Archive for the ‘Food & Cooking’ Category
Today I made some yummy and filling pancakes. Breakfast is always hard for me because I don’t like to eat when I first get up. After looking in the fridge and finding some browned ground turkey I had a plan. I made the turkey into breakfast sausage and made some Trim Healthy Pancake batter (page 223 in the Trim Healthy Mama book). I’m going to share with you how I made my sausage and my sausage pancakes.
I put my pre-cooked ground turkey into a small skillet. I used a good handful of it, don’t you like my precise measurements? 
I added to the turkey a little water, homemade sugar-free brown sugar (Gwen has a great recipe), sage, marjoram and salt and pepper. You could add a few red pepper flakes if you like, but I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy. I cooked it on medium heat until it was heated well while my blender did the work to make my low carb/ low fat pancakes.
As the sausage finished up I began to heat my griddle on medium heat. I then took my sausage and put it into little piles on the griddle. I only made 3 pancakes because that was the most I could eat. I think I ended up eating a little over 2.
I then poured my batter over the sausage. The edges took on the shape of my sausage pile so it looked more like flowers (if you’re really imaginative).
Since my edges all oozed together I had to take my spatula and cut through the joined places. I want you to know that we are just simple home cooks here and though we like our food photography to look nice, we want to keep it real too. Yes, I have weird looking pancakes, but they taste awesome!
I had only greased the griddle with a tiny bit of butter (I mean really tiny) and din’t have any issues with them sticking. Often with gluten free and different flours sticking can be a real issue.
These pancakes were really light and satisfying. What a great way to start the day! What do you do to your pancakes to make them special?
- 1 cup Browned Ground Turkey *
- 1 tsp Sugar Free Brown Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Sage
- a dash of Marjoram
- Salt and Pepper to taste
- 2 T. Water
- optional: Red Pepper Flakes to taste
- Combine all ingredients in small skillet and heat over medium heat until heated through.
- *If you use ground turkey (or any other lean ground meat) that is less that 96% fat free, make sure you rinse it after you brown it to get the excess fat off.
- If you wanted to do this with raw turkey I would add the spices as it was finished browning.
For about the last year I have been seeing my friends link to recipes and testimonials from Trim Healthy Mama. I didn’t really know anything about it and one day in late July I started looking into it. I joined the Facebook group and ordered the book. The last year of my life has been filled with many ups and downs and much sorrow. I was ready for something positive in my life. I began reading the book and trying to implement some of the things I was reading. Then we got a call we all dread and found out Gene’s step-father was dying. While on that trip Gene’s brother was testing out his new glucometer and one morning we all decided to get our blood sugar tested. This was a big wake-up call for me because my sugar level wasn’t terrible, but it was higher than I would have liked.
If you know me well, you know that I usually have a Dr. Pepper in my hand. Even after the high sugar level it took me a few weeks to get off of Dr. Pepper completely. At this point I haven’t had a soft-drink (with HFC) since the beginning of October. I actually don’t desire them any more. The only type of soft drink I have had is Vitamin Water Zero and an occasional Izze (made with fruit juice, no added sugar). I did cheat last weekend and have a drink like an Izze that had added cane juice in it, and I am still paying for that with major joint pain.
So far I have lost about 10 pounds, but I haven’t been anywhere close to faithful with the diet except on the soda front. I see now after my sugar binge this weekend that it really does play a major role in my Lyme and joint pain. I am going to be much more careful from here out. I also have some adrenal fatigue issues which may cause my loss to be slower as I heal my adrenals.
Many people think that everyone who is over-weight is obsessed with food. I even had a “friend” talk to me about it one time. She was trim but was obsessed with food and assumed my weight issues were related to my food obsession. I actually have the opposite problem. . . I could care less. It is not unusual for me to be up for 4 or 5 (or more) hours before I take my first bite of food. Often I would hardly eat all day and I rarely if ever felt hunger pains. I was just never hungry. This causes your metabolism to shut down and it stores fat instead of burning it. I now have to reverse this process through the way I eat and supplements. If I were to go to a restaurant to eat, I might be able to finish 1/2 of what they served as an entree. The biggest struggle for me is to eat. What will happen often is I forget to eat and then realize it has been over 4 hours and I panic and eat just anything because I know I need to eat. I am working on planning ahead more and having friendly foods ready and easily accessible so that I don’t blow it when I need to eat.
We do have sweets on this plan, just not with sugar. We use stevia, erythritol and xylitol to sweeten with. I will be sharing recipes that I have made and use that incorporate these sweeteners. I will also post some recipes that have sugar in them because Sarah cannot use these due to health issues.
In THM (Trim Healthy Mama) meals are classified as: S= satisfying (these are higher in fat/low in carb) E= energizing (Low in fat/ higher in carb) and FP= fuel pull (these are both low in fat and carbs and burn the most fat). My recipes will be labeled to denote which category they fall into.
Cheesecake Dip
This recipe came about last night when Rachel offered me a snack that she had made. I think she called it cheesecake. When I tasted it I found it to be very rich, which isn’t a bad thing but I wanted to eat it with something else. I remembered about Gwen’s Low Carb Cinnamon Dippers. After baking these I sat down for my snack. Gene asked me what I had. I told him and gave him a taste. He loved it as well and asked me more than once if this was really on plan.
When I asked Rachel how she made this she said she added some of this and a dash of that. I made some today and got the measurements so I could share it with you. I hope you like and enjoy it. Let me know if you try it and if you do anything else with it.
- 1- 8oz package of cream cheese (we used 1/3 fat but you could use full fat or fat free)
- 1/2 cup of heavy cream (I'm sure you could substitute with almond or coconut milk but why would you? ;-) )
- 1 tsp of vanilla
- 2 tsp of lemon juice
- 3 Tblsp of Truvia
- Put all ingredients into a bowl and mix until combined.
- This is a super simple and adaptable recipe. I was thinking about the ways to adapt it and I will play with some other ideas and post them as we make them.
I hope you enjoy the recipe and will let me know what you think of it. What ideas do you have as to how to adapt it? If you have any questions about THM, please feel free to ask.
This last year has been a little crazy, OK, a lot crazy. We’ve had issues with Sarah; Hannah, Rachel & Caroline dealing with Chronic Lyme disease, Papaw’s death & Caroline’s emergency surgery. Needless to say, it’s not a year we want to repeat. We are starting 2014 off with an optimistic outlook. It’s a year of new beginnings and we are looking forward to seeing what the Lord has in store for us.
This blog has been woefully neglected in the last year due to the aforementioned events. Our hope is to start posting what we are doing in our homemaking adventures. We will be sharing our photography, our recipes, organization and other homemaking skills/tasks, I may do a series on small space living with a large family, food budgeting, monthly shopping and money & time saving tips.
Our food journey has taken on many different complexions over the last few years. In an effort to combat the Chronic Lyme and other auto-immune issues we have changed our diet. We believe that what you eat can drastically affect your overall physical and mental health. We have experienced this first hand. Our recipes will cover several different diets and restrictions. We will have recipes that are one or more of the following: gluten free, egg free, grain free, dairy free, corn free, soy free, sugar free, low carb, high fat, or Trim Healthy Mama.
We try to keep our food as clean as possible while also keeping our budget in mind. We don’t buy organic meats, our budget just doesn’t allow for it at this time. We believe that food should be tasty, fun, affordable and pleasing to the eye as well as being good for you.
This week I am focusing on cleaning out and organizing our middle bedroom. It is very small and for the last few months has been the room that you put things into that don’t have a home. There are no before pictures (I didn’t want to be cast on hoarders) but when I finish, I’ll post some. This room is going to be used for storage of some of our 8 million books, our craft/office supplies and is home to our deep freeze.
Please take time to stop by our other blogs (there are links in the right side toolbar). Caroline also has her photography website. You can also find Rachel and me on Twitter. We also have Facebook pages for our different sites.
What are your homemaking goals for the upcoming year?