HoldTheToast! by Dana Carpender

Just talked to Fair Winds Press this morning, and I have a new deal to update an old book: We're going to reissue 15 Minute Low-Carbohydrate Recipes with 100 new recipes. That will expand the book by about 50%! Due out next spring.

So if there are any sorts of quick recipes you've been wishing you could find, tell me now! I'll get to work right away.

Laura Dolson, who writes the low carb blog for About.com, has a great article today about Geneen Roth's book Women, Food, and God. She makes a point I absolutely agree with: That much of what has been labeled "compulsive eating" and assumed to be emotionally-based is actually the result of a physical addiction to carbohydrate.

I swear, I entered all of Chris's soda reviews, but somewhere in the editing, and trying to get my italics tags to work right, three reviews got deleted. So I will now dutifully re-transcribe the remaining reviews. Remember, Chris uses a 1-5 scale for his ratings.

Zevia Orange: Tastes like Orange Crush and... wait for it... club soda! Yes! When I was aboy I insisted on orange soda after baseball (Little League) practice I'd have drunk this then and not complained about the sweetener taste. Rating: Another solid 4

Okay, I've figured out what sort of contest we should have for the great Zevia giveaway. Here's what I'm thinking:

The Tuesday after Labor Day is officially my 15 year anniversary of low carbing, so that seems an auspicious occasion for which to give out prizes. So if you wish to compete for the free mixed case of Zevia (or one of the runner up prizes of a six-pack of Zevia), you'll need to send a recipe. Or two. Or three! Heck, you may enter as many times as you like. The rules will be (this is rough, and is subject to possible change):

So I have a whole bunch of Zevia natural sugar-free soda in my fridge. Also some Blue Sky Free, another brand of stevia-and-erythritol sweetened diet soda. Cold soda, summer weather, sounds like I'm in the perfect position to review soda, doesn't it? There's just one teeny little catch: I loathe soda. All soda. Sugar-sweetened soda, diet soda, all-natural diet soda, cola, ginger ale, lemon lime, orange, wild cherry, it doesn't matter. I can't abide the stuff.

Odd historical sidenote: There appears to have been a little trend 1960s and 1970s for counting "carbo-calories" or "carbo-cals." I have a couple of old low carb diet books, The Carbo-Calorie Diet (and the Carbo-Calorie Diet Cookbook), from 1973 and 1976, respectively, and further back, the wonderfully titled "Martinis and Whipped Cream: The New Carbo-Cal Way to Lose Weight and Stay Slim," from 1966.

I'm getting impatient with IF. It may just be a bad day -- and I admit, it's been a bad day, though for no reason in particular. I mean, nothing overwhelmingly awful happened. I've just felt cranky and snappish and short-tempered all day, you know? And now I'm exhausted, and it's not even 8 pm, and I got plenty of sleep last night.

Found Russel Stover's sugar free dark chocolate bar at Kroger on Friday, so I picked one up. Tried it along side sugar-free Hershey's Dark. Have to say, the flavor of the two is nearly identical, but the Russel Stover is a tad creamier, to my taste.

Neither is a patch on my favorite, Valor Sugar Free 70%, which is sheer sugar-free chocolate heaven. On the other hand, they're cheaper, and far more widely distributed.

I might add, I also think the Dove Sugar Free is darned good.

I've mentioned that I'm a huge fan of Mark Sisson's Mark's Daily Apple blog. Today there's an abstract from a medical journal article regarding paleo nutrition.

It is sad but true that a disproportionate number of Latino, African-descended, Native American, and Pacific Islander folks suffer from obesity, diabetes, and all the other sequelae of carbohydrate intolerance. This is often blamed on poverty, but the problem appears to cut across economic lines. Poverty may play a part, but I believe that it is largely because these populations were introduced to wheat, sugar, vegetable oils, and processed foods in general many generations later than folks of Western European descent.

That Nice Boy I Married is halfway through a wretched cold, which I am very much hoping not to catch. To help him through, I'm making a pot of chicken noodle soup. A low carb pot of chicken noodle soup, of course! Here's how it goes:

My doctor and I have an agreement: If she ever wants me to stop being her patient, she'll try to get me to start taking statins. I consider them nearly useless, hideously over-hyped and over-prescribed, and potentially very dangerous. Take a look at this blog post by Tom Naughton, at the Fathead blog, to see what I'm talking about.

My nearest grocery store -- one of the area Marsh chain -- now has a Mediterranean bar. Olives, stuffed pepperoncini, tapenade, marinated artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, chunks of feta, and lots more low carb delights, all ready to scoop into a plastic container and take to the check out. I don't recall seeing a single thing we couldn't eat!

Is this a great country, or what?

Victoria BC (which I assume refers to the city, rather than a name and initials) responded to the Energy Bar thread with this query:

Where can you find erythritol? What is it? Is that the sugar alcohol? How much do you usually use in a recipe?

Erythritol is, indeed, a sugar alcohol or polyol. It has been gaining a lot of popularity because, of all the polyols, erythritol has the lowest rate of absorption -- pretty much zero -- and the least risk of gastric effect. It's not a perfect substitute for sugar, but it's darned good.

So it's a little over a week into my experience with IF. How's it going? Okay. Not brilliant, not revelatory, but okay.