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

Do Militant Vegans Want Global Mass Starvation?

Militant vegans say they want everybody to go vegan. They also seem to want laws passed against animal agriculture so non-vegan food is less accessible.

What would be the consequences if the world went vegan, either by choice or because of outlawing animal agriculture? Mass starvation.

You see, there are two kinds of farmland out there. One kind is the kind of land that can be plowed up and planted to ‘plant-based’ crops like soybeans and grains to be processed into the kind of food that vegans can eat.

The other kind is the farmland that can be used to graze animals. There are federal lands leased for cattle grazing that is too delicate ecologically to be grazed every year. Other grazing lands are tougher than that.

What happens when you plow up grazing land to grow plant-based crops on it? Well, it could end up like Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl— your topsoil can pack up and hitch a ride on the nearest wind out-of-state. 

What happens if the vegans get their way and no one any longer uses grazing lands to produce human food? There is that much less food in a hungry world! You just can’t grow more soy for soymilk & tofu on grazing land. So the global food supply gets shorter and the less powerful people in the world won’t get to eat.

There is, of course, the vegan myth that all meat is produced only by grain feeding. But what is the most trendy, desirable and healthy form of meat? Grass-fed and grass-finished meat! And this meat is actually shown to be healthier and richer in Omega-3s than grain-fed meat.

Of course the vegan militants, if they are aware of the mass death their plans would cause, probably have some high-minded propaganda about saving the planet through population shrinkage. But the sad fact is, many members of the globe’s threatened population will not be ‘shrunk’ to death quietly. Why should they starve while the vegan elites shout ‘let them eat tofu’ even though tofu will be in short supply? 

There have been human-caused deliberate famines in history, as in the Ukrainian genocide-by-hunger perpetrated by Stalin, that have not lead to violent revolts, but that’s because the famines were geographically limited and the people that started them had power over the people that were meant to die.

The globe currently has many independent nations. Will the third world ones willingly agree to be starved out to please elite first-world militant vegans? Somehow I don’t think so.

Yours in Keto * Low-Carb,

Nissa Annakindt

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They are Out to Sabotage Your Keto * Low-Carb!

Everyone on the Keto * Low-Carb way of life will experience sabotage— from friends and family members, from medical people, from food corporations….

It works something like this— you go to aunt Mabel’s house and she knows you are on lowcarb. So she serves you brown rice instead of the white rice she usually makes, and a big banana instead of ice cream for dessert. Because brown rice is good for you, and banana is a fruit and the carbs in fruits don’t count. And because your Aunt Mabel thinks she knows more about healthy foods than you do.

Dr. Atkins in his first book explained how the diet saboteurs work. In his day, most people didn’t know about lowcarb diets and thought all diets were low-calorie diets. So if a food was perceived as low in calories, any dieter could have it regardless of the carb count.

Today more people have heard of lowcarb, but they may have weird, wrong ideas of what it is. Maybe they think you can’t have regular bread but can have unlimited pita bread. Or that you can’t have regular noodles but can have whole wheat noodles. And they may think that the carbs in fruit or in vegetables or in whole grain products do not count.

We know better. We know that all carbs count. But you can’t tell other people that, in many cases. If you are or have been fat and they are not fat or less fat, nothing you say counts as much as what thin people say. 

Emotional issues may be used to make you eat more carbs than you should. A relative fixes a special cake or special cookies just for you, and you will be a bad person if you don’t eat them.

But if you had a deadly allergy to peanut butter, would you eat a food with peanut butter to please someone else? You know you wouldn’t. Well, you likely have a deadly ‘allergy’ to carbohydrates which can cause your early death if you don’t take care of it. 

Sometimes people urge us to go out to restaurants which don’t have a single menu item we can have. Just to be sociable. And you go and order something you shouldn’t have, resolving to eat just half— and often you eat more than half.

Fast-food restaurants train their employees to tempt you to buy more carbs than you want. You go in to order a small burger— you don’t intend to eat the bun— and a side salad, no dressing. And they push you to order French fries and a soda to go with that— carb-filled foods, and foods you may have had an addiction to. You may need to avoid eating out when the local restaurants all push carbs and your lowcarb meal at their hands is likely to be dismal. (When you are eating your burgers without the buns, you may find that your favorite burger joint becomes your least favorite, because their actual burgers are dry and nasty, but they cover it up with buns and condiments.)

Married couples can have problems— when she needs to be on keto for health reasons and he wants to continue with the high carb foods he always eats. There is no easy answer. You cannot demand that someone else change what they eat to accommodate you, or not keep the foods they like in the house because they tempt you. But on the other hand you need to take care of your own health, and certain temptations may be too much to bear in your own home.

A compromise might be to ask the carb-eater to refrain from keeping the most tempting carb foods around, and concentrate on the ones that you wouldn’t touch. I don’t care for those ‘kettle’ potato chips or that circus peanut candy. Bring peanut butter cups in the house, though, and you will have to keep me off them with a machete.

I would not recommend you break off important relationships over the carb issue. But your health is important, too. Don’t be ashamed if carbs tempt you. They tempt a lot of people. But if you were a recovering alcoholic, people would be more respectful and not invite you to barrooms or insist on keeping alcohol in a shared household. If you were a recovering drug addict, they would understand not to bring their own heroin stash to your house to tempt you. Others need to treat your recovery from carbohydrate addiction as a serious thing. And if they don’t, ignore them. 

High Blood Pressure & Keto * Low-Carb

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a serious symptom which can lead to strokes and heart attacks, so we don’t want to have high blood pressure.

I have had that problem for a number of years, but mostly ignored it which you should not do. 

The Keto * Low-Carb eating plan of itself usually lowers your blood pressure just fine, to the point that experienced doctors often advise high blood pressure patients starting lowcarb to cut their blood pressure medication dose in half to prevent overly low blood pressures. 

But what if you still have high blood pressure, or develop it later into your Keto life? You may have to go with a prescription medication. You will probably find that your medication does its job best when you are ALSO faithful to your lowcarb plan.

I have a home blood pressure machine which measures at the wrist. I measure my blood pressure every morning when I measure my blood sugar (T2 diabetes) and check my state of ketosis with a Ketonix breath ketone analyzer. I write these measurements down in a notebook.

When I go for an appointment with my PA, I copy down about a week's worth of blood pressure and blood sugar readings to give to her. 

I have been on the medication amlodipine since my stroke last February. My PA thought my blood pressure was still too high, so doubled my dose recently. It really helped.

Another thing that really helped is garlic. I had purchased Kyolic garlic capsules and took them until I ran out. When I ran out, my blood pressures went a little higher. I tried eating garlic cloves, but I couldn’t face another raw garlic clove and tried roasted garlic cloves. I could actually face eating these, but they didn’t have as nice an effect on my blood pressure.

I estimate that the Kyolic garlic lowered my blood pressure by about the same amount as the earlier, 5mg dose of amlodipine did. Since I have been taking garlic in some form all this time, I don’t know for sure whether the numbers I get now on the 10mg amlodipine are just from the amlodipine or from the amlodipine plus garlic, but the evidence would seem to support that it is both. 

Since I don’t care to be on more medication than I have to be, I’m looking to buy a new bottle of Kyolic once I have the money to do so. Sadly, Medicaid does not pay for a supplement, even if recommended by a doctor, like it pays for prescription drugs. 

I also want to keep up eating my roasted garlic cloves. I am going to roast them for a shorter time the next time, to preserve the medicinal elements. One reason for doing this is that I like doing things in a natural way or a home-made way. The second reason is that my Food Stamp benefits can be used on garlic, and in addition when spring comes I plan to plant some garlic and grow my own. 

For practical reasons I also want to keep taking the Kyolic garlic. I can take that even if my health deteriorates to the point where regularly roasting garlic is a chore. 

I also plan to keep taking my amlodipine even though taking prescription meds chains me to the medical-industrial complex. My stroke showed me that high blood pressure is nothing to ignore.

Healthy days to you,

Nissa Annakindt

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Starting Keto: The Cheesy Life

I like cheese— perhaps because I was born in Wisconsin, the dairy state? When my mother was young there were a lot of small cheese factories near where she lived, and she dated a few cheesemaker’s sons. They tended to have clean hands. 

Cheese is part of some recipes I use regularly, such as a cheese pancake recipe that I use for making small flatbreads. I also use cheese slices as a snack, and prefer my bun-free burgers with cheese on them.  You can add a little shredded cheese to the yolk mixture when making deviled eggs— a low-carb staple. 

What about substitutes for cheese? The only non-dairy cheese I know about that is explicitly allowed on Atkins - keto - lowcarb is tofu, or soy cheese. Tofu/soy cheese does have soy in it, which many of us don’t care to have in our food plan. If you cannot eat dairy cheese but can consume tofu, it may be a right choice for you. (What about other ‘non-dairy’ cheese substitutes? Check the label for carb count— if it is comparable to a real cheese in carb count and doesn’t have any nasty ingredients in it, you might try adding it to your eating plan.)

I used to eat American cheese when American cheese came in a big block rather than in nasty plastic-flavored slices wrapped individually in plastic. I have widened my taste to other cheeses: Colby, smoked Cheddar, Pepper Jack, Mexican blend shredded, Parmesan, Muenster, even blue cheese. I would say that the Kraft slices which are NOT wrapped in plastic might be ‘real-cheese enough,’ but a store-brand substitute I bought tasted exactly like those nasty plastic-wrapped slices even though it wasn’t wrapped in plastic. I have found American cheese in small blocks from actual cheesemakers, as well. 

Grated Parmesan cheese, along with good mayonnaise (like avocado mayonnaise) is great to put on fish of various types you are baking, or shrimp. Great for those of us who haven’t eaten fish or shrimp without breading before going keto. 

Of course, if you really can’t have dairy you have to skip the cheese. But for most of the rest of us, cheese is a good food that adds some variety to our eating plan. Next shopping trip, don’t forget the cheese!

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"Are You Still Fasting?"

I must admit I have not been doing the level of fasting I had been doing before my stroke last February. While in the hospital, a rehab center, and an anti-Catholic homeless shelter (while my plumbing was being fixed) I did a lot of fasting because I was served institutional meals with high-carb elements in them. I ate what little I could and did without.

When I came home my appetite came back and I felt deprived because of the long stint of mostly do-not-eat institutional food. And when I tried morning fasting I tended to have afternoon carb binges. 

I am trying to get back into fasting today, it being a Friday in Lent after all. I am allowing myself 2 coffees-with-MCT oil today and hoping to go for nothing else. If I feel massive temptation for a carb binge, though, I will eat a little something like some canned tuna. 

The problem with fasting is that a lot of people think it is all about skipping ‘calories’ and that we all should be counting and reducing our ‘calories.’ But we on Keto * Low-Carb should know better than that. Studies have shown that a 1000 calorie diet has radically different effects when the calories are from fat or protein mostly instead of from carbohydrates. Calories don’t count. Deprivation and hunger are not good things. 

On Keto * Low-Carb fasting ideally happens because we aren’t experiencing hunger when we are in ketosis. If you are an older person or have long-term insulin resistance problems, lowering carbs alone won’t give you ‘fast weight loss’ or even any weight loss. But ketosis makes it easy to do some fasting and adding a bit of hunger-free fasting to your eating plan can help you lose a few pounds even if you have plateaued on your Keto * Low-Carb eating plan.

I think it was Dr. Jason Fung who said ‘when you fast, fast, when you feast, feast.’ A little fasting in a ketogenic life means that you can feast on your allowed foods without worry. You become in control, not the food. 

But learn to listen to your body. I’ve found that ‘white-knuckle’ fasting-with-hunger just leads me to give in to the temptation of a carb-binge. So if I start feeling hunger, I eat something. Even when I was planning on fasting. Eating a bit of low-or-zero carb food can derail a carb binge before it starts. Many of us make a point of not getting hungry so we are less tempted. Less tempted is good!

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Changing My MCT Routine

For some time I have been taking 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of MCT in a bulletproof coffee every morning. MCT oil is ‘medium chain triglyceride’ oil, and it helps you get into ketosis and stay in ketosis. MCT oil is found in coconut oil, and the MCT oil that you buy is made either from coconut oil alone or coconut and palm kernel oil. 

MCT oil is expensive, and when I run out I substitute regular coconut oil. The kind of coconut oil that stays liquid at room temperature is even higher in MCT oil. 

Recently I realized that the way I do my MCT oil dose could stand improvement. I measure my ketosis with my trusty old Ketonix first thing in the morning when I test my blood sugar and blood pressure. Shortly afterward I have my first bulletproof coffee of the day, the one with the MCT oil in it. Time-wise, the time I take the MCT oil and the time I measure my ketosis are about as far apart as they can get!

Plus, it would be good to be in good ketosis throughout the day. So I decided that from now on I will split my MCT dose into two doses of 1 tablespoon (15 ml) each, one taken in the morning and one in the evening. I took an evening dose last night, and did get into good ketosis this morning (yellow, or moderate, on my Ketonix.)  I add also a tablespoon of another good fat— ghee last night (I like it better than plain butter) and I plan on using regular coconut oil or even extra-virgin olive oil in future bullet-proof beverages. (I can’t stand more than 1/2 a tablespoon of EVOO in a bulletproof coffee, even with 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon in the coffee! Maybe if I add 1/8 t. Turmeric it would kill the taste?)

You do not need to buy MCT oil or drink bulletproof coffee or other bullet-proof beverages to do Keto * Low-Carb! Just follow the rules of the Atkins Induction and you will most likely get into good ketosis, especially if you make a point of including enough fat in your meal plan. 

But if you do use MCT oil, you might split your daily dose into 2 smaller doses, to be consumed morning and evening, to help your ketosis stay more steady.

ABBREVIATIONS

MCT - Medium Chain Triglyceride

BPC - Bulletproof coffee

BPCd - bulletproof decaf coffee

BPB - bulletproof beverage

BPT - bulletproof tea or tisane (herb “tea”)

BPco - bulletproof hot cocoa

BPcar - bulletproof hot carob

EVOO - extra-virgin olive oil

Keto - ketogenic “diet” or eating plan

LCHF - low-carbohydrate, high-fat

LENT UPDATE

My Lenten sacrifice, such as it is, is to give up heavy whipping cream, and substitute full-fat canned coconut milk. My BPC in the morning and my BPCd in the evening were not the taste treats that they are with cream, but they were good enough with a bit of coconut milk. (I suppose I lose any spiritual ‘brownie points’ by telling everyone about my Lenten plans, but as weak-willed as I am I highly doubt my ability to make any spiritual effort that God would notice except out of pure mercy, and I am hoping to encourage other Christians to observe Lent even after they go Keto * Low-Carb.)

Do you use MCT oil? How do you incorporate it into your eating plan? Do you ever use it in a bulletproof beverage (BPB)? If so, what kind of BPB do you make? 

Starting Keto: Love those Eggs!

Cuisinart Egg Cooker

When I first started doing Atkins, I would make up a batch of deviled eggs for the first day. I’d keep them in the fridge and whenever I felt hungry or wanted to eat something, I’d have a deviled egg. It got me through those first few days of getting into ketosis, which can be tough for some people. (For me it wasn’t the first time, but each time I went off Atkins and did Induction again I would have a tougher time. But the reward, greater energy, good blood sugars, and weight control, were worth a few bad days.) 

In the original Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution (1972) eggs were an unlimited food, like meats. In Dr. Atkins New Diet (1994,) it is explicitly listed as a ‘free food,’ as meats are. Eggs do have a bit of carbs— 0.4 g— but it’s hard to wolf down enough eggs that the carbs will give you trouble.

Eggs have cholesterol in them, but eating food with cholesterol doesn’t give you blood cholesterol any more than eating beef makes you moo and eat grass. Eggs are full of nutrients, especially egg yolks.

The best eggs to eat are eggs from pastured poultry, which you probably have to buy from a farm or at least a farmer’s market, and pay more for. Pastured eggs have more Omega 3s. We like Omega 3s!  Farm eggs from poultry that are not pastured are the next best thing. They have stronger shells, which make them easier to get home without cracking. 

The problem with organic eggs is that organic chicken feed is not available everywhere, and where available often not in bulk. It adds to the cost. Organic chicken people also have the money to comply with state regulations for selling eggs in stores— in Michigan I’d have had to have spent thousands of dollars to build a building for handling the eggs from my 40 or so hens— and also have to pay the monthly fee to their organic organization to be allowed to call their eggs organic. So it’s mainly well-off egg corporations that can afford to produce the organic eggs you find in stores. And, frankly, I think that the pastured eggs from my totally non-government sanctioned chickens are healthier than the average grocery-store organic egg.

Are totally free range chickens producers of better eggs? Well, where I live free ranging chickens tend to become dinner for the local foxes and coyotes, which reduces the total eggs produced by the flock. It’s why I built a movable pen for my chickens during grazing season. Chickens can get fresh grass and bugs daily, but predators can’t get in to eat them. I hope. 

Raising your own chickens is not a way to save money on eggs— you have to feed the little darlings whether they are laying or not. And chicken feed in small-flock quantities costs money—plain, non-organic feed mill feed. But if raising backyard chickens is a substitute for you for having half-a-dozen big dogs, you are probably saving money. Chicken food is cheaper than dog food, and their manure can be composted for garden use.

Is cooking eggs a tough chore for you? It’s actually fairly easy to learn, and since eggs are a traditional Lenten food I will be writing some blog posts giving more details on things like cooking eggs over easy, cooking eggs in a George Foreman grill, and so on.

In the meantime I would like to share about a little gadget that I have. It’s a Cuisinart Egg Cooker, and it cooks hard or soft-boiled eggs without fuss, just by following the directions. (HINT: Read the directions.) It can cook from 1-7 normal sized eggs, fewer if you have older hens or egg-laying breeds of ducks that produce bigger eggs. You measure water into it, depending on how many eggs you have and whether you want them hard-boiled or soft boiled. It sets off a timer when the cooking is done. I immediately plunge the eggs into very cold water— ice water if I have ice in the house— and that makes them easier to peel. It’s a great aid to producing batches of hard-boiled eggs for deviled eggs or just for eating hard-boiled eggs. 

How do you like your eggs? What is the tastiest egg dish you have ever had? What kind of eggs do you normally buy/trade-for/gather from your poultry?

Starting Keto: When in Doubt, Eat Something!

Starting on the Keto * Low-Carb way of life means unlearning a lot of things we have all learned from advocates of the low-calorie, low-fat, Hunger Games diet (LCLFHG.) On low-calorie, there are no such things as allowed calories that you would be better off and a more virtuous dieter if you did not consume in full. That 350 calorie meal you are allowed— wouldn’t you be a better, thinner person if you didn’t finish it? And hunger was a sign that you were a good dieter and not a failure of a fat person.

Keto, ever since the days of Robert Atkins’ first book, has been different. There are ‘free foods’ on Atkins/lowcarb that you will actually want to eat— like bacon, steaks and pork chops. All of those items are zero carb. Atkins also encouraged people to not do things like skip breakfast. And even though I, like many in modern Keto, regularly do Intermittent Fasting, I would not encourage those new to Keto * Low-Carb to start off with skipping meals. That’s low-calorie thinking— the only good calorie is the one you don’t eat. But we don’t count calories on Keto. 

On Keto, we don’t start our Intermittent Fasting until we are already in ketosis. Ketosis is a state in which your body is fueled by fat-burning, not sugar-burning. To get into nutritional ketosis, you need to drop your high-carbohydrate diet and start on low-carb, doing two weeks of what we call ‘Induction—‘ a stricter level of low-carb. Once you are in ketosis, you don’t feel hunger, or at least you don’t feel it often. Many people, once in ketosis, skip meals without planning to do fasting because they are too busy doing things will all that new energy they get from going into ketosis. This leads to doing fasting on purpose, to help lose a bit of weight and to save time from doing that three-meals-a-day home-cooking grind. 

In Dr. Atkins’ first book, he tells case histories of some of his patients who were quite big eaters. Some ate as much as 4000 calories a day, all of low-carb allowed foods, and they still lost weight. In other books Atkins warns to eat when hungry but not to eat until you feel stuffed. Which is a good rule— eating until stuffed makes you feel uncomfortable. You can always eat more food a little later, when you no longer feel stuffed. 

Dr. Atkins encourages us to be ‘shockingly unafraid of fat.’ Yes, fat is not an evil substance that makes you fat and shortens your life. A scientific study in 1957 by Kekwick and Pawan showed that a 1000 calorie diet high in fat let people lose weight, while a 1000 calorie diet high in carbohydrates did not produce weight loss. And with a high-fat, moderate-protein, you don’t even need to count those darn calories. Just eat something (lowcarb.)

Lent for those on the Keto * Low-Carb Way

Lent is a common Christian observance in preparation for the most sacred of Christian holy days, Easter. Though some people associate Lent only with Catholics, Protestants also may observe Lent. It is particularly a common observance among Lutherans and Episcopalians. But how to you observe Lent if you are Keto * Low-Carb?

Militant vegetarians demand that people try out the vegetarian diet for Lent, and then, if they ‘like’ it, adopt that diet for life. ‘Like’ it? Of course people like it! What’s not to like when you get to feed that carb-monkey on your back with plenty of ‘plant-based’ high carb deadly foods? Remember, famous vegetarian Adolf Hitler loved to eat rich pastries (and kill people.) And near the end of his life he was certainly not the picture of health, either physically or spiritually. 

When we give up meat and poultry for Lent to eat fish, eggs and cheese, we are not giving up bad things. Meats and poultry are lawful pleasures and healthy foods. We give them up for a time to show God that we are sorry for the wrong things we have done that displease Him. It’s like the ancient Hebrews putting on rough sackcloth garments as a sign of mourning for sin. There is no evidence that anyone thought smooth linen garments were somehow unhealthy or less spiritual. 

The rules for Lent, in the Catholic church, have gotten less strict over time. (Protestant mostly do as they like for Lenten observance.) It used to be they had to actually fast, or eat only one meal a day, or give up dairy products and fish as well as meat. The rules today is that people over 14 years are to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays during Lent, and people who are 18 or over but not yet 60 must eat only one full meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. 

But if you are doing Keto * Low-Carb and giving up a lot of the common foods people eat all the time, and if you are doing Intermittent Fasting or longer fasting on a regular basis, doing the common Lenten observances don’t seem like doing much. Many of us do only one meal a day every day, not just twice a year on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday!

Eating more fish during Lent— not just on Fridays— is a healthy Lenten observance that doesn’t conflict with Keto * Low-Carb. The hard part is affording it! I buy frozen salmon at my local market (Gary’s in Stephenson MI) and it’s not so expensive for a meal, and salmon is quite healthy. I buy low-cost canned tuna, but I read the labels because some cheap canned tuna now has carbs in it! I buy tuna in water when I can’t get to a store that carries tuna in olive oil. You can always put a bit of EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil) in your canned tuna once you drain the water.

To make Lent more of a sacrifice of something lawful, you may choose to pick a food allowed on Keto * Low-Carb that you often eat and give it up. I am planning to give up heavy whipping cream for Lent, substituting canned coconut milk in its place. I like real cream in my bulletproof morning coffee, but I can do without and I will see how canned coconut milk works as a substitute. You might choose to give up low-carb chocolates or Atkins drinks or some other food you use regularly, enjoy, but one that is not the mainstay of your Keto * Low-Carb life. 

Sundays during Lent are not considered part of the Lenten fast and you can certainly eat meat for Sunday dinners without breaking your Lenten observance. If you can’t go without chocolate for all of Lent, you can make a point of buying a bit for your Sunday. For practical reasons, I’m not planning to buy heavy whipping cream for my Lenten Sundays, since it won’t get used up in one day and it doesn’t stay good forever. (I suppose I could freeze some cream in ice cube trays and use it on Sundays, but I don’t really plan to.)

You must never forget that the purpose of Lenten dietary observances is spiritual, not for health improvement. You are doing for your health when you go Keto * Low-Carb, Lent is about doing for your soul. Almsgiving— giving to the poor— is an essential part of Lenten observance. One is supposed to be giving the food you give up during Lent to the poor. (But as a poor person, what about my Lent? I wouldn’t mind having the steaks someone else gave up for Lent, but if I’m doing Lent too, I won’t be eating them except perhaps on Sunday. I could always freeze them I guess. But of course food banks won’t accept your lovely grass-fed steaks— they only want non-perishable food. Perhaps you could give some canned tuna and EVOO to the food bank? Mine never has much canned tuna, and only nasty vegetable oil.)

It is also possible to observe Lent without doing dietary observances (unless you are Catholic and have to give up meat on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of course.) You can pray more— perhaps do novenas for the intention that God will move people to help the poor. You can pray this way even if you personally are poor (though maybe it’s a bit self-serving? But God will understand.)

It is also possible for people of non-Christian religions to follow whatever fasting or dietary restrictions your own faith encourages without breaking your Keto * Low-Carb life. If it helps your spiritual life, it need not conflict with your healthy low-carb life. Sometimes you can get permission to modify traditions for health reasons. I understand that Muslims, if they get a note from their doctor, can be allowed to consume water during the Ramadan fast when this is normally forbidden. Since the dehydration this might cause when this is observed is not good for anyone’s health, most Muslims can get a doctor’s OK for doing this. 

"Roasted" Garlic in a George Foreman grill

Finished Garlic in Storage Jar

Garlic is great for both culinary and medicinal purposes. I was using Kyolic Garlic capsules for my high blood pressure, and recently ran out of the pills and couldn’t afford more. So I just ate some of the “roasted” garlic I had on hand. It’s not as unpleasant as eating garlic cloves raw, in fact they are fine-tasting. And I think they are working for my blood pressure. (I also take 2 drugs for my blood pressure, but the garlic must have been helping because my readings went up when I ran out of the Kyolic Garlic.)

“Roasted” Garlic in a George Foreman contact grill

Step one: break your heads of garlic into individual cloves of garlic. Leave the papery stuff on the garlic cloves. Cut a bit off each garlic clove at the base or bottom (in the direction of the roots, not the top.)  Put the cloves in a plastic ziplock bag or a glass canning jar. Measure out 1/4 cup of EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil.) You CAN add 1 tsp (teaspoon) of kelp or basil or oregano or thyme— or two or three of the above— if you want to flavor your garlic cloves, but this is optional. Marinate for a while or overnight.

Garlic, marinating

Step two: Prepare your George Foreman grill by setting the positioning lever to the back, or level, position. Put a Baking Plate on the bottom and the Steak Plate on the top. Spray some olive oil cooking spray on to the plates, and add a bit of EVOO to the Baking Plate. 

Set the temperature to Medium and preheat the grill. When the green light goes out, indicating it is preheated, put the marinated garlic cloves onto the grill in a single layer, and grill for 7 to 9 minutes (set a timer!)

Step three: When the time is up, remove your garlic cloves from the grill and place into a glass canning jar. Put a label with the contents and date on the jar. You may store the roasted garlic briefly in the refrigerator or for a few months in the freezer. 

To use: pop the garlic out of the papery ‘shell.’ You may place it in a garlic crusher to get crushed roasted garlic for culinary use. For medicinal use, I take one largish clove three times a day. Chew it well— garlic needs to be crushed or chewed to have a medicinal effect or even a culinary flavoring effect.

Just "roasted' garlic

Anatomy of a Bulletproof Beverage

Bulletproof coffee is a thing now. I had a family member who briefly tried ‘keto’ who made some (and didn’t like it.) When I was in a rehab center after my stroke, I used the pitiful bits of butter I could get in my coffee, since I didn’t want to waste them on the often-lukewarm food. 

The purpose of a bulletproof beverage is to get healthy fats into your body. Note that in Keto * Low-Carb we go by science when we think about what fats are healthy, not by what big national organizations claim are healthy fats— they’d have us using CANOLA oil! Remember there are people trying to sell us on the idea that sugary Honey-Nut Cheerios are ‘heart-healthy’ just because they have oat ingredients in among all the sugar and carbs.

Because ‘keto’ is trendy right now, you have to beware of trying random advice about what is allowed on Keto * Low-Carb. You can’t use ‘creamers’ in your coffee— not only are they processed food, but they have sugars and starches and probably very little HEALTHY fat. 

A bulletproof beverage consists of three parts— the basic beverage (coffee, tea, cocoa/carob and hot water, bone broth), a healthy fat (butter, coconut oil, MCT oil, extra-virgin olive oil, home-made ghee, perhaps heavy whipping cream or coconut milk/cream as a lightener) and, possibly, additions. Like cinnamon— healthy for diabetics— a pinch of sea salt or a bit of kelp powder, or any other thing that is healthy in small amounts and tastes well in your bulletproof beverage.

I have never been a big coffee drinker, but I started using some instant coffee when I read about the oxalate problem with tea. I still drink some tea, but not as much and I don’t care for additives in it. I currently have three brands of instant coffee in my house, one of them imported from Germany. 

On the few occasions I have been able to afford Kerrygold butter, I reserved it all for bulletproof beverages so the goodness wouldn’t be wasted. I use MCT oil when I can, because it’s helpful in getting into ketosis or staying in ketosis. Since I can’t afford a lot of MCT oil, I use coconut oil as well— it CONTAINS some MCT. I used to use butter as well, but ever since I first made ghee, I prefer the taste of that. 

When I was in the rehab center I got some extra-virgin olive oil to put in my coffee, but that tasted just too dire. Butter in my coffee was a treat, EVOO in coffee just wrecked a good cup of coffee. Since coming home, I found that if I put in 1/2 Tablespoon to 1 Tablespoon of EVOO in my coffee and have 1 Tablespoon of MCT oil, butter, ghee or some other tasty fat source, I can’t taste the EVOO. 

SWEETENERS are not normally used in bulletproof beverages, but when I do a hot cocoa/carob BP beverages, I use a few drops of liquid Stevia (Sweetleaf.) On Fridays on other penitential occasions I use as few drops as possible and can handle a hot cocoa with only 2 drops of stevia. Carob doesn’t even need a sweetener really. If you are really ‘hooked’ on sweetened beverages, so that you needed a couple of Tablespoons of sugar in your coffee or tea back when you ate carbs, you can use whatever amount of liquid stevia you need, but try to taper off, and also sometimes take a break from the sweetener. We need to break our addiction to constant sweet things!

Have you ever made a bulletproof coffee, bulletproof tea or other bulletproof beverage? Did you like it? Is it a regular part of your Keto * Low-Carb life right now? Please share your experiences in a com