Fear, anger, chaos. My work here is almost done.
And Tom’s almost back.
I’ve mentioned what The Wife and I call Sarah’s Awesome BLT’s a couple of times, so I thought I’d finish the story before Tom gets back and fills us in on his adventures in L.A. at the Ancestral Health Symposium at UCLA.
Sarah is Sarah Workman, a friend The Wife found, like several of our friends, while the moms (mostly) waited and chatted on the after-school playground back when all of our kids were younger. Much younger. This is how communities are formed.
Besides a fellow parent, Sarah was and remains co-proprietor of Carol Jean’s Fine Cuisine with her aunt, Carol Fraase. They do some of Springfield’s finest catering and in the off-season, they do cooking schools (The Wife went to so many they told her she’d graduated!).
Sarah invited us over one night because we wanted to learn how to put together a Turducken (yeah — chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey). She gave us shopping instruction beforehand, and told us not to eat first — she’d “just make some BLT’s.” Made sense. Why not something simple, basic, and easy when you’re going to spending your evening wrassling with stuffing sundry fowl inside each other.
Simple and easy was right, but we’d forgotten that Sarah never does anything basic; what’s the point, when a bit of extra effort adds so much.
Bacon 101
First of all, Sarah was just finishing up the thick-sliced bacon when we got there. In the oven. We hadn’t ever thought of that, but now it’s the only way we make bacon when we want more than a couple slices.
You just line a cookie sheet with foil, lay the bacon out on it, and pop it in a 450 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. No turning necessary.
there’s less shrinkage, you can do a whole lot in one batch, and there’s no bacon fat splattering on the stove top. Or you.
Here’s what it looks like when you’re done. Mmmm.
Speaking of bacon fat, you can now just tip the cookie sheet up and pour it through your strainer into a container for the next time you need bacon fat. Later this afternoon, maybe.
For cleanup you just peel the foil off the cookie sheet and give it a quick cleaning. Easy.
Now you probably saw most of the other stars of this party from Veenstra’s Vegetables in my previous post — the mixed lettuce and heirloom tomatoes make up the rest of the traditional BLT, but Sarah added thinly sliced red onion (also shown here from Veenstra’s) and avocado, which adds more flavor, mouth feel, and seems to be one of the few sources of saturated fat even Ancel Keyes would be okay with. As you can see in the foreground, instead of plain mayo, we stir in some (not too much) of the thick liquid from a can of chipotles.
If you haven’t seen the easy way to deal with an avocado, here’s a quick lesson…
Avocado 101
Start by slicing in down to the pit, then circling the pit with your knife.
Then you can twist the two halves, pulling one half away from the one where the pit stayed.
Now carefully whack the blade into the middle of the pit (if the avocado is very ripe, the pit could spin if you hit it off-center, so if you don’t have good aim, set it down first!).
Once the knife has bitten into the pit a little, you can just wiggle it side-to-side to loosen, then pop it out.
Take each half in your hand, and use the knife tip to “score” lines down through the fruit. The skin is pretty thick so you should be able to make clean cuts without stabbing yourself! If you’re going for cubes (like in my crab/avocado salad), just turn the avocado 90 degrees to make cross hatch cuts.
Now you can scoop the already sliced fruit out with a large spoon.
Nice and neat.
Now comes the dicey part for us low-carb types. What do you put all of this goodness on? I mean, we shun bread. As I explained to someone who asked, you can always just call it a cheat day, of course.
Sarah served hers on toasted potato bread, and we loved it. We decided on a couple of compromises, so I had to go dig the toaster out of storage.
The Oldest Son decided to go with low-carb bread. Here’s how it preps up.
After final assembly, two slices of the low carb bread are only adding about 5 net carbs.
I went with one slice of the potato bread, but it scores around 18 net carbs per slice. I’m not heading off to sugar spike land, but it is more than I like to ingest on purpose.
The Oldest Son had a great idea of using a couple of the low-carb waffles from the Eade’s Six Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle — it uses almond flour and they’re delicious. Unfortunately, although I make batches of them at once and freeze them, they don’t last long, and I didn’t have any on hand.
Then, as this got discussed a bit in the comments on my “Shopping” post, Saline came up with a perfect low-carb solution — it’s a B (as in Bacon) LT, right? Why not use a bacon weave as the base. Wow!
That’s why it’s a good idea to hang out with smart people! And good cooks.
If you make these and kick the humble BLT up several notches, a great side would be Dana Carpender’s “Un-potato Salad.” We made it a couple of weeks ago, and it’s one of those “why would I ever want to look a potato in the eye again” dishes. We ate that one too fast for me to get a picture.
Well, thanks again for putting up with me. See you in the comments!
Cheers,
— The Older Brother
If you enjoy my posts, please consider a small donation to the Fat Head Kids GoFundMe campaign.
“The older brother has yet to post any type of picture of himself (except that stupid looking face on his own blog banner), so I don’t take his work that he’s ‘thin’. ”
In point of fact, my picture is in both of the “Dinner With the Older Brother…” posts. That’s me at the end of the first one at the beautiful Blue Moon winery in southern Illinois, and in the second picture of part II with Tom’s “lab assistants.” Down to “not-morbidly-obese,” but not ready for the ring.
I’m still 30 pounds over what I have any business weighing, but gradually, healthfully, and happily moving in the right direction.
Cheers
“The older brother has yet to post any type of picture of himself (except that stupid looking face on his own blog banner), so I don’t take his work that he’s ‘thin’. ”
In point of fact, my picture is in both of the “Dinner With the Older Brother…” posts. That’s me at the end of the first one at the beautiful Blue Moon winery in southern Illinois, and in the second picture of part II with Tom’s “lab assistants.” Down to “not-morbidly-obese,” but not ready for the ring.
I’m still 30 pounds over what I have any business weighing, but gradually, healthfully, and happily moving in the right direction.
Cheers
Tom’
Stephan commented on Lustig’s study in the comments section of his latest post.
“The drug Lustig used to suppress insulin secretion, octreotide, is a somatostatin mimic, and has many effects besides suppressing insulin secretion. Also, if you look carefully at his slides, there was a subset of participants that gained weight on the drug. However, he only focused on the subgroup that lost weight.
I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Lustig that sugar contributes to fat gain, but insulin is not the mechanism.”
I haven’t seen the study, but I think Lustig might have also advised those patients to eat a diet low in sugar and high in fiber while that study was being conducted. That alone would be a massive confounder, and likely the main reason any of them lost weight.
What Lustig told me in our interview is that he gave the kids the drug and they spontaneously reduced their carb intake since they were no longer craving carbs. What would be interesting to see (if it’s in the data) is if there was a difference in insulin levels in the kids who lost weight and the few who didn’t.
Tom,
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/88/6/2586.short
I’m assuming that’s the study you’re referring to. The children had severe hypothalamic obesity following their cancer treatment.
From the abstract:
“Hypothalamic obesity is a devastating complication in children surviving brain tumors and/or cranial irradiation. These subjects are thought to exhibit autonomic dysregulation of the β-cell, with insulin hypersecretion in response to oral glucose tolerance testing (OGTT).”
Would you agree that if they were suffering “insulin hypersecretion”, as Roberto posited earlier, there’s a good possibility they were suffering from severe hypoglycemia? If that were the case, it would make perfect sense that they stopped craving carbs when their insulin hypersecretion was controlled.
Perhaps a lot of obese people have the same problem, but it’s seriously doubtful they all do, or even the majority do.
In either case, I’m wary applying any study of people with hypothalamic obesity to the general public.
Yes, I would certainly agree that such high levels of insulin would have made them hypoglycemic. I believe we probably see that to a lesser degree in people with chronically high levels of circulating insulin, and of course there have been some good clinical studies demonstrating that a meal that produces a big load of glucose can lead to low blood sugar later because of the insulin reaction.
Your point about not extrapolating a study of hypothalamic kids to the rest of us is well taken. They would have other issues that could affect the outcomes. Either way, I’m glad Lustig didn’t act like a statin researcher and suggest we start prescribing octreocide to all obese people immediately. He’s trying to fix our problems with a change in diet.
Fair enough, Tom.
And to think all this came about on a post about BLT’s 🙂
Tom’
Stephan commented on Lustig’s study in the comments section of his latest post.
“The drug Lustig used to suppress insulin secretion, octreotide, is a somatostatin mimic, and has many effects besides suppressing insulin secretion. Also, if you look carefully at his slides, there was a subset of participants that gained weight on the drug. However, he only focused on the subgroup that lost weight.
I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Lustig that sugar contributes to fat gain, but insulin is not the mechanism.”
I haven’t seen the study, but I think Lustig might have also advised those patients to eat a diet low in sugar and high in fiber while that study was being conducted. That alone would be a massive confounder, and likely the main reason any of them lost weight.
What Lustig told me in our interview is that he gave the kids the drug and they spontaneously reduced their carb intake since they were no longer craving carbs. What would be interesting to see (if it’s in the data) is if there was a difference in insulin levels in the kids who lost weight and the few who didn’t.
Tom,
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/88/6/2586.short
I’m assuming that’s the study you’re referring to. The children had severe hypothalamic obesity following their cancer treatment.
From the abstract:
“Hypothalamic obesity is a devastating complication in children surviving brain tumors and/or cranial irradiation. These subjects are thought to exhibit autonomic dysregulation of the β-cell, with insulin hypersecretion in response to oral glucose tolerance testing (OGTT).”
Would you agree that if they were suffering “insulin hypersecretion”, as Roberto posited earlier, there’s a good possibility they were suffering from severe hypoglycemia? If that were the case, it would make perfect sense that they stopped craving carbs when their insulin hypersecretion was controlled.
Perhaps a lot of obese people have the same problem, but it’s seriously doubtful they all do, or even the majority do.
In either case, I’m wary applying any study of people with hypothalamic obesity to the general public.
Yes, I would certainly agree that such high levels of insulin would have made them hypoglycemic. I believe we probably see that to a lesser degree in people with chronically high levels of circulating insulin, and of course there have been some good clinical studies demonstrating that a meal that produces a big load of glucose can lead to low blood sugar later because of the insulin reaction.
Your point about not extrapolating a study of hypothalamic kids to the rest of us is well taken. They would have other issues that could affect the outcomes. Either way, I’m glad Lustig didn’t act like a statin researcher and suggest we start prescribing octreocide to all obese people immediately. He’s trying to fix our problems with a change in diet.
Fair enough, Tom.
And to think all this came about on a post about BLT’s 🙂
Awesome technique! I’m going to try this today. I was getting fed up with frying 1 lb bacon every morning before work. This should save me lots of time!!! I won’t be trying the BLTs, however… :/
Awesome technique! I’m going to try this today. I was getting fed up with frying 1 lb bacon every morning before work. This should save me lots of time!!! I won’t be trying the BLTs, however… :/
Where do i find the forementioned “shopping” post?
I believe you mean this one:
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2011/07/27/the-older-brother-goes-shopping-and-replaces-the-entire-government/
Where do i find the forementioned “shopping” post?
I believe you mean this one:
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2011/07/27/the-older-brother-goes-shopping-and-replaces-the-entire-government/
I used your oven method for the bacon on my two bunless, grass-fed bacon cheeseburgers last night. Worked splendidly.
Okay, after baking my bacon, I think I’m going back to pan-frying. The taste seems off. Perhaps its because I have a gas oven…
Never heard of that happening. We have gas, also.
It’s not recommended that you leave food in a gas oven with a pilot light after cooking as a “keep warm” measure, as that can cause moisture/taste issues.
— The Older Brother
I used your oven method for the bacon on my two bunless, grass-fed bacon cheeseburgers last night. Worked splendidly.
Okay, after baking my bacon, I think I’m going back to pan-frying. The taste seems off. Perhaps its because I have a gas oven…
Never heard of that happening. We have gas, also.
It’s not recommended that you leave food in a gas oven with a pilot light after cooking as a “keep warm” measure, as that can cause moisture/taste issues.
— The Older Brother
Wow, I nearly fell off my chair when I read this post. I’m a post-grad student living in London who’s very interested in health and the paleo/primal lifestyle. I watched FatHead about a year ago, then again last night, which subsequently brought me to this blog. As soon as you mentioned Fraase Farm I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I grew up in Springfield, moved away for college and never looked back. I love the blog and the movie, and I just wanted to let you know that you’ve got a Springfielder supporting both you and your brother!
We appreciate support from the home-towners.
Wow, I nearly fell off my chair when I read this post. I’m a post-grad student living in London who’s very interested in health and the paleo/primal lifestyle. I watched FatHead about a year ago, then again last night, which subsequently brought me to this blog. As soon as you mentioned Fraase Farm I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I grew up in Springfield, moved away for college and never looked back. I love the blog and the movie, and I just wanted to let you know that you’ve got a Springfielder supporting both you and your brother!
We appreciate support from the home-towners.