Foodie Patootie

Since starting keto, I’ve intermittently had a dull pain in my lower right side of my trunk crop at times throughout the day.

My hypochondriac self immediately jumps to a fear that I have some kind of incurable condition, but even I can’t deny that something that has started happening since making a pretty significant dietary change probably has something to do with it. That would be considered causal, right?

(I’m hoping during this journey, I gain a better understanding of and able to speak better to scientific and biological processes.)

Anyway, enough of my usual yammering.

Thanks to good ol’ Google and Reddit, I came across this link:  Solved Dull Kidney Ache and Bladder Pain

While the OP shares how baking soda has helped, I was specifically interested in another poster lower down on the thread who had this to say:

I actually went to the doctor for this because I was in searing pain all the time. I thought something was genuinely wrong. It turns out my urine was just really acidic and was made worse by the fact that I forget to drink water at work (I get really busy) and do a lot of sweating (labor + so-so air conditioning.) @kgros004

This poster also went on to say:

In my last post, I discussed some of my challenges of a new keto lifestyle and feeling like I don’t have too much control over my meals.

As I worked on the post, it started turning into a trip report of sorts and it was fun to write… so let’s keep going!

When we last left our intrepid travellers, they (haha – look at me and third person…) had ordered two wine flights at Georgian Hill Vineyards in an incredibly picturesque backdrop.

After deciding to be seated outdoors and to order a sampling flight each, were were given the option of some tastings.  Far as I can tell, they offer mostly apple and pear-based wines and ciders.

Since it was such a beautiful day out, we decided to try a flight of their offering and sit out on their deck area, overlooking their property.

Here’s JB’s comprehensive review (please excuse the audio, it was quite breezy… although the breezy was super nice to experience, not great for recording video):

Great deal: $10 for four samples.  We also purchased one of the ciders (I think 750ml) for around $10, too.

I don’t even want to know what the carb counts are in what I drank.  No doubt A TON of sugar.  But I indulged and it was worth it.

We didn’t look too much into it, but we saw groups touring the winery.  And quite a few people really enjoying the lovely scenery and the sweet flowing wines.

There were also a number of couples we saw there, too.  One couple, I noted, looked exactly like Michelle Tam of NomNomNomPaleo, but knew it didn’t make sense based on a number of things… one big one being this particular woman didn’t appear to have a family and her partner didn’t look remotely like Michelle’s husband.  But I admit, I kept sneaking peeks because she looked SO MUCH like Michelle!

By the way, I first came upon her website about five years ago when I first dipped my toe into Paleo, Bulletproof and Slow Carb WOE and NomNomPaleo is EXCELLENT.  Especially, as an asian low-carber, I really appreciate her recipes, style and aesthetics, too.  She and her family truly deserve all of the success their work have brought!

We then headed to the Village at Blue Mountains.  From what I gather, The Blue Mountains is a town.  A resort town, which mostly attracts tourists in the winter for skiing and other winter-type activities.

In their efforts to have tourists visit their area in other times of the year, there are some activities and this ‘Village’, which is mostly retail shops and restaurants.

Since it was on our way to our hotel located in Collingwood (There was a time when I thought that The Blue Mountains was IN Collingwood.  Now I know better!), we decided to drive over to the Village to see what was going on there.

Aaaaaaand, it’s on the Apple Pie Map trail as one of the places to be!

Seems about a million and a half people had the same idea as the area around Blue Mountain resort was RAMMED.  No parking and a ton of cars driving around aimlessly just like us.

After a bunch of turns and dead-ends and parking attendants telling us that there are no spots available (but how about the five cars that just turned out?), we quickly came up with a new plan to see whether we can check in early at our hotel in Collingwood and see what we can do from there.

Early check in was a success!

With that out of the way, we consulted the Apple Pie Trail map once again and it showed that a couple of points of interest were very close-by.

We decided to seek out Currie’s Farm Market and the Side Launch Brewing Co.

While I was keen on the farm market, JB had his heart set on the brewery.

(As an aside, while I am following a more strict keto and LCHF WOE, JB is coming along on the ride and has been cutting out sugars.  He’s mostly eating ‘cleaner’, but doesn’t necessarily watch his carb counts and beer is on the menu for him!  That said, we have both been mostly alcohol free this year.)

After a few minutes of wandering looking for the farm market, we pulled into Side Launch.

JB decided on trying the flight there, too.

Campai, as we say in Japanese!

Hmmm… yet another long post.  This trip is to be continued.  

Stay tuned for part 3!

I was a bit nervous not being able to have more control over my meals during this Thanksgiving road trip.

Especially since we were leaving a larger urban area where it’s been my assumption that many eating establishments are pretty sensitive to many ‘ways of eating’ (WOE), I wasn’t sure what options… or more truthfully, what GOOD options might be available to me.

Here’s a truth about me: Because I love food and relish my eating experiences so much, I get legitimately angry when I have a bad meal or dish.

With this in mind, I did my share of research for options which would provide: a) a good experience and b) good Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) / Ketogenic meal option(s).

I am also intermittent fasting that works out to about 22/2 and the one meal I have is dinner.  So it made it a little easier to not have to worry about what to eat for other meals of the day.

The one big thing I missed was having my bulletproof coffee in the morning.  Yeah, I know that it’s possible to sort out having it on the road.

But I’m particular and I have a coffee-making routine using a really, really, really good coffee from a local roaster, my Aeropress and Vitamix.  Guaranteed YUM.

If I end up with a sub-par coffee and even having my vile of MCT and butter mixture added to it, it just doesn’t do it for me.

And this is how much of a snob I am when it comes to coffee, I’m not a fan of Starbucks.  I won’t drink… it’s too bitter.  Blech.

All that said, during this trip, I didn’t have my coffee in the morning, which took me out of my routine and made me kinda out of sorts for the day.

Apart from that, my biggest challenge was figuring out dinner options.

If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for sticking with me through this rambly-rambly portion of this post.  😉

Day 1 – Owen Sound, Ontario

I like the idea of “down home cookin'”.  Having been born in Japan and then immigrating to Canada as a young ‘un, my version of down home cooking is, as you might image, quite different.

Because of that, I find myself gravitating to any place that boasts back home cookin’.

Kettles Restaurant in Owen Sound fit just the bill (in Comic Sans, no less).

(I consciously decided to ignore the fact that the restaurant was founded in 2007… somewhat shattering my fantasies about old fashioned cooking having been around for thousands of years.)

Going through their website, I was pleased to see that they have gluten-free options (so much for the belief that smaller populated areas don’t provide WOE choices!).

Here’s Kettles’ dinner menu here.

They have an all-day breakfast menu, but I wanted to try something special specific to Kettles: The Kettles Country Chicken.

It’s described as: ““Delicious” tender chicken breast topped with fried mushrooms and melted cheese.”

On the menu, it mentioned that each of the mains come with cole slaw to start and potatoes and hot vegetable with the meal.

I asked for extra veggies instead of potatoes.

As you can see, it ended up coming with a shit ton of carrots… which is not exactly keto.  Shoulda asked, but I had wrongly assumed that I would get broccoli.  Booo…

I was disappointed with the carrots, although I did have four or five.  Gave the rest to JB and wondered aloud if I should order an additional side-order of cole slaw.  Which, by the way, was really good!

It was a huge order of chicken smothered in mozzarella cheese and mushrooms.  And it was good.

I suspect that the chicken breasts were brined before they were cooked, as they had that telltale sign of juiciness which wouldn’t be possible without a brine.

Not that I have a problem with that since I’d prefer juicy to bone dry chicken any day.

The toughest thing about Kettles is that the place is covered in PIES.  Oh and honey, I love me some pie.

I was so distraught about not being able to have pie that I couldn’t bring myself to take pictures of all the pies just chilling about at Kettles.

After dinner, we decided to drive around Owen Sound to see what’s up there on a Saturday night.

Well, we ended up at Walmart and this ended up being what’s up:

Day 2 – The Apple Pie Trail, The Blue Mountains & Collingwood

There was a ‘complimentary’ continental breakfast offered at the hotel, so we got up in time to check that out.

Since I correctly anticipated that there wouldn’t be anything for me to have, I didn’t end up taking any pictures of it.  It was all mostly carbs… toast, pre-made pastries, cereal… but they did have a self-serve/make waffle station, which was a nice touch.

Not for me, tho.  Ugh.

With plans to explore the Apple Pie Trail, we headed out of the hotel pretty early.

First stop: Thornbury.

Where we picked up some coffees at the Thornbury Bakery Cafe, looked at Mill Pond, watched the trout (?) jump, and walked through the farmers market.

The weather was perfect and it was quite lovely.

JB stopped into the Cheese Gallery hoping to pick up some cheese curds.  DENIED!

We decided that our next stop will be the Georgian Hill Vineyards located in Beaver Valley.

Since this post is getting pretty long, I’ve decided to split it up into two parts.

Stay tuned for part 2 where JB provides an in-depth commentary on the wines we had a chance to sample!

Here in Canada, our Thanksgiving is in October.

And this year, Thanksgiving landed the weekend after my birthday, so JB and I decided to take an extended long weekend road trip to celebrate and to also take in some of the fall colours.

I’ve always been more of a city gal.  Having been born in one of the largest cities in the world and then immigrating to Canada’s largest city, Toronto.

In the past, I would want to go to New York City, Boston, Chicago… LA, San Francisco, etc.  (The first three I’ve been too, sadly those west coast cities I’ve yet to conquer.)

But maybe due to my more advanced age now, I have developed a curiosity and desire to experience things that feel more natural.

With that in mind, we decided to explore some of the areas north of Toronto.  We’re heading up to Owen Sound, Collingwood and Orillia.

I’m really looking forward to the trip overall… but what I’m not looking forward to is the potential challenge of finding keto appropriate stuff to eat.

It doesn’t help that there’s a harvest festival going on in the The Blue Mountains / Collingwood area that has something called the “The Apple Pie Trail”.

Sheesh, if I wasn’t doing my best to get fat adapted, you know that I would be all about the apple pie.  Or apple pies, to probably be more accurate.

This is my first extended period of time being away from home, so there will definitely be a decreased level of control and I’m admittedly worried about that.

I’m also worried that I will want to eat everything in sight.  Ugh.

On the third night, in Orillia, we received an offer to stay for free and two complimentary buffet dinners at the casino there, so we’ll see how that goes, too.

I’ll be taking a bottle full of MCT oil mixed with organic butter, a container of soluble fibre, and some stevia/erythritol which will hopefully help me get through the extended long weekend.

Wish me luck!

So when exactly did I get so old?  That’s 43 for those of you who are curious.

And yes, today I turn 43.

The truth is, at a certain point in my 30’s I stopped counting.  In fact, I actually thought I was turning 44 this year.

While all that’s true, I still don’t know when I got so old.

And it’s totally cliched, but how I feel on the inside doesn’t feel old.  But with my weight having hit an all time high of 180lbs until only recently, I was feeling my age… although, arguably, I do believe that what I was actually feeling is my compromised health.

The one great gift I gave myself this year, only just a few weeks ago, was to commit to improving my health, specifically to eating keto and cutting out the sugar (yikes!).

Since then, I’ve dropped some weight, no longer feel fatigued when standing or walking for a period of time, have increased energy and feeling better about myself overall in general.

Oh, and my tendency toward anxiety has also improved greatly.

It’s been challenging, sure.  Giving up bread and pasta is one thing.  For me, the biggest challenge, and I’m sure will continue to be, is not having any rice.

But so much good has already come from it, that I’ve decided to change up my birthday feast (I had originally wanted sushi and soba noodles with tempura) to a home cooked surf and turf meal.

Don’t get me wrong, the surf and turf is nothing to sniff at, but for me to forego my favourite meal for the larger gain is a big step for me.

And finally at the age of 43, it seems I am learning patience and consistency.

Hopefully.

And one other thing, I made my birthday weight goal: 165.4.

I’ve always been terrible at chronology.  Last Wednesday, I’m pretty sure I mentioned that it was week four.

Now I’m thinking that last week was the beginning of week four and today is actually, officially week four.

Or something like that.  The point is, I have been on the new lifestyle journey for a full four weeks as of today.

That said, I have not jumped on the scale the past few days because I have not been intermittent fasting that strictly and I have been cooking up AND eating fat bombs.

No doubt fat bombs would be high in calories and for some reason, I keep popping them into my mouth and it’s not filling me up as much as I think they should be (I mean, that’s what high fat is supposed to do, RIGHT?!?) … so a few more gets popped in and then my brain says, “Whoa, how many calories do you think you just ate?”

Then the other part of my brain kind of shrugs off that part of the brain and says, “Well, we’re learning a new way of eating and besides, cooking is fun!”  Not to mention the eating.

Sigh.

I’ve made three batches of fat bombs over the past three days.  The first batch was pretty good except the Sukrin Gold didn’t dissolve into the mixture so it had a gritty texture to it.

Yesterday, I found and bought some Better Stevia and made a batch with some drops of that in it.  But I forgot to include the peanut butter I was planning on adding, so it ended up being like a chocolate truffle.  It’s all right, but not what I was aiming for.

Oh and I also found a chocolate mold!  So cute little heart-shaped fat bombs!!

So today, I decided to make another batch.  This time with the peanut butter, cocoa, heavy cream, a bunch of other fats, Better Stevia drops AND the stevia / erythritol.   The oils separated, so this batch was also not perfect, but the flavours are more on point.

Maybe later this weekend, I’ll try to whip up another batch.  In the meantime though, I have quite a few fat bombs to keep me company for a while.

Depending on how I feel, I might step on the scale tomorrow… and I may or may not report back.  haha!

 

What I discovered today: I LOVE COOKING.  I mean, I know I love cooking.  But I REALLY REALLY LOVE COOKING.

And I love just puttering around the kitchen, making things to eat whether now or in the future.

Today, I did a lot of cooking and eating.  I know I should be counting my macros, but so far, I’ll be perfectly honest, I can’t be bothered.  But I know I am very low carb and very high in fat.

I keep peeing on those Ketostix and they keep coming out deep purple, so I know I’m doing well with keeping things low carb.

Even though I got quite a few things from the market yesterday, I was on my bike and I mostly got proteins.  So I roused JB from bed a bit earlier than I generally would on a Sunday for us both to go to the grocery store to stock up for the week.

We are also Toronto Blue Jays fans.  Since it was the last home game of the season and there were going to be tributes to Jose Bautista with him most likely not returning to the team next year, we wanted to get out and back before the pre-game show was to start at 12:30pm.

We don’t own a vehicle, so we hustled on foot to the grocery store, loaded up on fresh produce, butter and eggs and booted it back home.  But dang, it was a hot one today at 30 degrees celsius (86 F) and MUGGY.

So glad we actually weren’t at the ballpark today because I think we would’ve roasted.  On top of that, I think we would missed a lot of the subtle things we could see with Bautista showing some emotion on TV rather than being there in person.

It also gave me a chance to spend the day cooking.  I set up at the marinated pork belly to sous vide before leaving for the grocery store since a lot of the instructions on line suggested that it be in the water bath for 12 hours plus.  (In fact, it’s still sitting in the water bath as I write.)

I have also found my new-found favourite thing to do, which is to roast peppers.  The orange and yellow peppers were on sale, so I roasted four of them up to have in the fridge for salads, sauces or whatever.  (I don’t think peppers aren’t exactly keto, but they are great for rich flavours and in moderation.)

For lunch, I did try my hand at putting together a hacky low carb hiyashichuka with the noodles I bought from the Japanese grocery store, a sesame salad dressing (4 net carbs for one tablespoon) from the store today, a sous vide egg, sliced grape tomatoes, arugula and a piece of sous vide pork belly I fished out early from the marathon water bath it was currently in.

Final verdict: Pretty good.  I think in the future, I will divide the noodle serving in half even though the package says that the 200g serving is one serving.  I wanted to use more sauce to flavour the dish, but I didn’t want to go too crazy with it and add to many carbs.

I also made some fat bombs with all natural peanut butter, cacao butter, cocoa,  Sukrin Gold (the more I use this stuff, the more I’m not liking it), coconut oil… I can’t remember if I added anything else.  I melted the mixture together and put them in ice cube trays.  And let me tell you, they really hit the spot.

Because I would like a natural sweetener that won’t spike blood sugar, I am going to look for a product called ‘Better Stevia’.  I’ve seen it used online and even though I’ve not really come across a Stevia product I’ve liked, I do want to try the ‘Better Stevia’ brand to see if it might really be.. well… better.

Dinner was zucchini noodles with sous vide garlic shrimp with Mario Batali tomato sauce.  I want to try the Rao’s, but Mario’s tomato sauce were a few dollars less and it’s quite good!

I feel kind of guilty for doing so much cooking and eating today, especially since I’m trying to lose weight, but I guess it would be unrealistic for me to expect that I would not think about or do anything with food for the rest of my life.

In fact, I’m really jazzed by the idea of being creative and making good food, while getting healthy and also losing weight.

Or maybe I’m just being delusional… I’m hoping not.  Wish me luck!  lol.

For the first time in a long time, I took my bike out last week.  And I ain’t gonna lie, I am in horrendous cardio shape.  I mean, there’s no shape to the cardio at all.

On top of that there were millions of people and cars on the streets and it felt like mass chaos while I was hyperventilating trying to get to various places in the city.

There was a whole bunch of horrendously comedic wrong-goings throughout the day and by the end of last Saturday, I was totally spent and pretty convinced that I was never going to get back on the saddle ever again.

That is, until, today.  Yeah, it took a whole entire week for me to recover from the trauma of last weekend.

That and I figured I need to get some more exercise in.

And today, thankfully, it went A LOT better.  Phew… because honestly, last Saturday was a full-on shitshow.

Anyhow, back to today.

My local Japanese food store has a shirataki noodle I have found (so far) to be the best substitute for an asian noodle.  It also helps that I’m Japanese and that I don’t mind shirataki, or specifically kojac products.

Last week, after a month of more “western” style dishes, I was craving a meal of stir fried noodles and used the “ramen” shirataki noodles from the Japanese grocery food store to make my hack version of yakisoba.  And it was great!  It was delicious and that’s saying a lot because I am VERY PARTICULAR about food.

My plan this week was to get more of the same noodles and make a keto version of hirashichuka (a Japanese cold noodle dish) with a low carb sesame salad dressing, in lieu of being able to have a full on ramen (oh, do I ever crave!).

I will report back later on how that turned out, but that’s the plan for the time being.

But to make hiyashichuka, I would need to find a low carb sesame dressing (nothing at the Japanese food store that would work), make a roast pork and get salad fixings for it to complete the dish.

I already had plans to hit the St. Lawrence Market because I wanted to get some meats and seafood to have available for meals throughout the week, so off I rode to the market.

A lot of huffing and puffing later, I arrived to a full house at the market.  I’ve been hankering for some crab legs and wanted to get shrimp for a zucchini noodle “spaghetti” dish, so some $$ were spent at the fish store.

I then found a butcher to buy some pork belly to sous vide for my salad noodle dish, some chicken thighs to cook up and have on hand and a skirt steak that I also wanted to sous vide to have for dinner for a nice ‘surf and turf’ along with the crab legs for dinner.

It was a bit of a spendy trip, but the foodie in me was craving really really good food… and actually going out to have all this stuff at a restaurant would have actually been a small fortune.

I have been successfully intermittent fasting during the week, but with the heat and all the riding around that I had been doing today, I ended up being quite hungry, so I bought some in-store smoked salmon on sale and gobbled that up with some water.

Which, by the way, was super fatty and delicious!  (I really should be taking pictures of all these things, I know.)

Once home, I set up the skirt steak to sous vide and collapsed for a while.  It was in the water bath for four hours since it’s a tougher cut of steak to get it to tenderize.

As I was preparing the sides and the sear on the steak, I put the frozen crab legs in the water bath to heat it up for 30 minutes since they are already pre-cooked.

Sides were oven-roasted broccoli and cauliflower, and broccoli stem ‘noodles’ and red cabbage stir-fried with bacon.

It was a super nice treat and everything was delicious.  The skirt steak was tender and juicy, and the crab legs were incredibly flavourful.

Presentation had a little to be desired, but who cares how it looks since it just all ends up in our bellies anyway?!?

All right, so earlier this week, I was throwing myself a prolonged pity party about how I had *only* lost 9lbs this past four weeks.

And here’s the truth of things (and I’m sure you’ve felt this way, too), even if something makes logical sense, it doesn’t mean it makes emotional sense, right?

So my mind says, “patience, grasshopper” and my feels are all like, “ALL RIGHT ALREADY, WHY HAVEN’T I DROPPED MORE GODDAMNED WEIGHT?!?!?!?!”

Well, ask and you shall receive…?  Not quite, it helps to keep working at it, for sure.

So, I couldn’t help weighing myself this morning and I’m down to 167.4.  HURRAY!!!

You know how you have some irrational beliefs?  (Don’t be coy, I know you do.)  Like mine was, I’m gonna be stuck at 170lbs FOREVER.

It feels AMAZING to know that I can smash through these kinds of irrational beliefs.

Let’s take a moment to honour the memory of the DEAD IRRATIONAL BELIEF.  yaaaas.