HoldTheToast! by Dana Carpender

Well, geez, the world is just full of fascinating but perplexing information. Consider this: a study showing that feeding stevia or steviosides increases abdominal fat in chickens.

I mean, what the heck? The chickens given the stevia or stevioside supplemented feed ate more, which makes sense if chickens, like people, have an inherent taste for sweet stuff. Certainly my chickens went nuts for the mulberries that fell from my tree this year.

One of the great things about the Low Carb Meet-and-Greet is that it gave me a chance to get feedback on Zevia and Blue Sky Free, the two new all-natural sugar-free sodas. This was needed, because, as I've mentioned, I loathe all soda pop, and a series of reviews all of which said "BLEEARGH! HOW CAN PEOPLE DRINK THIS STUFF?" just wasn't going to be very useful to you, the consumer.

What fun! The Low Carb Meet-and-Greet happened yesterday, and it was just so much fun. About twenty folks came, along with Jimmy and Christine Moore, of course, and Amy and John Dungan and their kids, Matt and Rachel. I hadn't met Matt and Rachel before; they're great kids -- smart, personable, well-behaved. The Dungan family came Friday night, so we all had dinner together, and Saturday morning Amy, Rachel and I went to the local farmer's market to buy fresh local vegetables for crudites, not to mention a local cantaloupe for an easy dessert.

Here's the flounder recipe I promised you. I confess, the carb count is off just a teeny bit, because I haven't entered the stats for coconut flour into my Mastercook database yet. And with company showing up any second -- low carb blogger Amy Dungan and her family -- I don't have time to fix it right now.

That Nice Boy I Married gave this a perfect 10, and said, "You have a way with flounder, darling." (I'd done another really tasty thing with flounder earlier in the week.)

Coconut Crusted Flounder with Browned Butter and Lime

1/2 cup coconut flour

At the Hold the Toast Facebook page , Lisa Feinson posted a link to a great website called Sugar Stacks. It has photos of various foods with piles of sugar cubes illustrating how much sugar is in a serving. Doesn't mention total carb count at all, or the fact that starch turns into sugar in the blood stream, but it's still fun and eye-opening stuff.

Got this email from a reader named Janice Salomon:

Hi, Dana -

A Google search on The Julian Bakery led me to your blog where I noticed that your 5/25/10 post about a carb test seems to be based upon incorrect math. If you started out at 125 (lowest reading), and your highest reading was 157, then the gap between high and low was 28 points, not 38. So I'm assuming that a lower baseline would result in a better carb count for this bread (I figure 2.4?). Anyway, just so you know. I wouldn't notice if my house is burning down, but this I noticed...LOL...

Rice Krispie Treats are now being advertised with the slogan "You're never too big for a little something sweet." In a nation with a growing obesity epidemic, I'm thinking there are a whole lot of people who are too big for a little something sweet.

Worst thought out slogan since Old El Paso -- you know, people who sell beans -- came up with "Pass the Old El Paso."

Hey, it's cheap entertainment.

Since August 3rd is apparently National Watermelon Day (who decides these things, anyway?!) I thought I'd post the stats for watermelon. According to Mastercook, 1 slice of watermelon weighing 550 grams (that's over a pound, by the way, so a good-sized slice -- but the stuff is full of water, of course, and water weighs heavy) contains:

92 calories
1 gram fat
21 grams carbohydrate
1 gram fiber
2 grams protein
2% of your calcium
9% of your potassium
3% of your iron
1% of your zinc
46% of your vitamin C

I know a lot of folks drink cranberry juice to prevent urinary tract infections, but cranberry juice cocktail is loaded with sugar, because cranberries in their natural state are so tart. Yesterday while cleaning out my fridge (YUCK!) I found my bottle of unsweetened cranberry juice concentrate -- 8 teaspoons of the stuff with 8 fluid ounces of water makes 8 ounces of unsweetened cranberry juice. I came up with an idea that worked out beautifully. Indeed, this tastes a lot like the cranberry juice spritzers I used to buy at the health food store back when I thought juice was healthy.

Got a query on Facebook re a granola recipe in 500 Low Carb Recipes. The recipe is based on TVP, a soy product, and the reader wanted to know what she could substitute. My best suggestion? "A better recipe." Here it is.

Flax Granola

2 cups flax seed meal
1/2 cup oat bran
3/4 cup vanilla whey protein powder
1/2 cup Splenda granular
1/2 cup sesame seeds
3/4 cup shredded coconut meat (unsweetened!)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup sugar free pancake syrup

I'm a 35 year old Finnish woman, living in France for 15 years already! I live in a small medieval village near Chartres (70km from Paris) and am often tempted by the smell of bread from the village's 5 different bakery shops, tough! Anyway, I have always had weight issues, more so during the past 2 years even though I tried dieting and exercising.. Finally I was diagnosed a hypothyroidism with a Hashimoto syndroma meaning my metabolism is really slow and weight loss is difficult. I got a hormonal treatment and started cutting carbs, on my own, 2 months ago.

So I launched a new blog today: My Total Gym Transformation. It's going to be a record of my using my Total Gym exercise machine with Slow Burn technique to get back into fierce shape, increasing my muscle mass and bone density. I'll probably throw in some other exercise along the way, but I've had a Total Gym for a long time now -- wanted one the moment I first saw the infomercial over a decade ago -- and I think it's a great machine.

Dr. Mike's latest at the Protein Power blog. Good stuff.

Started a new article today, but life caught up with me; I'll finish it tomorrow. In the meanwhile, here's one from the deep Lowcarbezine! archives:

For years and years, mainstream health authorities have been denying that sugar is detrimental to health. The only proven ill-effect of sugar, they insist, is that it rots your teeth.

As many of you know, I'm currently working on 100 new 15 minute recipes for a new, expanded edition of my book 15 Minute Low-Carb Recipes. I thought perhaps a quick run-down of some of the basic principles of 15 minute recipe creation might be useful.

* You won't be using your oven. Even if a recipe needs less than 15 minutes baking time, you have pre-heating time to deal with. This means, among other things, that 15 minute recipes are great for summer.