A New Twist on Green Eggs (With or Without the Ham)

Want to shake up the traditional deviled egg and double up on healthy fats at the same time? Well, the same Mark's Daily Apple post that led me to the weirdest hard-boiled egg-peeling technique ever also contained a link to this recipe for Fat Guacamole Devils.



For my version (pictured above), I didn't have any hot sauce available, so I added more traditional ingredients to my avocado, using Kelly the Kitchen Kop's guacamole recipe for inspiration. And it was so easy! Just peel 4-6 hard-boiled eggs, slice them in half lengthwise, and throw the yolks into a bowl with the scooped-out flesh of one ripe avocado:



Then, add desired guacamole-ish ingredients. I chose sea salt, garlic, chopped red onion, chopped fresh cilantro from my herb garden, and a few squirts of lime juice:



Mash it all up with a fork:



And scoop the mixture back into the eggs. Fin!

Using only 4 eggs with one whole avocado, this yielded enough extra guacamole to serve on the side with some veggies. Put it out at a party, and your guests will never know the secret ingredient to your deliciously rich guacamole is egg yolks! (Just don't tell your vegan friends.)

The Devastating Effects of Carbohydrate Addiction: McDonald's Rampage Edition

Don't ask me how these things get leaked, but the surveillance video of the lady who attacked a McDonald's earlier this year because they wouldn't serve her Chicken McNuggets during breakfast is making its way through the Internets. (And thanks to Dan for sharing it.) If you've ever wondered why those signs at drive-thrus say, "For your safety and ours, we do not accept walk-ups," watching this might clear that up a little.

Start this just after a minute in to get to the good part, and believe me, it's worth it to watch to the end to see the next driver pull up and get his food like nothing happened.



Can you blame her? As much as people like to put down the low-quality, hormone-filled food from the Golden Arches, there really is something special about those McNuggets. In the 80s, they made the coolest Happy Meal toys. In the 90s, after Chuck Klosterman ate them and nothing else for 7 straight days, he admitted that he would eat them again. And in '08, they were made animatronic in the name of art:

Katie's video and poetic caption: "Chickens made of nuggets, pecking at their sauce."

And I hold firm that it's not the chicken, but the crispy, carby breading that makes them so delicious, even if they have no place in a healthy low carb diet. (Unless you use the rules of Jorge Cruise's The Belly Fat Cure to justify having up to 7 McNuggets for one of your daily carb servings, which I'm not above doing.)

The Holy Grail of Egg-Peeling Techniques?

It often bothers me how everyone thinks they know the secret for cleanly peeling hard-boiled eggs, because I've tried every trick in the book, and can still never get the shell off without taking chunks out of the eggs and making them look less than appetizing.

A deviled egg disaster before the Memorial Day picnic Dan and I had at our house this year actually drove me to tweet about it:




Well, a recent link over at Mark's Daily Apple sent me to this egg-peeling instructional video, which made me gasp audibly and may have changed my life forever:




Amazing! I swear I watched this about five times just to hear the noise the egg makes when it gets blown out of its shell.


****************UPDATE****************

I have now tried this technique, and while I didn't get the super-easy-looking, mind-blowing results seen in the video, I did have MUCH more egg-peeling success than usual. Out of six eggs attempted, only two sort of fully blew out of their shells, one of which came out with a couple of small chunks of egg still attached to the inside of the shell. As for the rest of them, the blowing created excellent long, vertical cracks all over the eggs that made them infinitely easier to peel than the cracks you usually get by cracking them on the table or in the pan.

And even though the pressure this created in my head felt reminiscent of learning to play the oboe, and even though the sound it made completely freaked out my cats, I'm not ready to give up on this weirdo technique just yet.

Anyone else have any luck? Tips on getting this to work right? Leave 'em in the comments!

Diet-Mixing 101: Dining with the Differently Dieting

I've been thinking a lot lately about diet-mixing in its many forms. Katie and I often discuss the nuts and bolts and pros and cons of different low carb approaches to eating, from Atkins to the The Glycemic Load Diet to The Belly Fat Cure, and we often end up mixing the guidelines of lots of different plans to find what works for both our individual tastes and specific food situations.

There's also the kind of diet-mixing that happens when two (or more) people who follow different eating plans eat together. Sometimes, this involves the everyday negotiations that go on between partners or within families over what's for dinner, and other times, it's the difficulty of figuring out a single meal with someone with whom you rarely dine.

Just last week, for example, I was invited over to a friend's house for dinner, knowing fully well that this friend is a fat-gram-watcher/calorie-counter and NOT a low-carber like me. Having no idea what I would be served for dinner, I prepared myself to bite the bullet and graciously accept whatever was available. (I realize that a lot of serious low carbers would scold me for my willingness to compromise, but I still, in many ways, value social comfort over complete control over my food.) Even though my friend had thoughtfully Googled low carb recipes before my visit and ended up planning something mostly acceptable for my way of eating, I still found it SO interesting how much our food choices clashed. As we prepared stir-fried chicken breast and vegetables together in her kitchen, I had to stifle a cringe when she added I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and bottled lite vinaigrette to the skillet. Dessert consisted of mountains of watermelon and mango slices, and even though I've allowed myself fruit ever since I branched out from strict Atkins Induction a few years ago, those are some of the more sugary options and not the ones I usually reach for.

When we chatted over dinner about what sorts of things we eat, she went on about how she's horrified to learn how many calories are actually in many of her favorite foods and how she has grudgingly switched from mayonnaise to mustard on her sandwiches. I explained back that I can eat all the mayo I want as long as I skip the bread. She mentioned that she eats a lot of Lean Cuisine meals, and even though I envied her for a split second for the total convenience of those little frozen dinners, I quickly remembered how tiny and utterly tasteless they are and how hungry I was always left whenever I tried making a meal out of them in the past. At least with low carb, I'm eating real foods full of healthy fats and no added sugars or starches to make my blood sugar go crazy. Even though it's sometimes really hard to avoid carbs, I think it's finally starting to sink in for me that it's so much more satisfying than avoiding fat could ever be.

Friday Meatspiration

American Meat Institute, 1947:



(Via Plan59 Prints)

Low-Carb Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes

I was in Ohio last weekend and spent much of it with Tracey, who–like me–finds lots of excuses to "cheat" on her low-carb diet. Meaning that whenever I'm in town, we go crazy and eat whatever we want, which is everything from Dairy Queen to Pizza Hut to McDonald's with a couple of local joints thrown in as long as they're all as unhealthy as possible. We've said 100 times in the past year that we'd love to try "being good" one time when I come home for a visit, but this time we actually meant it.

As luck would have it, the lovely Maria Emmerich posted a recipe for a low-carb version of the famed Hostess Little Debbie Chocolate Cupcake in her blog the very day I came home, and you know we went to town on those things. Here's our take on her recipe:



Cupcakes:
1/2 cup of blanched almond flour
3 eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon of iodized sea salt
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
1/2 cup of Splenda
4 tablespoons of melted butter

Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Combine the yolks, sweetener, and butter and whisk until well-blended. Combine all of the dry ingredients and blend well. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the whipped whites, then slowly fold in the dry mixture and blend well. Fill the cupcake pan 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 15-18 minutes at 350 degrees F or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Creamy Filling:
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup Splenda

Whip the cream until light and fluffy and add in the sweetener. Place filling in sandwich baggie with one corner snipped off. Scoop a dime-sized hole out of the top of each cupcake, push the snipped corner of the baggie into the hole, and squeeze until the filling rises to the top of the cupcake. (Maria injected hers into side of the cupcakes, so feel free to try both ways and see which gets more filling in.)



Frosting:
50g low-carb chocolate (we used a Lindt 85% Cocoa Bar, but Maria's, made with a ChocoPerfection bar, turned out much shinier, like the Hostess version)
1 tablespoon heavy cream

Melt the chocolate bar in 10-second intervals in the microwave and add in whipping cream. Once the cupcake is cooled, dip the top of each one in melted chocolate.

Swirly White Topping:
Cream cheese

Add a small amount of cream cheese to another baggie, cut another tiny piece of the corner off, and swirl it onto each cupcake.

Nutritional Info:
297 calories, 6g carbs, 3.5g fiber, 2.5g net carbs
Makes 6 cakes


a cross-sectional view shows how much creamy filling was waiting inside for us


a cup of heavy cream makes a LOT of creamy filling, and you can guess where all of the leftovers went

Tracey and I loved these. A lot of low-carb swaps for common sugary foods are sad approximations that leave you wishing for the real thing, but we didn't feel a sense of loss while eating these at all. The only problem we had was convincing ourselves not to eat all six in one sitting, and we were rewarded for that the next day with a deliciously hardened chocolate top on the two we saved. If you can double the recipe, I recommend it.

(Cross-posted to donuts4dinner)

Friday Meatspiration

Crown of Beef:



(Via FOODBEAST)

Who Needs Pasta When You Have Rutabagas?

MIU France Julienne Slicer:



plus rutabaga:



equals rutabaga "pasta":







How cool is that? I heard about this little gadget from Maria Emmerich's blog, and I drooled over her zucchini "Garden Spaghetti" so much that I couldn't wait to try veggie pasta for myself.

This rutabaga version had a firmness and slight crunch that shirataki noodles lack, which is great for me, since I prefer my pasta al dente and not gelatinous. I boiled the "noodles" for just a couple of minutes, tossed them with a some butter and garlic, and added a little Ragu to make it quick and easy. While Katie is here this weekend, we'll feast on Rutabaga "Pasta" with Meat Sauce. It's only too bad I can't make a Rutabaga Johnny Marzetti.

What methods do you use to help you get your pasta fix?

Getting the Healthy Taste Off

I don't have much of a problem eating low- or no-carb meals. As much as I hate salads, for instance, I can choke one down at the end of the day if it means getting some vitamins and losing some weight. The problem is that I do it assuming that I'll then reward myself for my "good" behavior with something I don't hate. Like ice cream! Or a cupcake! Or even an all-fruit smoothie! But that's not possible on a carb-restricted diet like Atkins or the Belly Fat Cure.

But I need a palate cleanser. It's not just that I haven't lost my taste for sugar, as is magically supposed to happen in the first two weeks of a low-carb diet. It's that I just can't stand to have a savory taste lingering on my tongue.

At home, I mix unsweetened chocolate Almond Breeze almond milk with a scoop of Smucker's natural peanut butter and a packet of Truvia, but those aren't things I have access to at work. Things I've tried there include:

• water
• diet soda
• sugar-free candy
• dark chocolate
• sugar-free gum
• coffee with heavy cream

All of these are fine, but they don't leave me feeling as if I've satisfied my need to stop tasting my lunch. I'll end up digging through the freezer later for some Ben & Jerry's left over from the last company birthday, telling myself that just one scoop is fine. But it's not, and I always feel bad about it afterward.

What do you follow up your meals with? Or am I the only one with this problem?

Vintage Ad: "Sugar Makes You Skinny!"

On my feminist blog, I often post vintage ads to poke fun at the rampant sexism in advertising throughout history. Today, I came across an ad worthy of deconstructing here:



The unnecessarily long copy reads:

If sugar is so fattening, how come so many kids are thin?

Next time you pass a bunch of kids, take a look. Kids eat and drink more sugar than anybody. But how many fat kids do you see? The fact is, if you constantly take in more food than your body needs, you'll probably get fat. If you eat a balanced diet in moderation, you probably won't. And sugar in moderation has a place in a well-balanced diet. For kids, eating or drinking something with sugar in it can mean a new supply of body fuel. Fuel that can be used in not too many minutes. There's a useful psychological effect, too. The good natural sweetness of sugar is like a little reward that promotes a sense of satisfaction and well-being. The thing is, good nutrition comes from a balanced diet. And a balanced diet means the right amounts of protein, vitamins, minerals, fats, and carbohydrates. Now, what's one important carbohydrate? Sugar.

Sugar. It isn't just good flavor; it's good food.

Discuss.