I had decided to fast til dinnertime, since the pizza-fest last night was certainly doing a great job at keeping my appetite at bay. I had a productive morning of wrapping gifts, but when I couldn't bear to tear off another tab of sticky tape, I turned to my other favourite holidays activity - cooking!
Examining the contents of my pantry, I saw nuts, cacao, eggs, and not much else. Assuming I didn't have enough supplies on hand to try anything exciting, I got busy making the beau another batch of grain-free granola.
As I stirred the half-toasted nuts & coconut midway through the process, I had a sudden brainwave - couldn't I use the chunky texture of the granola as the base for some sort of pie? My Choc-Cherry Tart worked very well with the fine delicateness of an almond flour crust, but how about playing with something a bit bulkier?
I checked the freezer - lots of small, sweet berries... How about a layer or those on top of the nuts, topped with the choc mix from the Choc-Cherry Tarts since I had promised readers that I would play with cutting the amount of cacao and butter required, as well as trying a bit of cacao powder rather than just the pricier solids.
The result?
Primal Choc-Berry Pie!
Ohhh yes... I think I've found my contribution to the family Christmas party lunch!
And how is it that I am so confident?
Well, I served up a slice of pie to the beau, my devoted taste-tester... He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully...
"It's good..."
"And?"
"It's not very sweet. The fruit is sweet. The crust is very nice. The chocolate is a bit strong, but the fruit works with it..."
"So it's sweet enough?"
"I don't know."
"Is it nice?"
"Yeah... It's hard to describe."
ARGH!
So I did what any good chef would have done - I ate a slice.
Oh my Gawd.
Amazing.
I held back on the sweeteners (erythritol, stevia and xylitol), so the fruit held all the power and the darkness of the chocolate thrilled my accustomed palate, combining with the berrries and nuts in an orgasmic frenzy of decadence! Seriously. I'm amazed I was able to put the rest of the pie into the fridge. Huzzah for will-power! And it helps that just one small slice filled up my fasted self more than adequately! Wow, fluffy yet filling, exploding with rich flavours...
After dancing around the house with joy, I settled back into my gift-wrapping for another couple of hours. My hopes for a warm patch of sunlight hitting the hammock late-arvo were dashed by the cool breeze persisting even once the clouds had passed. Tomorrow promises to be warmer... Much warmer! Ah, gotta love 10-degree jumps in average temperatures from one day to the next...
Dinner:
What did I have in the fridge? Chicken, bacon, salami, and some leftover mozzarella from the pizzas last night...
Enter Pizza Chicken!
Two chicken breasts, cut to lie flat and open, are grilled alongside some bacon. The bacon is removed from the grill and finely chopped, as is some salami and mozzarella. Herbs are added to the chopped goodness - basil was the herb of choice here.
Chicken breasts are removed from the grill, covered with piza toppings, then placed under the broiler until cheese is melted.
The flavour danced the barrier between the good KFC and the really good pizza. Wow. I'll be trying the three meat products in combination again soon, so hopefully the success of Pizza Chicken doesn't rely too much on the cheese... Maybe I could just stuff the chicken with salami, wrap it in chicken, and grill... Mmmmmm....
I cut out grains, sugar and starches at the beginning of 2009. I have been keeping a journal as I have progressively shed my bulges and my processed foods. I am aiming to live a clean, primal lifestyle, and I wish to share my eating habits with those who wish to clean up their lifestyle and live happily and healthfully. As the cliche states - if I can do it, so can everybody else.
2 comments:
Hello, what do you think about butter? Do you think butter helps to increase satiety? Because i read in an article the importance of fats on low-carb diets. So i have been introducing butter in my diet. This is what my new diet with butter looks like:
this is what my new ketogenic low-carb diet looks like:
Breakfast:
Protein pancake
1 cup of egg whites or 1 cup of egg-beaters
1 scoop of whey protein powder
1 table-spoon of regular butter
Mix ingredients and cook like a pancake
Lunch:
10 to 14 ounces of baked chicken or turkey
Dinner:
Protein pancake
1 cup of egg-whites
1/2 cup of egg-beaters
2 scoops of whey protein powder
1 spoon of butter
Mix ingredients in blender and cook like a pancake
if u feel hungry between meals eat pieces of cold meat, or turkey breast ham
.
Hello again, read this important article i got from the web, about the importance of high-fat intake on low-carb diets:
WHY LOW-CARB DIETS MUST BE HIGH IN FAT.
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fat-not-protein.html
Introduction
We now know that we should eat a diet that is low in carbohydrates. But a plethora of books published in the last decade have been low-carb, high-protein, or low-carb, high-fat, or low-carb, high-'good'-fats, or all sorts of other mixtures. In other words, the real confusion lies in what we should replace the carbohydrates with: for example, should it be protein or fats? And if fats, what sort of fats? This article, I hope, will answer the question and put any doubts out of your mind. In a nutshell, carbs should be replaced with fats, and those fats should be mainly from animal sources.
Our bodies use carbs for only one purpose: to provide energy. When we cut down on carbs, the energy our bodies need has to come from somewhere else.
There are only two choices: Protein or fat.
ATP: our bodies' fuel
The fuel that our body cells use for energy is actually neither glucose nor fat, it is a chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). A typical human cell may contain nearly one billion molecules of ATP at any one moment, and those may be used and re-supplied every three minutes.[i] This huge demand for ATP, and our evolutionary history, has resulted in our bodies' developing several different pathways for its manufacture.
Oxygen and mitochondria
Living organisms have two means to produce the energy they need to live. The first is fermentation, a primitive process that doesn't require the presence of oxygen. This is the way that anaerobic (meaning 'without oxygen') bacteria break down glucose to produce energy. Our body cells can use this method. The second — aerobic (meaning 'using oxygen') — method began after the Earth began to cool down and its atmosphere became rich in oxygen. After this event, a new type of cell — a eukaryotic cell — evolved to use it. Today all organisms more complex than bacteria use this property and all animal life requires oxygen to function. When we breathe in, our lungs are used to extract the oxygen in air and pass it to the bloodstream for transport through the body. And in our bodies, it is our body cells' mitochondria — little power plants that produce most of the energy our bodies need — that use this oxygen. The process is called 'respiration'. This process takes the basic fuel source and oxidises it to produce ATP. The numbers of mitochondria in each cell varies, but as much as half of the total cell volume can be mitochondria. The important point to note is that mitochondria are primarily designed to use fats.
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