A New Twist on an Old Classic

About a week ago, Mrs. Boss sent me a link to a wonderful recipe for Spaghetti Squash Au Gratin at the blog "Dandy Dishes".  Spaghetti squash has become a regular part of our diet as it's a great substitute for pasta, and it also sort of fits the yam flavor profile (at least how we like yams, which is more savory than sweet).  I've been using it primarily with shrimp scampi, so we were looking to expand the repertoire of dishes we could make with this delightful gourd.

That'll do, pig.  That'll do.

So tonight's dinner started with my favorite roast pork recipe.  I like this because it's simple and delicious.  I usually make it with cauliflower to soak up the gravy, but not tonight!  When I do this recipe, I usually end up adding a bit more corn starch (which does up the carbs) to the gravy because I like my gravy nice and thick. Other than that, I make it pretty much as written (with the addition of some garlic & onion powder to the outside of the roast before browning it).  One other substitution is instead of using "kitchen bouquet" I take the water and add a couple tsp. of beef-flavored Better Than Bouillon stock mix.  I buy mine at Costco because it's too expensive otherwise, and I love the results of both the chicken & beef varieties.

I could get naked and roll around in that cheese, but that would be unsanitary.

Next was the Au Gratin.  This I followed true to the recipe.  I don't know what difference the fresh thyme made, but I bought some when I was out today getting the pork roast, and it sure make the onions smell good when I was sauteing them (I also threw a bit in with the roast).  The only real variation (other than, of course, some garlic powder in the onions when they were cooking) was that I doubled the cheese.  'Cause I like cheese.

Don't drool in the dish!

While that was cooking, I nuked some frozen peas, and bing-bang-boom - dinner was served!  It was actually pretty easy, didn't take TOO long (2 hrs total) and is pretty healthy!  So I'd encourage you to give Spaghetti Squash Au Gratin a try, 'cause potatoes are for SUCKAS.

I'm out!

Low Carb, Gluten-Free Pizza

This isn't my creation, so I'll point you to the page I found and you can look at the instructions there.  Thanks to GlutenFreeEasily for this awesome recipe.  While the focus of that site is gluten-free, it's a great option for low carb as well.  Basically, keep your sauce as low-carb as possible and go to town on the toppings!  I double the recipe as written here per pizza that I bake on a standard 18x12 commercial baking sheet.

Sauce Options
Tomato Sauce - you have to be really careful here, as tomatoes are somewhat high in carbs... better than a Snickers bar, but not as good a cauliflower... I have a brand I buy at Cash & Carry here in the Seattle Area called "First Street Pizza Sauce w/ Basil" that has 6.8g of carbs per 1/3 cup serving, which is about as low as I've been able to find for tomato sauce.  It's pretty tasty sauce, without a lot of extra crap in it, and 1/3 a cup is big enough for a normal pizza, albeit somewhat thinly.  It's all about the toppings anyway, amirite?  Oh, though sometimes when I'm feelin' a bit saucy, I'll throw in a couple tbsp of half & half to the sauce.

Alfredo Sauce - pretty much your favorite Alfredo sauce will do, just watch the ingredients in the pre-made stuff as they love to sneak sugar or HFCS in.  I'm not an anti-HFCS Nazi, I just don't want any extra carbs. So I guess I'm a bit of an anti-carb fascist.  That's about as far as I'll go.  If your store-bought stuff tastes odd, sprinkle on some garlic powder after you spread it around.

Salsa - we'll make a "Mexican" pizza sometimes using salsa as the sauce.  Again, tomatoes, so carbs, just watch the amounts and make sure you're counting what you use.

Ground Beef & Bacon w/ Black Olives

Toppings
With all my pizzas, I usually will saute some onions and garlic first, in some butter & olive oil with seasonings (garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, salt, Italian seasoning mix from Costco).  In fact, I do this in just about everything I cook because they're good for you and they're frickin' DELICIOUS!  Then the sky is the limit.  Some ideas... for tomato sauce, I've topped with ground beef, Italian sausage, pepperoni, bacon, chicken sausage... or all of the above!  The Big Boss is ALL about the meat!

Another one that's been in the rotation is chicken & spinach with feta.  Using an Alfredo sauce, I'll throw down some chicken & spinach, then sprinkle some feta and mozza on top.  NOM!

"Mexican" is one we've also been doing for a change of pace... using salsa as a sauce, I'll fry some ground beef with some taco seasoning, maybe some peppers, then throw on top of the salsa.  I'll maybe add some olives (some carbs here so be judicious) then top with cheese.  Then when we eat it we put a dollop of sour cream on top.  Ole!

So that's it... get creative, that's what makes cooking fun.  Experiment.  Let me know what you like to do.  I'm thinking of a steak & shrimp pizza some time...  Until next time - peace!

Why I'm doing this! Or, no more malt liquor blood for me!

All my life I've been fat.  On the Gabriel Iglesias fat scale, I've been everywhere from big to DAAAMN!, but most of my life I've alternated between "husky" and "fluffy".  I come from a family of 'fluffies'.  My dad had diabetes for the last 10 years of his life, and in 2010 he had a heart attack, after which they performed a quintuple bypass.  I didn't even know you could have a quintuple bypass.  He survived the surgery, and resolved to finally get healthy, and six months later he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was dead on April 16, 2011.  I guess life is a biatch like that sometimes.

At any rate, I spent the next year figuring out how to live with the grief, and realizing that if I didn't make the changes I'd been wanting to make for years (but not doing anything about it) I would follow in my dad's footsteps and be dead before my time.  This will not work.  My #1 job in life is to embarrass my children, and there's too much work left to do.

(Warning - I'm going to talk about prayer.  If you are atheist or agnostic - skip this paragraph.)  So if I can get serious for a moment (I will endeavor not to do that very often), I getting desperate to do something different with my diet and health... but I had NO energy.  I felt most of the time like I was wading through concrete, and I would sleep all night and wake up tired.  In January of 2012 I prayed that God would intervene in a supernatural way to get me out of this lethargy and to help give me the willingness or the will power or the whatever to change my life.

(Not for use to control diabetes.)

That summer, my mom visited us for three months, and after a summer of drinking heavily my a1c shot up to 9.3... basically somewhere between Guinness stout and Colt 45 malt liquor.  My doctor wanted to put me on medication.  I'd been diabetic since 2008, but mostly I had not taken anything and my blood sugar wasn't terrible, but wasn't great.  Well, the summer of booze pushed it up too far for even me to ignore.

Meanwhile, my wife (Mrs. Boss) had been struggling for years to lower her cholesterol levels.  Nothing was working, and the next step for her was to go on statins (cholesterol medication).  She was very unhappy with the prospect.  So this summer she had changed doctors, and her new doctor suggestion she go low carb.  She said that new research is showing a correlation to weight and cholesterol levels, especially in patients (like my wife) for whom diet changes were not working.  She said that by going low carb she could take off some weight which would improve her blood work.

A good friend of ours had recently lost a ton of weight, and she had been seeing Dr. Julie Brogren at the Revitalize Clinic in Woodinville, WA.  She said that Dr. Julie had a program that might work for us.  Mrs. Boss went to see her, and came home with a some major lifestyle changes in tow.  I was decidedly NONPLUSSED.  I liked my booze, I liked my chips, and I LOOOVED my potatoes.  Fortunately, I love Mrs. Boss more, so I decided to humor her by going along with new way of eating.

So here's how it works.  It's similar to a lot of popular 'diets' or 'eating systems' out there.   Atkins, Paleo, stuff like that... basically, most carbs are bad.  In this diet, I can pretty much eat all the meat I want, all the cheese I want, all the eggs and bacon I want... so far so good... skim milk is bad, half and half not terrible (more fat = less lactose by volume).  There are three classes of carbs (which I'll list at a later date).  Class 1 are unlimited... so these are things like cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, etc.  Class 2 are limited carbs... like carrots, milk, nuts, etc.  These are carbs you have to count.  Class 3 are carbs you cannot have.  This is basically anything containing sugar, starchy vegetables, rice, grains & bread, etc.  You're allowed 30 carbs a day from Class 2.  And that's pretty much it.

So... we started this in September, 2012.  As of November 2012, I'd lost 40 lbs, and my a1c was down to 6.2.  You read that right... in two months of eating this way I dropped my a1c down by over three whole points.  I'm dangerously close to getting below 300 lbs for the first time since 2005, and my wife's losses have been even more dramatic.  She's lost over 50 lbs, and she's flirting with Onederland (as she calls it).  She was a size 24 in the summer, she's a size 14 now.  So it works.  Best of all... it really isn't that hard.  I don't really miss potatoes or chips anymore.  I actually like cauliflower.  And most of all I like losing weight.

Welcome!

Hi!  I'm the Big Boss, and I'm ALL about eating low carb.  I love to eat, and I love to eat well.  So I'm going to share what I eat, so that you can eat well too!  Some of this will be original, some of it will be stuff I find elsewhere... usually with a Big Boss twist.  So enjoy!  I'll try to post at least once a week, with what I'm eating these days.  Bon appétit!