I just can't talk about any more of the dismal stuff for a while (although I think it's getting better), so for a change, let's have a recipe... and this is a great one.
The basis and inspiration for this recipe is from Jacques Pépin's Fast Food My Way, which is a fantastic cookbook for simple dishes, every one delicious. I've made this for years, and evolved it into a more-or-less low carb dish. But the beauty of it (see below) is that really you can modify the carbs, modify the fat, and still have something that's both easy to put together, quick, nutritious, and just great comfort food. (His recipe is Chickpea Ragout, p. 91, and it's a side dish. Mine is a one-dish meal.)
This is a very forgiving recipe, and thus the proportions are all pretty vague.
Chicken-Chorizo Autumn Stew
- 1 package boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 6 thighs. Don't use breast because it will dry out.)
- about 4 inches spicy chorizo (the Spanish style... a hard, pepperoni-like sausage, not the Mexican kind. I prefer the hot kind, which adds a kick, but you can use the regular kind if you prefer)
- olive oil
- 1 red onion, roughly diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
- 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets (discard any tough stems or dice small)
- 1 14 oz. can chopped tomatoes (I like the fire-roasted ones.)
- 1 legume choice... see note below... a can of chickpeas or a package of lima beans or butter beans, etc.
- choice of optional vegetables: fresh mushrooms, zucchini, fennel, etc.
- salt and freshly ground pepper
- about 1 cup chicken stock
- finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, if desired
Finely dice the chorizo and cube the chicken thighs. Heat the oil in a (preferably nonstick) large skillet (with a lid!), and sauté the chorizo, onion, garlic, and chicken over high heat until lightly browned. Add all of the rest of the ingredients except the salt and pepper and the parsley, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are done, about 1/2 hour. Season to taste, and sprinkle with fresh parsley if desired.
The prep time is very quick, and then you can pretty much ignore it while you relax and have a glass of wine.
This is a hearty and delicious fall/winter meal. Serves 4-6, depending on portion size and how many vegetables you use. As listed above, with chickpeas and mushrooms, 4 very generous servings.
A note on legumes: the carb content of this dish is almost entirely determined by the choice of legume. You could leave out the legume entirely, and it would be lower carb, but I think that they really add something... so I've tried to just cut the proportion way back. I make this usually with chickpeas, but lima beans are really good, and an alternative might be just a few green peas. (Suggestions welcome!)
A note for the low-fat crowd: We don't pay much attention to fat proportions these days, but I first made this dish when I counted calories, not carbs. If you go very easy on the oil and use about half the chorizo, diced very small, this is a pretty low fat dish as well.
Oh, and if you like your food very spicy-hot, a dash of chili oil is excellent in this (I add this to my bowl, at the end, so that the rest of my family doesn't gasp and run for the water!).
Michael: -0.6 lbs, 453.8, total loss since January: 89.5 lbs., total overall loss 160 lbs.
Nina: -0.8 lbs, 278, total loss since January, 24.2 lbs.
Well. What can I say? At least my weight was fractionally lower and hopefully after this weekend's trip to Baltimore, I can get back to Really Serious. Because, let's face it, I have not exactly been putting everything in the world into this for some time. Michael's weight loss slowed this week, but he still lost some after bouncing around a bit throughout the week. That's fine, too, though unexciting... he's been doing so very well throughout the summer that the occasional slow week is only to be expected.
Last night, the power went out about midnight... leftover winds from Ike, I gather... and didn't come back on until 4, so I tossed and turned until that happened. Then had to get up at 6 to make sure that my son's alarm went off (yes, I am a bad mom; I usually don't get up with him unless I have an early class. He is a grumpy boy in the morning, and more than capable of toasting his bagel.). Back to sleep for a few hours of weird dreams, and then up... result, we are all a little groggy today except for Son, who is delighted because in the end school was canceled, giving him a mostly-free day with the New Big TV.
We're trying a slightly new regime this week, or Michael is, anyway. I sort of cringe when I say this, but I think that he's not eating enough carbs. Every little low-carb bone in my body shivers when I say that, because I know that technically, there is no carb requirement. But for him, at just above 450 lbs., just moving is exercise. And he's been exhausted all the time lately. Some of this may be something unrelated (and I'm still wondering if the endocrinologist will find something when we FINALLY get to see him/her in January), but I think that part of it may be that he's not eating that much, rich fatty foods aggravate the stomach issues caused by his hernia so he doesn't eat that much of them, and he's not eating something extra to compensate. Result: fatigue all the time. Possibly slightly low blood sugar all the time. So what we're going to try by way of experiment is supplementing his diet with soups and legumes for maybe a 10-15 carb boost per meal. He's still going to be well in the low-carb range, but not in that 30-40 carb range. We'll see what happens.
Just in case anyone's been waiting with eager anticipation to see what snarky comments I had about Jamie Oliver's cookbook after I actully cooked something from it (rather than after I just read most of it and looked at the pictures), here you are...
I've cooked several things from this book now, and I have to say, this is a good but weirdly idiosyncratic, in my opinion, book.
The GOOD:
1. Perfect instructions for pan-searing salmon, a cooking method that I invariably screw up, usually overcooking the salmon until it's pretty nasty. Same thing for pan-grilling steak. Just absolutely perfect. So, ok, I take back some of my previously snippy words; this did teach me a couple of skills that I was terrible at.
2. Absolutely awesome recipe for lima beans with leeks. I know, half of you are going, "lima beans, ick", and the other half of you are going "but Nina, that's not exactly low carb, is it?" I love lima beans; they're great if they're cooked properly. And, no, it's not the most low-carb thing in the universe, and you have to be very careful with portion size. Regardless, this recipe is just beyond good. Also a wonderful recipe for lamb shanks, simple, easy to adapt to other things, and really, really good.
3. A lot of these recipes involve simple sauces. If you make these in a little extra quantity (or if, like us, you're really cooking for 2 with a recipe for 4), you end up with a bunch of sauces that can be used for other things, making a lot of quick and sloppy food look like you actually spent some time on it.
4. There are many recipes in this book that need little or no adaptation for a low carb diet. I have to say that I've mostly given up on low-carb cookbooks... well, let me put that another way; I prefer cooking real food and leaving out the carb stuff to adding a lot of low-carb substitutes. So this kind of book, which has sections that are certainly unsuitable (skip the pasta, obviously) but probably 2/3 of the book which is fine without adaptation, are my idea of a good cookbook.
The BAD:
1 (and only): Proportions, proportions, proportions. The first part, the inexact measures. How much rosemary is in "a bunch?" Less than I used, evidently. How much olive oil is in "a glug?" How much butter in "a knob?" (Ok, that last one is actually a sort of standard term, although it has a great deal of inexactness, too.) Yes, these things are kind of charming, but they're far better after you've made the recipe once. But the bigger issue is that the proportions in many of the recipes are just wrong. Most wrong was the rosemary-anchovy-lemon sauce for the salmon, simply FAR too much lemon, not enough anchovies, and I think I just didn't put enough rosemary in since I hadn't figured out that his bunch idea is a lot bigger than mine.
I think that once you realize that the proportions are likely to be wrong, it's ok... you can work with that. It's the part where you're thinking that these numbers have some meaning that are really a problem. I do understand that this is partly what I call the professional chef problem... my sister is just like this; you ask her how to make something, and she can usually tell you the ingredients but not the proportions.
I'm a little discouraged today. Both of our weights are up slightly... never a happy mid-week weighing event... and I'm puzzled about why. Michael's been chugging water like mad, and that could account for it, really... but he's convinced that he's eating too much. Which would be fine if he could say, this is what I'm eating that I shouldn't. But it's not that, just like a vague general worrying. I don't think he is; I think that if anything, he's eating too little. Me... well, I might be eating too much, and secondly, my leg has been unhappy enough that I haven't been able to play racquetball (or do a great deal else) for a week. And it could be an monthly fluid retention thing, too. But it's pretty hard to just shrug and say, it's nothing, especially when his weight is up.
Yesterday we ate... let's see, about 1/3 cup of melon and about 1.5 oz hamburger for breakfast. Then a 2-egg omelet for lunch, cooked in butter, a little bacon, mushrooms, chickpeas, jalapeno, onion, salsa, sour cream, sprinkling of cheese... sounds like a lot but fractional bits of all of those things. Michael only ate about 1/2 of his. I had a few nuts and a few pork rinds at school, and then my students brought soft tacos for the class; I ate the insides, maybe 3 tablespoons of beef and cheese and lettuce. Small cold hamburger, maybe 3 oz., when I got home, plus a little butter... Michael had that too, and an apple. And then for dinner we had steaks and chili beans (maybe 1/3 cup) and pureed cauliflower. I don't know. The steaks were large... we actually ate about 1/2 of them for dinner and the rest as a snack when we were watching Top Chef at 10. All in all, not an excessive amount of food, and I don't know why I'm fussing so much about this... but I get so out of sorts when he worries about what he's eating without some kind of alternate to it... if anything, the worst thing that happened for him food-wise was that he didn't eat from about 11 to about 5:30, so his blood sugar got really low. Which I also think is something that makes it all harder (that reminds me, he also had another 1/2 cup or so of chickpeas, trying to get something into his stomach that would bring up his blood sugar a little).
I don't know. Worried about the legumes. Worried about the carb tradeoff. Just kind of worrying in general, I guess, and the smart thing would be to stop fussing and get on with the day.
This is what makes me really crazy about all the nutrition stuff. No one really knows what the truth is. The real absolute single sole truth that works for everyone. Here are some examples:
1. Resistant starch
So we've been eating a little bit of beans lately, which, on the whole, seems to be making us feel better. So, beans and legumes... bad on a low carb diet or not? Well, one opinion would be here, from Laura Dolson on About.com, who seems to do an excellent job of summarizing low carb info. Her take? Beans are the least-glycemic carb source plus they have this magical resistant starch, which is supposedly good for you for a pile of reasons (you can read them; I'm too lazy to summarize. On the other hand, you can read Dr. Mike Eades' take on this here. I have absolutely nothing but huge amounts of respect for Dr. Eades, and his take is basically that this is all nonsense. So do you believe one and dismiss the other? Which one?
2. Yeast/Candida
Something I heard the other day made me put a few things together and start wondering if Michael's odd tongue irritation lately might be thrush, which is a yeast-related infection. And researching that made me also remember a few things that I once read about yeast infections and this notion that some people may suffer from candida overgrowth... essentially a systemic yeast infection. Well, Michael has a few things going on... chronic skin infections that just won't clear and the dermatologist said were yeast, some toe fungus stuff, etc.... plus a host of symptoms that seem to fit right in with the list for this. Of course, this is a vague enough list that you could make yourself fit a lot of these things, but still... Anyway, I did a bunch of reading about this, and this seems to be another one of those two diametrically opposed opinions things. Some people (including Dr. Jonny Bowden, who seems to me to be a credible source) seem to buy into it (he talks about it in his natural cures book, which is a very good book in my opinion). Others think it the worst kind of junk science, and that opinion is reinforced in my mind by the fact that there are billion sites out there that would be really happy to sell you a lot of VERY expensive stuff to take care of this problem. I'm always suspicious when there's a big money connection, and this thing is packed with this sort of site... in fact, thus far it's been hard to find much of anything that isn't riddled with ads that look like snake oil sales. But most of the stuff that you're supposed to take for this, if you believe the alternate medicine guys, is pretty innocuous. Probiotics... hard to argue with that. Garlic... good for a host of things. Oil of oregano... how bad could that be? And so on. So I figured, what the hell, we could spend a month trying a super cocktail of these things and see what happens. Worst, we're out about $50 in supplements (some of which we would have taken anyway). Best case, we feel better.
So... Friday (I think!) we started taking the additional probiotics and garlic, and Monday, some of the other stuff. Result... well, thus far kind of hard to determine, but oddly, Michael's skin and feet look better than they have in ages. And there are odd subtle changes in things like sense of taste and so on. I sort of find this whole notion a little... not incredible, but I suppose that things that explain too many symptoms make me kind of suspicious, too. But one of the things that supposedly happens is that you get something called die-off, which is sort of the release of various dead yeast gunk into your body, and it's supposed to make you feel terrible for a while. And, kind of like clockwork, we both started feeling awful yesterday. Grumpy as hell mostly, but also achy and lethargic and, ok, kind of flu-like, which is one of the terms often used. So... conclusion of all of this? I don't know. The jury is out. Way out. But I figure it's worth a month or so to figure out whether there's a real effect.
Now, if this blinding headache would just go away....
Welcome to Tuesday morning. Here I am, with my cup of Yorkshire Gold tea (possibly the best commercial tea in the universe but a true nuisance to get in the U.S.), a tiny breakfast of melon and a cold hamburger (weird but it works), and husband that most closely resembles a large breathing white tent (he's sitting in the next chair covered with a fluffy quilt, snoring lightly), and bored out of my skull. I already read the local paper and the Wall St Journal, I checked all the blogs on my list plus a few that I don't have bookmarked because they're not really low carb... and you know, people... you really don't write often enough! The world is supposed to be entertaining me better.
It's my long school day... three statistics labs to teach in a row, oh joy... and I should be getting going and showering and so on, but I'm really sitting here musing about the magic of beans. No, not magic beans, that's another story!
Three days ago we started doing three things differently. First we adjusted some things that has meant that Michael sleeps better, which means that I sleep better, too... details not really important. Secondly, we started really taking a lot of probiotics and other anti-yeast related supplements on the theory that one thing that may be going on is some sort of yeast overgrowth problem.... more on that in some other post. And the third thing... we started eating legumes again. Chickpeas. Red beans. Lentils. Not a lot. About 1/4 cup with lunch and 1/2 cup with dinner. I don't know whether it's one or all of these things, but the difference in energy levels and mood around here over the last few days has been extraordinary.
Beans have a big thing going for them, as far as I can tell... they are essentially carbs, but they are high fiber and low glycemic, so they don't promote a big insulin response, and so are far less likely to kick in the evils of physical response to carbs. And they're a protein source, too. I don't know. I'm finding this all quite magical... and my weight was a fraction lower this morning, too, as it has been every day for the last three days. So... I think this means that I need to spend some more time researching glycemic indices and glycemic load... arcane mysteries at this point... and figuring out the implications of all this.
Let's face it, not very much is happening here. It's a lazy Sunday (so far anyway), a cool and beautiful spring morning, and I have my tea. So I'm just going to babble about some things on my mind.
1. Ads on blogsites... just how much money is in these things?
I hate ads. I hate the prevalence of ads on the internet. Yes, I'm an economist, and I understand the economics of why, and I also know that people have to earn a living. Which makes ads on sites like Jimmy Moore's a lot more acceptable to me (although, could we not have ALL the banners on the top? Makes it hard to see if there's a new post without scrolling down, and hey, I'm lazy.) But why does the Protein Power blog have Google ad feeds for things that are clearly snake oil? Diet pills and weird diets and things like that which the authors of the blog would never endorse. Is this really necessary to support the blog, and if it is, wouldn't a few well-chosen sponsors be more credible? Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the cost of this is a lot higher than I think or the revenues are a lot higher than I think, but I'm just so tired of looking at this stuff. And so many of the sites that do advertise have so MUCH of it that it obscures the content. And as long as I'm complaining, things (not just ads) that flash and pop and swirl and move around make it very hard to actually read things. Like that trend on eBay for a while (fortunately mostly absent these days) for flashy cursors and flashing stuff. Just annoying, and distracts from what you want to read.
2. Blood glucose meters-- what use are these things if they're not accurate?
We have an Ultra Touch 2 ( I think) blood glucose meter. This is supposed to be a good meter, one of the better ones on the market, and, ok , it's the one the doctor gave us. I'm sure that the doctor gets them free from the manufacturer, because the big money in blood glucose testing isn't in the meters; it's in the $1 per strip test strips... which are unique to the meter, so if you get someone using your meter, bingo, huge profits on something that doesn't cost even close to that to manufacture. It's all part of the huge diabetes industry ripoff, but that's another rant. Anyway, I'd sort of assumed that these things were reasonably accurate, but then I read a review that someone had written on Amazon, talking about inaccuracy of results, and that the company says that its error range is +/- 30 points. If you have really high blood sugar, that might marginally be acceptable, but if your blood sugar is close to the normal range, that 30 points... 60 point range really... is all of your readings, which in theory makes every reading meaningless. I checked this out yesterday when we got a weirdly high reading... 146. Tested again... 116. Tested again... 120. The last two seem to be to be in an acceptable range, but since you'd only think to retest if you got a goofy reading, the results are by definition both biased and pretty meaningless. I don't know what to do about this. It is not necessary to test his blood sugar all the time, but certainly it's desirable some of the time, especially in relation to certain foods. I read some other reviews... but of course, they're biased to the bad, to people who've had trouble with them, and so how do you find one that's accurate? (Thoughts appreciated if anyone has any experience.)
3. Return of the Legumes
Michael has been having serious issues with fatigue for some time now, and part of it is disturbed sleep, but... I think on the whole, it's lack of carbohydrates. Ok, low carb fans, I know perfectly well that there is no dietary NEED for carbs, that you can survive just fine on no carbs (or close to that), but carbs are energy. I've seen him go, over the last four months, from someone who I would call energetic to this lethargic dishrag thing. It got a little better when he returned to eating a little fruit, mostly berries and melons plus the occasional apple. That seemed to give him enough quick energy to move around. But he has still been fatigued and low, and I've had to admit that it correlates with diet. So I've been searching for a way of adding more carbs without adding things like rice and wheat and potatoes... all of which are not good for blood sugar and not things that I think one should really be eating much of at all. And it finally dawned on me... legumes. The wonderful world of beans. Varied. Low-glycemic. High fiber. And maybe enough extra energy to solve some of the lethargy problem. We're giving it a try.
