Lowcarbezine! 21 June 2000
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Hey, Gang!
Okay, I've made up for the lack of recipes last week -- there are four,
count 'em, four recipes in this week's Cooking Low Carb section, all for
interesting new salads I hope you'll love! Salad is such a wonderful
thing, don't you think? And vegetables in general. Sometimes people say
to me, "Oh, those nutrition people, they can never agree on
*anything*!" I always say, "Yes they can -- *eat your vegetables!*" ;-D
Enjoy the 'zine!
Dana
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All contents copyright 2000 by Hold the Toast Press. All commercial
reproduction and/or use is expressly prohibited. As always, feel free
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Lowcarbezine! welcomes reader input! If you have a question, a recipe,
a product review, a low carb success story, send it on in!!
mailto:dana@holdthetoast.com However, please note -- although I really
do read all my email my very own self, I get a *lot* of mail --
generally over 200 posts a day (not all of them about Lowcarbezine!), so
I can't promise to answer every post personally. Or I'll never get the
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Thought For the Week
Do you love to feed people? I do! I don't know what it is, but I just
*love* cooking for a group! When friends suggest, "Let's get together
and go out to dinner," I'm the one who says, "Ah, why don't you come
over and I'll cook?" The food's better, for less money -- and there's a
joy to it that just isn't there in a restaurant meal, much as I love
good restaurants, too. Hey, three-four times a year I cook lunch for my
church! (With the help of my trusty sous-chef, aka my webmaster,
vice-president in charge of operations, and of course, husband!)
So how do you plan a menu that *you* can eat and enjoy, and your guests
will enjoy as well? Let's take the problem a step further -- how about
if you've got a vegetarian in the crowd, as well? (Of course, you may
be a low carb vegetarian, at which point you're in business. But a
majority of the folks reading this depend pretty heavily on animal
foods.)
It's not as knotty a problem as it may appear at first. It's just a
matter of serving a harmonious variety of dishes that allows the diners
to pick and choose which elements of the dinner they wish to eat, and
which they'll pass up. Examples:
Menu for a dinner party for six (including us) this winter, including me
(low carber), 4 omnivores, and one lacto-ovo vegetarian:
Spinach Pecan Salad (tasty, a little different, and the pecans add a
little vegetable protein for the vegetarian, and some healthy fats for
us all -- recipe below)
Baked Ham (of course I read the labels and got the ham with the least
sugar!)
Baked Macaroni and Cheese (as a side dish for the omnivores, but solid
enough to be a filling entree for the vegetarian)
'Baga Fries (fried rutabaga. Always a hit, even though most people
never met a rutabaga in their lives!)
Strawberries, angel food cake, and whipped cream (a guest brought this
-- saved me from having to make a dessert. I didn't eat it, of course!
Would have had just strawberries, but they were the sweetened, frozen
kind.)
A much lighter dinner menu, suitable for the summer months, that went
over well recently was:
Guacamatoes (recipe below)
Stir fried peppers, onions, and black olives, with lemon and dry sherry
Stir fried chicken, with lemon and dry sherry
Stir fried tofu (marinate for 1/2 hr. or so in vegetable broth or some
other seasoning)
Brown rice
Strawberries and whipped cream
This was a big hit. The omnivores had their chicken and veggies served
over brown rice, my vegetarian guest had the veggies and tofu, also over
brown rice. I had the chicken and vegetables, no rice. Everybody
*loved* the Guacamatoes!
Here's the most recent lunch I served at church:
Baked Chicken, "breaded" with seasoned parmesan (I'd done this before,
and had a request from my little friend Anna!)
Brown Rice, cooked in vegetable broth/water combo, with sage, marjoram,
and thyme, with chopped walnuts sauteed in butter and worcestershire
sauce stirred in right before serving. (the nuts complement the protein
in the rice, giving the vegetarians a good main dish)
Salad (I used bagged salad with some sliced cucumber, tomato, and pepper
tossed in; put out the selection of dressings in the church fridge)
Fresh Pears
I filled up on chicken and salad, of course, while the omnivores ate
everything, and the vegetarians had the rice dish and the salad. Are
you getting the hang of this yet? Here's another church lunch that drew
a lot of complements:
Sopa Azteca (Mexican chicken/vegetable soup, served with grated cheese
and chunks of avocado -- I made the soup on Saturday, which streamlined
Sunday meal prep considerably!)
Quesadillas
Salad (the bagged stuff again)
Sliced Melon
In this case, I had soup and salad -- the soup is plenty filling, with
lots of chicken and vegetables, not to mention cheese! The vegetarians
could have quesadillas, salad, and melon.
A third church lunch which worked out nicely (I know I'm listing a lot
of church lunches, but hey, that's where I cook for a crowd!)
Spaghetti
Meatless spaghetti sauce
Meatballs (with no bread crumbs in them)
Grated parmesan
Garlic bread
Salad
Sliced Melon
Again, you can see how this works -- I (and a couple of other low carb
types) had a plate of meatballs, sauce, and cheese, plus plenty of
salad. The vegetarians could have spaghetti with sauce and cheese, plus
salad and bread, and the "normal" folks could eat everything. The only
hitch in this menu is that the *vast* majority of jarred spaghetti
sauces have corn syrup in them, and the ones that don't are pretty
darned expensive -- beyond the budget of a church lunch. I settled for
having standard jarred sauce for the crowd, on the theory that it was
the same kind of stuff they were eating at home, and having a jar of
sugarless sauce available for me and the other low carbers in our
congregation. Another solution, of course, would be to make spaghetti
sauce from scratch, and if this were a dinner I were serving at home, I
might well do so.
Here's a dinner menu I came up with when I had some folks in the first
nice weekend of early spring -- I wanted a menu that tasted sort of
fresh and light.
Roast turkey breast, basted with butter and balsamic vinegar
Stuffing (chopped celery, mushrooms, onions, tart apple, and walnuts,
with herbs, an egg to bind. Not dirt low in carbs, because of the
apple, but celery, mushrooms and walnuts are all very low carb, and of
course there was no bread in this. This stuffing was a *big* hit.)
For my vegetarian guest, a portion of the stuffing kept aside, and mixed
with rehydrated, seasoned Textured Vegetable Protein, and baked in an
individual casserole dish.
Salad of romaine lettuce, fresh parsley, cucumber, pepper, tomato, sweet
onion, with a Greek-style dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, oregano,
salt, and pepper.
Fried brussels sprouts
Sugar free cheesecake, with thawed frozen strawberries (I used the
unsweetened ones, and added a touch of Splenda.)
You'll notice a few of things in all these menus:
* I *always* serve a salad. Everybody, of every sort of
nutritional/dietary habits, can eat salad, and it's tasty and filling.
* I usually combine the starch dish -- which I won't be eating -- with
something more filling, and containing some vegetarian protein, such as
cheese or nuts, so that the vegetarians have something solid to fill up
on.
* I try, at dinner parties, to have some sort of vegetable that isn't
quite so common. It adds a lot of interest to a menu!
* I never serve the main protein in combination with a starch -- no
lasagna, pot pies, stuff like that. I mean, I can't eat it, so what's
the point? On the other hand, dishes that can be served over rice or
noodles -- or not -- can work very well. Stir fries, for instance, are
a good choice.
* I strive for balance -- not as in "a balanced diet", although these
menus are all balanced in that sense -- I'm talking about a balance of
colors, textures, and flavors. I try to plan menus where the dishes
compliment each other.
* I often will have a main dish that doesn't take much supervising. For
instance, ham or turkey breast can roast happily by themselves in the
oven, while I tend to the other food. Roasts are a fine thing to serve
to company, because they're *simple*. Further, leftover roast meat is a
wonderful thing to have in the refrigerator when you're low carbing --
convenience food! You may not have the money to feed a crowd roast beef
or roast lamb, but turkey and ham are usually affordable. Roaster
chickens are inexpensive, too -- just do one for every two to three
people.
* If I'm not having an entree that can be ignored while cooking, I try
to get some other things done ahead of time. For instance, with the
summer supper of Guacamatoes, stir fry, and rice, I had the guacamole
made and in the fridge, the peppers and onions all cut up, also stashed
in the fridge (in a ziploc), and the rice already cooked, waiting to be
reheated. With church lunches, I'll often make a pot of soup on
Saturday, so that I'm that far ahead of the game.
* When time is really short, go ahead and rely on things like bagged
salad, and the grocery store salad bar. Remember that the grocery store
salad bar isn't good just for salads. Need chopped onion and celery for
a recipe? Grated cheese? Sliced green pepper? You can get them
pre-cut at the grocery store salad bar. Just remember that you'll pay a
premium for the convenience.
So now go invite someone to dinner!!
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CarbSmart - Smart choice for a low carb lifestyle - is proud to sponsor
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(Note from Dana: CarbSmart also has my book, and they're selling it at
a discount... :-D)
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Is God Low Carb?
Kelle Schnabel, a fellow low carber who goes to my church, sent me this:
Couldn't believe I read this yesterday and thought you might be one of
the few people who would see the humor in it. As background, you need
to know that I am strongly adverse to quoting anything out of context
but especially religious material. Still, I just sat and chuckled when
I came upon this. Is it possible that God is pro-Low Carb?
Deuteronomy 12:20
When the Lord your God has enlarged your territory as he promised you
[I've personally been carrying around an enlarged territory for several
years!], and you crave meat and say, `I would like some meat,' then you
may eat as much
of it as you want.
No kidding! I'm glad God has a sense of humor!! The rest of the
passage has absolutely nothing to do with food. I wish I understood
where that came from!
Thanks, Kelle!! ;-D
Boy, couple that with Ray Audette's take on Genesis 2:17 -- "Do not eat
the fruit of the technology that makes edible the inedible" (referring
to grains and beans, which have to be cooked to be edible), and you
start to wonder...
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Product Review
Okay, the new Atkins bars are good. But for my money, the bars from
Protein Revolution are better!
Nutritionally they're similar, but to my taste, the Protein Revolution
bars have the edge on taste and texture, at least the ones I've tried.
I really like the Double Chocolate Fudge Almond (although the almonds
were elusive) and the Creamy Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup (no big
surprise, given my childhood love affair with Reese's and
Butterfingers). The Classic Peanut Butter and Jelly is tasty, although
I didn't note a whole lot of jelly flavor. Apple Cinnamon Spice Cake is
good, but could do without the chocolate coating. I wouldn't eat
chocolate sauce on apple pie; I don't need chocolate coating on my apple
cinnamon protein bar! Still, I know some folks have been *craving*
cinnamon/sugar flavored stuff (I get email!), and this should be
*perfect* for those folks.
The one flavor that I couldn't get is the one I most wanted to try --
Chocolate Hazelnut Toffee Crunch, which sounds *divine*. The store
where I got these should have them soon; I'll let you know what I think!
All the bars have 2.5 g of carb, but like the Atkins bars, they depend
on glycerin for a soft, chewy texture, and glycerin will knock some
folks out of ketosis. They also contain some polyols (sugar alcohols),
which technically are carbs, although they're not digested and absorbed
the way most carbs are -- they cause little-to-no blood sugar rise or
insulin release. The polyols are supplemented, here, with sucralose, the
stuff that makes Splenda sweet. As always, you need to pay attention
not just to what the label says, but to what *your body* is telling
you! They all have a nice long list of added vitamins and minerals,
making these a viable meal substitute, at least for now and again.
These would be a great thing to keep in your purse, attache case, or
desk for emergencies!
All told, I really liked these bars. Sent my dad a pile of them for
Father's Day!
These bars aren't as easy to find as Atkins bars, but there's a few
websites that have them, if you look. Having gotten a professional
discount from the store where I purchased them, I promised them a plug
-- I got them from a fine specialty food store here in Bloomington,
Indiana, called Sahara Mart. Sahara Mart carries Atkins Shake, too, and
other low carb specialty products, and they carry them all at very good
prices -- $1.99 for the Atkins and Protein Revolution bars, under $20
for the Atkins Shake. I've told Sahara Mart they need a website, but in
the meanwhile they'll happily take orders over the phone. You can reach
them at 812-333-0502. If you're in the Southern Indiana area, you ought
to check out Sahara Mart -- they've got some very cool stuff. They're
at 106 E. 2nd St, here in Bloomington.
Now, just to get you excited... Do you know what I have sitting on my
desk, waiting for me to mix it up, bake it, eat it, and review it? *LOW
CARB PIZZA MIX*!!!!! Man, I love this job!
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Low Fat Diets Take Another Hit!
Still getting dire warnings from family and friends about your diet?
Doctor still skeptical? Direct them to this month's American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition.
There they'll find a report of a study done at the Harvard School of
Public Health, regarding the effect of carbohydrate intake on the risk
of heart disease. The study was very large -- it involved 75,521 women
between the ages of 38 and 63. The women were screened for various
health problems, and none with a previous history of diabetes, heart
attack, angina, stroke, or any other cardiovascular disease was included
in the study. The women were then tracked for *ten years* -- not only
does this study deal with an unusually large group, but also with an
impressively long time.
In particular, for this study, the "glycemic load" of each woman's diet
was calculated -- that's a combination of how many carbohydrates she
ate, how often she ate them, and the impact of the types of carbs she
ate -- whether they were fast or slow absorbing carbs.
During the 10 years of the study, 761 cases of heart disease occurred
among the 75,521 women in the study. Two hundred and eight of those
were fatal incidents, and 553 were not fatal. After the researchers
adjusted their data for such factors as age, smoking, total caloric
intake, and such, "glycemic load" was found to be a significant risk
factor for heart disease. Over all, the "glycemic index" of the foods
the women ate -- their blood sugar impact -- was found to be more
important than the simple classification of "simple" or "complex"
carbohydrate. (So much for "sugar bad, starch good.")
Also, women who were overweight were found to be at a greater risk of
heart disease caused by carbohydrate consumption than women who were
not. Make sense? Think maybe those overweight women were carbohydrate
intolerant, just like you and me?
This study concluded, "These epidimiologic data suggest that a high
dietary glycemic load from refined carbohydrates increases the risk of
coronary heart disease, independent of known coronary disease risk
factors."
In other words, a high carb diet, *especially* a diet high in processed
carbs, can cause heart disease all by itself. Tell me again why cereal
is a healthier breakfast than eggs...?
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Reader Review of _How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and Lost Forty Pounds!_
I am on my third day and already am feeling wonderful. Today the energy
kicked in, NO hunger (in fact I worked until 2 PM before stopping to
eat). That is the 1st time I have done that in a LONG time! My stomach
has quit grumbling AND I even felt good enough after working all day to
go to the gym for a 1 1/2 hour work out this evening! I am ordering this
book again today for a friend of mine. I will not let mine out of my
sight long enough to lend it to her! This appears to be what I have been
waiting for most of my adult life. I will contact you later with my
results!
Oh, by the way - Already -3.5 pounds! Yeah!
Thank you,
Bob Mc Williams
Hey, Bob, thank YOU!
You can check out the first chapter of the book FREE at
http://www.holdthetoast.com . And you can see this testimonial and
other reader testimonials at the website, too.
You can also check out more reader reviews at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966883101/lowcarbohysoluti
If you've already read _How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and Lost Forty
Pounds_, and enjoyed it, please go to Amazon.com and review it yourself!
Who knows, you might see your review right here!
And if you'd rather, and you're in the United States, you can order _How
I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and Lost Forty Pounds_ through your local
bookstore. Hey, that way you don't even pay shipping and handling! (I'm
sorry to say we do not yet have an international wholesaler;
international sales will have to be via the internet, or a mailed check
or money order.) (Your bookstore may want to know -- our wholesaler is
Baker and Taylor, and the ISBN of _How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and
Lost Forty Pounds!_ is 0-9668831-0-1. And of course the author is Dana
Carpender!! :-))
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Come Live the Low Carb High Life!! Cruise With Me!!
January 7th we set sail for the Low Carb High Life Cruise to the Western
Caribbean, on Carnival's newest, biggest, and most luxurious ship,
Victory! It's going to be a great chance to get your New Year's
Resolutions in gear, knock off the holiday five, escape the cold, and
de-stress and have fun, all at the same time! Check out the details at
http://www.holdthetoast.com/cruise.html !!! You've gotta see it to
believe it!
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That's it for this week! See you next week!
Dana W. Carpender
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