Sunday means keto brunch noms! We had some simple fried eggs, cooked in butter, with a side of peppered spinach. Delish! What did you all have for brunch today?
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Butter and Eggs, Please!
Tag: low carb
Mini Quiches
Good morning! What’s for brunch today? Mini quiches.
Ingredients:
- 4 oz of ground sausage
- 2 oz of cream cheese
- 1 tbsp of animal fat (or coconut oil)
- 8 eggs
- 1/3 cup of chopped red onion
- 1/2 cup of spinach
- 1 tsp of black pepper
- 1 tsp of cayenne pepper
- A few shakes of salt
- Shredded Colby-jack cheese
Supplies:
- 1 large mixing bowl
- Medium-large skillet
- Spatula
- The appropriate measuring cups and spoons
- 1 standard sized muffin pan (makes 12 quiches)
- Coconut oil non-stick cooking spray
I love making these bad boys. They’re so easy and get tastier each time we make them. To start, begin to brown the sausage in stove-top skillet set to medium heat. As you chop and brown the sausage, add your animal fat to keep our next ingredients from sticking to our non-stick pan.
You’re probably thinking, why do we need to add an ingredient that helps ingredients sticking to a non-stick skillet? We all know our non-stick skillets and pans lose their power as we use them. Adding animal fat helps in this department AND add to the flavor.
After you’ve added your animal fat, throw in the chopped red onion, spinach, and cream cheese. Keep an eye on your cream cheese. As it heats up it’ll soften, allowing you to mixing it up with all the other ingredients in the skillet.Mix up your eight eggs in the large mixing bowl and add your seasonings. You’ll need to spray your muffin tin with a non-stick cooking spray. I prefer Spectrum’s Coconut Oil Spray.
Fill each muffin space on the pan with just enough egg to cover the bottom. Spoon your sausage, cream cheese, spinach and onion mixture into your muffin pan and be sure to leave room for more egg. Each muffin space should only be about half full at this point. Go ahead and add more egg to each muffin space to submerge the sausage mixture. Sprinkle a dash of Colby-jack cheese on each space. Time to bake!
Your oven should be preheated to 400 degrees. I wish I had an amount of time to share with you here, but I don’t. Channel your inner Aunty, Grandma, or Mom and bake until golden brown.
Serve warm and enjoy!
Note: Don’t be afraid to have fun with this recipe. I once made these with mushrooms, jalapeños, and ham. I believe I sprinkled sharp cheddar on those though. I suggest serving these with your favorite hot sauce on the side as well.
Pizza for Two
S and I didn’t put much thought into Valentine’s Day this year. In the past, we’ve gone out and stayed in, so knowing which direction plans for this day can go each year is always a wildcard.
“Do you think our Valentine’s Day plans are boring?” He asks just nervous enough, but still hungry for my response. “Not really. I like our plans. We’ve both had so much going on at work, so a chill night in sounds perfect to me.” His tone is relaxed now. “I just haven’t really thought about it.” Nor had I.
The truth is we had talked about our plans for Valentine’s Day. A couple weeks back we decided that we’d have a quiet night in – cooking low-carb pizza and having some champagne. We try not to drink during the week, so the fact that this day happened to fall on a Wednesday made it a treat in itself.
We settled on a simple bacon and cheese pizza. The crust consisted of cream cheese, egg, mozzarella cheese, almond flour, and we topped it with a low-sugar pizza sauce. We typically do pepperoni and sausage pizza, but we forgot to put pepperoni on the grocery list. Whoops! Not that this should be considered creative at all, but we decided on bacon when we realized our mistake. There’s always bacon around here though.
I tend to be a big cheeseball, so you could argue that I would expect a surge in romance on this day. Maybe it’s because we’ve been together for going on seven years, maybe it’s because we’re both thirty-one years old now, but this day is hardly considered romantic or important to us. I’ve written about this previously – check out that post here – but what about the other 364 days of the year?! If you’re going to be cute, warm and fuzzy, just surprise me with your heart.
We had some good pizza, crispy champagne, and each other… we’re full.
Brunch Fave: Sausage & Cornbread.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some nights…
…call for a crispy Pinot Grigio moment. Tomorrow’s hump day.
It’s Snacktime in the FATboys Kitchen…
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.
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.
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!
Fast and Low Carbs
At least once or twice a week, we find ourselves at Hardee’s for a quick and easy low-carb dinner.
“Can we get two double bacon thick burgers, made low-carb, no onions or tomatoes… A single bacon thick burger, made low-carb, no onions or tomatoes… and a charbroiled chicken club, also made low-carb.”
I’m not sure what S has against veggies, but hey, I leave them on if I’m rolling solo.
The staff is always so pleasant and has our order mememorized. There’s one high-school-aged team member who always hooks us up with a %10 discount – on top of the already great customer service. It’s the little things and this team has learned us.
“The cook always gets so stressed when you guys show up.” Hilarious.
We love coming to Hardee’s, but honestly, we need to slow down on the fast food game. If you find yourself wanting a fast and decent low-carb meal, try your local Hardee’s.
(Shouts to Carl’s Jr. up North!)
Oh We’ve Got Buns, Hun. Keto Buns.
January kicks off some fun and new content for the blog. We’re hoping to make cooking videos a regular thing in the FATboys section of Gays in the life. People often think we have boring food lives as regular low-carbers, but with video like these, we hope to show that we’re anything but dull when it comes to our food.
We followed Maria Emmerich’s recipe from her latest book The 30 Day Ketogenic Cleanse. We used the buns to make her sloppy ottos recipe – ground pork cooked with onions, topped with homemade keto thousand island dressing and sauerkraut – which turned out SO amazing. I want more.
I like to use keto bread in bun or loaf form for sandwiches… ESPECIALLY a good breakfast sandwich. The keto bread recipe in Maria’s latest book is dairy-free. Not everyone can tolerate dairy the same so this is a huge bonus for me. A little over a year ago, I cut way back on dairy and experienced great results. My weight-loss stall was broken and I could tell my insides were happy with me (TMI? lol)
Don’t be afraid to have fun with whatever lifestyle you live in the kitchen. A true diet shouldn’t feel like a diet. You have to live, people. Catch us under FATboys for more keto and low-carb gems.
Snap, Crackle, Pop!
I have a feeling we won’t be ordering so many wings now…
We’ve only had this bad boy for about a week, and it’s changed our kitchen game already. For the past (coming up on) three years, S and I have produced our low-carb creations via the stovetop, oven, our grill or crock-pots. This home deep fryer by DeLonghi doesn’t take up much space on the counter and has yielded some extremely tasty keto snacks for us.
Staying as true to ketogenic and low-carb form as possible, the only oil that will be used in our fryer is beef tallow – a form of pure animal fat.
Eating real food is the key, regardless of your lifestyle, so this single ingredient, healthy fat will do well with the heat of the fryer. Some oils – if cooked at too high a temperature – become bad for you.
We baked some bacon-wrapped smokies with the family over Christmas , so we immediately knew we had to try frying those…
(Pre-fry)
(Post-fry)
And check out these wings!
We’ve been ordering so many wings, but now that our schedules are getting back to normal, we’ll have the time and energy to cook regularly again.
How exciting! New toys in the kitchen means remixed recipes and more fun and creativity to keep things interesting as a pair of low-carbers.
Stay tuned,
This Evening’s Cocktail of Choice…
Tequila, LaCroix sparkling water, lemons and limes stirred.
It’s low-carb and yields a healthy buzz. Not for faint palates, this drink punches your tastebuds in the face. Yum.
