More Keto Goals Achieved

Today is Wednesday, I forgot to post on Monday when my scale officially registered that I had lost 25 pounds! The next day Hal hit his goal of 215 pounds, and actually was 0.2 below that. He is happy with where he is at. I would like to drop another 10 at least. It's coming off more slowly now, though 25 pounds in 2 months is nothing to sneeze at.

Tonight we are taking a break and going out to celebrate at Rosa's, our favorite Italian restaurant. Yes, there will be pasta, bread, salad and for me probably shrimp. and wine, of course. A VERY BAD  night of carb loading. But I plan on enjoying it. Tomorrow we will be back at it till I get that last 10 pounds GONE.

Smoked Chicken!

Even though it was below 40 degrees outside Hal went ahead and smoked 4 chicken leg quarters in the old white stove smoker he made a few years ago. As usual the skin was too chewy to eat but the meat was tender an flavorful. And the whole thing was keto, he used erythritol in the dry rub instead of sugar. I made cornbread with almond flour and flaxseed meal and asparagus and a small salad. Yum.

Real (ish) Bread!

So I Found a recipe for low carb bread on youtube last week, ordered the ingredients and they came Tuesday. Wednesday I made the recipe and we each had a slice for dinner. It was pretty dang AWESOME. It has yeast in it, a teaspoon of honey which the yeast eats so supposedly we don't have to count the carbs in it, (whether or not that is true, it's so little per slice it's no biggie). It also has oat fiber (not flour) and vital wheat gluten which you'll hear all sorts of keto fanatics arguing it is NOT keto, but though it's made from wheat flour they remove the starch and leave just protein. You find the fanatics putting all kinds of protein powder in their drinks and food but because this comes out of wheat flour it screams BAD to them. Until there are actual studies done on it I am not going to worry.

It can be made in my bread machine, but it came out lopsided so next time I will try baking it in the oven.

Tonight I made us sandwiches for dinner using this bread and meatloaf slices. So, very nice to have a sandwich again!

Hal's Sandwich

Keto Meals

So we've been at this for 7 weeks and doing pretty well, Hal is down 18 pounds and I am down 23. Thought I'd showcase a few of the meals we've been eating. All without the sides of rice and potatoes and pasta of course. And bread.

Bought a fresh salmon filet last week and cut off about 14 ounces and baked it with garlic, salt and pepper, butter and some sugar free maple syrup which isn't too bad actually. The salmon tasted great with a side of sauteed asparagus. Salad was also served.

To celebrate a wight milestone the other day I took some keto chili I had made the previous week, mixed it with scrambled egg and wrapped it in a spinach/wheat flour tortilla, added a tiny bit of enchilada sauce and some Mexican shredded cheese. It was awesome to have a "real" tortilla again and that tortilla was only 5 Net carbs instead of the usual 16 plus net carbs.

A pizza on a cheese dough called "fathead" Tasty, and it holds the stuff on it but not as awesome as my usual wheat flour dough.

Chicken and portabella mushrooms, on zucchini noodles, aka zoodles, green beans and an attempt at flourless bread.

Shrimp and asparagus, mushrooms in garlic butter and another attempt at bread.

Because we can't have pasta I bought some Skinny Pasta shirataki noodles made from a root called kanjac. I followed the directions and we had them under some gravy dish, which I can't remember right now, but I found them plasticky, a bit chewy and really not worth buying again. I do have 2 more packages from different brands to try but I haven't rushed to make them.

Kaylee is a Healthy Pup!

The several urine tests showing bits of red and white blood cells in her urine has been bothering me for the last couple of months. The vets even sent a sample to MSU in East Lansing for testing to see if there was any more bacteria. Nothing grew so it was just why was there blood. She was also spayed on Feb 7th and the vets wanted another sample 3-4 weeks later to see if perhaps the juvenile vaginitis she had was the cause.

Well today I brought her in, they used a needle to take a clean sample from her bladder, and yippee, no blood, totally clean. I, as well as the vets are very happy, as is Kaylee I am sure. They think it probably was the juvenile vaginitis after all. So she won't need any more of these tests unless she gets another UTI. Ironically, if she hadn't gotten the damn UTI there wouldn't have been any tests, no evidence of blood, and none of this needless worry. Ah well.

I also took Ziggy in for a blood test to ensure the carprofen he's been taking for his bad back was not detrimentally affecting his kidneys or liver. And those numbers were within the normal range so I have another bottle of pills for him. This is good because he was really messed up the last 4 days. I even had to give him tramadol 2 nights in a row his pain was so bad. Poor boy.

But he's feeling better now so for now all is right in my pups' world.