Bonus Recipe - Pumpkin Sausage Soup - Low Carb Fun!

Pumpkin Sausage Soup served in a roasted
mini jack o' lantern

Pumpkin Sausage Soup and fall = low carb comfort food delux! Serve that same soup in roasted jack o' lanterns and you have a one-pot-wonder soup that's perfect for pre-trick-or-treating and Halloween partyin'! Fluffy Chix Cook came up with a bonus recipe over at CarbSmart Magazine for the Budget Low Carb Cooking or the Feed 4 Under $10 series.

In case you missed Part I of Ghoulishly Grisly Low Carb Dinners where I show everyone how to make a meal for a family of 4 that's festive and fun for under $10! I made Guts 'N' Worms (Polish Sausage and Cabbage with Caraway Seeds and Apple) and Monster Claws (Breaded Oven Baked Chicken Fingers with Spicy Asian Mustard Dipping Sauce) and I don't mind tellin' you, the "boys" just couldn't keep their little monkey paws off of either of those dishes - although they did tell me, the scary names are what sold it to them. They were prepared not to eat either dish till I got creative and remarketed the dishes to them under new, exciting, and daring names. (The little buggers.)

And now we bring you Part II - a Bonus Meal! Yummy low carb Pumpkin Sausage Soup with a twist! I add smoked turkey leg to mine and make a rich smoky broth and add the turkey meat once it's tender and moist. Combined with the breakfast sausage it's fabulous!

Low carbers either love it or hate it. I love this soup. Especially when I make it with the Fluffy Chix spin on it! Using smoked turkey leg or smoked meat like ham hocks, neck bones, turkey wings, turkey breast, ham, or smoked sausage gives an earthiness to the plain ol' pumpkin

Mashed Cauliflower, Rutabaga and Turnips – 2 Ways

Low carb winter mash gives starchy potatoes the heave “hoe”!

Roasted Winter Mash - Low carb roasted cauliflower,
rutabaga and turnips by any other name is perfect with
creamed gravy and low carb Wienerschnitzel.

Fall is upon us all and you know what that means, doncha? (Well, except for us…we're in coastal Texas, remember? We're still locked in summer's death grip and 90 degree weather.) But for most of the country, fall is synonymous with soups and stews, and crock pot roasts and slowly baked meats of all kinds, and pan gravies and well, umami out the ying yang!

Comfort food dude and dudette! 

Fall = Comfort Food

And before we know it, Thanksgiving will be upon us and everyone will be scrambling to decide the side dishes that let’s face it ARE the stars of the really big Thanksgiving Show.

I figured we could get started early with a few Thanksgiving sides and Fall/Winter Classics that will free you from the demon starch monster – ol’ Idaho Ike himself, the tyrannical potato. I don’t know how many low carbers’dreams have been squelched by falling off the low carb wagon and having those rusty wagon wheels

Ghoulishly Grisly Low Carb Halloween Budget Meals

 Polish Sausage with Cabbage, Caraway and Apple and Oven Roasted Chicken Nuggets are Low Carb
but just don't sound as scary as Guts 'N' Worms or Monster Claws!



Happy Low Carb Halloweeny!



Remember the old joke, "What's worse than finding a worm in an apple?"

Heehee!

Ok, humor me here. Admittedly the two meals I made for the CarbSmart Budget Low Carb Cooking article this month sound a lot scarier than they look!

The Budget Low Carb Cooking October article impressed the "boys". The re-naming really helped present my case because they thought the scary named dishes tasted way better than the counterparts with plain ol' boring names.

For some reason I have a tough time getting them to eat cooked cabbage but dangit! They will eat those grisly worms like nobody's beeswax - slurping and drooling and trying to gross everyone at the table right off their feed! Especially if I tell them they better not eat 'em!

Eating to Beat Breast Cancer - Part 2 and 3 of a 3 Part Series is Up at CarbSmart

Nutritious and delicious bone broth a la Dr. Mary Enig
and Sally Fallon was one of the items I ate while undergoing
treatment for Stage IIIC Breast Cancer.

Whooooooo doggey. Seems like I'm always apologizin' for bein' away. I leave you guys sittin' there wonderin', "Why don't she write?"

You'd be forgiven for thinking I mighta gotten shot by an arrow and fell dead, plumb off my wagon as I was headin' west - like that poor fellow in Dances With Wolves. But I haven't. Sadly, my time at the puter is limited these days as is time in the kitchen. I have to rebuild the muscles in my back because they get very fatigued, which sets off a huge storm of pain.

You see, I had my angels' wings clipped as part of the reconstruction surgery 1 of 3-4 on Ginger and Mary Ann 2.0. Smaller, stronger, perkier and best yet, the replacement pair are not supposed to conspire to kill me like the original pair tried to do last year.

WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!
Graphic images of angel wingectomy (Latissimus Dorsi Flap Procedure) ahead. Look away if you can! I cannot be responsible for makin' you hurl.

Poor Man's Beef Stroganoff with Buttery Cabbage Noodles

Eating like poor folk doesn't equate to eating poorly.

Big steaming bowl of low carb Poor Man's
Beef Stroganoff with Buttery Cabbage Noodles.

Thanks for your patience last month as I prepared for a major surgery on the girls. Team Save Second Base has been a provisional success and assuming I continue to heal and don't start to reject my self-donated (autologus) tissue transplants, I should theoretically wind up with a pair that won't try to kill me like the originals - who were unceramonously voted off Survivor Island last November 1, 2011.

All I can say is, whooooo doooooggggggey! Finally!

I’ve been waitin’ and waitin’ for fall to arrive here in Texas and it looks like if I blinked, I may have just missed it. I’m pretty sure we had two days and two nights of fall last week, but I was in an

Eating To Beat Breast Cancer _ Part I of 3 at CarbSmart Magazine

Happy October everyone. I pray that fall finds you hail and hearty and firmly in the Group of 7.

What is the Group of 7, you ask?

Well, the latest facts and figures on breast cancer indicate that 1 out of every 8 women will be intimately affected by breast cancer in their lifetime. 1 of every 8 will hear, "I'm sorry, you have breast cancer."

I invite all of you to join me over at CarbSmart for the three part series Eating to Beat Breast Cancer. You'll learn that having cancer is no easy feat. You must learn an entirely new language as quickly as possible in order to make treatment decisions and understand odds and outcomes. You're faced with conflicting information everywhere you turn. And you have no idea if you should be juicing or going vegan or eating low fat or do you gamble on low carb nutrition.

It's confusing and scary and maybe one of the most ghoulishly garish (hat tip to Halloween) trips you will ever take if you are that unfortunate 8th woman out (or man, since men are a quickly growing breast cancer population).

Join me please for the October Breast Cancer Awareness month. Remember to Coppafeel at the same time, ok?

I do wish I had a donate button on the site. I would like to collect and contribute toward funding nutritional studies. Maybe next year...

I hope to be back here soon with a tempting fall treat - Poor Man's Beef Stroganoff with Buttery Cabbage Noodles.

Yummy!