Tag: dairy-free

Brunch Fave: Sausage & Cornbread.

Jamal5 Comments

So can you tell bread was one of my favorite things before living a low-carb lifestyle? I’m telling you, I could turn anything into a sandwich. Sandwiches – no one in particular – were my favorite food and I’d have them often. That’s why so many of my last meal remixes have included keto bread. It must be a craving coming to test my will.

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Today, I put a twist on one of my favorite college brunch items: sausage and cornbread. The original recipe comes from an old friend and roommate. With a single box of Jiffy cornbread mix, baked over cooked, crumbled breakfast sausage, the epic breakfast dish is ready when golden brown.

 

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Instead of using the keto bread recipe to make biscuits or buns, I spread the uncooked dough over spicy crumbled sausage I’d prepared in the skillet. I doused the sausage with cayenne pepper, black pepper, and Italian seasoning as it sizzled in the heat, so this dish was going to have just the right amount of kick. If you can make it spicy? Make it spicy. Let the dish bake until golden brown and spread REAL butter over the top before letting it rest. After about ten minutes, cut and serve with sugar-free syrup.

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This looks like a heavy meal, right? I was pleasantly surprised at how light the meal was; the complete opposite feeling of the one you have after eating the original recipe. I had two pieces in the beginning and felt completely satisfied – not too full – after I’d finished them. We love to make this and bake the mixture in cupcake baking sheets. You get the perfect single serving if you make it this way. Side item? Scrambled eggs and spinach cooked in bacon fat.

Yum. Absolutely, yum.

It’s Snacktime in the FATboys Kitchen…

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I’m having a low-carb, deconstructed chicken sandwich this afternoon. I was inspired to come up with something new because S is having low-carb biscuits and gravy. While I do love the biscuits and gravy recipe we use, it’s heavy on the dairy side of life, and I need to stay away from that to keep feeling light and healthy.

  • My body doesn’t tolerate dairy very well and since cutting it out of my diet over a year ago, I feel so much better on a daily basis. If I do have some dairy? I have some kombucha and get back on my mostly-dairy-free train.

To start, I fried a few chicken thighs in beef tallow using our home deep fryer. S had already made the keto bread so this was ready to go by the time my chicken was finished and ready for seasoning.

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Next? We slice the bread in half and add some homemade spicy keto sauce on each side. Continue on to debone each thigh and chop, together, with spinach. Add your preferred seasoning – I used a mixture of cayenne, lime juice, and a pinch of garlic salt – and place the chicken spinach mixture on top of the keto-sauced bread.

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At the top of this idea, I thought I would be able to mix the spinach and chicken, and make a sandwich with no issues. The mixture turned out to be a tad too unruly to rest calmly between the keto bread slices, so this is how the deconstructed version of this snack came to mind.

How was it? Absolutely DELISH. I enjoyed it with a crispy tequila water on the side.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

 

Progress Report 2

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The stall is broken! After sticking to the same workout routine for a smidgen over a year, my body needed a reset of sorts. Here’s the update:

Data collection #2, September 26, 2015:

Weight – 237.9

Body fat – 27.5%

BMI – 32.3

Data collection #3, November 18, 2015:

Weight – 232.4

Body fat – 27.1%

BMI – 31.4

What did I do differently? I started focusing more on lifting heavier weights, and cut out dairy. I’m about 97% dairy-free, and I say this because, if I want dairy… I’m gonna eat, or drink, it. I do miss my heavy cream and cinnamon coffee, but not having it isn’t a huge downer because I prefer my coffee strong, and black… (enter joke and laughter here).

Take us going to the Mexican restaurant for dinner a couple weeks ago for example. The salad I ordered did not list cheese as a topping. Adding extra guac and removing the sour cream, I was a little peeved when the salad arrived and there was cheese! Some sprinkled cheese on top of my salad isn’t the end of the world, so I went on and inhaled the dish anyway. I’m a regular “remove the cheese, please!” person now.

I’ve switched up my weightlifting routine by doing strong lifts. Three times a week, for thirty minutes or more, I do 5×5 – five sets of five reps – weightlifting workouts. I squat, bench press, barbell row, and deadlift as much weight as I can in a safe manner. I hit the gym alone, so I don’t want to push it so far that I need a spotter. Every week I add five pounds to the previous week’s weight. I’ve been doing yoga more frequently as well. I went to my first hot yoga class over the weekend. Not only did I survive and hit all the poses, I had a BLAST. I won’t get too much into that, though, because I’m going to write a separate post on that experience.

Thanks for checking in! And I’ll talk to you all soon 🙂

Stalled

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You’ll notice I didn’t post an October progress report. I’ve hit a little stall on the fitness front, and this is completely normal. For the past year my body has been adjusting – going from strictly cardio workouts, to regular strength training with light cardio in the form of the occasional elliptical session and yoga – and has finally hit a point of pause. I always view a fitness stall (or plateau) as an alert to kick things up a notch, or to pay closer attention to what’s going in my body. The weeks that followed the first progress report on FATboys, my weight stayed the same, went up, a little down, and back up again. I’ve been challenging myself in the gym, and making more of an effort to really focus my yoga sessions.

I decided last week that I would wait until November to produce the next progress report, and that I would cut dairy from my diet. When it comes to dairy and myself, I’d say we have a pretty good relationship, but did notice times of bloating. I’m not lactose intolerant, and something was definitely off when it came to my body and how I felt. Jamie Caporosso was a guest on The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore, and went on about how he wasn’t sure what it was about dairy, but after cutting it from his diet, he saw more results and felt completely refreshed.  Maybe my body is reacting negatively to dairy? For the next handful of weeks, I will be cutting dairy, and hopefully the next progress report will not come in stall form.