Favorite Soup

Do you have a favorite soup?  I don't have a favorite. I just like soup on the days when it's cold, freezing rain, lot's of snow, or otherwise just way too nasty to go out.   This week, it was turkey soup.

Soup is just of of those meals that whatever is in the freezer, fridge or even in a can in the cubboard, it all goes into the crockpot and it all blends perfectly into one yummy soup. It must be the crockpot, right?  It works magic!  I like that.

We still had turkey in the freezer from Thanksgiving.  So in the crockpot it went.  To that I added some veggies that were in our freezer, corn, green beans and onions.  To that I added celery, carots, and spices.  Some chicken broth rounds out the soup recipe.  It cooks all day and fills the house with yummy aromas.  Now we had some wonderful Cranberry-Orange-Walnut-Bread that was made for us by a friend and so as the rain came down, and froze to the ground, we had a nice bowl of turkey soup and bread and stayed warm and dry.

What are you making this week?

New Year, New Me.

New Year, new Me.  Time to get rid of all those pounds I gained over all those sick weeks when all I did was sleep, eat, cough and craft.  Time to get back on track.  Like so many of you right?  Here is one of go to breakfast's that fill me up.

Bacon, Egg and Cheese Muffins

I love these easy to make muffins that are packed with wonderful goodness! They fill me up and help me to stay trim. I also love how easy they are.  I have a small 6 cup muffin tin that fits perfectly in my toaster oven so I make 6 at a time for Hubby and me.

Here is what you do

6 eggs
2 slices bacon
Heavy Cream
Cheese of your choice ( I like cheddar cheese sliced thin)

Spray the muffin tin with spray and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook the bacon anyway you want to and drain on a paper towel, and then break it up into small pieces.
Scramble the eggs in a bowl with the heavy cream and a little bit of water.
Pour the egg mixture into the muffin tin and place your cheese of choice into the mixture. Evenly place the bacon bits into the mixture as well.

Bake for 12-17 minutes (again I used a toaster oven so if you use the big oven, watch them). It's done when a tooth pick comes out clean.

Let cool a few minutes and for the eggs to settle and then take them out and place them on a plate.

Each muffin has 1 carb. But more importantly, it's So good!

What are you doing in the new year?

No Hodgepodge, Just Me.

There is no Hodgepodge this week, Joyce is taking a week off so that she can live her life and not just write about it.   I know that feeling.  I took a lot of time off for my health and starting up blogging again is going slowly.  I think I'll do a Monday - Wednesday - Friday blog for a bit and see how I feel.

Today I'll share a recipe I just made.

I feels like fall has come upon us.  The daytime weather is up to 70's and dry.  The evening temps are in the low 50's with a breeze. Our electric bill is happy as the AC is off, the windows are open and the cold air is fresh and clean.  But it makes me feel like I should be putting up the fall decorations and digging out the crock pot.

Well the fall decorations are not up but the crock pot did come out.  Do you use your crock pot in the summer? I know of people who do and I know that using it would mean a lot of hot good meals in the summer but I don't use it until it gets cold. And it was cold yesterday. So out came the crock pot and the first thing I made was.....

Rice pudding.  I really love rice pudding but it's not very low carb so I changed up the recipe a bit to lower those carbs.

It turned out really good and with a dollop of low carb ice cream, it was a delish ending to a great dinner.

So what did I use for a recipe:

2 cups Almond milk

1/3 cup rice

1/6 cup sugar free maple syrup

1 teaspoon butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch of salt

pinch of nutmeg

Grease crock pot, dissolve maple syrup in milk and scramble the egg, then add it to the crock pot.

Add all the rest of the ingredients, pour into crock pot.

Cook on high for 6 hours. I added walnuts in the last 1/2 hour just because I could.

It makes enough for 6 servings so it's a good size amount!  And it's good too.

So we are having a Fallish August.  I hope we get summer back, and that this trend doesn't continue to make an early fall and even an earlier Winter!! 

Low Carb Living

Since starting Chemo I've fell off the Low Carb Wagon.  I ate what I felt like eating and enjoyed it very much. But it's time to get back into shape.  With each day I feel a bit stronger, the naps are a bit shorter and energy lasts a bit longer.  So I began my journey back to low carb living, with dessert because Cancer has taught me to enjoy everything!

I found the recipe for low carb cheese cake at www.genaw.com. It does have a different texture but as desserts go, it's good!  At only 2 net carbs a slice, I can dig in and enjoy it often.

It doesn't have a crust which is where most of the carbs are.  By changing out the flavor of Jello, I can have different flavors of cheese cake.  

No-Bake Jello Cheesecake

1 small box sugar free Jello, any flavor

1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 cup sour cream

16 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 Tablespoon Vanilla

In a small bowl, dissolve the Jello in the boiling water, stirring for 2-3 minutes.  Chill until no longer warm. In a medium mixing bowl mix the sour cream, cream cheese and vanilla slowly to avoid getting a curdled mess.  Add in the Jello and mix very well

Pour into a greased 10 inch glass pie plate and chill.  

It's a nice dessert and by changing out the flavor of jello you can have strawberry cheesecake, or Orange. I made this one with lemon jello so I enjoyed lemon cheesecake.

So I'm back on the low carb wagon and working towards getting back into shape. 

OK I'm Hooked and I blame Kim.

Kim is a wonderful friend of mine. She has a love of God, love of family, love of friends and a really good cook who has talked about this for a while. She finally got me to try it and I must say, Kim has good taste!

It's Spaghetti Squash.  It's so easy to make there are several ways to make it.  Since we had lots of time and I love having the oven on when the temperature dip low we cut it in half, scraped out the seeds, and placed it in a baking dish and popped it in the oven for about an hour.

Then it was just pull the "spaghetti" out of the shell and enjoy.

The shell, itself is really thin so there is a lot of Spaghetti in these things.

I added just a bit of real butter and a pinch of brown sugar twin (really didn't need it) and combined with Hubbies meat stuffing, it was the perfect meal.

And today's lunch as well.

So thank you Kim. I will be making it again...
Have you ever made Spaghetti Squash and if so, how do you cook it.. Now I want to try the other ways to make it.
Funny how something so simple can be so wonderful.  And It's Low Carb!!!!

Muffins for Fall!

One of the things I seem to do in the fall is bake more muffins. How about you?  There is something about turning on the oven (even the toaster oven), and smelling the wonderful aroma that comes out of it, that screams FALL!

This past weekend was the first of many more muffins to be made here at this house hold.  I looked around to see what I had on hand to make Cream Cheese Muffins - Be still my heart!!  It came out similar to a mini cheese cake minus the graham cracker crust because I eat low carb and believe me, I didn't miss the crust one bit.

Cream Cheese Muffins

2- 8 oz packages of cream cheese - softened
1/2 cup Splenda
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Cinnamon

Mix everything but the Cinnamon till it's smooth. Preheat oven to 350 and line the muffin cup with those paper cups and fill the cups. Top with a little of the cinnamon and bake for 30 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean.

I used my large cup 6 cup muffin tin but if you have the normal size 12 cup muffin tin, then do so. The muffins will be smaller of course but then you get to eat more of them. Drop the cooking time to about 20 minutes.  I wanted bigger ones so I used the 6 cup tin.  

Take them out and let cool before placing them in the fridge over night. Now, if you are not good with temptation you could eat them right then and there, but I really was glad I held out till morning because they are just wonderful!

And the carb count for these biggies were 2.30 each!!! So I had 2 for breakfast with pumpkin coffee and it was well worth the wait.

Made any muffins yet this season?  

Chicken Casserole Good Enough for Company

Most of the time, when I tell people I  live low carb they have visions of eating cheese burgers for breakfast minus the bun. Or pounds of bacon in the fridge to munch on (If Only!)

Yes I eat a lot more protein and I do have heavy cream in my coffee and yes, I do eat real butter but really I do eat veggies as well.  Hey, I even eat pasta!  Chicken casserole recipes are all over the web so why not one more right? I will be honest here and let you know of one website that I love. Your Lighter Side has a lot of recipes and if you are looking for a starting place, then I recommend you start there. There is lots of inspiration there.

  With that out of the way, here is my:

 Company Chicken Casserole

  

2 cups cooked chicken (left over chicken is fine)

1/2 box of Dreamfield Macaroni

1/2 purple onion chopped fine

1/2 bell pepper chopped fine (I used green pepper)

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup chicken broth

4 Tablespoons butter

minced garlic to taste

3 cups shredded cheese (I used a combination of Cheddar and Parmesan)

4 slices of bacon already cooked and broken into small pieces.

1 cup olives

Cook the Pasta according to directions and drain. In a microwave safe dish, mix everything together and cook covered until the cheese melts. Check every 5 minutes. I placed it under the broiler to give it a little browning. 

I made this for our church pot luck and told a few people who, like me, live a low carb lifestyle, but didn't tell most people and there was not much left over to take home.  In fact, there was just enough to bring to work for lunch today.  

Carb count 2.5 carbs per serving!  

Do you have a "Go- To" Recipe when company is coming?

Low Carb Butter Beer

I am a Harry Potter fan. I have been for a long time. I am a member of the house of Ravenclaw.

I even wore my House Colors to the last Harry Potter Movie last year.

So when I saw the recipe for Butter Beer I had to try it but of course, I had to make it low carb

I found the recipe here and made changes to create the low carb version

Low Carb Butter Beer Latte

2 Tablespoon Butter

1 Teaspoon Splenda Brown Sugar Blend

1/2 Mug Unsweented Almond Milk (I used Vanilla flavored)

1/4 mug heavy Cream

1/4 mug water

Dash of Cinnamon

Melt the butter and brown sugar blend in a saucepan to make Caramel.

Add milk, cream water and cinnamon to pan and stir to combine

Bring mixture to a boil and pour into a mug, top with whipped cream.

If you do not use Vanilla flavored milk then add 1 teaspoon vanilla to the saucepan.

On a cold rainy morning it was warm and wonderful. Do you have a movie recipe that you really like?

Have a great weekend everyone!

Pity Party Over (for now at least)

With working long hours, overtime,  and  having some pain in the neck health issues, I've been feeling down on myself.  I've had a bit of a pity party all by myself and felt sorry for myself. I think we all have those days (or weeks) at time I'm sure.  Some times life gets to all of us some times and we feel the weight of our earthly body giving out on us.  My get-up-and-go-had-gotten-up-and-went. Thankfully, it didn't last long. Just long enough for me to stop exercising and dancing and eat a big plate of whole wheat pasta with sauce.  It was very good and full of carbs.

So yesterday afternoon I got "My Scottish Up"  and decided that I was not ready to give in so I am back on the fight.  I made myself and Hubby some Coffee Frappuccino and got back on the treadmill.

Low Carb Caramel Frappuccino.

1 cup brewed coffee

several ice cubes

Sugar Free Caramel Syrup

Heavy cream

Place it all in a blender and blend it away, pour into a tall glass and enjoy! 

Our lives here on this earth will always be filled with down days, health issues, money woes, and all sorts of reasons to have a pity party.  It's OK to have that for a little while, but each of us has to get up and dust ourselves off and begin again. God has given us the strength to conquer all of this.

How about you, ever feel blue? What did you do?

How to get Perfect Bacon

Don't you hate it when you go out to eat, order bacon and eggs and the bacon is all curled up, burnt and just not very appetizing. It's even worst when you cook it at home and end up with the same thing. Food is so expensive that is upsets me when it get ruined.   Well a few months ago my son-in-law Doug told me the secret to perfect bacon.

We had gone to our daughter and son-in-law house and they had cooked us breakfast. It was delicious! They are such good cooks!!!

Our son-in-law always was a great cook but out daughter.....well let's just say that growing up with her cooking, we always made sure that the fire extinguisher was fully charged and everyone in the house hold knew how to use it.  Yes, she was that bad!!!

Any how here is the secret.  Bake the Bacon!!  Did you know this already? I didn't. Why didn't I know this secret?

Line a baking dish with tin foil (not necessary but makes clan up so much easier) and they lay your bacon in a single layer.

Set your oven at 450 degrees (since it just Hubby and I we use the toaster oven)
Watch it!!!  The thinner the bacon the faster it will bake. I use Think Sliced Bacon and it took about 15 minutes to get to what I like.

And voila I had the Perfect Bacon!  I've been cooking bacon this way ever since our smarty pants son-in-law told me about this.

How do you like your bacon?  Extra crispy? Think sliced? How do you cook it?

English Muffin - Low Carb

Flowers I got for my birthday last week from Hubby

Don't you love finding a recipe that you can adapt to your needs? I sure do!  For the past few days I've been on a bread kick but since I live low carb and I don't have any low carb bread in the house, the hunt was on trying to find something that I could make.

Low and Behold Ginny's Low Carb Kitchen!  She has this wonderful bread recipe that I adapted to meet my wants. You can find her recipe at the link above.  I didn't change it much at all since it was so good. I did change out butter for "coconut oil" and heavy cream for the "water--or kefir, or coconut milk". And I did cook it a little different.

For starters, I dug out this microwave safe muffin pan. Remember those?  It came from a time when full meals were cooked in microwaves and there were all sorts of pans to help you cook in the microwave. 

I gave it good spray with cooking spray so that nothing would stick.

I then put the batter in each cup. I put 3 teaspoons of batter in each cup, and I know that doesn't sound like much but remember the entire recipe only makes 1 big slice of bread.  I cooked it in the microwave for 2 full minutes 

They came out small  but is OK because I wasn't done with them. And at 2 net carbs for the whole batch, this is a good start!

Then I cooked a sausage patty and an egg. Who else had a sausage, egg, and "English muffin"  breakfast for 1.6 carbs?  Me that's who (and I packed one for lunch as well)

With so much help out there in blog land, this low carb living is easy. Where do you find recipes?

Good by Winter and Hello Spring

Nothing says SPRING like a ice cream sunday made with Diet Moxie and Low Carb Vanilla Ice Cream.     What a treat it was to have this considering it was still Winter up here. Well, winter is a funny term because it was in the high 70's and I was spending this past weekend doing this.

Yes, I was outside getting my toes warmed up by the sun. It was a perfect weekend. Warm and overcast on Saturday which was OK by me since we had so many stores to run around to and on Sunday, sun - warm- wonderful!  The dogs played together and played with their toys (well- August played with toys, Becke sun bathed) and played with the grand girls and by the end of the weekend they did this.

On the last day of winter we opened up the grill and grilled cubed steak and grilled cabbage. I found the grilled cabbage on Pinterest and you can see the directions here. Here was our verdict on the meal:

YES, we will have this again! Really, cabbage with bacon and butter! Can it get any better than that. Love the low carb eating and yes, it was really good.  Next time, I'm cutting the cabbage into 4 and get a bigger piece!  

Love this weather - how about you - how did you welcome Spring or say by to winter?

Christmas Cookies: Low Carb Style

I like having some Christmas cookies around for the weekend.  I made Italian nut rolls and Chocolate Drop Cookies.  I made them lower carb by changing out some of the traditional ingredients. This way we can eat the sweets without it impacting either our carb count or sugar count.  Do you make the traditional cookies and suffer the consequence or eat less or do you change the recipe to meet your needs. 

Chocolate Drop Cookies

What I love about these is that they are no bake, just mix and drop onto wax paper. The traditional recipe is here with the low carb version in Parenthesis

1 stick of butter

2 cups sugar          (1 cup Splenda)

3 tablespoons unsweetened coco

1/2 cup milk           (1/2 cup chocolate Almond Milk)

3 cups oatmeal

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup peanut butter   (1/2 cup almond butter)

Mix butter, sugar (Splenda) , coco, and milk on the stove and cook until it begins to boil.  Add the peanut butter (almond butter) and let it dissolve. Boil mixture for 2 minutes and then add in the oatmeal and vanilla. Mix well.  Drop by teaspoon onto wax paper and let cool. 

Carb count is per cookie is 4 each.

Italian Nut Ball

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup soft butter

2 egg yolks -keep the whites

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon almond

2 cups  all purpose flour (*flour substitute below)

2 egg whites beaten

1 1/2 cup chopped nuts

1/2 cup  sugar free jelly (strawberry and orange marmalade)

*Flour Substitute

1 cup Soy powder

2 cups protein powder

2 Tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons Splenda

Mix all in a food processor and mix into a powder use in place of flour.

In a large bowl mix the first six ingredients well. Blend in flour and nuts well. Roll dough into 1 inch balls and place on greased cookie sheet and flatten. Brush with the egg whites and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  When taken out of the oven make a depression in cookie with your finger and fill with jelly while still warm. Cool before storing. 

Carb count for these are .83 per cookie.

So do you change the recipes to meet your needs? Share how you do that will you?

Battle of the Holiday 10!

Yesterday it was 63 degrees and this morning it was 34!  Boy am I grateful that Hubby got the pellet stove going last night because the house was nice and toasty this morning. It got me in the mood to bake this morning. Do you gain the Holiday 10 every year? I use to but since I went low carb, I have options that allow me to enjoy sweets without gaining the Holiday 10.  Although it means I have to cook them - nothing from the local Dunkin Donuts (Rats).

Banana and Coconut muffins
2 cups Carbquick
2 eggs
3 Tablespoons Splenda
2 Tablespoons oil
2 Tablespoons butter softened
1 mashed banana (or banana flavoring)
1 1/2 teaspoon coconut flavoring

Mix all very well and put into a buttered muffin pan (regular size or better yet a mini muffin pan)  Bake in a pre-heated 400 degree oven for 13 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean.

Total carbs is 2.5 each for the regular or mini muffin
I don't count fat or calories so I didn't figure that out.

So how are doing with your holiday baking and your holiday eating? I'm going to put together some tips on how to survive the Holidays and not feel guilty or deprived for next week.

Recipe of the week: Pumpkin mini Cakes

I have this mini bunt cake pan. I really like this pan and use it a lot to make muffins, donuts and sometimes coffee cakes.  That is what I did a few days ago. It was a good hit and easy to make.

Pumpkin Mini Cakes

2 cups Carbquick

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup Almond Milk

1/3 cup Turvia

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large egg

2/3 cup Pumpkin Puree

1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon Allspice

1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg

Mix it all together and pour it into a greased mini pan.  Cook at 400 for at least 20 minutes, then check it to see if a toothpick comes out clean.  

In the mean time, mix a cup water, Turvia (to taste) and the rest of the pumpkin puree on the stove and cook it down to make a glaze.  

When the mini cakes are done, transfer them to a plate and pour some glaze over each and let cool.

YUM!

Each mini cake has 1.5 carbs each.  Since I don't count calories or fat, you will have to figure that out. I count the carbs.  

Recipe of the week: "Crullers Muffins"

One day last week I wanted to make something light and sweet. I looked through my recipes and through other blogs that also have low carb recipes. I found myself over at Your Lighter Side where she has 250 Low Carb Recipes!  Jamie loves to eat (don't we all) and loves to try out new things.  I found her recipe for Donuts and used it as it was written,well almost, I did change it up a bit. Here is her recipe and in red is what I did.

Low-Carb, (gluten-free) Donuts (of the oopsie variety)

3 eggs, separated           3 ounces cream cheese
1 tsp baking powder       1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 packet Splenda (I used Truvia)
2 Tbsp Davincis Vanilla Syrup (Sugar Free) (I used Chocolate)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

In a bowl, whip egg whites with cream of tartar until peaks are stiff (about 5 minutes).

In separate bowl, blend cream cheese, yolks, baking powder and davincis sugar free syrup. Adding half of the yolk batter at a time to the whites and using a tall spoon (I use an iced tea spoon), make a lazy sine wave through the batter once. Turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat. Add second half of the yolk mix and repeat sine wave two more times.

Place in ungreased, nonstick angel food miniature cake pans.

Bake for 30 minutes. Remove pans from oven and let cool on a cooling rack.Makes 4 crullers.


I put it in a muffin tin and got 6 muffins!  The recipe also has a chocolate glaze for you to poor over the top. Instead, I sprinkled cinnamon/splenda mix while they were still warm.  Carb count was 2 each.  Taste was great and they would have been great with the glaze but I really wasn't in the mood for chocolate.  
Jamie, these are just wonderful, light and tasty.  Thank you for all your hard work in the kitchen for us readers.  

What do you grab when you want something sweet and light - besides your husband I mean.

Recipe of the week: Pumpkin Muffins

As you know I really like pumpkin and still working with a low carb lifestyle I have a low carb pumpkin muffin that I want you to try. Here is what you will need:

2 cups Carbquick baking mix
2/3 cup Almond Milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup Splenda
2 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 can pumpkin puree
2 teaspoons Cinnamon
2 teaspoons Nutmeg
2 teaspoons Sage

Mix everything in a large bowl and set your oven at 400 (I used our toaster oven). Spray your muffin pan and fill 2/3 full with the mixture. Cook a good 20 minutes then check with a tooth pick. If the tooth pick comes out clean they are done, let cool on a plate and they don't need a thing on top, they are perfect just the way they are.

It comes out to 2 carbs for each regular sized muffin.  And boy are they moist!  Enjoy with some great pumpkin coffee made with pumpkin syrup and you one great breakfast.

Weekend Review: YUP! Sure Does Feels Like Fall Up Here.

Well it's time to turn on the lights early in the evening again and make hot cocoa. Man it feels like fall just showed up at our door!  This past weekend was pretty typical and pretty quiet. I slept wrong or something and ended up with one terrible and painful stiff neck that made it impossible (just about) to turn my head to my right. So glad we didn't have any thing special to do and could just take it easy.  I took it easy with my personal challenge. Only did 51 miles this week. Still I'm 94 miles from my goal. I'll take that!

By Sunday, I was feeling a lot better and good thing to as we got to play with the Grand Girls for a bit and they will sure wear us out! I wouldn't have it any other way!

Speaking of making hot cocoa, I really like pumpkin hot cocoa as well. It's pretty simple too. I take my hot cocoa recipe from here; add pumpkin syrup from the recipe here. Mix and enjoy, don't forget to top it with whipped cream for a special treat. 

How was your weekend?