Mike Nolan

Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 posts - 1,006 through 1,020 (of 7,652 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of February 4, 2024? #41824
    Mike Nolan
    Keymaster

      I made a keto-friendly bread today (egg whites, almond flour and coconut flour, mostly), still waiting for it to cool to see how it is.

      Followup:

      Well, it came out looking more or less like the picture on the recipe, though maybe it could have stood a little longer in the oven. And using pasteurized egg whites is always a bit challenging, they don't whip up quite as high as fresh egg whites.

      As to the taste, I've definitely had worse, toasted and with a little margarine and peanut butter it tasted mostly like peanut butter, and it had enough crunch and texture to feel like I was actually eating something close to a sandwich.

      The real test is if I can use it for something like cheese toast or a BLT.

      For a first try, it was somewhat better than expected, but I think I can improve upon it.

      in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 4, 2024? #41822
      Mike Nolan
      Keymaster

        Leftover night here.

        in reply to: Ketogenic Diets #41816
        Mike Nolan
        Keymaster

          So far we're just using test strips to check ketones, but I've ordered a ketones breathalyzer, it should be better than the test strips but probably not as accurate as a blood meter.

          in reply to: Ketogenic Diets #41815
          Mike Nolan
          Keymaster

            Carb-loading in advance of a high-energy output event, like a marathon, is common. Whether it really works is a bit more speculative.

            Football players tend to load upon proteins ahead of a game, but steak at 8AM is odd for the rest of us.

            in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 4, 2024? #41813
            Mike Nolan
            Keymaster

              We had cheese souffle with mushroom sauce, both recipes were modified to be keto-friendly, and the result was delicious.

              in reply to: Ketogenic Diets #41812
              Mike Nolan
              Keymaster

                A lot of what's out there tend to ignore or gloss over the science (that's true for most diet trends), but the ketogenic diet can be traced back to the 1920's, when it was developed as a diet for controlling epilepsy, before the drugs that are mostly used today were developed.

                The basic principle is to keep the carbs consumed down while raising the amount of protein and, especially, fat. How low you have to get varies from person to person, generally below 50 carbs/day, though 20-30 is more likely to be successful.

                Once the body uses up its reserves of glycogen (about 3 days worth, stored mostly in the liver and also in muscles), it will start converting fat to glycogen for energy. This is called ketogenesis. The trick is to avoid getting your ketones too high, which can turn the blood acidic, and is called ketoacidosis. It can be fatal. But there's a pretty wide range of ketone numbers where you're in ketogenesis before that happens.

                There are multiple ways to test your ketones, some are better (or at least more accurate) than others.

                Some of the proponents of the keto diet or its offshoots tend to get preachy, telling you to avoid most of the meats and other proteins in stores for reasons that have nothing to do with ketogenisis, eat only organic foods, avoid all gluten, etc.

                A cyclical ketogenic diet should be a bit more flexible, allowing some carbs, even (oh, the shame of it all!) wheat. πŸ™‚

                Because fats are taste bombs, a ketogenic diet can be very tasty and filling. (Fats also fill you up faster and leave you more satisfied than carbs.)

                Tonight, for example, we had a cheese souffle with mushroom sauce, using some almond flour and xanthan gum, cream (watered down), eggs, butter, cheddar cheese and mushrooms. A serving was probably 4-5 carbs (I'm checking it using multiple recipe analysis tools), and it was delicious! By comparison, my traditional souffle recipe (served with canned mushroom soup as a sauce) is more like 30-40 carbs/serving.

                Being an engineer by training, I think I'll read some of the scientific papers on ketogenesis as we get further into this, but I don't claim that I'll fully understand them.

                in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 4, 2024? #41803
                Mike Nolan
                Keymaster

                  I have a big pot of vegetable beef soup on the stove, that'll be dinner for the next several days plus I expect to freeze over half of it.

                  The soup was great, best batch I've made in a long time. It did come out a bit too heavy on the veggie side, so I thinned it down with a quart of tomato juice.

                  in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 4, 2024? #41797
                  Mike Nolan
                  Keymaster

                    We're planning fish (orange roughy or salmon) and steamed broccoli.

                    in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 4, 2024? #41783
                    Mike Nolan
                    Keymaster

                      My wife doesn't like lentils, I don't know if that just means she hasn't had them prepared in a way that she'd like them or if that's another lost cause.

                      We had takeout fish and chips for supper tonight

                      in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 4, 2024? #41775
                      Mike Nolan
                      Keymaster

                        We're planning pork tacos again tonight. I've got beef stock thawing for a batch of vegetable beef soup later this week.

                        in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of January 28, 2024? #41769
                        Mike Nolan
                        Keymaster

                          I'm looking at recipe with celeriac (celery root). Anybody ever worked with it?

                          in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of January 28, 2024? #41763
                          Mike Nolan
                          Keymaster

                            We had chili from the freezer tonight.

                            in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of January 28, 2024? #41760
                            Mike Nolan
                            Keymaster

                              My wife starts asking that question any time I even THINK of buying something for the kitchen.

                              in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of January 28, 2024? #41758
                              Mike Nolan
                              Keymaster

                                We had tacos made with some of the left over pork roast, very good.

                                in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of January 28, 2024? #41754
                                Mike Nolan
                                Keymaster

                                  I think we're having tacos for supper, or something similar.

                                Viewing 15 posts - 1,006 through 1,020 (of 7,652 total)