grain free

Cappello’s Gluten Free Grain Free Pasta

Hey, y’all. 🙂

How are things in your corner of the world?

Things are good here.

Took a little trip down to the homeland to take care of some financial stuff.  (The Homeland is what I call the formerly little town I grew up in.)

It’s on the super humid gulf coast so of course my naturally curly hair responded accordingly.  😉

 (source)

So I’m wondering…do we get to personally name those cowards Ryan and McConnell in our suits when we lose our health coverage due to our pre-existing conditions?  Oh please please say we do.  😉

Ok before I get started with the main topic of this post…a quick note. 

From day 100 on…about 85% of the time I eat super low carb. The rest of the time I allow higher days…usually around 50 and under…made up of all grain free / dairy free / sugar free stuff.  It makes this livable for me.  I want this to be something I can stick with for as long as possible. So while most of my meals look more like this…

…super low carb but also super boring.  I don’t post those here because… well they’re boring…and nobody wants to see my hamburger / bacon / mayo plate over and over and over again.  🙂  That’s sugar-free ketchup.

The higher carb stuff I do write about happens once or twice a week…and IS blog worthy / interesting.  🙂

This might be the most interesting yet.

Look what came last week. Cappello’s grain free / gluten free pasta.  It was super warm last week and it showed up in perfect condition.  One thing of dry ice had melted but the other two…two big blocks…were still frozen solid.  A++++, Cappello’s.  🙂

Always. 🙂

I ordered a mix pack of fettuccine, gnocchi and lasagna sheets.

Portioned out individual servings and vacuum sealed them.

Bought a block of my beloved dairy free cheese Follow Your Heart in Mozz flavor to try.  Another win.  🙂

Made that dough I keep raving about into a loaf.

 

Homemade dairy free ranch on top.

Y’all this stuff is legit. This is the best gluten free pasta I’ve ever had.  That whole plate had about 20 carbs (there’s only 1 oz of pasta here so 9 carbs).

When I portioned out the fettuccine I did it in 2 oz portions and had 1 oz left over.  I stuck it back in the icebox and then a few days later made it up with some ghee / bacon and mozz.  Kinda a Texan Carbonara.  So good.

It’s very expensive but if you’re like me and the only one eating it you can easily get 4 – 6 meals out of each box (if you do 2 oz servings).  Or make it a special meal every now and then if you’re feeding the whole fam.

The Women’s March is this weekend. Just a reminder if you can’t make it to D.C. there are sister marches all over the country. 🙂

You can find links to each city here:

https://www.womensmarch.com/sisters

The Houston march is going to be downtown at city hall.

The Austin march is going to be downtown at the state capital.

They’re being held in a bunch of other Texas cities too but I don’t know the exact locations of those so check out the link above.

Amen, Mrs. Scott King.  Amen.  🙂

Ok that’s all for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. Y’all have a great week and I’ll see you soon.  🙂

 

(I couldn’t find a version of this song without the picture of the domestic abuser duck dynasty piece of human garbage…so if you’re a decent human being who finds him repulsive on a 100 different levels…just listen to the music.)  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Orange Cake 100 days and Birthday Wishes

Hey, y’all. 🙂

First…Happy Birthday to Sister B. The best sister a girl could wish for.  I hope you have an awesome day.  🙂

So…

I did it, y’all. 🙂

100 days.

No grains or sugar for 100 days and no dairy for 50 days. 🙂

I’m pretty proud of myself. It’s been rough in some ways but super zen in others.  It was the weirdest thing.  I didn’t have any inner debate with myself over trying this.  In late August I really did just wake up one day and say to myself “enjoy Labor Day and then you’re doing this grain free  / sugar free thing for a while”.  There was no way I could have given up the dairy right from the start.  It’s what got me thru that first month.  But I’m so glad I eventually tried getting rid of it too.

The whole point of trying this was to try to help my autoimmune inflammation. It’s helped a lot but I’ve just got so much of it raging in my body that it’s going to take a lot longer.

I’m planning to stick with this for as long as I can.  Hopefully this is now a lifestyle change but I learned a long time ago to never say forever.  It’s a one day at a time kind of thing and today…I am still all in.  🙂

Before / current. Before was August and current was this weekend.

Logo from the shirt in the current pic.  You can never have too many y’all Christmas shirts.  😉

Remember that caramel I wrote about last week? That’s what it looked like in action.

I read about this orange cake where you boil 2 oranges for 2 hours then..

Throw the whole oranges peel and all (chopped into chucks) into the food processor and process to mushy.

Add 2 cups almond flour, 4 eggs, 1 – 2 cups sugar (I used xylitol), 1 heaping tsp baking powder and process til well blended.

Bake at 350* for about 45 minutes.  I glazed it with a ghee / xylitol reduction.

It’s kind of pound cake-esque. I loved the flavor and the texture was good but I did have a reaction to the acidic oranges.  If not for that I’d totally make this again sometime.

In that caramel post I wrote about using Ideal brand xylitol / splenda sweetener.  I switched over to this for the cake along with some added liquid splenda and that’s going to be my new mix.

Quick side note…a reader reached out and wanted to know how I can claim to be staying below 25g carbs / day when using xylitol. The answer to that is that I don’t count sugar alcohols at all. I’ve tested my blood sugar after eating them and they have zero effect on me. For example an hour after a piece of that orange cake my blood tested at 80.  Two hours after it tested at 78.  (I’m not diabetic but someone in my house is so I just used their testing machine to test it out. I also did it when I decided to allow the occasional potato.)  Anyway…that’s just how my body works.  You have to know your own body before you decide not to count sugar alcohols.  As I’ve said many times though…you do you and don’t worry about me.  🙂

Ok that’s all for today. Hope y’all are having a great week. 🙂