@Mark_Asher late to the thread but how are things going with the low carb? For sweeteners, I recommend
This is liquid Splenda without the bulking agents, so no extra carbs. It is tough to get beyond a certain level of sweetness, but mixing sweeteners helps. I bought pure Acesulfame Potassium and made a dilution like the above. When I’m trying to make something on the sweet side, like chocolate almond milk for instance, I use both.
As for something carby, there are some pretty decent low-carb tortillas out there, but I recently discovered these at Costco and they are phenomenal:
I love that shape of pasta. It’s one of my favorites. I cannot get my kid to like it though. And pasta is his favorite food. He’s a rigatoni kid (the mezzi kind). He likes penne and certain simple cheese ravioli or tortellini. Last time we were in the store I sent him off to get the pasta and he got farfalle, which surprised me.
I just love the way the pasta you pictured holds sauce.
Yep! It holds the sauce much better than regular old macaroni. And they’re much bigger, “beefier” noodles so they’ve got a firmer mouthfeel to go along with all that creamy cheese sauce :)
Farafelle is one of my favorites. In the summer I like to make a balsamic pasta dish with fresh tomatoes using farafelle. It’s pretty simple, dice up some chicken and onion and cook in olive oil and Italian seasonings, mix some olive oil, balsamic and seasonings together, add cooked pasta, stir in chicken then add fresh diced tomatoes.
Farafelle is the ideal pasta for this I’ve found, holds sauce well.
So we got to use the grinder attachment on the Kitchen-Aid last night. It was an offhand Christmas present we got. We don’t yet have the additional items to make sausage, but they aren’t expensive, it’s just wanting to do it that has held us up. I expected the process of using the grinder to be kind of crappy but, surprisingly, it went very well. We used the coarse grind on some turkey and used said ground turkey for tacos. The consistency of the grind was good and the process pretty simple. Clean up was also simple.
We did get the less expensive plastic-ized version which seems to have replaced what was an all-metal version in the past. It made no difference, it seemed to work well. We’re already planning on what to grind next. I have zero clue on the rations to combine things for say, hamburger or sausage. More to learn I guess.
Going ok. I had a bad day due to pizza the other day. It’s my kryptonite. I’m not really low-carbing it for an Atkins-like diet but just cutting back so I’m putting less sugar in my body.
My office is trying to torpedo me. Three days in a row people brought in cupcakes, then brownies, and then cookies. I resisted all but it’s not easy!
That should get easier eventually, believe it or not. You stay away from that stuff for long enough and it starts to seem a lot less appealing.
Best advice for something like pizza: eat something else first, maybe an hour before, then have a couple of slices instead of going completely off the rails. I love pizza too, and you should let yourself have that from time to time.
