Hi folks! It's TNBDM here with a guest blog for today. I was inspired to write about this by a recent Facebook exchange. As with most people, I have Facebook friends who are all over the spectrum when it comes to diet and nutrition -- some low-carbers, some who are health-conscious but choose other paths, many who don't pay much attention to health -- and even some who I know don't want to hear from me at all when it comes to these issues. Among the health-conscious, there are some who will eat up any new information on low-carbing, others who simply will not countenance the idea that eating "all that fat" won't "make you fat." And then there those who are in between -- willing to embrace some new LCHF-related information, but only up to a point. That's okay! Around our place, Dana and I have a saying, which is "information, not enforcement." It is counter-productive to browbeat people, and it's not very conducive to making and keeping friends. And I like friends!

FYI, this website and our spinoff site, My TotalGym Transformation, will be "going black" on Wednesday, January 18th, in protest of the proposed internet censorship legislation being considered by Congress this week. More information about the strike, including a list of participating websites (Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, icanhazcheezburger, and many, many more) is available at the Strike Against SOPA website. More information about the House and Senate bills, and how they would "break the internet", is available here, along with a form you can use to send a message to your Congresspersons and Senators, urging them to vote against this legislation.

This fignt is non-partisan. This would affect everyone who uses the internet for any purpose whatsoever. If you operate a website, please consider joining this strike. There are plugins available for Drupal and WordPress that will blackout your site all day on the 18th, returning it to normal after the event.

Hmmm. New Year's Resolutions. I feel like I should write about them, since it is, after all, the 2nd of January. (I confess to slarging about all day on New Years Day.) So here goes:

As I write this, it is December 30th, 2011, and tomorrow is the biggest party night of the year. If I don't write my annual article about alcohol today, I'll just have to skip it till next year -- and think up something else to write about. So here goes:

Have you noticed the new ads for Activia? I've written about this stuff before , pointing out that their claims about "bifidus regularis" in no way mean that theirs is the only yogurt that has a beneficial effect on digestion, or even that theirs is the only yogurt that contains that particular strain of bifidobacteria.

Gingersnaps
Crisp and gingery-cinnamony, these cookies are nothing short of extraordinary.

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup Splenda
1/4 cup sugar alcohol (I'd use erythritol now, but I originally used maltitol)
1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses (or dark molasses)
1 egg
1 cup almond meal
1 cup vanilla whey protein powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Utterly Addictive Pumpkin Seeds

1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoons coconut aminos
1/4 teaspoon anchovy paste
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce or other Louisiana-style hot sauce
1 teaspoon onion powder
2/3 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
2 cups squash kernels (shelled pumpkin seeds are, indeed, squash kernels.)

Set oven to 250. Put the coconut oil in a roasting pan, and put it in the oven to melt as the oven heats.

It seems like every time Dana mentions "Chicken Chips" in any blog entry or post on Facebook, someone will ask, "What are chicken chips???" (The other common question is about fat-fasting. We'll get to that shortly.) So we decided to give Chicken Chips a page of their own, with an easy link that can be quickly used pretty much anywhere.

Ingredients:

Chicken skin
Salt

It occurred to me, as I was stashing away the various leftovers last night, that there's a really cool thing about Thanksgiving dinner traditions, one that I really think is special to Thanksgiving: So much of what makes Thanksgiving dinner special is the vegetables. Sweet potatoes and green beans seem to be the most canonical, but in general it seems that people prepare more vegetable side dishes, and take more care with them, for Thanksgiving than for any other meal of the year.

I thought I'd post my menu for tomorrow -- and I'm having 5-count-'em-5 last minute guests! (FUN!)

Roast turkey with giblet gravy, thickened with xanthan
Apple-Walnut Dressing (see my most recent podcast transcript at Dana's Low Carb For Life.com)
Green Beans Almandine
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Fauxtatoes
Mashed Rutabaga (in the slow cooker as I keyboard this -- rutabaga takes a heap of cooking to get soft.)
Pumpkin Pie with a Pecan Praline Crust
Whipped Cream

The hardest thing about writing -- well, the hardest thing about writing is getting one's act together to sit down and do it. Or, as the old joke goes, the hardest part of writing is application -- applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. And now that we all write on internet-connected computers instead of typewriters (Children, a typewriter was an abysmally stupid word processor with no cut-and-paste, no "undo," no delete, and no multiple copy capability.

My head is about to explode. Today, at the American Heart Association conference, a panel from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute will be recommending cholesterol testing for children as young as 9. The reason? Screening more than 20,000 fifth graders turned up a bunch of undiagnosed cases of high cholesterol. Since high cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease -- more on this in a moment -- obviously we have to catch this early! We have to intervene! We have to do it for the chiiiilllldreeeen!

Schlepped across town to Aldi today, because I had a wallet full of cash. I was only going to "buy a few things," but of course wound up spending $100 -- three cases of sparkling water, three cans of coffee, five cartons of cottage cheese, 3 quarts of half and half, 6 blocks of cheese, etc. They don't call it "the stock-up store" for nothing.

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago for CarbSmart. Thought I should publish it here, too, plus an update, to let you know how this is going:

Well, isn't this interesting.

I have long recommended, among other low carb Halloween survival strategies, laying in a supply of sugar-free candy to help deter sugar binges. So when I got an email from a Tracy Linden, asking if she could write an article for the blog about sugar-free candy, I figured, heck, why not?