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Here is the low-down: if you have been reading this blog, you know I have been working on a low-carb peanut butter cookie recipe for some time. This is the latest, and in my opinion, best version yet. Previous versions tasted great, but were so delicate they were required a very gentle hand. This version is sturdier, and still tastes great. The secret ingredient? Vital wheat gluten. I added in a tablespoon of it, and a matching tablespoon of water to keep things from drying out. Turns drying out was the least of my problems. When these cookies went into the oven, they released a lot of oil and really smoked things up. They overflowed the flat Pampered Chef stone I put them on, and peanut-almond-butter-oil on the bottom of the stove. Was it due to my using a new jar of almond butter that I had to stir up? Was it some weird reaction due to the wheat gluten and water? I don't know, but can say they did come out great and hold together much better. In fact, I think I'll have to have another one now, just to verify they aren't too delicate after cooling off a bit on the cookie rack.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Maranatha Natural Almond Butter
• 1/2 cup Skippy Super Chunk Peanut Butter
• 1 cup pourable Splenda
• 1 tbsp Vital Wheat Gluten
• 1 tbsp water
• 1 egg

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350°f.
• Combine all ingredients in mixer and mix well. I suggest add the pourable splenda first, carefully add everything on top of it, and start the mixer slow.
• Use a small cookie dough scoop to form 12 cookies on a cookie sheet that has an edge. I actually got 13 cookies.
• Important:You must imprint each cookie with a fork in the classic criss-cross pattern.
• Bake for 15 minutes. In my instance as the photos show, the cookies released a lot of oil and basically fry in their own juices.
• When done, transfer cookies to a cooling rack so they don't soak in the oil.

Well, first off, I'm not sure. Here's why: the Carls Jr. Nutritional Info listing. Give it a look.

• The Original Six Dollar Burger®: 58 carbs
• The Low-Carb Six-Dollar Burger®: 7 carbs
• The Guacamole Bacon Six Dollar Burger®: 53 carbs
• The Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger®: 81 carbs
• The Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger™: 52 carbs
• The Jalapeño Six Dollar Burger™: 52 carbs
• The Six Dollar Cheeseburger™: 53 carbs

From a low-carb viewpoint, obviously The Low-Carb Six-Dollar Burger® is the winner at 7 carbs. All the others are at least 52 carbs. But oddly enough, the Original Six Dollar Burger® is 58 carbs. Amongst it's not-low-carb Six Dollar brethren, though, it's pretty high. Only the Western Bacon is higher.

I cannot prove it, but my theory is that The Jalapeño Six Dollar Burger™ is lowest, based on a raw guess that if 58-52=6 (Original - Jalapeno), then a "Jalepeño Low-Carb Six Dollar Burger" (you'd have to ask for that) should be what, one carb? I know that can't possibly be right but I'm thinking it should come up better than their default Low-Carb version.

Homemade bacon 'n eggs

Pork belly in the drying pan

Fry bacon fry!

Slab of bacon, waiting to be sliced

This week I tried my hand at making my own bacon. This turns out to be even easier than making a ham. All one really needs is a pork belly, some salt, and a Tupperware container or something similar. Rather than relist what somebody else has said so much more elequently, here are the instructions I went by to make my own bacon.

So you click that link and give the process a look. What I did specifically was I went sort of crazy on the spices. I parked that pork belly in the fridge for a few days, and each night as I went to pour off the excess liquid, I was overcome with the desire to apply something different. Salt, black pepper, blackstrap molasses, ginger powder, plenty of Splenda, and more.

I don't have photos of the smoking process so you'll just have to read it and use your imagination. I fired up my grill, got the fire low, and put on plenty of hickory chips soaked in water. Using the nice remote temp probe I got as a gift, I waited for the temp to rise to 150°f. It took almost four hours, but reach it at last it did. It smelled very smoky, as it was. I immediately cut off some slices from the slab, and they were ultra-smoked. Okay, I admit I threw on a handful of dry mesquite chips at the end, right on the fire. This made a pungent cloud of smoke indeed, and the bacon is very smoked.

So at the top you see a plate of bacon and eggs. The bacon doesn't taste entirely bacon-y, but is very good nonetheless. Next time I think I will wet cure the meat like a ham. This bacon is good. My only regret is that I lack a rotary slicer to get perfect slices. Thick-cut bacon is okay, but after a while I was craving some nice uniform slices. So, stay tuned, I'm planning on more bacon adventures.

The other day I decided I wanted to make a low-carb ham. Having not a clue on how to go about making my own ham, I googled around and came up with a few different articles on cold curing, which is just what I did. Having acquired a nice ham roast (refers to the cut of pork, not it actually being ham yet), I used the following brining solution, which came out too salty.

Too-salty* ham brine

• 12 cups cold water
• 36 packets Splenda
• 3 cups Morton® Tender Quick®
• 1 tablespoon ground clove
• 1 tablespoon black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a big ol' stock pot. The roast will soak in this stuff for a recommended one day per 2 pounds of pork. Obtain a pork roast, preferably a ham roast. Ask your butcher if in doubt. Tell 'em you are making your own ham. They will know what you need.

The brining process

• Trim off all the excess fat around the edge of the pork.
• I got this tip from a site, but can't find it now. Anyhow, get a meat injector, and shoot a bunch of the brine into the ham, especially around the bone.
• Get a suitable container to submerge that roast in. This must go into your fridge for a few days. Me, I used the plastic marinade bucket which came with our FoodSaver vacuum sealer. I slid the roast into the vacuum canister, and poured in all the brine that would fit, then I vacuum sealed the roast in there. That's me, though. You, you follow the directions on the Tender Quick package. I stuck the whole container into the fridge and let it brine.
• So, the Tender Quick package has brining instructions on it. I let my ham, which was probably 3 pounds, soak for what, 4 days after being vacuum sealed? Yeah. Probably too long. The vacuum sealer probably shortens the amount of time needed in the brine anyway.
• Drain off the brine and refill the container with cold water. Return to the fridge. This will draw out excess salt from the ham. I only did this for a half-hour, and regretted it. Next time I'll let it cold-water soak for a couple hours.


So as you can see the piece of plain boring pork I started out with (not shown) has been transformed into a lovely ham. I cooked it in a dutch oven at 350°f. for 1 hour, and left it in the oven for an additional half-hour.



Sliced up and looking like a good ham should. To me, at least. It was quite good, but certainly too salty. After our first meal, I returned the ham into the cleaned vacuum seal marinade container and filled it with cold water for an overnight salt-extraction soak. The ham had an intense clove flavor, which I will probably tone down next time. I'm thinking of adding in some ginger, too. but for a first ham, I'm very happy.

So that's my first ham. It was quite fun. Now for trying my hand at homemade bacon...

Oh, and the standard disclaimer: This info is presented as entertainment, if you use it, you do so entirely at your own risk.

This is for satisfying a late-night sweet tooth. This will feed one, and you'll be eating it in minutes. No, it ain't pretty, but then, well, you want it now, right? Right.

Ingredients

• 1/2 package cream cheese. What is that, 4 ounces? Yeah.
• 3 packages Splenda (or Nutrasweet)
• 1 egg
• Splash of sugar-free coffee syrup. I like Kahlua flavor, but any flavor will do.
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• sprinkle of cinnamon

Directions

• Get a 2-cup (or larger) Pyrex measuring cup. Toss in a half-package of cream cheese. Use your microwave oven to soften the cream cheese. With my microwave, that means 2 minutes at 20% power.
• Add in all the other stuff. Stir it all up good. You'll want something like a stiff wooden spoon. The consistency will be like lumpy pancake batter. Don't bother trying to get rid of all the lumps.
• Cook in the microwave oven for 5 minutes.
• Don't burn your mouth. Eat it right out of the cup with a spoon.

I did a google search for sugar-free teriyaki sauce, and low-carb teriyaki sauce. Having found a suitable recipe, I had to bump the quantities up a bit and doctor it a tad.

Low-Carb Teriyaki Sauce

• 1 cup soy sauce (Aloha brand, of course)
• 1/4 cup sesame oil
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon ginger powder
• 6 packets Splenda (or Nutrasweet)

Directions

Mix it all up. A lot.

If you're wondering why I am using powdered garlic and ginger, the reason is simple. I made this on a whim, and did not have fresh ginger available. Having used powdered ginger, why not use powdered garlic, too?

The taste is lighter than a typical teriyaki sauce. This makes for a great marinade. I used it to marinate thinly sliced roast pork, and it was the best teri pork I had. The first night, it marinated for a half-hour. The next night of course, well, it marinated overnight. Both nights it came out great. Fry up in a pan, serve as you see fit. I found teri pork over raw bean sprouts to be an excellent low-carb dinner.

This is my first recipe while making an attempt at Weight Watchers along with my wife. There are many oxtail soup recipes out there, this one is extremely easy, and done in less than an hour with a pressure cooker.

Ingredients

• 2-3/4 lb. raw oxtail
• 2 packets Won Ton instant soup mix (Dragonfly brand)
• 1 small head nappa cabbage
• little bunch of cilantro
• A few stalks of green onion
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil

Directions

Put 1 tablespoon of sesame oil in the pressure cooker, and heat up hot. Brown the oxtails.

While the oxtails are browning in the pot, mix a package of won ton instant soup mix into 3 cups of warm water. Pour the soup mix into the pot. Mix up another package of won ton soup mix into 3 more cups of water, and add that in there, too. Chop up the green onion and cilantro and toss that in the pot.

Close up the pressure cooker, and following the usual processes, cook under pressure for 30 minutes. Watch the temperature so that not too much steam escapes. You want the pot to be pressurized, but you do not want all the liquid to steam out.

After 30 minutes, release pressure using the cold water release method. Chop up 1 small head of nappa cabbage, and place it on top of the soup, avoiding the urge to stir it in.

Close the pressure cooker back up, and return to the stove. Cook for an additional 10 minutes under pressure, and cool using the cold water release method.

Now you got some pretty good oxtail soup without too much effort.

Nutritional Info

I don't have much nutritional info for this soup, as getting useful information on oxtail is pretty much impossible. Lots of the oxtail is bone, so weight alone isn't a good measure. Figuring out how much meat comes off the bone isn't easy, either. The Weight Watchers site shows "Oxtail Soup, Hawaiian (1 cup)" as 7 points. So, that's what I'll say for mine.

The other day I wanted to make some arroz con pollo in the ol' pressure cooker, but decided to go about it slightly differently. I started out by working over the Arroz Con Pollo recipe in Pressure Cookers for Dummies, and twisted it a bit. I forgot the specific directions, so that's going to make this more a set of guidelines rather than detailed instructions, but here goes:

Ingredients

• 1 cup or so uncooked long grain rice
• 1 7-oz can El Pato hot tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 10 green olives
• 1 green bell pepper (next time I'd use a red one)
• 1 onion
• Some chicken things. I think I used 5.
• Water. But how much? I think I did 2 cups and a splash.
• Garlic, onion, all that.

Really vauge directions

Cut everything up. I didn't cut up the olives, though, so that complaining children could easily pick 'em out. Next time, they get diced up. Anyhow, brown the chicken off. Toss in diced onion and bell pepper, and brown that up, too. Now pour in the wet stuff, and toss in the olives, too. Pour in the uncooked rice and stir it up to get everything evenly distributed. Close up the lid of the ol' steamer pot, and cook for 10 minutes. For me, with an electric range, this means I use two burners, one on high, the other on half. Once the cooker comes up to pressure, I start the timer, and slide the cooker to the other burner. I aim to keep the pressure up but have just a small amount of steam escaping.

Well, when all was said and done, this came out pretty good. The olives gave it a nice kick, an idea I got from my dad while visiting in Hawaii. He used green olives in the rice and it was great.

I ended serving this up to the kids not directly, but rather, as the filling within burritos, which I then grilled in a hot pan to give 'em a nice crunchy outside. mmmmm.

Last night, I wanted to make a nice batch of oxtail stew. I wanted a spicy flair to it, a slight Mexican influence.

At the store I picked up a 27 oz. can of El Pato tomato sauce, labeled "Hot". I figured it wouldn't be that hot, so I picked up a 7 oz. can of chipotle peppers. These ones.

I went over to the produce section and picked up a nice box of little orange and red peppers in a plastic shell case. I thought those were bell peppers. Some onions, some carrots, and to home I went.

At home I took out a pack of oxtails, and some pearl barley I always intended to use for something. I got out my handy Fagor Splended 6-quart pressure cooker, and browned the oxtail and tossed in some onions, and poured in the El Pato, and added in maybe a half cup of water, just enough to get some liquid in the pot. I put in a half cup of the pearl barley, figuring it would cook up nicely like rice does.

After getting the pot rollin' for 8 minutes, I cooled it down using the cold water release method and opened the lid. The stew was smelling magnificent, if not a bit hot. The barley was looking like gravel, not too good.

Anyhow, I put in the other vegetables on top, sealed it up and let 'er rip for another 8 minutes. Around 5 minutes into it, I smell the dreaded "cigarette butts" smell of food burning in the pressure cooker. I have no idea how something can burn underwater, but it does, and it did. Ugh. I slid the cooker off the hot burner and over to a cool one, to give the stew a few more minutes to cook under it's own heat.

When the timer went off at 8 minutes, I again cooled the pot down with the cold water release method, and opened it up. The stew smelled pretty good, but it was also clear it was scorched on the bottom. I ladeled up a bowlful on top of some brown rice and let it cool down enough to eat.

It was the Oxtail Stew of Death. Those little peppers weren't bell peppers, they were very hot peppers, sort of like jalapenos, but they wern't exactly those. I did remove all the seeds, but those babies were hot hot. The El Pato and chipotle are fantastic stuff, and I plan on doing this again, but whoo, this stuff I cooked up would melt plastic. It's good but mega spicy. I served it up anyway to Rachel and Justin. Rachel had some, but yeah, it was too hot for her. It was definitely too hot for Justin, but he ended up dipping a tortilla in it and used it as a sort of salsa.

I'll be making this again, just not so deadly.