My first 4-H sewing project

I must have been about 8 years old when I did my first 4-H Club sewing project. We had to do a skirt and a scarf. The skirt is long gone, but I still have the scarf, nestled in my drawer of dishtowels.

I just bought a huge new bowl (on sale from Amazon, has a big dent but paid $20 for a $100 bowl!). I am now doing many more boules and batons for market, and the dough just doesn't fit in any of my bowls for the crucial initial mixing stage. I have a nice big plastic container with room to spare -- holds 12 quarts --  for my bulk fermentation, but I needed that BIG bowl.

I used it for the first time this morning, and it was nice to have all that room in the bowl. However, when I went to cover it, a dish towel is too small. Voila! There was the scarf from the 1949 sewing project! I don't know how many washings it will tolerate, so I am handling it like fine China.

Here is my new bowl with the scarf from my first sewing project! I was so proud of it! Brings back many memories. Where did the years go?

The scarf

How did I start blogging?

I have been blogging for quite a while now, starting with my farm life. So many of you have been with me through chicken stories, pet stories, cooking stories, and now, grandchildren getting married stories.

How did I start blogging? I went to a movie.

I saw Julie and Julia - twice in the theatre, and countless additional times since I bought the DVD. Julie blogged - she started a blog to talk about making every recipe in Julia Child's book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Eventually it led to a movie! I was so inspired that I walked out of the theatre, went home and wrote my first blog.

I don't do any thing tricky, just write my stuff and upload pics. My life is interesting enough that there seem to be over a hundred hits for every blog lately, and that makes me happy - happy to share bits of my life with you.

Still waiting for a movie contract though. Just saying . . .

My bookmark in the book My Life In France is a boarding pass from my trip to France!

Starting things - and finishing things

My counter top is full of projects. A week ago, I started a new batch of fermented mustard pickles. They can be jarred this Friday. Same day, I started a jar of sauerkraut. Forgot to put in juniper berries, but I will do that with my next batch. I'm eating my last quart from last year right now, so this is perfect timing, although sauerkraut just keeps tasting better with time. But even "new" kraut is better than the store bought stuff.

Fermenting kraut and mustard pickles

My two bowls of poolish are doing their thing - flour, water and a pinch of yeast. It will sit until this evening. I give it 12 hours, by which time I'll see lots of bubbles and it will smell divine! Then it will get mixed into my bread dough. The dough will do a slow rise in fridge until I take it out at 5:00 tomorrow morning to make 15 baguettes for Garden Patch Market.

By tonight, it will be spongy and full of bubbles.

I made buckwheat pancakes for breakfast this morning and realized the jar of homemade sprouted buckwheat flour is getting kind of low. So more buckwheat was soaked this morning, then will be rinsed and drained daily until I see plenty of sprouts. Then it goes into the dehydrator for a few hours and is ground into flour for my beloved buckwheat pancakes. I mix it half and half with my low carb baking mix. Sprouting the grain gets rid of a few carbs, so my diet can tolerate a plate of buckwheat pancakes once every week or two, especially after a really intense workout at the gym.

Buckwheat groats soaked and set to sprout

I make kefir for a couple of people and have a delivery tomorrow, so the milk is sitting on the counter, with kefir grains added. By tonight it should be just right. I'll bottle it and take with me to market tomorrow.

By tomorrow morning, it will be thick, creamy kefir made with A2 milk - high nutrients

One of my customers loves my sourdough rye bread (only leavening in the bread dough is yeast that I caught in my kitchen when I moved here three years ago), and the jar of sourdough came out of the fridge for a hefty feeding so that I will have enough to do a recipe for two loaves tomorrow and Friday. Yes, that's right - it takes at least two days to make my sourdough rye bread, but it's worth the wait. He will be at market Saturday to pick up his loaf, and there will be two half loaves for sale along side the French baguettes. Those two breads are at the opposite ends of the bread spectrum, let me tell you, but both mighty fine.

I can already see some bubbles forming!

Last but not least, I'm making Easy Slow Cooker Lemon Custard, a low carb recipe with liquid stevia, fresh lemon juice and rind, egg yolks and heavy cream. It is in my slow cooker in a water bath for three hours. First time I've made it. Hope it turns out well.

Organic lemons, organic egg yolks, heavy cream, a little stevia for sweetening. 

Once a month, my minister and I have dinner here together and talk over church business.  I'm president of the board this year, and we seem to accumulate a few knotty issues that need some extra attention each month. Tonight's the night. He will just have to put up with my low carb stuff - although he is bringing the appetizers, his choice. Menu: Rev. Chip's appetizers, sweet red peppers stuffed with cauli-rice smothered in meat and tomato sauce, sautéed beans with garlic and cherry tomato cream sauce, and the lemon custards for dessert.

Well, back to work. Christina will be here to work in the soap room in an hour, and I have to get the work schedule together, get labels printed, jars set out, etc. so that we make the best use of our time today. In three hours, we put out a LOT of product!

New bread baking process this morning!

WOW!!

Well, I used my couche, bread flipper and burn prevention gloves for the first time this morning. Oh, WOW! I cannot believe how beautiful the bread is turning out.

I am a bit clumsy with flipping the loaves directly onto the baking stone, and I made the first five loaves a little too long. One of them has a bent tip where it was too long for the baking stone.

The texture is unbelievable! Take a look at these pics.

Loaves rising in the couche

Loaves baking directly on baking stone - no pans anymore!

First loaves out of the oven - 10 more to go

Look at the crumb, the texture - perfection! 

Why I was late to the market AGAIN!

Jerry told me about these wonderful pickles his mother made called mustard pickles. They were made in a crock, fermented for ten days, and then could be kept in a cool dark place without refrigeration for up to a year. My kind of pickle!

My one and only invention is my Easy Peasy Fermenting Jar. I originally called it my Suze Goldberg Pickling Jar, since one of my nicknames is Suze, and I put it together from odds and ends in my kitchen. But given the history of Rube Goldberg inventions, it may have given the impression that it would be unnecessarily complex. My jar is simple and it works! So I renamed it to reflect how easy it makes what was kind of a messy job.

I had several crocks and used them to make my own pickles. But even with a weighted plate on the pickles, skimming of mold was required. It was messy. There was a fermenting jar for sale on the internet - $30 plus shipping and no mold to deal with. It had a unique jar that, if broken, cost $20 (and shipping) to replace. I could do better than that. I am a frugal person.

I rooted through my cupboards and found a half gallon wide mouth canning jar, big enough to hold large head of cabbage if fermenting sauerkraut. Two of them would hold a half peck of pickling cukes. Perfect!

The trick to stopping mold is to keep the oxygen out of the process. The on-line pickling jar had a looped straw in the lid to allow any gasses to escape, and the lid screwed on tight to keep out air. So how would I keep the air out of my jar? No matter how full I filled it with my salt water, there was sure to be a small amount of air trapped in the top when I screwed the lid on. And a tight lid plus a build up of gases could actually cause the jar to explode.

I did some more rooting and found the perfect insert - a very small soufflé cup that we had used in my restaurant. It fit firmly into the neck of the jar and had straight sides. I filled the jar with pickles, spices, oak leaves for tannin, and salt water, making sure that the insert fit completely into the neck. When I inserted it, with the jar in a shallow bowl, a little of the saltwater spilled out. This meant that there was no air in that jar! The insert was heavy enough to keep the pickles under the salt water, and light enough that if gases accumulated, it would allow them to escape. You can always add a bit more saltwater if there are too many burps, which could allow a little air into the jar.

Suze's Easy Peasy Fermenting Jar at work

In five days, you will have tremendous dill pickles. In a week, you will have mighty fine sauerkraut. In ten days you will have mustard pickles. However I can't attest to how good they will taste because the reason I was late today is because I was making my first ever batch of Mustard Pickles. We will see. (Update: August 11, 2017 - decanted the pickles. They are fantastic!)

Today's Mustard Pickles. Will be ready August 11, 2017.

My new best friend - Ankarsrum!

Okay, if you are not an avid bread baker, you will probably find this blog pretty boring. However, if you like to bake bread, read on. Or maybe even if you just like to eat bread, read on.

When I found out quickly that even a Kitchen Aid "Professional" mixer wasn't going to work for me, instead of falling back on my 20 year old Kenwood that was getting a little cranky I looked into getting a mixer that was up to the task at hand.

I don't make enough bread (and my oven will only do six baguettes at a time anyway) to justify getting a big honking mixer, but there had to be something to replace my Kenwood. I knew the Kenwood would only do the dough for six loaves at a time. I tried doing nine, but it really worked hard, and besides, I do 12 loaves for a standard order, so the extra three loaves were meaningless.

While researching mixers for bread dough, I looked at an Ankarsrum, a weird looking Swedish machine. The dough hook stays stationary and the bowl turns. The motor is in the bottom, which means it is more stable while mixing. No sense having a mixer that you have to stand over to keep it from walking off the counter. I well know that! Did it twice with my Kenwood, and the second time I even figured out how to put it together on my own, didn't have to call in Allen to put it together for me. That 20 year old Kenwood is one mighty machine, let me tell you, but as I said, only six loaves at a time, and this walking problem.

I did a lot of research on the Ankarsum - finally learned how to pronounce it. It's "anchor shroom," in case you want to know. I talked to people who had used them. One person said it could do up to 15 pounds of dough, which would be 18 baguettes. I didn't count on that, and it's a good thing I didn't. Its max is the 12 baguettes worth of dough that I was looking for. There is no bowl cover, so there is a little problem with flour flying all over when I start a batch, but I am finding some ways to work around that. Unless you are a bread baker, this is all meaningless, but I start the poolish in the mixer bowl, let it sit for 12 hours right in the bowl, then put in the flour, and then pour in the water over the flour, which helps to keep the flying flour problem down. I wish it would go just a tad slower when starting up. That too would help to reduce flying flour.

I bought the slicer/shredder attachment, and it is fabulous! I slice and dehydrate organic sweet potatoes for one of my trail mixes, and it made short work of the slicing. I also bought the blender. I used it this morning, and it too is fantastic. This means I could sell my Cuisinart food processor, since there is nothing that I was doing with it that I can't do as well (or better!) with the Ankarsrum.

The only attachment I still want is the meat grinder, which has five different sized holes for rough grind to fine, attachments for making spaghetti and linguini, and even a cookie press. I cannot imagine how that works, but it comes with the package. So why not? Here is a picture of the basic machine. It is sitting with the poolish in it for the 12 baguettes I will make for Garden Patch, to be delivered at 10 am on my way to market every Thursday.

Isn't she beautiful?

I have been playing with it now for several months, and I have found that switching to a different kneading attachment after the first 8 minutes of kneading with the big dough hook produces an even finer dough. The big discovery is that the better the kneading, the less yeast I have to use. I am down to using only a teaspoon and a half of yeast for 12 loaves. Before I discovered poolishes and slow cold rises, I was using about a teaspoon per loaf! Since yeast is a very expensive component of a baguette, this is significant. In fact, I am going to try to cut it down just a little more, since I am having trouble with the dough rising too much during the cold rise period in the fridge. I have to knock it down at least twice a day. I do believe the extra effort I am getting from the yeast is from using that second kneading implement instead of just the dough hook. It is working miracles on that bowl of dough!

Well, if I haven't put you to sleep with this blog, stop by the Garden Patch market on Thursdays for a beautiful and tasty true French baguette, or stop by my booth at the South Bend Farmers Market on Saturdays. Every other week, the Farmers Market baguettes are made from ancient grain flour (Einkorn), which my customers who are sensitive to gluten tell me they can eat. Sorry, no dice if you have celiac disease, but if it is just gluten sensitivity, the ancient grains have a genetically different gluten in them, and they are tolerable for many who can't eat bread made with today's hybridized wheat flours.

Fresh baked bread with a nice slab of good cheese or a slice of a meaty French terrine. Mmmmmm! Bon appétit.

NEW RECIPE - Low Carb Tuscan Kale Soup

This is adapted from a recipe I found for a soup with kale and white beans, which is a match made in heaven. Unfortunately, those white beans make it impossible for me to eat it.

To make it my own, I left out the beans, changed some proportions, added some hot pepper flakes, changed the method here and there, and came up with something that I hope is just as good, without the carb overload. Recipe called for grated Parmesan cheese, but I had some nice artisan cheese in the fridge. I grated it using the grater with large holes, needed only a tablespoon or so on the soup to add a real kick of flavor.

I didn't run this through my program, but eye-balling it, there shouldn't be more than six or seven grams of carbs in a BIG bowl of soup. It's a meal!

Tuscan Kale Soup

1 tbsp. EVOO
1 lb. pork sausage (I used mild Italian, not in casings)
½ pound sliced mushrooms
2 cloves peeled and minced garlic
4 cups (or 2 – 14 oz. cans) chicken broth
1 bay leaf
1 or 2 bunches kale, chopped into bite-sized pieces
¼ tsp. red pepper flakes
Salt – depends on how salty the chicken broth is. Taste first!
Grated cheese – I used some good artisan cheese, grated through large holed grater

Brown the sausage and mushroom in olive oil until sausage is broken up and browned. Add the garlic, then stir and cook for three more minutes. Add broth, bay leaf and kale. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Discard bay leaf.

Serve in large bowls with grated cheese on top.

Serves 4

By Susan Siemers, from Devonshire House Low Carb Delights©

(If you want to reprint recipe, please ask me first. I'd be delighted to share!)

Soup's on!

Bread Baking Class

I offer a bread baking class for a service auction event at the First Unitarian Church of South Bend each fall, and the bidders who won were at my place this weekend learning to make a true French baguette.

So how do I know it's a "true French baguette?" Because I learned to make it last April, in Paris. And now the five people who attended know how to make one as well, without having to go across the pond. I refer to it as my $6,500 baguette - you know, round trip air fare, renting an apartment in Paris, museums, concerts and more -- much, much more. It was the vacation of a lifetime. I'm feeling a bit melancholy now, remembering that a year ago I was packing and anticipating. Now it is just a memory, but one I love to share with my friends.

Here are pics from my own bread baking class last Sunday. We had a wonderful time! I am pretty sure that at least two of the people in the class are very serious about baking bread in the future. We cut two loaves and had a repast of five-meat terrine, smoked salmon, sliced meats and French cheese. I am very much enjoying the leftovers.

The finished terrine, centerpiece of our lunch - see my blog Always read the bad reviews first!

The terrine, unwrapped and sliced

Andrea cutting and weighing

Chuck forming dough

Jim forming loaf

Joseph putting dough on sheet to rise

The spread

340 grams per loaf

Willow making poolish

I'm demonstrating first cut for loaf

What is French bread without meat?

French cheese disappearing

The students' loaves - GOOD JOB!

Students did a great job. Two loaves disappeared during our repast.

Here is a picture of my cousin Ruth and me, with our instructor Chef Alex, showing off the many breads we learned to bake last April in Paris.

Always read the bad reviews first!

When I am shopping on line or trying a new recipe, I gravitate to the least favorable reviews first. If there are any show stoppers there, why go any further? In the case of recipes, I am less concerned, because often the reviewers have some great suggestions, and the recipe ends up being quite tasty.

I am teaching a bread baking class this Sunday. As part of the class, my five students get to partake of a charcuterie board, quite elegant if I do say so myself, with slices of freshly baked baguette and glasses of wine in hand. The highlight of the repast is my three meat terrine.

When I was in Paris, I ate a terrine that made my knees shake. It was fantastic! I have searched recipes but haven't found anything like it. I found a pretty good one on Epicurious.com, and I make one each spring for my bread baking students.

Even though it isn't as good as that memorable terrine in Paris, it is still pretty impressive, and I have never had a complaint when I bring it out, surrounded by cornichons, homemade dill pickles, mustard and Cumberland sauce.

I start it several days in advance. It starts with a trip to the store for ingredients not on hand. After much chopping, weighing and mixing, I put the meat and spices into the bacon lined terrine (yes, the product and the pan are both called "terrine"), wrapped it and then read through the comments at the bottom of the page. One cook wrote that it was good, but not nearly as good as one she had in Paris, so she only gave it two forks. In fact, the reviewer said, she had a spice mix from a famous restaurant in Chicago called The Bakery and said she was going to try to kick up the flavor by adding some of Chef Szathmary's magic pâté spice the next time she made it.

I was excited! I had some of his spice on my shelf and thought, it's not too late to spoon out the meat and add some spice. What a great idea! Then I noticed that the reviewer was SusanVey from Indiana. That's me, folks. I was reading my own review. That was my laugh for the day!

And by the way, I brought it up from my basement fridge where it will marinate for a day before baking, spooned it out of the bacon lining, added the magic spices and put it back to rest. Then after a slow bake, it is weighted and left in fridge for a day or so. Tasting is still a good way off. 

We will see if the suggestion from "SusanVey, Indiana" gets it closer to the wonderful Parisian terrine of my memory.

Terrine marinating for a day before baking

Baked terrine, sitting with weights for a day

After weighting for a day

Wrapped and ready to chill - look for my bread baking class blog to see it sliced and served!

RECIPE - Hard boiled eggs

I hate it when it is nearly impossible to neatly peel a hard boiled egg. So every time I read an article with someone's magic recipe for how to have perfect hard boiled eggs that peel easily, I try it. I am always disappointed. That is because they don't tell you the most important thing - a very fresh egg will NOT peel easily no matter what method you use.

Eggs are one of nature's most perfect foods. And they are encased in great natural packaging. If an egg is not washed, you can safely leave it sit on your counter for a month. There is a natural film on the shell that creates a barrier to keep your eggs safe.

A commercial egg is washed, and that film / barrier has been removed. So you might want to refrigerate them. Mine are on the counter in this great little red ceramic egg carton that I bought. (Just for fun I keep my chicken salt and pepper shakers next to it - a gift from my daughter-in-law Julie, who always seemed to know what I would like.)

Eggs ready for action!

I know, they have been washed, and even if fresh from the farmer at the South Bend Farmers Market, by law they must be washed. But they are gone from my countertop quickly, and I'm still alive. They are never out there more than two weeks. And when the recipe calls for an "egg brought to room temperature," I'm good to go immediately. (One caveat -- if you need to separate whites from yolks, a cold egg separates more easily.)

So back to that egg's natural packaging. In spite of it, an egg begins to shrink inside that shell from day #1. And that shrinkage will be the difference between an egg that gets mutilated when trying to peel it and one from which the shell is easily removed. After just one week of aging on the counter, eggs will peel better because the albumin is shrinking away from the interior of the shell. When refrigerating, give them two weeks. When I was bringing in fresh eggs from the chickens on the farm, I would set a bowl of eggs into the back of the fridge for at least two weeks just for hard boiling. Once your eggs are at least two weeks old, some of those egg peeling pointers may actually make a difference. And three weeks should be guaranteed success, no matter what method you use.

I love Ina Garten's show, the Barefoot Contessa. And I love her method of hard boiling eggs. It is a little different from any I have seen, and I do recommend it. Most supermarket eggs will be well over a week or two old by the time you get them home. If you want guaranteed success, try keeping them for at least another week before hard boiling. If they are straight from the farm, don't use them for hard boiling until they have aged at least two weeks. So here goes, this is Ina's recipe with a couple of small tweaks:

1. Put your eggs into a deep pan and cover completely with cold water.
2. Bring to a full rolling boil. Immediately turn off heat. (If electric stove, remove from burner. On my gas stove, I just let them sit there in the pan of hot water on the turned-off burner.)
3. Here's where Ina's recipe is different. Leave them sit in the water for only FIVE MINUTES!
4. Remove the eggs from the water. Don't rinse with cold water. Just let the warm eggs sit on the counter on a paper towel.
5. Here's where Ina and I differ. She says to wait only two minutes before peeling. I recommend waiting about five minutes. The first egg I tried to peel at two minutes didn't do too well. At five minutes, they peeled beautifully.
6. Now roll the eggs on the counter top with the palm of your hand. The shells will crack into a myriad of small bits.
7. CAREFULLY peel. They should come off pretty well.
8. If you are still having trouble, hold the egg under running water while you peel, my second tweak to Ina's wonderful method.

Great thing about this is that the yolks are still a beautiful yellow color, no green around the edges. They are on the very edge of still being soft in the middle, but they aren't.  They are just perfect!

Thanks, Ina.

Now I'm going to have another deviled egg for breakfast. Recipe for my favorite deviled eggs coming soon.

NEW RECIPE - Steak and blue cheese

Need to kick-start your ketogenic diet? I know I need to, after one too many cheats during the holidays.

Someone gave me a gift certificate to DC meats, and I bought a beautiful New York strip steak. Any good steak will do, or even good quality hamburger. The topping is where it's at. And by the way, it's ZERO carbs.

Take a 4 oz. container of crumbled blue cheese. There is an Amish brand that is very reasonable. Turn it out into a bowl. Add 3 tbsp. soft butter and a rounded tbsp. of fresh grated horseradish. A couple of vendors at the South Bend farmers market have good horseradish. Mix them together with a spoon - should still be a bit lumpy. Then sprinkle a tsp. of good Italian seasoning mix over it. (Ceres & Co. at the farmers market has a really good one, reasonably priced,  and it's organic.)

Liberally salt and pepper your meat. I like to use smoked salt and smoked pepper, especially in the wintertime. Fry your steak or hamburger in a screaming hot cast iron grill pan or skillet - or if the weather is good, on your grill. I like it 5 minutes per side. Meat should still feel springy when you press your finger into the meat. Then put on heated plate to rest for five minutes. While it is resting, spread a fourth to a third of a cup of the blue cheese / horseradish / butter topping evenly over the meat.

Now this is a "get back on track" meal, so tuck in! Only side should be a shot of good bourbon or whiskey. You will definitely be full, and you will be back on track!

Happy New Year! And bon apetit.

Blue cheese topped steak

Do you remember Jumer's cinnamon rolls?

My Illinois roots are showing. When going through my mom's recipe box recently, I found her recipe for Jumer's Castle Lodge cinnamon rolls. I remember my mom saying this was the real Jumer's Castle Lodge recipe. So even though Jumer's has closed its doors for good, their rolls can live on! If you know anyone from Peoria or Bloomington in Illinois or from Bettendorf, Iowa, they will remember Jumer's and these tastey little cinnamon bites. We hope they become a favorite here in South Bend-Mishawaka as well!

The famous Jumer's cinnamon rolls

Want to try some? Available at my booth at the Farmers Market in South Bend today! 

50¢ each or 3 for $1.00.  

Jumer's was an Old World attraction with its Bavarian theme. Elegant, yet it was always within reach of the average person. The lodge was known for its eclectic collection of antiques and German bric-a-brac that included a stuffed black bear. It was truly a unique experience in the Midwest.

I think this was the Peoria site

Need a little bling in your life?

Not too shabby

Dine in style - lots of German dishes.

Soup

I gave away or sold about 100 cookbooks when I moved. If I hadn't used them at all, or was not enthralled with recipes I had used, then if the books were nice, there was a price tag on them, otherwise they went into the pile of a quarter or free.

My new bookcase (part of my birthday present from me to me) is comfortably full, and I have resisted the urge to buy more than the one cookbook that got added to the shelf about a month ago.

Today is a reading type day. While I could spend time in the soap room (need to manufacture pain relief cream, lemon skin renew and triple rose) or cleaning up my office (think large garbage bag), I grabbed a beautiful cookbook from the shelf. It's called Soup - a way of life, by Barbara Kafka. I don't think I have ever cooked a thing out of it, but perhaps today is the day.

I'm making the best of a soggy day, which for once includes a little free time. Hope you make the most of your soggy day, too.

NEW RECIPE - Low carb Belgian waffles

This one is pretty simple, and pretty tasty. I found a recipe for chocolate waffles and invested big money in low carb chocolate whey protein powder from grass fed cows. AND I bought a waffle iron! Big investment. But I really didn't like them. Too much artificial sweetener in them. I wish they hadn't sweetened the whey protein at all and just left it to us to add what we wanted. Oh, well.

So now, there is a waffle iron sitting on my counter, and I have to find a way to use it, of course. And I did. These waffles are much tastier to me, and you add the sweetener to your own liking. I am a firm believer in minimizing even artificial sweeteners, as I do think that sweet taste on your tongue, from whatever source, is apt to make you crave more food, especially sweets.

You will need to invest in a box of Carbquik. (Click on this link for more info:  Carbquik FAQs ) Hopefully you have a waffle iron tucked somewhere in a cupboard. If not, St. Vinnie's, Goodwill and Salvation Army shops are my go-to stores, especially for stuff I am not going to use often.

Low Carb Waffle - single serving (This can be doubled or quadrupled with no problem.)

Turn on your waffle iron. I like mine brown and crisp so I set it on high.

1 large egg, beaten

1/3 C. Carbquik

1/4 C. heavy cream

1/4 C. (or less) water

1 TBSP light olive oil

1 tsp. (or to taste) xylitol for sweetening - or your zero carb sweetener of choice

You can add a spice of your choice. I add about a half teaspoon of Mom's Apple Pie Spice, which is available at my booth. Or just add a healthy shake of cinnamon, nutmeg and whatever sounds good and is at hand. The size of your egg will make a difference, So don't put all of the water in - save a little to thin it more if it is too thick.  It should be fairly thin but not "soupy."

Beat all of the ingredients together. My waffle iron beeps to let me know it is hot enough just about the time I am done with the batter. Pour it into the middle of the iron and put the lid down. It takes about six minutes for mine to be as done as I like.

Put on warmed plate. (Waffles seem to cool down too fast, so a warm plate helps.) Top with about a tablespoon of soft butter, and dig in! If you want to add a tsp. of maple syrup, go for it.  But remember, it's 4.5 carbs per teaspoon, so use with discretion. I really don't think it needs any syrup - just LOTS of butter!!

Here are the nutritional values per waffle.

Calories: 370 / Net Carbs: 3.2 / Fat: 21.8 (not including added butter) / Protein: 12.6 / Fiber: 14 (fiber is already subtracted for net carbs)

Half a waffle - I already ate the other half!

Did a lot of research before purchasing - this is a good machine.

NEW RECIPE - spicy deviled eggs

These are low carb deviled eggs. But then, they all are, unless you add sugar to them, or maple syrup.

I was cleaning the fridge and thought these "extras" from my fridge would enhance deviled eggs, which can get a bit boring when you are on a ketogenic diet. These are definitely NOT boring.

Spicy Deviled Eggs

6 hard boiled eggs
Put eggs in a pan large enough to hold them in one layer. Cover completely with cold water and throw in a half teaspoon of salt to help them peel easier. Set over high heat, no lid on pan. Bring to full rolling boil (should take six to ten minutes, depending on your stove).

When the water boils, turn off heat and put lid on. Set a timer for 10 minutes. If eggs are extra large, then set the timer for 12 minutes. When the timer goes off, immediately pour off the water and pack ice cubes around eggs, then put cold water over all until the eggs are covered. They are ready to peel and use within about 10 minutes, or can be stored in the fridge for several days.

If you are using right away, chop three pieces of bacon into fine dice and cook over low heat while you are doing the eggs. Drain the bacon well.

Peel the eggs, cut in half and turn yolks (which should be beautiful with no green around the edges) into a bowl. Mash with a fork. Add 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 C. mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip, which has sugar in it), 1 tsp. white wine vinegar (one with zero carbs), and a piece of chipotle in adobo sauce (about 1" x 1") which has been finely chopped. Split a scallion long ways into quarters, remove all but an inch or two of green top, and chop finely. Add to the bowl along with the drained bacon bits. Stir to combine and stuff the egg halves.

Garnish each deviled egg with a cilantro leaf.

Enjoy!

Deviled eggs  with a kick

NEW RECIPE - Amy's Pork Carnitas

Amy and I met at my booth at the market. I think it was when I was selling lamb. She LOVES lamb, so that's a good guess! Anyway, we both enjoy food and cooking. We've exchanged several recipes.

Amy loves to garden. She invited me over one Sunday afternoon and I got to see her lovely city garden. I was impressed by all she grew in a small space. She had loads of tomatoes and tomatillos. So what do you make at season's end? Salsa verde, of course. And she blessed me with a pint jar of it, as well as her recipe for pork carnitas.

Ready to eat

If you use wraps and rice, this is NOT low carb. However, there are some low carb options for wraps, or just make up a big plate of cauliflower rice and top it with the spicy pulled pork.

Here's Amy's recipe.

Mix a dry rub:
1 tbsp. chili powder
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
2 tsp. ground cumin

1. Rub on pork butt or shoulder, about 4 pounds.
2. Coarsely chop one yellow onion and place in bottom of a crock pot.
3. Place pork on onion,
4. Pour jar of Amy's salsa verde over the top (or store bought if you don't know Amy!)
5. Cover and set on high for 5 to 6 hours,
6. Break pork apart and mix. Taste and add salt if needed.
7. Serve with hominy or rice (cauliflower rice for us low carbers), roll in burrito (or a coconut wrap for us low carbers), or just pour over chopped lettuce.
8. Crumble or chop Mexican cheese on top, such as Oaxaca or caso blanco, and add some avocado slices or cilantro. 

Nutritional values are for the meat and cauliflower rice only. Be sure to add in your carb count for other accompaniments if you are using them.

Per serving:

		Carbs	Fat	Protein	Calories
	TOTALS	4.23	35.04	42.66	515.69
	% of total calories	5.2%	42.8%	52.1%

Cauliflower rice:
Per serving: grate 3/4 C. cauliflower and brown lightly in 2 tsp. olive oil for 2 minutes. Add salt and red pepper flakes to taste. Put on plate and top with pulled pork from crock pot.

Carbs  Fat  Protein  Calories TOTALS 1.70  2.96 1.10 38.40 % of total 17.7%  69.4%   11.5%

This is a great fall treat. Enjoy!

NEW RECIPE - Susan's Low Carb Chili

With the hint of fall in the air, it seemed time to update my chili recipe. Getting the nutritional values right is very time consuming. I built a model so that I can do it my way. It allows me to play with the recipe, adding or minimizing to get a healthy number of carbs per serving in the finished product without compromising flavor.

All that being said, here is my chili recipe. A few things about it. First, those darned tomatoes! They are a fruit, you know, and so they contribute nearly half of the net carbs in the recipe.  If you want to trim 1.5 carbs per serving, cut them in half. That's the big hitter. Even the onions don't amount to much, and they add a spike of flavor. It's the tomatoes. Sigh . . .

Second, I have written about my views on black soybeans, so you might want to leave them out if you are going to make this often, but I will repeat what I said in my earlier post - a few soybeans are not as bad as a piece of pie. So make it an every now and then treat.

Last but not least, I watch Bobby Flay and Anne Burrell for inspiration frequently, which has made me cognizant of texture and flavor when I am developing a new recipe. So you will see a couple of ingredients in here that are a bit unusual - finely chopped celery for a little bite (and almost NO carbs!), and white wine vinegar, the zero carb kind, to brighten the flavor.  Thanks, Anne and Bobby.

Susan's Low Carb Chili

1 tbsp. olive oil 1/2 C. finely chopped celery 1/4 C. finely diced onions 1 tsp. toasted ground cumin 1 tbsp. chili powder 1 poblano pepper, seeded 1 lb. ground beef 15 oz. can black soy beans, well      rinsed, not turtle beans Diced tomatoes,14 oz. 1 tbsp. tomato paste 1 tbsp. white wine vinegar        (no carb kind) 1/2 tsp. salt 1/2 C. roughly chopped cilantro 1-1/2 C. water

Finely chop the celery, onion and seeded pepper. Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan over medium high heat, then add the vegetables. Put in your chili powder and ground cumin. It improves the flavor of the spices if they are cooked prior to adding the crumbled ground beef to the pan. Once the spices have released their wonderful aroma and the onions are soft but not brown, add the ground beef. Keep the heat on medium high and stand over the burner until the hamburger is cooked almost through. Don't burn the vegetables while you are cooking the meat! Watch over the process. This is no time to check email.

Now add the rinsed soy beans (if using), tomatoes, tomato paste, cilantro, vinegar and salt. Stir to combine well. Add a cup and a half of water. Taste for seasoning. Now is the time to add salt if necessary. Bring to a low simmer, cover the pan and cook for a half hour to an hour, stirring occasionally. NOW you can check your email!

In the picture, there are a couple of garlic croutons on the edge of the bowl. They are very low carb, but that recipe is for later. You can top the chili with butter (which smooths out the tartness of the tomatoes) and sour cream or shredded cheese. Just remember to add in the carbs for the additions. All three are very low carb, but they need to be accounted for.

Revision to original nutritional data! (I'm still working on my model, found major error this morning!)

Nutritional info (with soy beans):

	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Calories
TOTALS	3.32	10.29	1.70	112.00
% of total calories	11.8%	82.2%	6.0%	100.0%
Calories from:	13.3	92.6	6.8	112.6

Bon Appetit!

Susan Siemers
From Devonshire House Low Carb Delights

Susan's Low Carb Chili

Low Carb Black Bean Salad

You will see me referring to "net carbs" and "dietary fiber" in this and other blogs. How do you get net carbs? Start with the total carb count, and then look for an entry that reads "Dietary Fiber." If there is no entry for dietary fiber, then you have to count all of the carbs listed.  If there are dietary fiber grams listed, subtract them from the carb count. Voila! You have the net carbs count. That means if you want to eat something that has a lot of carbs, what might have looked like it was out of bounds can be okay once you have backed out the total dietary fiber grams.

Black soybeans are a good example. I discovered that black soybeans can be used just like turtle beans. This means that my chili is no longer without beans. And best of all, I can make my favorite black bean salad, which I thought was gone from my diet forever.

Now some might argue that we shouldn't eat ANY kind of soybeans. Pardon if I digress, but there are some legitimate arguments against soybeans. They contain phyto-estrogens, so some doctors encourage their patients who are dealing with breast, unterine and ovarian cancers to cut out soybean products, including soy milk and tofu, since estrogen can aggravate cancer of reproductive organs. And what about baby formula? If a baby gets virtually 100% of its diet from soy formula, it is getting the equivalent of five birth control pills every day. That just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Soybeans are also high in phytic acid. Why should you care? Because phytic acid binds to minerals such as calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc and iron. What that means is that it acts like a little vacuum cleaner and sweeps them out of your system. We really ought to hang onto them, don't you think? However, if you don't eat black soybeans every day, if you save them for a now-and-then treat, if you add just a few to a pot of chili so that you discover a bean or two in every spoonful, then I think they are okay. And so far as I am concerned, they are certainly better for us than a piece of pie.

Many people think that dry beans must be low carb. Au contraire. They are loaded! One cup of black turtle beans will set you back 116 carbs. (If you read my blog very often, by now you probably know the magic number for low carbers is 50 grams of carbs - or less! - per day.) You do get to deduct the 29 grams of dietary fiber to get to net carbs, but that is still 87 net carbs, or one full day's carbs plus three fourths of the next. And that's without adding some onions and cilantro to the dish. On the other hand, there are 16 grams of carbs in a cup of black soybeans, and 14 grams of dietary fiber, for a net carb count of only 2 grams. That leaves some room for a few veggies in the salad. And a couple of deviled eggs.

Here is my recipe for Black Bean Salad. If you are in the "hate" column for cilantro (there are only lovers and haters of cilantro, in my experience, no in-between), use parsley. You can use another cheese, so long as you choose one that holds its shape pretty well when the dressing is poured over.

BLACK BEAN SALAD

2 cans (15 oz. each) Edens Organic Black Soybeans (do not substitute other types of black beans - see intro to this recipe)
4 oz. feta cheese, crumbled or cut into 1/4" dice
1/2 C. finely chopped celery
1/4 C. finely diced red onions
1/2 C. roughly chopped cilantro (I'm in the "love" column - see intro)
Juice from one juicy large lime, or two not so great limes (3 to 4 tbsp.)
2 tbsp. good, fruity olive oil
8 to 10 sliced green pimento olives
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. fresh ground pepper
1/8 tsp. red pepper flakes

Rinse the beans well and drain thoroughly. Throw them and all of the other ingredients in a big bowl, stir to combine, and let sit on the counter for about an hour to blend flavors. Give it another stir every now and then if you are so inclined. Then refrigerate until ready to eat.

Makes 10 half cup servings as a side dish, or 5 one cup servings as a main course. (Double the macronutrient values if using as a main course.)

	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Calories
TOTALS	2.27	9.27	9.41	141.09
% of total	10.8%	44.3%	44.9%

Ingredients at the ready