of the same brand. In that way, I can set out sprout trays to green up without using up all the Victorio bases or leaking water all over the house.  

EATING YOUR SALAD SPROUTS. On our Keto * Low-Carb lifestyle we are entitled to 2 cups of salad daily even on Induction. Be sure and eat your daily salads! You may use low-carb salad dressings if that is what you are used to. I’ve always just added salt to my salads, or sometimes Spike or Mrs Dash seasonings (with or without adding salt.) Sometimes I add a bit of kelp powder or seaweed flakes (I like seaweed.)

SPROUTS THE SUPERFOOD. Sprouts are considered a superfood because they have more nutrients than in the full-grown plant. Often they are lower in carbs than the full-grown plant. Both alfalfa sprouts and mung bean sprouts are specifically mentioned in Atkins books as allowed vegetables.

ARE SPROUTS MICROGREENS? Microgreens are a new term. It seems to mostly mean sprouts that are grown in soil to the sprouting stage. Or some are grown to a larger size, more like shoots. Personally, I call both sprouts and shoots ‘microgreens’ whether they are grown in soil or using a sprout tray or jar and water.

TO LEARN MORE: Be warned: many sprouting advocates are also advocates for an unhealthy vegetarian high-carb diet. They have little science to back it up, so they use emotional appeals or mockery to promote their diet. DON’T GET TAKEN IN! I have a number of books on sprouting. The one I use most is ‘Sprouts: The Miracle Food: The Complete Guide to Sprouting’ by Steve Meyerowitz. I also have ‘Growing and Using Sprouts’ by Richard Helweg and ‘How to Survive with Sprouting’ by Bruford Scott Reynolds.

Have you ever done sprouting? What did you use? How did it work out for you? Are you still sprouting, or planning to try it again? Let us know in a comment!

If you find this blog post useful, please share it with your friends. Thank you.

Starting on Keto? Your reading list.

Knowing what the Keto * low-carb eating plan is really all about is important if you want to improve your health, treat health problems, or lose weight on this lifestyle. Don’t go by internet rumors, self-published ‘Keto’ books, or random web sites. Go to good sources. 

BASIC BOOKS

Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, Dr. Robert Atkins (1972)

Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, Dr. Robert Atkins, (1992)

These are the books I had you purchase and read in a previous blog post. They are still your most essential and basic books. Plus, Atkins books usually feature a batch of recipes in the back of the book. You may find some you make every week for years.

Keto Clarity, Jimmy Moore and Dr. Eric Westman (2014)

This book gives you the science behind Keto * low-carb from many different sources. Actual scientific studies are mentioned. 

Real Food Keto, Jimmy Moore and Christine Moore, NTP (Nutritional Therapy Practitioner) (2019)

This one is from Jimmy Moore and his wife. Modern keto has an emphasis on ‘real foods.’ This book will show you why. There are also recipes by Maria Emmerich. 

FOR INSPIRATION

How I Gave Up My Low-Fat Diet And Lost 40 Pounds ….And How You Can Too! Dana Carpender (2003)

Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb: My Journey for Flabby Fat to Sensationally Skinny In One Year, Jimmy Moore (2005) 

Dana Carpender lost 40 pounds, Jimmy Moore lost 180, so both stories can inspire us. Dr. Atkins, in his many books, liked to include mini ‘case studies’ of people who lost weight and improved their health on his eating plan. All these stories help us to get inspired to get on Keto * low-carb and stay there.

COOKBOOKS

Dr. Atkins’ Diet Cookbook, Fran Gare and Helen Monica (1974)

Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Cookbook, Dr. Robert Atkin and Fran Gare ((1994)

Dr. Atkins’ Quick & Easy New Diet Cookbook, Dr. Robert Atkins & Veronica Atkins (1997)

500 Low-Carb Recipes, Dana Carpender (2002)

200 Low-Carb High-Fat Recipes, Dana Carpender (2015)

The Ketogenic Cookbook, Jimmy Moore and Maria Emmerich (2015)

Most of us need to start accumulating some Keto * low-carb cookbooks to give us ideas for making meals. There are some recipes that are rather elaborate and some that are simple. One problem in some of the cookbooks is that recipes call for low-carb specialty ingredients that are no longer being manufactured. This is why an emphasis on real foods is helpful. Your grocery store will continue to carry pork chops, heavy whipping cream and heads of cabbage far into the future, no matter what diets are the current fad. 

CARB COUNTERS

Carbohydrate Guide to Brand Names and Basic Foods, Barbara Kraus (1988)

New Carb and Calorie Counter, Dana Carpender, (2010)

Even if you have an app or a internet site available to help you count your carbs, you probably should have one or more in your home. I have two and use both to work out the carb contents of foods. The brand name foods and fast food items go out of date rapidly. It’s better to check the box on any processed food, so you know the carb grams of the current version. And of course fast-food places change their menus often, You can find the nutritional information online, but it is often useless. They presume you are going to be eating your bun, so you don’t know the amount of carbs in a beef patty with condiments, or of a fake-meat patty (which certainly will have more carbs than a meat patty!)

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

Buy a few more books from this list. Continue to read your Atkins book, as assigned in the previous blog post, daily, but add some of your new books into the daily reading rotation. Be sure to give special attention to the how-to-do-the—diet chapters in the Atkins books— perhaps read a paragraph every day from those chapters until you can practically recite them. Your other books should have a place in your daily reading for variation and inspiration. Remember, you have spend many years of your life learning how to overeat carbs. Now you need to learn a new way. 

Starting on Keto? It doesn't come in a pill

Recently I was exploring the products in the Dollar General store in Stephenson, Michigan (USA.) I noticed, not far from where the few Atkins diet products were kept, there was a bottle of pills labelled ‘Keto.’

‘Keto’ is not the name of a fast-weight-loss gimmick pill! ‘Keto’ is short for ‘ketogenic’ which is the name for an EATING PLAN (or lifestyle) which puts your body into a state of KETOSIS.

Scientific research shows that the state of ketosis can have health benefits of many kinds. It can help with brain conditions such as epilepsy and Alzheimer’s Disease, it can help diabetics control their blood sugars, it can help in treating cancer and may show promise in reversing diabetic kidney disease. And, oh yeah, it helps people lose weight without feeling hungry or deprived. 

This is the first post in the Starting Keto series. 

The first popular ketogenic eating plan was published by Dr. Robert Atkins in Doctor Atkins Diet Revolution in 1972. It actually advised that people test for ketosis daily! It allowed unlimited amounts of zero-carb foods like meats and fish (and eggs, which aren’t quite zero.) Other allowed foods were limited in quantity, so one could have about 20 grams of carbohydrate per day in the initial phase, called Induction. 

Many ‘keto’ advocates, such as the podcaster Jimmy Moore, started out on Atkins. Many started when the common name of the eating plan was ‘low-carb’ rather than ‘keto.’ 

There are also diets which claim to be low-carb diets but are not. Dr. Atkins warned in his first book about it— there were diets such as the Drinking Man’s Diet which restricted carbs but allowed you 60 grams of carbs a day— enough to keep you OUT of ketosis. Today, there is a diet called the ‘Controlled Carb’ diet, which allows more carbs at ONE MEAL than I can eat in a day. And it expects you to eat three meals a day, plus snacks! If the 60-grams of carb diets are more moderate-carb than low-carb, the ‘Controlled Carb’ is more of a moderate-high carb diet. 

Because ‘keto’ is often seen as a trendy fad diet right now, it’s very important to get your ‘keto’ information from a good source. Don’t pick up stuff from random web sites and blogs (not even this blog.) You need accurate information, or you will end up like the patients of Dr. Jason Fung who were put on low-carb eating plans but in their food diaries had merely replaced their ordinary bread with pita bread. They were still eating plenty of carbs!

YOUR ASSIGNMENT: If you are thinking of staring a keto *low-carb eating plan, or renewing one you tried  before, your first step is to find accurate information. BUY one of the basic Atkins books— either Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution (1972) or Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution (1992.) Read it cover-to-cover. Pay special attention to the chapter called ‘The Never-Hungry, No-Limit, Steak-and-Salad-plus Diet’ in original Atkins or Chapter 8, ‘The Rules of the Induction Diet’ in new Atkins— these are the chapters that tell you what to eat and what to restrict on your new eating plan. EXTRA CREDIT: Buy and read both books. After the first read, read about a chapter’s worth of one or the other book every day to help keep you inspired.