[Mike Nolan]

Between last night and today, I've got 13 tomato plants in, about half of the ones I started in March. So far I've got First Lady II, 4th of July, Porter, Rutgers and Celebrity planted.

[Mike Nolan]

The new cat came out of hiding when I gave him a bowl of tuna water. We're slowly expanding how much of the house he has access to, but for now he's content to stay in the mudroom where he spent the night.

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[Mike Nolan]

I've got a bunch of tomatoes I could put in now (and may do so this evening) and more that aren't quite big enough yet, I'll probably put them in a bigger peat pot for a week or two.

[Mike Nolan]

I think there's too much cocoa in the cake, and I'm not sure if that's because I lowered the amount of semi-sweet chocolate (to cut carbs) and increased the amount of cocoa powder or because I used dutch cocoa (as called for.)

Next time--more buttermilk, less cocoa, maybe regular cocoa, and perhaps some pecan flour for texture. And possible a little baking powder for airiness.

If the regular Texas Chocolate Sheet cake is a 10, this is a 5 or 6, but that mean's there's plenty of room for improvement. It'll get eaten, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I tried making a keto-friendly Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, using a flourless cake recipe and using allulose instead of sugar and powdered allulose for the frosting. The cake is still cooling, but the frosting tastes pretty close, though it may not be hardening quite as much, I may not have cooked the butter/buttermilk/cocoa long enough. But maybe it will set up more over the next few hours, I've had batches where it didn't harden as much right away.

Looks like 1/9 of an 8x8 pan, with frosting, will be 11 carbs.

[Mike Nolan]

Maybe I should start with oranges before putting out the grape jelly, but both disappear here, to a variety of birds. Squirrels like grape jelly, too, and I've even seen a raccoon try to get up the pole. (It bent, so I had to straighten it out.)

Something's been nibbling at the dill plants I put out, but so far they're rebounding. I'd like to put in a dill patch but haven't found a good place for one.

[Mike Nolan]

Both our front and back lawns were in pretty sad shape, so I've been replanting them. The back yard had a lot of bare patches, so I seeded the whole yard in microclover.

The front yard got both microclover and buffalo grass seed. (One of the professors at UNL in my wife's department is a grasses expert, he strongly recommends buffalo grass as a native grass that is heat and drought tolerant.)

I scarified the yard first to remove thatch and that also took out a lot of the weeds. Scarifying is like power raking but it digs a series of grooves about a half inch into the dirt to provide a place for seeds to take hold.

The back yard got the clover seed several weeks ago and the clover is doing well, I may not even need to reseed any bare patches. The front yard just got seeded on Tuesday, the clover may start showing up next week but the buffalo grass might take 2 weeks.

I tried putting in a few small areas of buckwheat, mostly along the east side, but I don't know if any of it took, so I might try it again soon. The year I rested the main vegetable garden area I put in buckwheat and it was so pretty, and the bees just loved it.

[Mike Nolan]

We had hot dogs on the buns I baked and I had some salad.

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[Mike Nolan]

I'm making keto-friendly hot dog buns today

[Mike Nolan]

It's usually just to the right of the image you just selected and says 'Insert into Content':

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[Mike Nolan]

We had salads again, I put some of the left over pork roast on mine.

[Mike Nolan]

I looked at Rick Bayless's recipe for mole. Aside from the fact that it called for several ingredients I've never seen in a store (even the ones that cater to the Hispanic community here), it was a very complicated recipe with lots of ingredients.

I've had his mole at his Chicago restaurant; it is very good, but I doubt I'd have the patience to make it. Mole from a jar seems good enough for me.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't made a carrot soup with it, but I have a juicer that does a pretty good job grinding up the carrots, making it easier and faster to cook them. I have used the juicer to make vegetable stock. (I strained out the pulp from the veggies afterwards.)

I've mainly used the carrot juice to make carrot vinegar and have used the carrot pulp in a carrot cake that was really good. (That'd be a tricky thing to make low-carb, though.)

[Mike Nolan]

Dinner tonight was a salad (mine had tuna), two deviled eggs and a slice of cheesecake.

[Mike Nolan]

If he likes cheesecake, the on-the-stove cheesecake filling I used for my keto-friendly cheesecake (using allulose instead of sugar) is a good recipe, and if you allow it to warm up to room temperature it is really soft. Just skip the crust for him. (I sprinkled a few chopped pecans on the excess filling, Diane loved it.)

The recipe is on this YouTube page. Turn off your sound first, the soundtrack is really annoying.

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