[Mike Nolan]

We had vegetable beef soup with a salad.

One of the challenges with a keto diet will be coming up with enough different dishes to keep meals interesting, both from the perspective of cooking and eating them. Years ago we bought a lot of NY strip steak through the Nebraska Public TV auction and put most of it in the freezer. That summer it was, "What, steak again!" more than once. 🙂

Without much starch, including things like wheat, rice and potatoes, that'll be challenging. I've looked at some of the keto cookbooks online, so far I haven't seen one that really impressed me. I may have to visit the bookstore to browse a few of the ones on the shelf.

I need to try some cauliflower rice, to see how it would work with a stir-fry.

[Mike Nolan]

You could use them in tacos, on a salad, in a pork-noodle casserole, or like pulled pork on bread. The barbecue flavor will perk up the dish.

Or maybe kind of a cassoulet or faux Feijoada with beans?

People make tuna salad or chicken salad all the time, why not pork salad?

[Mike Nolan]

I made cream of celery and leek soup for supper tonight. I kept the recipe fairly simple, next time I think I'd add some carrots. I didn't use any spices, though thyme, bay leaf, chives, parsley and sage show up in a lot of recipes, as does bacon and parmesan cheese, so there's lots of room for experimentation. One recipe suggests topping it with roasted hazelnut bits.

[Mike Nolan]

I'll try that if I make another recipe that uses flaxseed meal. I'll be curious to see how the KAF keto flour works and tastes.

I bought a loaf of Dave's killer seed bread, fairly small loaf and sliced thin, so it is only 13 carbs/slice, which means we could probably have one slice a day and not carb out. Our goal is to always be under 100 carbs but preferably around 50/day, some keto diet sources recommend 25-30 carbs/day, but that's pretty extreme and they tend to be health fanatics.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife's comment on the latest keto bread is that she isn't sure if it was better than having no bread at all, not exactly a ringing endorsement. It feels a bit rough in the throat, maybe that's from having ground flaxseed in it?

Right now I'd say this is probably not a recipe I'd make again, so the search continues.

[Mike Nolan]

I see it as a challenge, how can I make an edible bread that is still keto-friendly.

My weight is down about 5 pounds in two weeks, so the keto diet is working for me, and my wife's blood sugar numbers have been really good, especially no overnight spikes, so it's working for her that way, and her weight is down some.

[Mike Nolan]

Haven't tried it yet,but it's a bit crumbly, a big corner of it broke off as I was handling it. But given that it didn't have any gluten or a gum (like xanthan) for structure, that may not be surprising. I will try slicing it at lunchtime.

I've ordered a bag of King Arthur's new keto flour, we'll see how it works, but it's really expensive.

[Mike Nolan]

The custards taste like custard, though they could probably have used a little more allulose. (Allulose is about 75% as sweet as sucrose.) Diane thinks more vanilla would help.

They did dome a bit in the middle, something I've never seen custard do before, but they collapsed as they cooled.

[Mike Nolan]

The keto friendly bread that I made 6 days ago was gone, so I'm trying another keto-friendly recipe tonight. This one uses 4 whole eggs and some ground flaxseed. It's in the oven, but it says not to slice it until it's cool, so I probably won't taste it until morning.

This recipe recommends keeping it in the refrigerator or slicing and freezing it. The other one didn't.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making keto-friendly egg custard tonight, using allulose instead of sugar and 1 part cream to 3 parts water.

[Mike Nolan]

We got a dusting of snow overnight, under 1/2 inch.

We had a rotisserie chicken for supper.

[Mike Nolan]

$2.19-$2.29 is what I'm seeing for eggs at places like Aldi and Walmart, $2.89 is what I'm seeing in other grocery stores.

Tonight's butter-poached lobster was very good, the low-carb gnocchi was OK, but felt a bit gritty, maybe that's the almond flour. I made an alfredo sauce to go with the gnocchi, I think it clashed with the lobster, the original recipe recommended a lemon-butter-tarragon sauce; we tried a few with lemon-butter from the lobsters, that was an improvement.

I also made a low carb hot fudge sauce to go with some reduced sugar ice cream for dessert in a while. I think it'll be OK on the ice cream with some strawberries, but it isn't the same as real hot fudge sauce. (I've yet to find a recipe for hot fudge sauce that matches what I get through soda fountain suppliers. Of the ones at the grocery store, Mrs. Richardson's hot fudge sauce is the one I like best.)

[Mike Nolan]

I tried another half-batch of peanut butter cookies, this time the only change I made was substituting almond flour for the wheat flour. (I did accidentally put in a whole egg rather than a half egg, and that made the cookies flatten out a bit more.)

They're pretty good, the almond flour changes the taste a little, but they taste good enough that Diane had two this evening. And they're somewhere around 6 carbs each as opposed to 9 carbs for the originals.

[Mike Nolan]

Since we postponed the lobster dinner to tomorrow, we settled for steaks tonight. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

I tried making peanut butter cookies using almond flour with monkfruit and erythritol (corrected) as the sweetener. Erythritol tends to leave a 'cool' sensation on the tongue and there was kind of an aftertaste as well, which may be from the monkfruit. The texture was off, but that's more easily fixed than taste issues. So I call this one a fail.

I may see what happens if I use allulose, which browns faster than sucrose, so I'll have to watch for that.

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