D Day or Should I say De-B Day Is Upon Me!

A few of you astute readers may have recognized that I have been conspicuous by my absence!?! I thought I could do it all: have breast cancer, go through chemo, work as much as my body lets me, deal with complications from chemo (i.e. infection), run this blog, and have a life. Sheesh! What's a girl to do, I ask you? I apparently dropped more than a few balls

Fat, Dumb, And Bald

Is no way to go through life, or so Dean Wormer says in Animal House



This is as much skin as the WPP (Witless Protection Program)
allows me to show. Funny, even though I have her haircut,
I still don't look like Sinead O'Connor. Wahhh.

 Ok. Enough!!! Let the veil of silence be shattered! Time for an update. And a recipe.

No. Recipes will have to wait till I don't feel like hurling toes or blowing chunks.

Update will have to do for now. Please continue your patience for a day or two longer?

Well, so here's the poop.

Fancy Pants Swiss Chard With Sun Dried Tomatoes, Pine Nuts and Garlic

Swiss Chard – An Anti-Cancer Rock Star

Find Printable Recipe Here

Few people south of the Mason Dixon can claim ignorance about “greens.” No, I don’t mean salad greens either. Salad greens = Iceberg Lettuce back in the day. We might see an occasional curly or red leaf lettuce but that was only after Mama and Daddy got
 

Breast Cancer

Sorry to everyone to be less than current on posts.

I've had some unexpected test results come in and it looks like I'm going to be battling breast cancer in the future months. I don't mind telling you that fear has me in its nasty grip and I'm up and down faster than a rollercoaster.

Waiting to get into the doctors and see what they have to say and how they want to attack this beast. And I can truthfully tell you its the wait of my life. I'm not feeling very motivated to work or post right now. What little sleep I'm getting leaves me in a state of unrest, anxiety and exhaustion.

So sorry to let you all down and hope you will hang in there for a bit and let me get my sea-legs with all of this news. I believe I will be posting more than ever once I find balance. I believe in the way I'm eating (well maybe "brown" will have to take a bit of a back seat in favor of green, but I believe I will still pursue a low carb way of life and will still pursue fats in favor of carbs and excessive proteins).

I will be back in touch soon to post a new flavor packed, sassy, Texan thread.

Blessings all around!

Food Porn Surfing

Surfs up! Begin surfing food porn NOW!

Sometimes teasing is better than eating.



BBQ Beef Rib, Grilled Italian Sausage, Revolution Roll Focaccia
with Bruschetta, Ugly Green Beans and Chile Lime Slaw

 Go ahead admit it. You like porn. Food porn that is…

Honk If You Love Food Porn!
So do I! Many would call us obsessed or doomed to failure because our life with food appears out of balance.

But I say, “Pish, posh, piffle!”

Surfing food porn doesn’t mean anything of the sort. It means we take pleasure in food and that’s ok. I believe God says, “That’s ok!”

Omelet Mess

Any Omelet This Big Has To Be Called An Omelet Mess

Find Printable Recipe Here


Omelet Mess - the omelet so big it threated to seize
control of the kitchen! So I ate it.

First off, let me get right to it. Omelet should be spelled with 2 “Ts” and 3 “Es”. It should look like Omelette. I’m just sayin’.

Now…second thing I’m gonna say? If more omelets looked like this picture, more people would be dreamin’ about their last big omelet in the same way we dream of other comfort food – oh say, chicken n’ dumplings for instance. But they don’t and we can’t.

Smart Margarita

Think of This as Low Carb Margarita 2.1 - The Next Generation (That's 2.1 net carbs Thank You Very Much!)

Find Printable Recipe Here

You can’t have Cinco de Mayo without having a margarita or at least a beer with ice and lime, right? I mean, Cinco de Mayo is synonymous with “drink heavily of tequila and eat great Mexican food” – right? Am I right?

Eating a low or controlled carb diet doesn’t have to mean “the end” to your favorite sweet
 

Green Chili Chicken Enchilada Stack

Seriously Stacked, It's Where It's At! The El Chupacabre of Leftovers! Olé!

Green Chili Chicken Enchilada Stack -
the king of Tex Mex.

Dang! Green Chili Chicken Enchilada Stack - now that’s a mouthful, and you haven’t even picked up a fork yet. Green Chili Chicken Enchiladas epitomizes Tex Mex comfort food at its best. I hear ya. You’re sayin’, but where is the red sauce? Where is the enchilada sauce?!!!

Sometimes it’s good to go green! I could even go so far as to call this a king among Tex Mex

Green Chili Pulled Chicken

Green Chili Pulled Chicken Jalapeno Poppers
served with fresh salsa, guac and sour cream.

Thank You New Mexico! (For allowing us to steal your green chiles...)



You might have missed this, but I’m from Texas.

In the old days, when my sisters and brothers and I were growin’ up – yes, we grew up in the olden days. We had black and white tv’s and there was no such thing as a cell phone, and Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet…

But when we were growin’ up, Texas was divided into 2 kinds

Ole! Corn Tortillas In Time For Cinco de Mayo

Putting The Crunch Back In Your Tex Mex!

Find Printable Recipe Here

You can’t be a Texan without loving Tex Mex food. Steeped in tradition, heavily influenced by Hispanic culture for hundreds of years, Texans know Cinco de Mayo. Long considered a feast day, Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexican heritage and pride.

May 5th, commemorates the defeat of French invaders by Mexican forces during the Civil War years in a tiny town named Puebla - in Mexico. But what most Texans mainly know about Cinco de Mayo is that Cinco de Mayo really translates in English to “party like it’s 1999 with great Mexican food and tequila, family and friends.”

We mean, REALLY PARTY!

Spicy Sambal Spinach

My Spinach Does The Sambal – Can Yours?

I See Dancing Spinach

Find Printable Recipe Here 

Sometimes spicy spinach is the only thing between you and insanity. I mean it. Some days are completely nuts here and just when you’re about to lose it, you happen to glance over at your sauté pan and see your garlic doing the tango and you spinach doing the sambal! Oelek that is. Sambal Oelek.

Quickly now.

Repeat after me. Sambal Oelek.

Now rush to look in your ice box (fridge by any other name).

Wha? What? Don’t see it? Horrors!

Don't panic! OK?

5 Tried And True Recipes for Leftover Easter Eggs

Ah Leftover Easter Eggs - We All Got 'Em - Whaddawe Do With 'Em?



SusieT and the whole dern Gibbs clan - Easter 1965



So many of us have our family traditions for feast days and they often relate to childhood and what our folks made. And we make the same things year in and year out as part of tradition! Easter at our house was always a brunch and almost always involved ham or some charred offering from the barbeque, if Daddy was cooking. Daddy was a fan of brown food too, just like me! Maybe I inherited that gene – the brown gene!

I'm not even gonna try to compete with your family memories and traditions. Nope. "Not gonnah," in the words of 41. (He and Bar live here in Houston btw, if you will allow me to name drop, and my BIL saw him at the drugstore one night - I think they were both there for the Nyquil. It was cold n flu season after all.)

Slider Buns and Focaccia Bread - Revolution Style

Coconut Flour Revolution Roll Batter Goes Wild

 

Slider Buns and Focaccia Bread
Revolution Style!

I know we just did Revolution Rolls, but I wasn’t kidding when I told you in the Basic Revolution Roll post that there are more versions of this recipe than Carter has little liver pills. I use the Revolution Roll batter with a little tweak to make slider rolls and focaccia too. 

It's so versatile! This recipe uses coconut flour. Coconut flour is de-fatted flour made from…you guessed it - coconuts! (Thanks to my friend, Dottie, an admin over on the LCF – Low Carb Friends board for the suggestion!)
If you eat a controlled carb diet, you need coconut flour.

Zucchini Zoodles Knock Out Pasta In Round One

Functional Food With a One-Two Punch!

Find Printable Recipe Here



Zucchini Zoodles coming out
of the Vertical Spiral Slicer

 Pasta represents a huge ooga-booga bear. I’m weak-willed and more than a little slutty when it comes to pasta. I want it badly. I beg to go steady with it. I text and phone it incessantly. It is my heroin and I have few defenses against its seductive allure. In fact, put pasta up against any kind of sweet you can imagine and pasta will win before the match begins.

I love it that match.

I covet my neighbor’s pasta is what I do. I’m a coveter.

And the only two things that get me past “my preciouses” are my totally functional food buddies: zoodles and the handy, dandy Konjac noodles whom you’ve already met.

Four Chili Grilled Chicken With Cilantro Cream Sauce

Taste The Flavah - Not The Heat!

Find Printable Recipe Here

Four Chili Grilled Chicken – just the name probably starts palpitations in all you non-Texans, right? But do not fear Chili Wrangler is here to teach you how to get the flavor out of your chiles without the heat bomb. You too can be enjoying vitamin rich chiles and peppers just like Big Tex within minutes. It’s so easy!

Four Chili Grilled Chicken or Four Chili Grilled Chix for short is packed with nutrients. Chili peppers are chock full of Vitamin C, VitaminA

Your Basic Revolution Rolls

Kinda looks like manna from heaven, right?

Revolutionary Rolls from a Revolutionary Doctor



Learn The Rev Roll Technique Now

What do a roll and a doctor have in common? Like the first shot heard round the world during the American Revolution, the Revolution Roll and Dr. Atkin’s team who invented it, fired a mighty shot heard round the dieting world.

Un-Corned Beef Reuben

(The Best Un-Corned, Un-New York, Un-Jewish, Un-Sandwich You’ve Ever Tasted)

Find Printable Recipe Here

What on earth do you make with Un-Corned Beef, you ask? Making a Reuben sandwich tops my list. The best Reuben comes from corned beef made in New York and is served on dense, rustic, pumpernickel rye bread. It’s toasted on a griddle with gooey Swiss cheese and gobs of butter and is served topped with crispy, salty sauerkraut and mildly sweet Russian dressing. Oh my gosh, where’s my drool cup when I really need it?

Un-Corned Beef Brisket

Jimmy crack corn-ed beef and I don’t care…

Find Printable Recipe Here

If I had to mention any faults, lack of forward planning, would top the list. I am still stuck in a Twilight Zone limbo from high school and college. Please remind me sometime that I can not pull an all-niter when it comes to getting ingredients. Nor can I manufacture curing time of 5-21 days on a whim in order to make authentic New Yorker-style corned beef brisket at home?

Faux Pho

(Fee-Fi-Faux-Pho! The Little Fake Pho Soup That Could)

Find Printable Recipe Here

This great little pho can be made in a jiffy and thanks to a few grown-up options, it’s packed with Vitamins A, C, Potassium and minerals like Calcium and magnesium added by God and not the guy working the assembly line in the manufacturing plant. Faux Pho is a Vietnamese style soup made up to appease my nasty cravings for Ramen noodles and chicken noodle soup.