“I can’t beleive it’s not pizza Fabio!” – recipe

This was going to be called “Use it before you lose it Fricassee” but after the first mouthful I changed my mind  (although I reserve the right to keep “Use it before you lose it Fricassee” for another time – no takesies).

How this masterpiece came about.

Dans la pan

I had a few little bits of many things.

A couple slices of prosciutto from when I made the Broiled Prosciutto Asparagus spears, ditto for some asparagus spears. I had a pepperoni stick. I had some sliced mushrooms, chopped onions and green peppers. I have a couple pieces left of No egg cup for you broccoli casserole.

I sauteed the onions and green peppers in about 2 tbsp of aroma free coconut oil until onions were almost translucent.
I added the chopped prosciutto and I sliced the pepperoni stick and sauteed a bit more.
I added the mushrooms and sauteed a little bit longer.
I added the asparagus spears and the cubed slice of the the No Egg cup for you blah blah blah.
I whisked an egg with cream and poured over the whole thing and lowered the heat to about 3 and covered it for a few minutes.
When the egg was almost set, I added some cubed feta cheese ( a 1/4 inch thick by 3 inches by 2 inches piece) and covered again but turned off the heat.
About 5 minutes later…

And OMG! I had that first bite and could have sworn I was eating a pizza! The whole mouth feel was incredible, like a pizza!

Sur l'assiette

 

What’s for supper tonight? (recipe)

Asparagus stuffed omelet with smoked salmon and gouda.

Whisk 2 eggs with cream.

Pour into 2 tbsp melted butter over medium heat  in a frying pan 

When eggs begin to set, layer smoked salmon slices (I used 3) and asparagus (I used 8 stalks cut in half (pre steamed)), sprinkle about 1/4 cup loosely packed shredded cheese (I used Gouda), fold over and lower heat and cover. Leave for a few minutes until cheese melts. I garnished with half an avocado.

Eat!

Broiled Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus with Balsamic Vinegar Trempette

This comes from the site nomnompaleo.com and is a great side dish perhaps with my Greek egg cups .

So easy to make and so delicious!

Ingredients

1 bunch asparagus, with the ends cut off (the fibrous parts of the stem)
1 pkg prosciutto (I used 175g package)
Olive oil
cookie sheet
cooking spray
tin foil

Method

Set oven to broil.
Coat a cookie sheet with foil and spray liberally with olive oil spray.
Cut the prosciutto slices into three strips (I had to use scissors as the prosciutto is paper thin and the knife was ripping it rather than cutting)
Wrap strips around each asparagus stalk and place on cookie sheet and drizzle with olive olive oil.
Place sheet under broiler and broil for 5 – 8 minutes.  I set it to the full 8 minutes and the prosciutto had begun to blacken slightly (unless you like expensive thin cured ham blackened, check it at the 5 minute mark).
Remove from oven and plate.
I served it with a balsamic vinegar *trempette but not before I had to air out the place and fan the smoke detector – ears still ringing.

Eat!

*trempette is a fancy french word meaning dip. Ooh la la!

No egg cup for you Layered egg and broccoli casserole – recipe

Just in case I was getting to be known as the egg cup lady, I thought I would offer something different, however, this recipe could be made into egg cups if you were so inclined.

Ingredients:   

12 eggs
1/4 cup cream
2 cups chopped broccoli
1/2 cup onions
1/2 cup chopped, sliced or shredded mushrooms
1/4 coconut oil ( I used aroma free – you could butter, olive oil, bacon fat or lard)
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp dried basil
1 cup shredded cheese (loosely packed)
Himalayan sea salt (a couple of twists)
rectangle baking dish
cooking spray

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 350F.
Whisk together eggs and cream.
Add herbs and mix well.
Sautee onions and mushrooms in your oil of choice. When onions are translucent,
Add half of the egg mixture and reduce to low (3-4) and stir constantly until eggs mixture thickens slightly.
Pour the thickened eggs mixture into a greased baking casserole dish.
Sprinkle the broccoli on top of mixture and add cheese on top of broccoli.
Pour remaining egg mixture over the broccoli/egg mixture and bake in oven for 25 minutes (check at 15 minues and every 5 minutes as ovens vary).
When the middle of the egg casserole is lightly set (no more jiggling), turn off oven and leave in oven for another 10 minutes.

Eat!

*to turn this into egg cups, let the sauteed onions and mushrooms cool before mixing into the egg mixture. Stir all ingredients together including cheese, pour into greased muffin wells and sprinkle a little extra cheese on top. Bake for 15 minutes in 350F oven. Turn oven off and leave in oven for another 10 minutes to allow eggs to set without over baking them.

Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche But They Do Eat Egg Cups (recipe)

It’s safe to assume that my egg cup recipes are actually little quiches made without flour, hence baking them in a muffin tin.

—————————————————-
Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, by American Bruce Feirstein, is a bestselling tongue-in-cheek book satirizing stereotypes of masculinity, published in 1982 (ISBN 0-671-44831-5). It popularized the term quiche-eater, meaning a man who is a dilettante, a trend-chaser, an over-anxious conformist to fashionable forms of ‘lifestyle’, and socially correct behaviors and opinions, one who eschews (or merely lacks) the traditional masculine virtue of tough self-assurance. A ‘traditional’ male might enjoy egg-and-bacon pie if his wife served it to him; a quiche-eater, or Sensitive New Age Guy would make the dish himself, call it by its French name quiche, and serve it to his female life partner to demonstrate his empathy with the Women’s Movement. He would also wash up afterwards.

The book’s humor derives from the fears and confusion of contemporary middle-class men about how they ought to behave, after a decade of feminist critique on traditional male roles and beliefs.
—————————————————–

So, to call a spade a spade, here is a recipe for mini quiches that men will make, eat and serve to their life partners and then clean up afterwards.

Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche But They Do Eat Egg Cups

Preheat oven to 350F.

Crab egg cup

Ingredients

12 eggs
1/4 cup cream
1 can crab meat (I used chunky style), drained
1/2 cup loosely packed shredded cheese (I used gruyere)
1 tbsp dijon mustard
sea salt (pink Himalayan salt) to taste
ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup each chopped onion, green peppers and mushrooms sauteed in 2 tbsp butter
a large pinch of marjoram

Method

Whisk eggs and cream. Add dijon mustard, cheese, salt and pepper.
Add the contents of the strained crab meat, mix well.
Add sauteed onions, peppers and mushrooms.
Grease your muffin tin. Using a measuring cup (I use a 1/3 cup) pour egg mixture into each well.
Bake for 18 minutes, turn oven off and keep them in oven for another three minutes.

Eat!

It’s safe to say the egg cups are now my most favourite thing like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. They fit perfectly in those 8 oz snack sized containers from Ziplock and each one is one serving of egg.

What have I noticed since I started?

Aside from blogging, I also keep a written diary (sort of) of my experiences in weight loss and dieting. I keep this by my bed and I write something down nearly every night.  These entries are usually last minute thoughts or notes for a future blog entry.

This little notebook dates back a few years as I have jotted down ideas, thoughts and what-not of all kinds of things I have done to try and get control of my weight. When I have previously posted about the many ways I have tried to lose weight, I didn’t include these methods.

So, let’s share some ways we have tried to lose weight shall we?

The first entry is dated September  3rd 2010. I began the HED diet. The high everything diet. In theory you raise your body temperature to jump start fat burning and increase metabolism. And to make sure this worked, I started using visualization with Jon Gabriel. How this works: upon waking you take your temperature and chart it everyday, and you eat a lot of everything. This calms the body’s reaction to dieting and you start to burn body fat. I charted my temperature for 30 days, took bodily measurements weekly. I gained in the bust, lost in the waist, lost in the hips and gained in the thighs (about one inch up and one inch down in corresponding places).

Fast forward a year (to the day), I started following the Vega plan. This is a vegan raw food replacement, shakes and meal replacement bars. I even met the creator of the Vega raw food line, Brendan Brazier.  How this works: you have two shakes a day, and a light meal once a day. I lasted until November 28/11. Didn’t lose anything, except my self respect…

Then in January of this year I bought a vibrating platform. I did 10 minutes a day (all the literature warns about going over the 10 minutes a day) for three months. Nothing happened. (I cannot do typical exercise as I dislocated my hip two summers ago and I have some issues with applying pressure to that hip). So “dieting” for me is pretty much how I will lose weight until the excess weight is off and I can start being more active and not further injure my hip.

Fast forward to Mar 3rd 2012 and this entry;

“Doing *10 minutes M-F, have not noticed any further changes. No weight loss, no flexibility other than earlier reported. No improved movement. No improved energy. Quite disappointed to say the least. Have researched doing an egg diet (I hate the word diet – but there is no other term for it), eating eggs for all three meals (instead of meat), have begun to incorporate more eggs as I eat up existing foods. The egg council of Canada has a site with dozens of recipes for egg dishes. So far so good. This is like the Atkins diet, but with eggs. I will eat seafood but not much other animal meat, cheese and some veggies (spinach, mushrooms, onions, green peppers, olives (including tapenade), broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower and brussel sprouts), and honey for tea and coffee, butter, coconut oil and cream…”

From March 3rd to March 10th I continued to eat more eggs and decrease foods I had that were flour based, starchy and refined. As I ate up the less desirable foods, I added in more of the healthier foods I wanted to eat, eggs, cheese, veggies and such.

I then created the blog eggkinsdiet on wordpress and launched my ideas to the world on March 10th.

And quite naturally, on March 18th, I packed up what remained of the starchy and refined foods and went full on with eggkins.

So, what have I learned? That when I plan to go on a “diet”, despite my best effort and intentions the diet fails. For example, before doing a diet where I know I will have to deny myself certain foods, I go out the day before and gorge on that food because I will never ever have it again. All I can think about is that food and I crave it and I want it and I eventually cave.

But this time, I hadn’t set an actual date. The day that I switched to eating better happened spontaneously and without any effort. There was no last minute pig out. There was simply a feeling that told me today is the day and I changed. This reminds me of the many times (probably 20-30 times) that I tried to quit smoking, until the last day I smoked, September 27th 1991. I had set a future date on the calendar and every day I looked at the calendar, I saw that date circled and I looked forward to it. On that date, I had my last cigarette, had my laser therapy and never looked back.

So what is different this time around, what feels different this time as opposed to every other time I have “dieted” is that it isn’t a diet. Yes, there are some foods that I am not currently eating, not because I am denying myself, but because I do not want them right now.  Will I ever have them again? I don’t know, the same way that I don’t know 100% if I will ever smoke again. I do know that right now, I don’t want to smoke or eat food that will only derail me. And as with every day that I didn’t smoke has added up to nearly 21 years smoke free, everyday that I don’t derail myself will eventually add up to more reasons to continue than against any reason to revert back.

And the biggest side effect that I have noticed so far? How stable my mood has been, virtually no cravings and positive mental energy.

My goal is to become chronically healthy.

so eat ! and stop dieting!

* refers to the use of the vibrating platform

What’s for brunch today?

A slice of upside down spinach egg pie, a slab of feta cheese and a glass of unsweetened natural almond milk.

Delish!

What’s for dinner tonight?

I whipped up two eggs with a couple tbsp of cream.

Cooked my omelet in coconut oil, added some steamed asparagus spears and added 1/4 cup shredded monterey jack cheese.

Folded that baby over and voila!

The eggkinsdiet ain’t no diet

It’s interesting that as soon as I created my Facebook page (shameless plug), the ads that began appearing were for “diets’.  I click the “x” and choose against my views because the eggkinsdiet isn’t a diet.

It is a weight management “life” style, but eggkinsweightmanagementlifestyle would have been to long and hard to remember, so I chose diet.

http://www.dictionary.com gives these descriptors for diet;

1.  food and drink considered in terms of its qualities, composition, and its effects on health
2.  a particular selection of food, especially as designed or prescribed to improve a person’s physical condition or to prevent or treat a disease
3.  such a selection or a limitation on the amount a person eats for reducing weight
4.  the foods eaten, as by a particular person or group
5.  food or feed habitually eaten or provided

I would say that four out of five descriptors are exactly what eggkins is about, with the exception of number 3, I offer a modified point. By selecting and eating foods (in abundance) that will nourish my body, in a way that will allow me to limit (and eliminate) foods that currently do not provide my body with any real value, and thus resulting in overall weight reduction.

That weight loss will be the end result of following this eating plan and not the sole reason makes this a non diet as far as the diet industry interprets it.  How much weight loss experienced, that will be up to my body to decide (we all have a set weight point).

I want to reclaim the word diet and use it in the way that it was intended to be used, and not the deprivation inducing four letter word it has become.

If “diets” (the calorie reducing kind) really worked, there wouldn’t be hundreds of them.  And our waistlines wouldn’t be getting bigger. Healthy bodies aren’t a result of reducing the overall amount of food we consume, but the overall amount of the kinds of food we consume while increasing other kinds.

 

 

Greek egg cups (recipe)

If you like olives, feta and sun-dried tomatoes, this’ll hit the spot.

Ingredients

12 eggs
1/4 cup cream
1/2 cup crumbled feta
6 sun-dried tomatoe halves, sliced into strips (sulphur free)
1/2 cup sliced kalamata olives
1 tsp Greek seasoning
muffin tin
cooking spray

Method

Preheat oven to 350F.
Mix eggs, cream, feta, sliced up sun-dried tomatoes and Greek seasoning.
Spray the muffin tin well.
Divide the egg mixture into the 12 wells (I use a 1/3 cup measuring cup and it does the trick).
Bake for 15 minutes. Turn oven off and let the heat continue to cook the egg cups for 10 minutes. I found this produces a moist firm egg cup.

Option: serve with a chunk of feta.