Weekly Low Carb Wrap Up - Week Four

Since beginning my low carb eating regimen I've lost 12 pounds. I'm kind of stuck now or what is known as "being stalled" or "plateauing". Call it what you will it's really irritating!!!

Last week I did a little experiment on myself. I have been following the Atkins recommended 20-24 carbs per day and that is how I lost the 12 pounds, but I've been stuck at the same weight for about 3 weeks now. This week I stayed under 17 carbs per day. I know that sounds awful, but it really wasn't because you can still eat protein and fats to a point that you truly feel satisfied so it's not like when you count calories and you get to 1200 calories and you can't eat anything else the rest of the day. You will see in my wrap up that I continued to eat delicious food, just less carbs.

So I only lost 1/2 pound eating under 17 carbs and that bums me out. The reason it bums me out is because I think that in order to unstall myself I'm going to have to turn up the exercise and physical activity portion of my regimen..which doesn't require much since I've been doing literally nothing!

That is my goal for this next week. I'm going back to 20-24 carbs but I will be exercising every single day and we will see what the scale says on Friday morning...wish me luck!

So on to the food wrap up, I ate some of my normal things that I eat each week, my turkey salad, which I don't think I've pictured on my blog before. It's just ground turkey sauteed in a pan with some taco seasoning, then I make a gorgeous salad with every veggie we have in the fridge, bacon, shredded mozzarella cheese and ranch dressing and top with the turkey...I love it!

But I did try some new things and knowing that I would have to put something new in my weekly wrap up made me a little more energetic and inspired me to try something new.

First off though, my co-worker made a wonderful low carb soup last weekend and brought me some for my lunch on Monday. I love my co-worker, she's a doll!

Doesn't that look delicious? She got her inspiration from the Tuscan Chicken Soup recipe shared by Karen at Living Low Carb One Day at a Time. Angelica, my co-worker is one of those outside-the-box cooks that sees a recipe then adds her own spin, but me...I play it safe and follow the recipe to the letter! The soup was delicious and really hit the spot for a nice lunch. Thank you Angelica!

I wanted to make something new to share with her too, so one night when I was feeling especially energetic I decided to try to make Lemon Almond Shortbread, sounds delicious doesn't it? I saw the recipe on the blog, I Breathe... I'm Hungry! I followed her recipe to the letter and you can find the recipe on her blog HERE. 

If I'm going to be honest, I have to say that while it looks beautiful it was not as sweet as I had hoped. Next time I am going to put a bit more Splenda, even though it will increase the carb count and I am going to add some cinnamon, maybe some anise for flavoring. It has the most delicious crunch though!

Didn't it photograph perfectly? I'm in love with these pictures!

I also tried another Atkins Frozen Food, this time it was the Italian Sausage Primavera. I loved everything about it except the sausage  but I'm not a big fan of sausage. If you like sausage though you would probably like this meal.

The only other thing out of the ordinary that I ate this week was my lunch I had yesterday when I was out shopping with my mom.

She had been wanting to go to a restaurant called Famous Dave's. It's a BBQ place and it surprised me that she has been wanting to go for so long as she's not a big fan of BBQ  When we first got there I told the hostess that it was our first time there and they treated us special, they even gave us a free bottle of their BBQ sauce and a free appetizer next time we go there. Which may not be soon as mom didn't like it! Seriously! After all that time of her wanting to go she didn't even like it. But I did!

Because I had to stick with my low carb diet, I ordered their Southside Rib Tips which came with french fries, but I requested a substitution for their broccoli and they were more than willing to do that for me. I love them! I was a little bad in that they served us Bread and Butter Pickles. I adore Bread and Butter Pickles, but of course they have sugar, but I only ate at the most 6 pickle chips...Yum!

That was my week. I ate well, I feel great, my clothes are fitting better each and every day. If I can just get that stinking scale to move I will be happy.



 

Weekly Low Carb Wrap Up - Week 3

     Darn it! I have to get better at this! I've been doing this low carb wrap up for a few weeks now and I'm not getting any posting done during the week. I think I'm going to have to start posting this stuff on a daily basis for two reasons: 

1. It will make for more posting throughout the week. 
2. I forget what stuff I made during the week and comments I wanted to make on it.

     I'll do the best I can during the week since it is American Idol season and I love them and won't miss it for anything in the world!

     Have you all been hearing about the health benefits of Kale? I know I have, and aside from the health benefits I've been told that Kale Chips are the next best thing to Tortilla Chips. May I just tell you right now that is  a big fat lie  a bit far-fetched! Yuk! Kale Chips are not the thing for me! Now those of you that love them, don't hate me, they are just not for me, just as Seaweed Chips are not for me even though I know those that love them.

     The photo above is where they are all washed and dried and seasoned and ready to be baked. I used the recipe from the very excellent low carb blog, I breathe...I'm hungry...

     I'm pretty sure it's not the fault of the recipe or the blog or the blog creator, Mellissa Sevigny, it's just that kale chips are not for me, just like I don't like mushrooms, it's just a matter of personal taste.

     I baked them just as she instructed and tasted the ones that burned a little bit and tasted the ones that were perfectly crisp and nope...not for me. I want to think that maybe it was the Soy Sauce or the Sriracha Sauce so I am going to try to make it one more time with a different recipe that just calls for olive oil, salt and pepper. I'll let you know what happens.

     One new item I did try this week is the new Atkins Frozen Meals. I tried the Crustless Chicken Pot Pie. I gotta say, it wasn't bad. It didn't taste like a pot pie, but the chicken was fresh and delicious white meat with a very nice tenderness, not dry at all. The veggies were pretty good and the sauce was rich and gooey. It didn't seem like a lot at first and I didn't know if I was going to get full, but it was very filling due to the fact that there was quite a bit of chicken and the pieces were pretty big. I would definitely recommend this and I will be buying it again. Right now Wal-mart is the only store carrying them and of course, they don't carry them at the store I go to!

     Atkins has a whole line of them and I also purchased the Italian Sausage Primavera which I will probably try for lunch tomorrow. You can see their whole line on the Atkins website. 

     I tried another new thing this week, I tried making Buffalo Roasted Cauliflower. I used a recipe from a new blog I've found via Pinterest. The blog is called Closet Cooking because the blog owner, Kevin is "Cooking in a closet sized kitchen".

     Again, I don't blame Kevin for my not being thrilled with the recipe, I think that I just don't like roasted Cauliflower. I love Cauliflower, but just not roasted. I may try it steamed as I did like the flavor of the buffalo sauce.

     I served the dish alongside a favorite dish of mine that my mom makes, you can see it below. She chops up steak and pan fries it in oil and when it's done she adds chopped tomato and jalapenos and it's almost like a steak fajita except there is no onion as mom can't stomach onion (I love, love, love onion!). See those burnt parts on the cauliflower? Those parts are supposed to have a delicious nutty taste, they just tasted burnt. You can't see the buffalo sauce very well, I actually added more later.

     That night I went to bed wondering what to do so I wouldn't waste the rest of that cauliflower. Voila! Overnight a wonderful idea came to me, why not fry it up with some scrambled eggs? Hence is born my Scrambled Egg Buffalo Roasted Cauliflower! 

     The egg really cut down on the burnt taste and the marinating overnight of the cauliflower with the Franks Red Hot Sauce made for a spicy delicious breakfast. It made enough for two servings and I put it in plastic containers and enjoyed it two mornings at work. The office smelled awful, but we opened the door and aired it out and it was ok. I recommend this dish if you love spicy. Just make Closet Cooking's Buffalo Roasted Cauliflower and chop it into bite-sized pieces and heat it in a pan with some butter and olive oil, then throw uncooked scrambled egg in and cook to your desired egg consistency. Yum!

     Now...let's see, what else did I try this week that was new and exciting? Oh yeah! I made a pork tenderloin that was to die for!! I almost killed my mom making it but she said the flavor was almost worth it. I used a cast iron skillet on the stove top and seared the whole tenderloin while it had the dry rub on it. Because of the Cayenne Pepper in the dry rub, it makes it noxious to breath. It didn't bother me but it drove poor mom out of the house!

     I've actually made this dish before and blogged about it here. My daughter found this recipe a while back and asked me to make it for her. The original recipe was adapted by a recipe from the blog, Little B Cooks: Chronicles from a Vermont foodie, quite a title!

     The first time I made it I used the exact recipe as Little B posted on her blog, but when I went to go get the recipe out of my little personal cookbook where I write down recipes I like, I noticed that I had jotted down some notes. I said my family didn't care for the cinnamon and to leave out the glaze if making low carb as it does have brown sugar....so I did that, it was smack your mama delicious! I believe I served steamed broccoli with it, but I don't remember now.

     And my co-worker, who loves to cook and try new low carb dishes made a tasty little dessert for us and she brought them to work and we had one every day for our 3pm break. They are these delicious  creamy little bites of heaven! It's called No-Bake Jello Cheesecake and it has just 3 carbs each! Really satisfies a sweet tooth! She found the recipe on a really excellent low carb website, Linda's Low Carb Menus. I love this site!

         Can you believe they are made with just 4 ingredients, one of them being water? Unbelievably delicious!

       So that was my week! Hopefully I can do even better in trying out new things this next week. I'm also going to try to cut down on my carbs from 20 -24 to 17 -20 carbs per day as I'm stalled right now and haven't lost any more weight. I feel lighter and my clothes fit better. Health wise I feel great! No indigestion or that yucky bloated feeling after eating, but it's always nice to see that scale drop too. So wish me luck and if you have any low carb ideas for me, I'd love to hear them!

     Oh yeah...my co-worker and I also started walking during our lunch hour. She can walk for miles, but then again she's the same age as my daughter. I made it almost a mile and then told her she had to go get the car...hahaha. No I made it back to the office but I guess I bit off more than I can chew and need to ride my stationery bike more before I tackle a mile again...but it's a start!

     Have a great week all!



 

Weekly Low Carb Wrap Up!

     I thought I would start doing a weekly low carb wrap up on Sundays to showcase some of the delicious things I've been able to eat during the week on a low-carb diet. I have two reasons for doing this:

     1. I want to push myself to try new things, foods and recipes. If every single week I am just posting the same old tired pictures of fried eggs and taco salad then feel free to call me out on it and tell me to get more creative!

     2. I just like to show off and I love blogs with pictures. I could tell you I ate a taco salad, but wouldn't you love to see just what it looked like? No? Yes? Well doesn't matter because I'm posting pictures anyway!

     And since I'm linking up to Mosaic Monday I've created a sweet little mosaic of a few of the more unique (at least to me) low carb foods I've tried this week.

     I eat a lot of turkey taco salads, but this week I switched it up and tried a tuna salad (pictured bottom right). 

     I love Romaine lettuce and I slice up about three of them each week, I wash it and put it in a lettuce spinner then put it into a plastic container like the one shown below. Then I seal them all well and place them in the crisper section of my fridge and they hold up pretty well. This one I ate on a Friday and see, the lettuce still looks fresh and green. There's also a few radishes and celery chopped finely in there.

     It's a super simple tuna salad, one you all probably make quite often. Just tuna, mayo, Lawry's Seasoning Salt and pepper, oh and my favorite, sweet pickle relish. I know that sweet pickle relish adds about 2 carbs but I just love it and it wouldn't be tuna salad to me without it. I topped it with some slivered almonds for some crunch and slices of avocado for decadence and creaminess. I didn't even need dressing!

     I had a few of my cheesy crackers (pictured bottom center) left that I made on Tuesday and I chomped on those at the same time. It made for a delicious lunch!

     Then the other night my mom said my daughter April had bought some asparagus and asked her to cook it. Mom said she had boiled it in the past and should she make it like that again. I told her I would look up a recipe on youtube (mom loves to watch recipes on youtube). I found this great one from ChefEvelyn TV. She simply places the asparagus on a foil lined cookie sheet, sprinkles extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt and pepper and tosses the whole thing with her hands, places in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes and Voila! Roasted cauliflower that was to die for!

     Mom had planned to make fried ham sandwiches and chips for dinner, so I asked her to just fry two pieces of ham for me and I had a boiled egg that I cut in half and added a spoonful of mayo, salt, pepper and paprika to and added some of the roasted asparagus and I had a delicious, easy meal without a lot of drama! It just takes imagination! The asparagus was nutty and delicious!

     A new recipe I tried this week was an Orange Creamsicle Mousse. Remember eating Orange Creamsicles? I used to love them!

     But they have 20 grams of carbs and 12 grams of sugar, so it's not something that I can fit into my carb count...unless I were to just eat one bar the whole day and nothing else, but who am I kidding, if there is a box of these puppies in the house I'm eating them all!!!

     So I got lucky and found a great recipe at genaw.com. Linda has a ton of great recipes on her website and I plan to try a lot of them in the coming year. She had this one listed under desserts/Butter Mint Mousse. While the Butter Mint Mousse seemed intriguing I only had lemon, vanilla and orange extract in the house and so I tried the orange. It looks pretty light in this picture but it's actually a pretty orange color. 

Orange Creamsicle Mousse
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 granular Splenda or equivalent liquid Splenda
1 tsp orange extract
3 drops yellow food color
2 drops red food color (I used 3 and it still seemed a little light to me.
1 tbsp sugar free instant vanilla pudding mix

You simply pour the cream into a mixing bowl, add the rest of the ingredients and using your mixer beat it on low speed until blended then beat on high until thick and fluffy. This is 4 servings with 5 net carbs if you use the granular Splenda and 3 net carbs is you use the liquid Splenda. It's a creamy, delicious treat!

     And last, but not least I tried something that I've been thinking of trying since forever! I riced a cauliflower and made Asian Pork Fried Rice......oh my gosh was it ever yummy!

     First..ricing a cauliflower? Yeah, I had no idea how to do that but I found this great video on youtube. There are other ways of doing it, like with a food processor, but since I don't have one and I do have a blender, this was the next best thing. It's a short video so please watch it. It was made by Robin Sue at Big Red Kitchen.

     Pretty cool huh? I love that there are so many low-carb, gluten-free, paleo, vegetarian blogs out there with cooks that love to experiment and share these wonderful tips, videos, ideas and recipes. I am so grateful for them!

     So I riced my Cauliflower and then followed the basic simple instructions on another video by another awesome low-carb chef, Kent Altena at Atkins Diet Geek Blog. He's made hundreds of videos and I've not had the chance yet to watch more than 10 or so and can't wait to see all of them. He also has an inspiring weight loss story to tell! Here's his video on making "Faux Fried Rice" using riced cauliflower. 

     I did basically the same thing, except I had no bacon, so I fried about a cup of my riced cauliflower for about 4 minutes with some olive oil and butter and salt and pepper, then added diced ham and some left over chicken kabob from dinner with my dad and sister the other night.

     Then after another two or three minutes of frying that up, I moved it all to the side and added one scrambled egg, fried the egg a bit then incorporated the rice, ham, chicken mixture in, added a shot of soy sauce and a small shot of sesame see oil and about a tablespoon of Sriracha Sauce (I love this sauce, it is my favorite seasoning of all time!). Stirred it a little longer and ended up with this little beauty.

    

     Every week I post a zillion low-carb recipes on Pinterest, and I definitely think it's time to start trying some of them, otherwise this will be true of me!

    
     Have a great week everyone and please feel free to head over to Mosaic Monday at Little Red House to see what everyone else is sharing. 

Sciatica Update and a Recipe and a Mosaic!

Photo Credit - Carmen Beecher

When last we got together I was one big throbbing ball of pain due to Sciatica! That was Wednesday and today is Saturday. Thursday and Friday actually got worse, the pain radiating and moving at times to my knees, then to the shin area of my leg, then to the top of my foot. I had a very difficult time sleeping and had to take a Vicodin...and I hate taking any kind of medicine, especially those that alter your mood and character!

Thursday night I went on an Internet hunt to try to find something, some exercise or food or medicine...that would give me some relief! I found this website, treatsciaticanow.com and reviewed it, searched online for reviews from others that have tried it. I contemplated it because you have to purchase an online e-book for $37.00! Anyone that knows me knows that I don't pay more than 80cents for a book because I buy them all at the Goodwill Store! But I was desperate and my pain-filled brain said, "Do IT!" So I ordered it and quickly reviewed it and went to bed, exhausted from the pain.
Sciatica Treatment

Friday I told my sister about it and sent her an email with the part of the book that tells you what you need to do in order to start relieving the pain in as little as 7 days if not sooner. She said she would come over that evening and help me as it requires some massaging in an area I can't reach. Friday evening I told her it would be better to wait until Saturday morning as I didn't know if having her massage me on Friday night might make the pain worse and I would be unable to sleep.

This morning she came over and we opened up the ebook and looked at the drawings and read the directions and she went to work. The book says you need to do the process for 8 minutes, it was tiring work and hard and painful on me so we did it for a little bit less. (It was also tiring for my sister, just try massaging someone for 8 minutes...8 minutes is a long time!) When I got up I told her I felt better, but it was really hard to gauge it as the massage itself causes pain.

She left and I sat for a while with the heating pad on my leg, which I had been doing all week and then I started watching low-carb videos on YouTube and that made me hungry. I debated just eating some cereal because it's very difficult for me to stand and walk with Sciatica, the pain is excruciating (and I have a high tolerance for pain). 

As I went into the kitchen to get the cereal, I noticed that the pain was not quite as bad. I walked around for a bit and thought, "hmmm, maybe I should try making those breakfast muffins I just watched a video on."

Amazingly I was able to stand and walk long enough to put these together.

I kid you not! After just one treatment! I did have to sit down while I chopped the veggies and the ham and usually I stand at the counter to do it, but I did it! I am amazed and SO happy because as I mentioned in the previous post I am supposed to go to Arizona in February for a huge family reunion and I was really looking forward to it but knew that with the Sciatica this bad I would not be able to attend!

My sister will be coming back tonight to do another massaging treatment and hopefully within 7 days I should be cured from Sciatica forever! (At least that is what they say on the website) Sciatica Treatment

So, I am going to continue to take it easy today and do the normal Sciatica stretches and continue to use the heating pad, but I can't wait for my sister to come back tonight to do another treatment! Maybe tomorrow, if I feel well enough I can take my mom to some Goodwill Stores and hit the supermarket to do some grocery shopping as our cupboards are bare.

For those of you that don't have Sciatica, or don't know anyone who has Sciatica and just want the recipe for those yummy breakfast muffins pictured on the mosaic above, here we go...

I got the idea from Pinterest and watched this video



As I mentioned...my cupboards are bare and so is my refrigerator. I didn't have any sausage or bacon, but what I did have was ham and veggies and the eggs of course. So I diced up my red bell peppers and diced up the ham. I sprayed the muffin pan with non stick spray and then filled them with the ham and some with ham and veggies. Because I love me some spiciness...I also chopped up some pickled jalapenos and even added some of my mom's Chile Macho (diced up roasted Ortega peppers with tomato and seasonings).

Then I mixed up 6 eggs, I figured one per muffin, but as you will see in the photos to follow, maybe 5 eggs would have been enough. I poured the egg into each muffin cup. 

That looked great already but then I remembered the cheddar cheese! BAM! as Chef Emeril Lagasse would say! That kicked it up a notch right?

Now it was time to put them into a pre-heated, 350 degree oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes. DO NOT do what I did and overfill the cups...you can see what happened! See they rise up almost like a souffle but then start shrinking back almost as soon as you take them out of the oven.

Aren't they gorgeous???? Even with the horrible quality of my cell phone camera you can still see how lovely and puffy they are!

In the video you can see that she takes them out of the pan immediately  but mine seemed to be stuck, so I waited a little while but still had to use a butter knife to pry them out. They didn't break apart or anything but they did leave me a messy pan I have to clean up...later.

But regardless of them spilling over and sticking to the pan, they were so pretty! And the best part is you can freeze them or just put them in a plastic container in the fridge and grab one and nuke it and go in the morning, or take them to work with you for a delicious filling snack!

I let my mom be the guinea pig and she tried one and proclaimed it to be very good (she ate the whole thing so she was either starving or it really was good.) Now it's my turn, here's my breakfast muffin!

Mmmm, it is very good! It's got a great texture, you can pick it up with your hands and eat it like a cupcake, or you can be refined like me and use a fork! Either way it was yummy. I was going to eat a slice of avocado with it, but it was so good alone I didn't even think about the avocado. 

I found this great tool online where you can type in your ingredients and it will give you nutrition info, including how many carbs per serving. You can find this at Calorie Count. As you can see from the info below, these muffins have 1.5 grams of carbs and only 0.9 grams of sugars. You could probably add flax seed to add some fiber to it. But that's awesome! This site is great because it gives you grades for each ingredient and then gives you pros and cons of the recipe  As you can see it is high in cholesterol and sodium, so you might want to use Egg Beaters which would help.

So anyway...I hope my healing progresses and I'll keep you all updated. For now I'm going to go take a little walk and maybe clean that muffin pan and then I'm going to watch a movie and perhaps nap a little. I am recuperating you know.

Hey! Thanks to all of you that have emailed me suggestions and ideas on how to help my Sciatica pain or just emailed me to send me get well wishes...it is so appreciated!



Joining the gang at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday. It's been a long time since I've played along with them and it feels good to be getting back into the swing of blogging!




 

Easy Peasy Huevos Rancheros

One would think that since I am Hispanic I would have eaten Huevos Rancheros a bazillion times in my lifetime right? But actually, I have never had them.

But first a funny story from my childhood. I grew up eating every meal with tortillas. My mom would make eggs sunny side up and I would tear off a little piece of my tortilla and scoop up the yummy yellow yolk. I would continue tearing the tortilla and scooping up the egg until it was all gone. Then I would close my little eyes and pat my little round belly and proclaim that that had been the best breakfast ever!

One time, we were on a road trip to Arizona and we stopped at a pancake house in Yuma. I was probably about 12 or 13 years of age. My mom ordered bacon and eggs for me. They brought my bacon and eggs and everyone started eating and my mom looked over at me and asked me why I wasn't eating yet. I said, "I'm waiting for the tortillas".  Mom told me there were no tortillas coming, that in restaurants they served breakfast with toast. I told her I couldn't eat eggs with toast, I didn't  know how and I wanted tortillas. Sad to say I started crying and telling my mom I didn't know how to eat eggs without tortillas! So I didn't eat my eggs and I loved eggs!

Now granted, I didn't think it was funny at the time, but I get teased about it a lot now. I did eventually learn to eat eggs with toast, which is good because I love restaurant breakfasts and they don't serve tortillas.

With Huevos Rancheros you get your tortillas! I was inspired to try this dish by a pin on Pinterest by Bev at Bev Cooks. I thought, "Wow! This looks delicious!" I read the recipe and it seemed easy as well. So I posted on facebook on Friday morning that I was going to make these tomorrow. Well my sister called my bluff this morning when she came over for coffee and said, "Ok, so where are these Huevos Rancheros you said you were going to make?"

Here's the original photo posted by Bev. Now tell me looking at this photo that you wouldn't be driven to try making them as well?

I did tweak Bev's recipe a bit. I didn't have any canned black beans, but my mom had cooked a fresh pot of Peruvian Beans or frijole peruanos so my sister refried them in a bit of oil. While she worked on making refried beans, I heated about 1/2 cup of oil in a pan and pan fried whole corn tortillas one at a time until they were just deliciously crisp, then I blotted them with paper towels. I then fried the eggs and layered the corn tortilla, spread with some of the refried beans, then a layer of shredded cheddar cheese, then the delicious fried egg. My sister chopped some cilantro and we had some salsa in the fridge...we always have homemade salsa in the fridge (I love having my mother live with me!).

Here's a photo of the Huevos Rancheros that I made.

Trust me these are delicious. If you make them you will be addicted...so go on, make them! You can thank me and Bev later!

FOOD...What is it good for? Absolutely Everything!

If feeding me and my brothers and sister as we were growing up had been left strictly to my mother then we would have eaten nothing but beans and tortillas morning, noon and night!! Ok, well maybe that’s a bit exaggerated, but seriously…if not for the fact that my dad was a meat and potatoes kind of man we would have starved!

See mom is a very picky eater, always has been, even as a child. Plus she doesn’t like to cook. She CAN cook…she can make some awesome dishes! She is a wonderful cook! Her chile colorado is to die for, as are her chili beans. But she dislikes cooking with a passion, probably because she dislikes eating. . .

Did your mouth just drop open in shock? How can anyone dislike eating? Well trust me she does. She eats because she has too. Food is not a big deal to her and she finds it frustrating to think of what to cook. And when she does cook she’s so sick of the smell of the food while it was cooking that she can barely manage to eat a bite or two. And leftovers?? Forget about it! She’s not touching leftovers!

My dad on the other hand will eat your arm if you don’t move it out of his way quick enough. I can remember him coming home in the mornings and my mom would make him breakfast. She would make him three or four pancakes slathered with butter and then she would fry an egg and put it on top. Dad would then smother it with maple syrup and joyfully break open the yoke and watch all the yellowy center mix with the syrup and he would scarf it down.

Dad loves food so much and eats with such relish and abandon that small children have been known to stop in restaurants to watch him eat. The way he moves his mouth and the joy in his eyes I guess are like magic and little kids can’t help but stare at him while he eats. He’s kind of gotten used to it. We have pictures of almost all the grandchildren sitting on his lap and staring up mesmerized by their Tata as he eats.

So suffice it to say that my brothers, sister and I were not brought up to be open to many kinds of foods. We didn’t have any idea when we were kids and up to young adulthood what tuna was, or onions, or fish, or beets, cauliflower, lobster, crab, shrimp, or even salads. We knew beans, tortillas, potatoes and always some kind of beef, cooked some kind of way.  We knew that dad would buy a small tin of something called sardines but we never knew what they were because he had to go outside to eat them as mom couldn’t stomach their smell!

I remember one of my first dates ever with a boy and they brought me a salad with garbanzo beans. I asked him what those were and he said, “Garbanzo beans” and I said, “No seriously…what are these?” I refused to believe him and he had to call the waitress over and ask her what they were and she said, “Garbanzo beans”, and looked at us both like we were space aliens!

So I’m reading this book for my From Left to Write book club called The Headmasters Wager by Vincent Lam and the author goes into detail about a lot of the food that was served in the home of the headmaster who was of Chinese descent living in Vietnam. I tell you what!!! Mom would sooner have died than to have lived in that home.

The food talked about in this book! Wow! Man oh man! My mom would be overwhelmed and disgusted by most of it. But some of it sounds so intriguing to me. For instance:

Squabs stuffed with cave swallow’s nests, scallops in a cognac reduction, braised and truffled lobsters, sharks fin soup, braised goose, giant abalones with fragrant mushrooms and freshly spiced jasmine flowers, giant chilled crabs, raw fish salad, kuay teow teng soup of egg noodles containing eight meats and sea foods, poached groupers, fresh sweet prawns live and wriggling in bowls to be cooked at the side of the table as each guest preferred, either deep-fried or dunked into boiling water.

I couldn't even find photos on the whole worldwideweb of most of these dishes. Here's a few that I did find.



Shark Fin Soup

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Braised Goose - Photo Courtesy of Street Directory.com

Abalone with Mushrooms, I couldn't find the Jasmine Flowers. This photo courtesy of Yelp.com

Raw Fish Salad - Photo courtesy of Food Network

Kuey Teow Teng Soup - Photo Courtesy of Elizabeth Lin

Sweet Prawns - Photo Courtesy of the YapIsland Blog

And that was all for just one party held at Tet or Vietnamese New Year! What a way to start the New Year! I guess it's not that different than the way we always started the New Year as far as strange foods because I'm sure to many of you the idea of eating Menudo would be a bit disconcerting right?

Menudo - Photo Courtesy of Victoria blog

Menudo is a traditional New Years Day breakfast food that is supposed to have medicinal purposes in that it is the cure for hangovers.

I like the description of what Menudo is that I found at the Urban Dictionary: Awesome Mexican soup made with tripe (beef stomach,) hominy, chile peppers, onions, cilantro, oregano, and a splash of lime. Some like menudo served with tortilla and "con pata"--which means with a pig's foot in there too. Menudo is traditionally eaten on Saturday mornings and has been known to cure the common hangover.

What's the strangest food you've ever had? Have you ever tried any of the foods pictured above?

Headmaster Percivial Chen is a proud Chinese born man who runs English language school during the cusp of the Vietnam War. In his refusal to accept his adopted country's turbulent times, his gamble becomes a life changer. Join From Left to Write on November 15 as we discuss the The Headmaster's Wager. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.