this time, i stuffed it and baked it.

i bought low carb tortillas.  turns out they're lower in carbs and higher in fiber than the stuff i worked so hard to make.  le sigh.  anyway, i call this leftover enchilada surprise!

wrapped up in low carb tortillas, topped with cheese and hot sauce, and threw 'em in the oven at 350F for about 15 minutes.  delicious.

i'm pretty sure angels aren't bakers

i wanted to make some sort of nom nom trifle because i wanted to.  i figured that angel food cake might be easy to turn into a low carb recipe because its mostly egg whites.  so i attempted to make one.  i figured granulated splenda was even lighter than regular sugar so it wouldn't make the eggs collapse.  i do know that almond and hazelnut meal are heavier than normal flour but i thought i'd be okay.
my stupid angel food cake collapsed.  i think its because boyfriend poked it too hard.  anyway, here's the recipe.  cook time + prep time: 1 hour, yields 12 servings, 1 net carb per serving

ingredients

0.5 cup almond flour
0.5 cup hazelnut flour
1.5 cup egg whites
1.5 tsp cream of tartar
1.5 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
1.5 cup granulated splenda ground up so that its powdered
1 cup granulated splenda regularish

• preheat oven 350F.
• mix flours and powdered splenda very well.  set aside
• whip extracts and tartar into egg whites.  then start whipping your stupid egg whites like a mad person.  i think i would have had more success if i had received my dang Cuisinart stand mixer that still hasn't even shipped yet!  instead, i employed the help of my my boyfriends superior mixing skills.  add the splenda in quarter cup increments and mix until its dissolvedish.  then start whipping it really fast until firm peaks form.  firm peaks, the internet taught me, is when it makes a peak that doesn't droop.  don't over whip though, because something happens to the eggs and they turn into something lame.
• fold in the flour mixture, small parts at a time, very carefully so that the eggs don't fall.
• very carefully spoon whole mixture into ungreased pan.  i think you're supposed to use some sort of bundt pan, but i just used this new loaf pan i bought for making bread.
• cook in oven for ~40 minutes or until it springs back when you touch it.  but don't touch it unless you think its done, because if you poke it too hard you'll break it and then it'll be all flat.
• i read a recipe that said to turn the pan over immediately when it comes out of the oven then leave the pan on until its cool to the touch, then remove the whole shebang from the pan.  so this is what i did.  thats when i realized the cake had fallen.  didn't matter though.  was still totally rad sauce delicious.  so crazy delicious.

boyfriend made some whipped cream and we topped it with some lower carbed berries and it was quite nice.

sorta like nachos. except not at all

boyfriend and i have been straight up desperate for red meat lately.  its nuts; we must be iron deficient or something.  we were sitting around this morning and boyfriend was all, "you should make a pot roast."  and i thought oooooooh beeeeeeeff aaaargggghhhhhhhh.  i used to make this shredded beef for tacos some years and years back.  i sort of perfected my process, but its been a long time, like more than five years since i visited the process.  and then when i was like, "how are we going to eat this?"  and i decided that i'd make some sort of tortilla bread type thing and it would be sorta like nachos.  here it is.  cook time + prep time 4.5 hours, yields 12 servings, 4 grams of net carbs per serving (that's all in the tortilla tho)

ingredients (for meat)

5lbs of boneless chuck roast - well marbled & cubed
5oz vinegar based hot sauce
1 bunch cilantro - chopped
3 serrano peppers - sliced
4 cloves garlic - smashed
4 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 tsp beef base
2 bay leafs
2 tbsp hot chili powder
1 tbsp steak seasoning
1 tbsp ground cuman
1 cup dry white wine

• bust out your super rad cast iron cored dutch oven  put everything except the cilantro in it over low heat on the stove, mix it up as well as you can.  cover it.  after an hour stir it up some.  after another hour, stir it up some.  after another hour take a cooking fork or something not heat sensitive and hard and mash up all the meat until its all shredded.  add the cilantro and cover it back up.  wait another hour, turn up the heat just a tad remove the lid and cook off excess juices.  then its done!

ingredients (tortilla like bread)

1 cup soy flower

1 cup vital wheat gluten

0.5 cup butter - melted

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp salt

1 egg

0.5 hot water

4 tbsp safflower oil

• mix up dry ingredients.  add melted butter and mix well until the dough is a little crumbly, then add egg.  mix it up and then add water, but not so much that the dough is sticky
• form the dough into golf ball sized spheres.  mash each one on a flat surface with the palm of your hand so it looks like a circle.  roll each circle out until its like an eighth of an inch thick.
• heat oil over medium heat in a medium sized pan.  cook each "tortilla" for ~3 minutes on each side until golden.  place on paper to drain off excess oil

finished product was this:

this was so fracking good, i can't even tell you.  the beef was so juicy and delicious, you wouldn't believe it.  would be fab on sandwich or salad or whatevs.  sucks that it takes so long to make, but sometimes that happens.

the french do amazing things with stale bread

i made my man french toast with the low carb bread.  you can do it too.

please take note of our new fancy fine china.  we're like totally grown ups now.

i'm not sure... but there's crab in it

i had no idea what i was going to make when i stopped by the market today, but i saw avocados were on sale and then i saw scallops were on sale and i just started buying a bunch of stuff and i didn't really know what i was making until i was done making it but here it is: seafood stuffing?  prep time + cook time: 1hr, yields 4 servings, 2.25 carbs per serving

ingredients:

2 avocados
3 thin slices of that bread we made or 1 cup of low carb breadcrumbs
1.5 tbsp butter
1 egg
1 cup "mexican" cheese - whatever that is
2 cloves of garlic - minced
1 bunch cilantro - finely chopped
8 oz lump crap meat
0.33 lb scallops
0.33 lb jumbo shrimp - peeled and deveined
1 serrano - thinly sliced
salt and pepper

• to make your own breadcrumbs, preheat oven to 350F.  cube your bread really really finely.  like 1/8th inch square max.  spread out cubes over baking sheet and put in oven for 30 minutes.  mix them around like every ten minutes or so and don't let them burn.  put aside in a medium sized mixing bowl.
• cut shrimp and scallops into quarter inch pieces.  heat butter in pan over medium heat, when its melted but not browned, add garlic, shrimp, scallops and crab.  the seafood will be all like "give us some more butter" but don't believe it and just put a lid on it.  it'll all sweat and be moist in like two minutes.  add serrano, cilantro, and salt and pepper to taste.  don't over cook, or your shrimp will be like rubber pellets.  remove from heat and toss with breadcrumbs in that bowl from before. i shoved it in the freezer to cook off a bit
• finely cube your avocados.  this can be done with them in the shell.  the internet can help you with this if you are unfamiliar.  mix in with the seafood mixture.  when your seafood mixture has cooled, like it doesn't need to be cold just not scalding to the touch, add your egg and your cheese and mix it all together well.  at this point i was like, "what in the hell am i doing right now?  should i make like crabbish cake thingies?  should i stuff these into something?" and then i decided to stuff them into these shells we have from the last time we had seafood stuffed shells.  remember that?  way back on the first blog?  yah.

• so i stuffed those shells, but you could use like bell peppers or sole filets or mushrooms or something.  the possibilities are really endless.  then i put them in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350F.  they weren't super golden or anything, but boyfriend was all like, "if you don't let me noms that right now, i'm going to eat leftovers."  he was hungry.  so we ate it.  it looked like this:

we had it with arugula.  we love arugula. anyway, there you have it.  improvised seafood stuffing that is delicious and also not so bad for you on this diet.

adding nuts sometimes makes it creamy

i had a terrible, no good, very bad day.  like hide tears from your coworkers day.  nothing was going my way at all and i needed food to fix this.  so i decided that i had to make curry; curry is one of my favorite things in the whole entire world.  so i made this weird crazy improvised korma that i wanted to serve over cauliflower rice but i didn't have cauliflower, so i mixed it in with spaghetti squash.  its a strange thing all together, i guess, but whatever.  i liked it.  it sorta made me feel better.  cook time + prep time 1hr, yields 10 servings, 5.23 carbs per serving

ingredients

4 tbsp safflower oil
5 oz frying cheese
1 medium spaghetti squash
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups broccoli - chopped
0.5 cup cilantro - chopped
1 can tomato sauce
1 tsp vegetable base
0.25 white onion - chopped
1 serrano pepper - thinly sliced
8 oz mushrooms - quartered
1 cup macadamia nuts
4 cloves garlic - minced
1 tbsp ginger - minced
2.5 tbsp indian curry powder
0.5 tsp cayenne pepper
2.5 cups water
salt

• prepare the spaghetti squash as we did last weekend
• in a large pan, like the largest pan you have, heat 2 tbsp oil over medium heat.  add macadamia nuts.  typically, you make korma with cashews but cashews are high in carbs and in fat, and so i decided to use macadamia nuts which tend to be pretty creamy and are one of the lower carb nuts.  toast nuts until they're sorta golden.  when the nuts start popping, add vegetable base and 1 cup water.  cook water down by half and then put nuts + water in a blender and puree them well.  set aside
• i fried my cheese at this point.  i found this cheese at tjs, and its the most similar cheese i've ever found to paneer in that it doesn't really melt down.  and then one day i decided to fry it, and things were really great.  you can fry yours or you can use paneer or you can use it just like it is or whatever.  i don't care.  once i thought to myself, "mozzarella is like paneer." and so i added mozzarella to my curry.  it melted like instantly, which was awesome because it made the curry super creamy and delicious, but it wasn't paneer.  anyway, here's a picture of my cheese:

• heat remaining oil over medium heat in same big ole' fryin' pan.  cook onions, garlic, pepper, and ginger until onions turn sort of translucent.  add all of seasonings and mix well.  saute over medium heat until aromatic.  its important to fry your curry powder into a paste like thing like this or else it ends up tasting super grainy.  
• add tomato sauce, mix well and heat until it comes to a simmer.  add mushrooms and a half cup of water and cover, allowing mushrooms to sweat and cook down.
• add cream and nut paste and broccoli.  heat to a boil then turn down the heat and let sauce cook for about 15 - 20 minutes until its super thick and curry-like.  you'll know it when you see it.  turn off heat, and stir in cheese and cilantro.  salt to taste.  mix this nom nom sauce in with scraped spaghetti squash.

end result:

it looks like vodka sauce or something, huh?  its not tho.  its super-spicy-crazy-delicious-weird-non-authentic-at-all curry.  you'll like it, i promise.

ps.  i got this amazing awesome gem thanks to my new good friend, stevie-poo.  no more begging for a stand-mixer.  i got the raddest one there ever was.  when it is delivered, i will use it and post pictures.  you'll see.

tear me a sue.

people be goin crazy for those almond cookie balls i made last night.  boyfriend was all, "these remind me of some fancy italian cookie."  and italian cookies made me think about lady fingers which of course made me think of tiramisu, so i made it.  its quite about different than any normal recipe, but its still pretty fly.  prep time + sit time: 4 hours (most of that is just sitting in the fridge time) yields 8 servings, 5.37 carbs per serving.

ingredients

1 cup almond flour
1 cup hazelnut flour
5 tbsp butter - melted
18 packets splenda
1.25 cups granulated splenda
1 tsp almond extract
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg + 6 egg yolks
1 lb mascarpone cheese
0.25 cup strong coffee
2 tbsp rum
2 cup cream
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

• follow last night's recipe for almond cookies, but i used just 5 tbsp of butter this time cause last night was a little greasy.  instead of balling dough, lay out flatly onto a cookie sheet about a quarter of an inch thick and cook at 350F for about 10 minutes or until dry and sticking together.  you can totally do this ahead of time or whatever.
• to make the custardy part mix egg yolks and splenda packets together super duper well in a heavy bottomed sauce pot.  add 2/3 cup of cream and put over medium heat.  stir constantly, seriously, never ever ever stop, constantly scraping the sides.  i did this with a spatula in one hand and a whisk in the other.  keep stirring until it starts to boil then remove from heat.  i then transported to a pyrex bowl that had a lid and put it into the fridge for about an fifteen minutes.  add mascarpone  cheese and mix really well.  put yolk misture back in the fridge for about an hour.  thats when i made the cookies.
• to make whipped cream, whisk remaining vanilla and remaining cream until it becomes a solid.  this is where that stupid kitchen aid mixer comes in handy.  but i don't have it.  put aside.
• mix together rum and coffee for putting on top of cookies
• when cookies have cooled, cut sheet into four rectangular pieces that you'll use for layering.
• once all your layering ingredients are all solid like, in a dish that will hold it all together, place one piece of your cookie.  top with a quarter of coffee mixture.  top with a quarter of the custard mixture, then a quarter of the whipped cream.  keep doing this until all ingredients are used then sprinkle with the cocoa powder.  

i tried to start this on a place but it got all droopy so i put it in this tupperware that is super unattractive but the perfect size for my tiramisu.  you then have to put it in the fridge for at least three hours for it to totally totally totally set.  this is important or it won't be pretty.  which is hard cause at this point you've prolly licked the custard and stuff and you want it real bad.  well, suck it up!

i don't have a finished photo because i'm sucking it up.  i'll add it in the morn.

now its morning.