My low carb breakfast today

Hello, everyone.  As part of being accountable for my food choices--part of staying on the wagon--to work on the weight, I'm taking photos of food. 

Three egg omelet with the last of the jalapeño cheese spread and some guac on top. Black coffee on the side.

This will keep me feeling full until well after noon.

Tortilla de verduras con gambas

Hello,  everyone.  We miss so many things about the Camino. And some of them are not really practical to recreate at home.

Tortilla, fortunately, can be made at home. 

Yum.

Cloud Bread

Hello, everyone.  I know that cloud bread was last year's fad, or maybe a couple of years ago, but I only tried it this year. Today, wanting something to spread taramosalata on, I got out the printout of a recipe and made some...with an extra egg because I thought I had contaminated the first egg white with yolk. Some cooking things just aren't worth taking chances on. I put the maybe contaminated white into the yolks cup and separated three more. The batter was a little less stiff when it was time to fold it into the whipped egg whites.  This may produce a less dry result than the original recipe...I am kind of hoping for that. 

Top view after baking for 35 minutes.

Side view. In the background is the Air Bake cookie sheet I supported the pan with.

After a while I flipped the little rounds over onto the baking rack so the bottoms would not become mushy from steam inside the pan.

I like the cloud breads, even though with no wheat flour there is no gluten with its chewy texture. They do need to be used with soft spreads as the lack of gluten does make them crumble if the sandwich filling is the least bit tough.

French style shallow poached pork steaks

Hello, everyone.  Recently I tried making shallow poached fish. It was great, even with swai. (Swai being tricky to make tasty.) This inspired me to try the method with something else.

The method, on Youtube. This is from Chef  Stepháne. 

I had some pork loin steaks. Following the method, I salted and peppered both sides. Also I chopped up a shallot.

Put shallot into nonstick pan and added the meat.

Added broth (chicken because it's pork) and wine and so on as in the recipe, which I found in his cookbook that was on hand. (It's hiding in a recipe for fish with tomato and onion reduction or something like that, I just skipped the part about tomatoes etc and the rest was as in the video.) Put the cover on and let it gently cook just like in the video.

Finished as per the video and put it on the plate. YUM! And completely low carb.

Tortilla de Rabano con Gambas y Tomates

Hello,  everyone.  We have been missing the Spanish foods terribly.  Especially the low carb version of the Tortilla.

A note for my Latin American readers, the Mexican tortilla is a bread product.  You wrap it around things like fajitas or scrambled egg mixtures. The Spanish tortilla,  which is also found on the island of Puerto Rico, is an egg product. The most frequent form involves potato slices.

My version of tortilla isn't based on egg-with-potato, it's based on egg-with-radish. This has a LOT less starch and is otherwise like the potato version.

We ate 2/3 of it for dinner, this being a Friday in Lent, and couldn't wait for pictures.  Honestly,  this wasn't the prettiest tortilla ever made, but with a drizzle of Cholula pepper sauce it might be the best. 

I sliced up sauce-type tomato wedges in about 1/16 inch slices, about a half of a fat Marzano type tomato. I peeled and then sliced the last of our amazing Korean style big radishes from the fall garden. These slices were about 1/8 inch. The shrimps were from a frozen bag of extra small, peeled, de-veined, de-tailed shrimp from the HEB freezer case.

I used 7 large cage-free eggs, broken up with a whisk.

Of course the sliced radish got salted and drained. And the eggs also got about a half teaspoon of salt.

Friends, this is a meal that is tasty, and filling, and has very little starch. We each ate 1/3 of the finished tortilla. The final third will probably reappear as breakfast. 

YUM!

Spanish food at home

 Hello, everyone.

Thanks to the very interesting YouTube channel Spain on a Fork  my repertoire of Spanish Tortilla has expanded beyond the basic tortilla de patata.

Today I tried making Tortilla Murciana de Verduras, which is not only delicious, it's also low-carb and suitable for Lenten Friday dinners. (Contains no meat.) 

This was so good! It includes bell peppers, onion, garlic, spinach, and Baby Bella mushrooms. 

Another breakfast idea

 Hello, everyone.

This is called "another" idea because this time I tried something new in the eggs:

In addition to bits of nopal (parboiled in advance with a bit of garlic) and chicken meat, this got added at the end: Preserved Lemon bits! From the giant jar of preserved lemon that we made from the big harvest of lemons before the Giant February Freeze hit this past winter/spring.

The lemon is preserved in salt brine--no sugar is used--and it gives an amazing ZING of lemon flavor to whatever it's put with. 

More healthy food

 Hello, everyone.

To keep encouraged and "at it" here are some more healthy meals.

This was dinner: panfried chicken breast with cauliflower "risotto" and green salad. The chicken piece was too big. (Dog cashed in!) The risotto was a hit.

This was lunch: the leftover wedge of a "quiche"--actually more of a frittata--that had mushrooms and some Italian 3 cheese shreds (hard cheeses, I think Romano, Parmesan, and Asiago) plus a few bits of shredded carrot and zucchini in it. I baked it in a pie plate instead of a casserole dish as the recipe called for. The frittata was a hit the first time and the last bits were not rejected either.

(Edited for spelling.)

Another installment in the healthy meals

 Hello, everyone.

The "healthy meals" is also known as "turning over a new leaf." ;-)

This is Friday breakfast. As y'all know, this particular Friday falls in Lent and is meatless. 

Breakfast for 2: Per person, 2 eggs and a splash of heavy cream, and about 2.5 slices of yellow squash cubed and browned in butter in the skillet. The eggs and cream, lightly beaten with a fork, went into the pan with the browned squash cubes and were scrambled. Then at the end the Italian 3 Cheese shreds were added and stirred in to melt.

Plating: half of the egg scramble to each plate, some bits of chopped fresh parsley--parsley was not damaged in the Big Freeze a couple of weeks ago, thank heavens--and some wedges of tomato.

Teapot in back has "Ambrosia" tea from Maggie's Farm in Memphis. ( This was a Christmas gift from DD1.) The teapot is our Turkish style teapot, which we call the "forever teapot" as with water refills it can last all day.

No bread, no rice, no oats or farina cereal, no sugar added to the eggs, just tasty goodness.