Fluffy Chix Cook Included in Newly Released Low Carbing Among Friends Vol II Cookbook

Low Carbing Among Friends - Vol II.
is ready to go!

I woke up this morning thinking Christmas arrived early on the last day of hotter-n-hell-July! Only, much to my chagrin I didn’t see no “damn Sannieclaus” anywhere…but I DID see that Jennifer Eloff and Company has the Low Carbing Among Friends – Volume II book hot off the press and ready to mail!

Ok, ok, I will explain about the “damn Sanniclaus” thing in a minute. I promise! And I just swannie-swear those “boys” will drive me to drink and it’s only 10am here in Hell, er I mean Houston-in-July.

(You remember our sock monkey boys: Buddy, Tony, Kevin (all named for NASCAR drivers), Schylling (our adoptee from the Islands), and Zippy (named for Tony’s former Crew Boss), their little toy dog WeeWee, and WeeWee’s stuffed baby, Skeeter. Oh and their “Geraff”, whom I thought was named Geff because the “boys” get tickled by alliteration and if you’ve never heard a sock monkey laugh – you really should! But the geraff’s name is actually Stretch, as I was informed by Zippy not too long ago.)

Anyways, the “boys” are jumpin’ up and down beside me sayin’, “Ommmmmm! Mamasaidaswearwordgetthepalmolive!” Alternating with, “I’m tellin’ Dayyyyyyy-uddddd-yyyyyy!”

The little snitches! I’ll fix them, my pretties! *evil cackling*

So back to the Low Carbing Among Friends – Volume II…I’m so excited! Not only because this is a very cool cookbook collaboration between 8 low carb authors and a group of low carb friends from our low carb community as the "extra author”. The book talks about 11 authors so we will just have to buy the book and count them to understand where they appear!


The Cookbook authors are:
Jennifer Eloff of Splendid Low-Carbing
Maria Emmerich of Maria’s Nutritious & Delicious JournalJonathan Eloff of
Lisa Marshall of 24/7 Low Carb Diner
Ginny Larsen of Ginny's Low Carb Kitchen
Dr. Steve Parker of Diabetic Mediterranean Diet
Dr. Su of Carbohydrates Can Kill
Jimmy Moore of Livin’ La Vida Low Carb
Vanessa Romero of Healthy Living How To

And guess what? Fluffy Chix Cook has a couple of recipes included in the book! I’m so pumped, because first Dana Carpender has given me terrific affirmation, then CarbSmart Magazine came on board and is also helping Fluffy Chix grow and become a better writer, and now Jennifer Eloff is also helping me deliver more concise and delicious recipes to your kitchen!

Jennifer was actually the first person to acknowledge the work at Fluffy Chix Cook. She asked me to contribute in Volume II of the new cookbook at the first of the year. I was so touched! I’d just finished 33 straight concurrent days of radiation (with time off for weekends and an extra day at Christmas and New Years). I had radiation burns under my arm and armpit and neck and underside of my left Foob. I’d finished about 3 months of chemo therapy and had a double mastectomy with all of the lymph nodes removed in my left breast and armpit through the second level (up to my collarbone).

I was draggin’ tail, couldn’t eat because of an inflamed esophagus, wracked with bone-jarring whole body pain, had serious insomnia because of the pain, felt depressed, dispirited and didn’t know what I was gonna do for the rest of my life or how to revive Fluffy Chix Cook.

Because of the grueling nature of the breast cancer treatment for Stage IIIC, hormone positive breast cancer, I’d let what little business I had before diagnosis barely squeak by. The treatment had bitten me in the booty. I’d let the blog that had been building momentum, just crater into dust. And you know (all 2 of you reading), that things were so quiet ‘round here even the crickets were savin’ their energy and weren’t making a sound.

Fluffy Chix Cook
Pan Seared Snapper with Tomato Caper Relish
appears in Low Carbing Among Friends Vol II

Jennifer Eloff’s kind and generous invitation to Fluffy Chix to participate in the new, Volume II of Low Carbing Among Friends, gave me a new lease on life! I felt honored. It gave me affirmation at a time when I desperately needed it. I doubted (and sometimes still do) my abilities as a recipe developer and writer and doubted that I even had any appeal. Quite frankly, was there even a need for a Fluffy Chix Cook blog on the face of the planet or was/is it simply self-indulgent, time-wasting nonsense?

Now, fast-forward about 9 months and the Low Carbing Among Friends Volume II has dropped and is ready for orders! What a difference a few months make!

And the other good news is the radiation burns healed, eating is back on track, sleeping continues to improve, pain levels have dropped a tad, and energy levels rise slowly each week. I’m back in the saddle, cooking for the people I love, and writing about cooking for the people I love – and writing about life in Texas – all things I, you guessed it - love passionately!

Thanks to you generous readers, traffic has picked up at the Fluffy Chix Cook chicken run and times are good. I’m dating NED for today (NED=No Evidence of Disease), next month I’ll have the first of 3 or 4 surgeries to put the Jello-Jigglers into my snap-crackle-and-pop! (That’s my way of sayin’ I’m getting real Jello-Jiggler Foobies that will walk and talk and recite the alphabet! They’ll do everything the old ones could ‘cept feed the sock monkey boys and give me cancer again!) Life is good.

Thanks Jennifer, Dana, Andrew and each of you out there for supporting me through very desperate times!!! I seriously heart you all!

SusieT Notes –
But wait there’s more! You also get a set of Ginzu Steak Knives…

No you don’t!

But I will ‘splain the “damned ol’ Sannieclaus” statement, just so the boys will give me peace and there will be rest in the house!

My daddy’s little cousin had picked up swearin’. He swore professionally! He was a four year old little monster with the mouth of a teamster or sailor and could swear a blue streak. The entire family was beside themselves about it. Now I say the entire family, because back in the old days, families were apt to live in close proximity to each other.

In our case, the Gibbs family migrated up from the Galveston/Lynchburg coast where our great granddaddy had a ship yard. They moved after the Spanish flu wiped out so many and they settled in the old Westmoreland neighborhood right around Montrose off Hawthorne Street.

Grandaddy, who kept a saloon called the Interurban Buffet located across Texas Avenue from the old Rice Hotel, built a house for our grandmother WaWa and their 3 kiddos: Daddy, Aunt Rea and Aunt Maryanne, who died when she was only a little girl. But he also built a house across the street for our great grandmother and the single folks in the family. In those days all the unmarrieds still lived with the family as a unit. Daddy’s cousin built a house next door for his family and that’s where Little Bubba lived. Little bubba of sailor-mouth fame.

Now our people were “Lace Curtain Irish”. Lace Curtain Irish were impoverished Irish immigrants with dreams of grandeur, which pretty much sums up my great aunts and great granny. We were fairly middle class. Not poor exactly, but not rich by a long stretch and by dangit we had those lace curtains and a will to succeed and that’s just what Grandad did for the family.

He’d become friends with the mayor, police chief, fire chief and loads of big wigs and politicians. Despite all the goodwill spread by Grandad and the men folk, we were not on par with the Houstonian elite and the women didn’t rub elbows with their women. But I digress…again!

So the family all lived on the same block and actually across the street and next door to each other. The cousins and neighborhood kids would play up and down the block. You could hear Little Bubba comin’ up the block just a cussin’ and a talkin’ and runnin’ on a mile a minute with his endless chatter. And all the while, the women folk would be standin’ behind their lace curtains, fanning themselves and about swooning at the idea of Little Bubba causin’ such an uproar in the neighborhood with his poor behavior and foul mouth.

So one night at Christmas time, one of the single uncles decided to pay Little Bubba a visit to try to get him to mend his ways and start acting like a proper little boy – and to get all the women folk off the men’s backs.

He knelt under Little Bubba’s open bedroom window. In Houston, you pretty much left the windows open year round. In the summer it kept your house cool and in winter it kept you from getting carbon monoxide poisoning from the coal fired heaters in the house. Uncle Bucka said, “Little Bubba? This is Santie Claus…and I’ve seen you and heard you cussin’ and usin’ that foul language. You better mind your mama and behave like a good boy. Quit that cussin’ if you want me to deliver your Christmas presents!”

To which Little Bubba bellowed at the top of his lungs from his bed, where he lay trying to go to sleep, “You better get on outta here you damned ol’ sannieclaus, cuz I got a slingshooter and I will shoot your eye out with it!

Little Bubba went on to fame and fortune teaching the parrot they kept on the screened-in porch to swear at Boodjie the family bulldog any time he came near. The parrot would scream at the top of his lungs, “Boodjie is a sonofabitch! Boodjie is a sonofabitch!”

I’m pretty sure between Little Bubba and the cursing parrot, the women in our family died prematurely.