weight loss

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. 🙂

 

 

 

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. 😉

 

 

 

 

Cashew Blender Bread

Hey, y’all.  🙂

I meant for this post to go up on Valentine’s Day but somehow scheduled it for March 14th instead.

So happy belated V-Day.  🙂

Hope it was everything…every single one of you…wanted it to be.  🙂

I’ve been busy working on my business which picked up hugely 😉 this month.

Still eating super boring so I don’t have much to share on that front.

Over the weekend we met Sister B for lunch and I did have some delish dry rub ribs but forgot to take pics.

I’m also busy with the resistance project. So proud of the work we’re doing. 🙂

Ok, y’all if you’ve got a high power blender you’ve got to try this.

I had this recipe on hold for months because I was completely skeptical.  But it really does work.

I wasn’t willing to commit to a larger amount of cashews than this so I just made a small loaf pan and used these measurements:

5 oz cashew nuts soaked in cold water for about an hour

1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp cold water

1 egg

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup tapioca flour

Soak cashews for an hour. Drain and rinse.  Add nuts and water to high power blender and blend on high until completely smooth.  I had to use the tamper with mine to help get it going.  I blended for probably about 2 1/2 – 3 minutes on 10.

Once it’s completely smooth…and I do mean completely…add everything else and blend on high for about a minute.

Pour / spread in pan and bake at 325* for about 35 minutes. Cover with foil if it’s browning too quickly.  Then kick the temp up to 375* and cook 5 – 10 additional minutes uncovered til golden brown.

This was soft and bendy and delish. It didn’t taste like nuts at all. That’s just cooked down strawberries with a few drops of liquid splenda as a mock strawberry jelly.  My first PB&J in ages. 🙂

When I try this as a regular size loaf I’m going to triple the recipe.  I’m still kind of scared of trying a big loaf though because that’s a lot of nuts wasted if for some reason structurally is not strong enough to hold up to the weight of the amount of nuts needed to fill that large of a pan without sinking.

 🙂

Progress pic…

Taken last week.

Ok that’s all for now. Y’all have a great long weekend and I’ll see you soon.  🙂

 

 

 

Eating Evolved Chocolate

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Sorry it’s been a while.

January is a slow month for my business. I’ve been using the time to do taxes and restock so when it picks up this month I’ll be ready to go.

If I wasn’t getting a refund I would have seriously given some thought to not filing myself.  😉

Also I hadn’t written about this yet but after I’d made 100 out of 104 days of dairy free…I tried adding dairy back.  I ate if for a week and let’s just say that my body rebelled big time.

I’m back off of it now and feeling a lot better.

Because of that I haven’t done any kitchen experimenting since we last met.

Did make a pressure pot of short ribs yesterday. They were so good.  The gravy is the arrowroot thickened pan juices. This was also one of my higher carb days so yes, those are potatoes. 🙂

JKR…taking out the garbage one tweet at time. 🙂

Decided to try the Siete chips.  Right choice. 🙂 They are totally worth it. Totally. These are nacho flavor but they have no dairy at all. That’s a bowl of ‘Frito’ pie…subbing the grain free tortilla chips for the Fritos.  I don’t add the chips to the bowl all at once though I just do it a couple at a time so they don’t get too soggy.

So I ordered a sample box of Eating Evolved primal chocolate goods.

It comes boxed with a bow and they included two extra bars as a little gift.  If you like dark chocolate most of this stuff is pretty good.  Well, what I’ve tried of it anyway. I’ve tried the green bar (72% dark chocolate), the red bar (72% dark chocolate with almonds) and the banana cream cups. I don’t particularly enjoy dark chocolate but I’m trying. 🙂

The one thing I didn’t like AT ALL was the hot chocolate. I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth for hours. It is super duper bitter and definitely not for someone who is just learning to like dark chocolate.

I’ll let y’all know what I think of the remaining items as I try them.  I only allow stuff like this a couple times a week though.

Thank you, Nordstrom. 🙂

We have to keep the pressure on these businesses, y’all. Let them know we won’t spend one cent in their stores if they support or give these monsters an outlet.   #GrabYourWallet

 More so than ever right now it’s up to each of us to be the good to counter all the hate and garbage. 🙂

 😉

 

Dear democrat senate and house members, over the last 6 years…every.single.day…the republican led senate acted out a ‘youtube-esque’ tutorial on government obstruction for y’all in living color. Take their blueprint and run, y’all. Obstruct this shit in every conceivable way (and some ways y’all don’t even know of yet).  Love and thanks, Texas Girl.  🙂

Also…if anybody in Texas wants to join us click that pic above and it should link to battle ground texas. 🙂

New current pic. Went shopping with Mama B and Sister B this past weekend. When I saw that seated picture I seriously asked them if I really look like that.  I struggle so much with seeing myself as I really am. In my mind I still look much larger and I’m still automatically drawn to tent like clothes. Automatically I pick up big baggy stuff.  Every time. Why is that?

I know part of it is style choice.  I love flowy / boho / hippy stuff but it’s really more that I just can’t see myself as anything other than huge.  It’s so annoying.  So if you see me in person and wonder why I’m wearing something 97 sizes too big…that’s why.  I’m working on it.  🙂

Anyway…that’s all for today.

Y’all have a great super bowl weekend and I’ll see you soon.  🙂

 

 

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. 🙂