Don't buy rice or ramen, buy THIS!

This Picture shows SPLIT 'moong beans' which
do not sprout. Don't buy this kind for sprouting.
I bought WHOLE 'moong beans'
from Spicy World.

When finances or food supply are tough, many people think it’s a smart idea to buy carb-filled rice or ramen noodles. But carb-foods just end up making you hungrier, causing you to eat more carb-foods and gaining more weight you don’t want.

The Keto * Low-Carb solution— a low-cost food that can be stocked up on, that can sit on your shelves for a while, is mung beans. I have Spicy World brand mung beans (moong dal)— bought on Amazon— and I sprout them into mung bean sprouts regularly. They sprout just as well as mung beans sold for sprouting!

Mung bean sprouts are a low-carb food allowed even on strict Atkins levels as a vegetable or even a salad ingredient. If you enjoy things like Rice-a-roni or ramen noodles, you can just use the seasonings and flavors found in your favorite rice-or-ramen foods on your cooked mung bean sprouts. 

You can cook your bean sprouts in a pot of boiling water and add your seasonings, soy-sauce, bouillon powder, garam masala, seasoned salt to the cooking water. Then drain it in a colander, add some butter or ghee or coconut oil, especially if you love butter noodles, and have the flavors you love without the carbs.

You can also stir fry your bean sprouts in a frying pan or wok. You can add other vegetables that are on hand for variety, and also meats— canned meats work— and perhaps some pecan or walnut pieces to add crunch. You can stir-fry in an egg if you like, as is done in Chinese Fried Rice. 

Stir-fried or cooked bean sprouts can stand in for rice or noodles in most recipes. Since they are wetter, some of my old favorite casserole recipes have become stir-fry recipes because the casserole version got too soggy. 

My little trick this week is that I am sprouting enough mung beans for one serving every day and trying to do it a little different each time. 

Can’t get mung beans at your grocery store? Lentils are more widely available— they had some at my food bank once— and I’ve sprouted lentils that were ten years old successfully. They are a little more carb-y, and aren’t as nice for stir-fry. Get green or black lentils— the orange ones are split lentils and don’t sprout.

THE MAGIC OF SPROUTING:

Dried mung beans: 22g carbs per 35 grams   Dried lentils: 30g carbs per 1/4 cup, dry

Mung bean sprouts, 1 cup: 6g carbs    Lentil sprouts: 100 g (2 cups?) 22 g carbs

Mung bean sprouts should be sprouted in a dark place. Can be sprouted in jars or in a Victorio sprouter. Lentils sprouts for similar use can be sprouted the same way, perhaps in a mix with mung beans.

Here’s to your health,

Nissa Annakindt

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Things to Have on Hand when you are Keto

It doesn’t have to be a special occasion. EVERYONE needs to keep a supply of non-perishable food and certain other items in their home. These things are useful if money is short one month, or if you get an ‘ordinary’ flu and don’t want to share your germs, or if you are just staying home for a bit to get things done. 

But it does us Ketonians no good to buy a batch of ramen noodles or frozen pizza-like substance that we can’t use anyway. Eating these things in an ‘emergency’ will just make you feel sick and non-energetic and who wants that?

We need to have the food we CAN eat available. If we have become good at eating ‘real food’ which is usually quite perishable, we need to learn about other kinds of things to have on hand in the home.

1. CANNED TUNA/SALMON - Fish is healthy food, and you can have it even during Lent. My favorite canned tuna is the kind canned in olive oil which I can’t get since I can no longer drive to a local Walmart, so I buy cheap packed-in-water tuna, drain it well, and add a bit of EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil.)

2. SALAD SPROUTING SEEDS - If you can’t get fresh salad veggies for a bit, sprouting seeds— alfalfa, clover or a salad mix— will let you make salad greens in your home from seed that lasts for a long time. I use 2 tsp. of seed for one tray of a Victorio sprouter, and start a new tray each day.  These seeds take seven days to sprout, so you will need two Victorio sprouter sets for each person in your family that eats 2 daily sprout salads.

3. BULLETPROOF COFFEE/TEA SUPPLIES - A supply of instant coffee, regular coffee or teabags will provide you with hot drinks for a while. To make it bulletproof, you will need butter, home-made ghee, coconut oil, MCT oil, or EVOO. You might also add a touch of heavy whipping cream or coconut milk if you have it. Be sure and have decaf coffee in the house if caffeine bothers you or you want coffee later in the day.

4. FROZEN MEATS — Yes, if your electricity is prone to go out from time to time you may end up with spoiled meat. But in other circumstances you can preserve meat from family packs or whole sides of beef or venison or whatever you can get in quantity. If you live alone, be sure and freeze your meat in smaller portions. You probably don’t eat 8 pork chops in one meal. Remember that even if you are observing Lent you can eat meat on Sundays.

5. EGGS — It’s good to have eggs on hand. They are a quick low-carb meal and they are a ‘free food’ on Atkins, even on Atkins Induction. I used to make deviled eggs a lot, but now I am more likely to just hard-boil some eggs, slice them in half, and sprinkle on some Vege-Sal or Salt-Free Spike. 

6. CHEESE — Good to put on eggs in a scramble or omelet. Cheese doesn’t last forever in your refrigerator, so use it up fast. Pre-shredded cheese has something in it that makes it last quite a while before going moldy, but some premium brands don’t add this. So— trust me— CHECK your shredded cheese for mold before sprinkling on an omelet! Just slices of cheese can also be nice, by themselves or in a roll-up with sliced ham or beef.

7. BONE BROTH —- Learn to make your own bone broth— save bones from chicken you eat and the bone broth is free. If you are going to fast for a while, bone broth is allowed during fasting according to Dr. Jason Fung. I freeze my excess bone broth in the big freezer. Thaw out frozen bone broth overnight in your refrigerator.

8. MUNG BEANS & LENTILS FOR SPROUTING — You can make your own mung bean or lentil sprouts at home in your Victorio sprouter or a canning jar. I use 1/8 cup of mung beans to sprout about 1 cup of sprouts, which is one serving. You can steam or boil sprouts, eat with a low-carb cheese sauce for ‘mac & cheese’ or with a low-carb tomato sauce for ‘spaghetti.’  It takes about 4 days to sprout mung beans or lentils. Lentil sprouts have a higher carb content than mung bean sprouts. 100 grams of mung bean sprouts (3 cups) are 5.93 g carbs, 100 grams of pea sprouts (2 cups) are 28.26 grams of carbs and 100 grams of lentil sprouts are 22.14 g carbs. So it’s better to mix in smaller amounts of lentil and pea sprouts with mung beans. I have read a carb count for pea shoots which is a lot less carbs than pea sprouts, so if you want a low-carb sprouted pea soup you might want to use shoots instead, and mix in some mung bean sprouts.  The great thing about lentils, though, is that I have successfully sprouted grocery-store lentils that were around 10 years old. By contrast, broccoli seed that is only a little old sprouts less well. 

I hope I have given you a few ideas of what to buy when you stock up on staple supplies. Do you have any good ideas? Please share them!

Nissa Annakindt

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!

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