sugar free

Life After Keto

Hey, y’all.  🙂

It’s been so long again since I’ve even opened the blog. 

It’s the same ol’ same.  Health hell a hundred different ways.  But mostly digestive system. 

It was 2 years ago this week that I was put on those 6 months of antibiotics and I’ve never been the same since.😢

I’m seeing a new GI doctor 2 hours away next week so I’m trying to be hopeful that maybe she will have some answers.

One good thing that has happened recently is I finally stopped obsessing over keto. 👍 🧁 Keto / lchf messed me up so much.  I got so emotionally attached to the idea of it being the ‘best and only right way’ and for the last two years I’d spent way too much time trying or wanting to get back to it. Only to get worse and set myself back every single time I tried. 

For whatever reason my body cannot tolerate meat or fat anymore without carbs to buffer my stomach.  I know there will be those of you who will say I didn’t try hard enough or whatever.  You’re wrong.  I’ve done nothing but obsess and try for the last two years.

No more.  For real this time.

That’s actually why I haven’t been posting on insta for the last 6-ish weeks. I’ve been forcing myself to stay away from all the keto talk on social media.  So many of my favorite follows are from my keto days and I just couldn’t allow myself to backslide.

Because…

Yes this is an actual published book. I first read it back in May when we took a little pre-summer trip to my beloved galv. 

I tried to start practicing it that week…and I did.  I ate all the thangs.  😋

But then before I even made it back home, I was already obsessing about trying to force keto/lc/carnivore as soon as I got back.  And of course, I tried.

Several more times.  Each time my stomach ended up worse than before.☹️

Don’t you dare ever call me a quitter. 😉

The final straw came in August.  It was record heat. The house air conditioner broke and we got a new car on the same day. I was outside transferring all the stuff from the old car and I ended up having a mild heat stroke.  It was beyond scary.  That day I was in the middle of my millionth time trying to force keto and when I overheated I started throwing up the worst grossest stuff yet.  That night I said enough.  The next few days I stayed bundled up in blankets drinking coke icee and re-reading the F*ckit book.

It’s an easy read and should be relatable to every single person who has ever tried to out diet their DNA.  

It’s taken me 37 years (allegedly 😉 ) but I’m finally done fighting mine. 🎈

It was hard and I talked myself into “trying keto just one more time” many times but thankfully I didn’t give in.

Keto / LCHF and carnivore are fantastic in the right body, but I won’t try again because my body is not the right body. Even (when?) I finally get some digestive answers I’ll always have Lupus. And I will always be on some kind of meds. Most of which need some carbs to buffer the stomach. 

That’s the lot I’ve been given in this one short life.  I’m done fighting it. 🙂

This is not in anyway a paid endorsement. I purchased this book on my own and it was worth every cent.  There are other books that fall in the anti-diet category (I read two others) but most of them are still focused on weight loss. This one is not. 

I can’t waste whatever time I have left on this earth worrying about the size of my clothes or a number on a scale.

ps. I’m still following all of my favs because I like you for reasons beyond how you eat. 😊 If you eat keto that’s great. If you WW that’s great too. If you’re vegan…cool. If you’re preachy about your chosen food I’ve already unfollowed you. 🙂

Y’all have a great weekend. 😊

Here’s were you can find me on insta where I’m usually more active. 👍

Christmas In July and Pot Pies

Hey, Y’all. 🙂

(first…WordPress isn’t letting me spell check this right now so apologies for anything I missed)

Merry Christmas in July.

I celebrated twice.

Once on the weekend with the fam. And today with the boo.

Celebration 1: Cute beach Santa plates. Shrimp ‘pasta’ salad (minus the pasta for me) with seasoned Whisps as croutons.

Celebration 2: Carne Guisada with guac and queso. The ‘tortilla’ is the same mix as I used in this post for lasagna. I made them with a mix of cheddar and mozz plus 4 tbsp almond flour in place of the parm.  I also left out the seasonings so they could go with anything. I just tore them up and used them kind of like torn up pieces of tortillas (that’s how I used to eat this meal when I could still eat corn). This was actually really really good.

Plus a half a piece of sugar free cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory. This was my first time having the sugar free cheesecake from there and it won’t be my last.

90 would be more accurate. 🙂

This is my new secret ingredient. I’m using it in all my baking now. Right now I’m adding 1/2 tbsp for any amount of ‘flour’ up to a cup and then 1 tbsp for each full cup.

Amen, Anon. Amen.

So first up…a chicken pot pie. The amounts I use here will make two.

I’ve been making a hybrid mayo pancake / 90 second bread. So 4 tbsp almond flour, 2 tbsp mayo, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tbsp collagen peptides, the yellow is some chicken broth powder in place of spices. Plus one egg. Forgot to take the pic after adding the egg. It’s best with an actual egg but I used egg whites for this one because I’m trying to use that carton up. I mix this all up right before topping time.

Now the filling. That’s 1 cup of chicken broth, 1/2 cup cream and 4 tbsp mascarpone (or cream cheese) thickened with a little xanthan gum. Then I added some chopped chicken breast, 2 tbsp peas and a little steamed cauli.

Poured half into each bowl.

Topped each bowl with half of the bread mixture.  You kinda just have to drizzle it over and let it run together to fill it. You don’t want to spread it or shake it. If you do it will just mix in with the filling. Let it do it’s thing by itself. 🙂

Baked at 350* for about 14 minutes in the convection oven.

So unbelievably delicious. This is seriously one of my most favorite things I’ve made gluten free.

😉

I’ll close with my most recent before / current from last week.

Same dress. Summer 2015 vs last week. I can’t believe this is me.  As you can see I’m just plugging along. 25g net carbs / day. It’s working and I’m working it. But it is boring so I don’t have much to post. I still eat so much of the same stuff over and over again because it simple.

I miss blogging but I ya know…how many times can I post the same food pics, anti devil personified (cheeto dust / GOP) memes and beg y’all to go out and get involved in changing this mess?

So I’ll continue to pop in when I have something new to share and in the meantime you can always check out Instagram here for more frequent updates. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see y’all soon. 🙂

 

 

Chiffon Cake

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Happy 4th. Hope it’s been a safe and fun one for you. 🙂

I am so tired of seeing these stories. 🙁  I truly hope there is a special place in hell for these ‘parents’.

Last week I made these homemade maraschino cherries. I used xylitol for the sugar but you can use whatever you like…even real sugar of course.  Heat the water and sugar over medium heat til the sugar is dissolved then cool to room temp and stir in extracts. Then pour over the cherries, seal and put in the icebox. I actually had left over juice and I think I could have used a 1/2 cup each of water and sugar. The longer they sit the better they’ll be.

Made a batch of oopsie bread in my hotdog pan. They didn’t end up being big enough to hold a wiener and ‘fixin’s’ so I decided to deconstruct it. I cut up and pan fried a ‘bun’ in butter then added chopped up wieners, chili and cheese. I’ll definitely make this again.

Ok, y’all this is the best sugar free thing I’ve made yet.  🙂

It’s a single serve cherry chiffon cake.

I took one egg and separated it.

To the yolk I added 1 tbsp Swerve and beat it for 2 minutes then added 1 tbsp coconut oil, splash of vanilla and one tbsp of the homemade maraschino cherry juice.

To the whites I added 1/4 tsp cream of tartar and beat til frothy. Then I added 1 tbsp Swerve and beat to stiff peaks.

Added 1 tbsp coconut flour and a heaping 1/4 tsp baking powder to the yolk mixture.

Then I mixed in about 1/3 of the whites to the yolks.

Then gently folded in the rest of the whites.

Spread into an UNGREASED pan and baked at 300* for about 25 minutes. (My pan was a little too wide for this small amount of batter.)

Y’all this was so moist. That’s right. I said moist. Because it was.

Topped half of it with two small scoops from a fresh batch of sugar free ice cream, 2 of the cherries and a tbsp of the cherry juice.

Best sugar free cake yet and the most perfect finish to 4th of July eating. 🙂

Most recent before / current.

I went to the Dr. last week and I’m officially down 64 pounds. 🙂

Or an elephant’s penis plus an ostrich egg. 😉

If you follow me on Instagram here you’ve already seen this but my blood work was great too.

Y’all know how long I’ve struggled with my iron levels. It’s been years since it’s been this high. 🙂

The only things that are still not improving are my inflammation markers (ya know…the main reason I’m doing this whole weight loss / sugar free thing). But I’m just going to keep on going and hope that it’ll get there soon.  It’s really weird…the more weight I lose the worse some of my pain is. I wonder if some of the fat was creating a cushion or something? I don’t know but it’s kinda annoying to be working so hard and still be in so much physical pain.

Allrighty that’s all for today.  🙂

Y’all stay safe and cool and I’ll see you soon. 🙂

 

 

 

Cookie Butter

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Hope things are good in your part of the world and that your summer is off to a great start. 🙂

It’s crazy hot and humid here.

I’ve got an appointment with my vein doctor today. It’s just taking this thing so long to heal up. 🙁

🙂

Except for the vein stuff everything else is pretty good here. Still rocking grain free / sugar free / keto (9 months now) and I have gotten to a place where I actually love it and am not jonesing for the next planned off day. In fact I don’t even have an off day planned at all right now. Not saying I won’t plan one but right now…I don’t  need or want one and that feels so good. 🙂

Reminder: I’m still posting over on Instagram.  More frequently than here anyway. 🙂

I made these real kolaches for Papa B for father’s day and it didn’t bother me one bit.

Get the bad people / things and energy out of your life, y’all. Your world will change for the better almost instantly. 🙂

Chopped steak, caesar, loaded mashed cauli. This is one of my fav keto meals.

How many times a day do y’all feel like sayin’ this? For me it’s at least forty seventy billion.

So…what’s this cookie butter you mention, Texas Girl? 🙂

Well…it’s not actually cookies but it totally hits the spot for me anyway.

First you’ll melt 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp sugar sub (I use swerve) and 2 tbsp cream.

Get it all bubbly and a little bit thick (about 3 minutes).

Remove it from the heat and add sweetener drops to taste.

Of course I use liquid Splenda but you do you, boo. If you think Splenda is going to make you grow a second head…well I can’t help you. Pick something else and move on with your life. 🙂

While that cools off a little bit…take 1 – 2 cups of raw nuts (cashews are best but for a lower carb option I like macadamias). Yes I know these aren’t raw but I like the roasted taste too and this is all I could find here in Podunk and I wanted some cookie butter right that second. 😉

(Also…if you don’t want to use fresh nuts you can just use a cup of cashew butter or other bland flavored nut butter and save some time.)

Ok so take your nuts and put them in your high powered blender or your food processor.

Blend til smooth.

Add one heaping tsp of Gingerbread spice and 1 heaping tsp of Apple Pie spice plus the melted butter / sugar / cream mixture. Blend again til all mixed together and smooth.

Pour into a jar and cover. This lasts about 5 days in the cabinet or longer if you icebox it. Honestly it’s never lasted more than 3 or 4 days around here. We all love it.

So what can you do with this magical butter concoction, you ask? 😉

Well first you can make you a mini spice cake mug cake.

Melt 2 tbsp butter in a mug add: 1 heaping tbsp of your cookie butter, 1 egg and 1/2 tsp vanilla.

Mix it all together and add:

3 tbsp Almond flour, 1 tbsp Coconut flour, 1 tbsp sweetener (I used swerve) and 1/2 tsp baking powder.

Mix again and cook in micro for 1 minute.

 

Remove. Slice in three little layers.

Spread some of your cookie butter between layers. (See that Cookie Butter Torani Syrup there? It’s sugar free and to make the cookie butter easier to spread I thinned it out with a little bit of the syrup…it’s not necessary but it was good.)

Stack and ice. I used a mix of Mascarpone / Butter / Swerve and vanilla.

Oh my gravy, y’all this was GOOD. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t already made it again. (It’s only been a couple days.) 🙂

My Mema’s shrimp pasta salad minus the pasta. Topped with garlic and parm flavored Whisps. Instant seasoned ‘croutons’.

I flavor Whisps and those chicharones with popcorn seasoning. It makes them taste a million times better and I hardly ever miss chips now.

🙂

Something else to do with the ‘cookie’ butter…

I take a Snickerdoodle Keto Kookie…heat it up either in the micro or in the toaster oven. Plop a spoon of ‘cookie’ butter on top. Mix it up and eat. Almost like eating chunky cookie butter. 🙂

Finally…a before / current. This was actually a week ago. I had Sister B take a non-mirror pic but we were in Walmart and when I looked at the pic at home I realize there were some questionable items in the background so we’ll go with this one. This is one of my most favorite summer shirts but I probably won’t wear it out of the house again. The top part is way too big and the straps won’t stay up at all. Don’t wanna have a wardrobe malfunction at Walmart. 😉

Ok. Y’all have a great week and I’ll see you soon. 🙂

 

Sugar Free Key Lime Pie Filling

Hey, y’all. It’s been a while. 🙂

Things are good here. I’m still doing my day to day posting on Instagram.  Check it out if you miss me. 🙂

Hope y’all are having a great long weekend and that you took a moment to remember why we have a long a weekend. 🙂

Shall we get caught up?

just a reminder…if the pics in my post show up super small refresh the page and that usually fixes it

Some of this will probably be familiar if you’re following along on insta but as usual I’ll be a little more wordy here. 🙂

I tried peace love and low carb’s lasagna ‘noodle’ recipe. Oh my gravy, y’all this is a keeper. I LOVED this. Check out that link to her recipe if you wanna try it out.  It’s super easy and is just eggs, cream cheese, mozz, parm and spices.  I used my own sauce recipe.

If you’re missing watermelon this summer try this out.  It’s watermelon lime sparkling water with some sugar free watermelon syrup.

 🙂

This cup of deliciousness is sugar free sweetened condensed milk.

You’ll need it for a couple recipes coming up so here’s how I made it. It’s the equivalent of one can.

I put:

2 cups heavy whipping cream

2 tbsp butter

1/3 cup swerve

in an 8 cup pyrex measuring cup. Micro’d for a total of 8 minutes stopping and stirring about every minute and a half.

After 8 minutes

I stirred in:

1 tsp vanilla

24 drops liquid splenda

1/4 tsp xanthan gum.

I let it come to room temp then transferred to a bowl and into the icebox til ready to use.

after eating a few tbsp of course …this stuff is so good I just wanna drink it with a straw. 🙂

Me too, awesome granny. Me too. 🙂

Sugar free deconstructed key lime pie. 🙂

If you’ve been reading me for a while you know I dream about key lime pie. The last thing I made before going sugar free last September was the best key lime pie filling I’d had in years.

This isn’t as good as that and it does have sweetened condensed milk (which I complained about in that post) but man this did hit the spot given how I’m eating these days. 🙂

I don’t know if y’all have seen Keto Kookies or not but I ordered some chocolate chip and snickerdoodle cookies from them.

They have a recipe on their blog for using the snickerdoodle as a pie crust.

I tried that multiple times and lost seven pretty expensive cookies in the process. They burned no matter how low I set the temp. Not willing to be deterred…or waste anymore cookies…I decided to deconstruct the ‘pie’.

I layered a snickerdoodle cookie with some pie filling and topped with homemade sugar free whipped cream. It was so good.

This is just a regular sugar full recipe that I followed exactly replacing the real condensed milk with my homemade sugar free one. Here’s how I made the pie filling.

2 eggs

2 egg whites

1/2 cup key lime juice

1 can sweetened condensed milk (the recipe above)

splash of vanilla

I made half the recipe since it was probably going to be just me eating it.

Beat the eggs and whites til completely smooth. Slowly add lime juice, milk and vanilla.

NOW here you would pour this into a pie crust and bake at 325* til set.

I am not scared of raw eggs and since I was deconstructing this I took mine in its unbaked state and folded in about half a cup of whipped cream then ice boxed it til ready to eat.

Like I said…I loved it but if you’re scared of raw eggs then you’ll need to figure out a pie crust or just bake it without a crust and use a water bath.

I’ll leave y’all with my most recent before current set of pics. I’m standing in the same place for all three.

Left to right: Late 2015, Early Oct 2016, Last week late May 2017.

Y’all have a great week and I’ll see you soon. 🙂

Y’all know we have to kick off summer with my fav summer anthem. 😉