Cheesy Italian Almond Flour Biscuits

When I decided to go wheat free, I thought I would never make it. There are days when I literally crave buttered bread like a smoker craves a cigarette. But after experimenting with some almond flour recipes, I realized I COULD do this! I try to keep it to a minimum, but a few times a week, almond flour saves the day for me. This is my favorite bread recipe so far.

These biscuits were adapted from this recipe by Delicious As It Looks. This recipe is for four biscuits but is easily doubled.

SAVORY CHEESY ITALIAN BISCUITS

1-1/4 cup blanched almond flour (I like Honeyville)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 heaping teaspoon parsley flakes
1/4 heaping teaspoon onion powder
1/4 heaping teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup Italian blend shredded cheese (cheddar types work fine too but the Italian
tastes the best to me!
1/8 cup cold butter
1 egg lightly beaten
1 Tbsp sour cream, cream or milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, measure your almond flour and break up lumps. Stir in baking soda, parsley, salt, and garlic and onion powders with a fork to blend. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or two knives until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the shredded cheese. Stir in the egg and sour cream just until mix holds together. It might be a little crumbly but it will form in your hands.

Break the ball of dough in half and then each of those in half again. Pat onto a greased cookie sheet or a piece of non-stick foil - I use an air-bake pan as I don't like my biscuits browned on the bottom. You may need to cook these less time to be sure they don't brown too much as it happens fast with almond flour. Cook for 15-20 minutes - check at 15 or a bit sooner if not using an air-bake pan until you figure out how long it takes in your oven. Pat them with your finger and you can usually tell if they are still gooey inside (so scientific!).

These are great buttered when fresh hot out of the oven. But I keep the remainders in the fridge and they reheat nicely. I slice them in half and butter them and heat them in my convection toaster oven. Sometimes I put a bit more Italian cheese on to melt - just delicious! Also these are great to use for egg biscuits, sausage biscuits or bacon, egg and cheese biscuits. I do not feel deprived of bread when I have these biscuits around.

Super Easy Creamy Asparagus Soup - Low Carb

I often find myself with nothing "legal" for me to eat, even juggling Wheat Belly, Paleo and Low Carb diets. To keep myself from cheating, I keep these three ingredients in my home - cream cheese, chicken broth and asparagus. You can literally whip up this soup in less than 20 minutes, and it's good!

EASY LOW CARB CREAMY ASPARAGUS SOUP

1 16-oz can of low-sodium chicken broth or 2 cups homemade broth
1 can of chopped asparagus or about 2 cups of frozen or fresh asparagus steamed until tender
3-4 ounces (a scant half of an 8-oz block) of cream cheese
Salt (if your broth is not salted), onion powder, pepper, garlic powder to taste.

Optional - grated parmesan cheese, ground beef or chicken
If using fresh or frozen asparagus, you could cook it in the chicken broth until tender before adding the cream cheese

In a two-quart sauce pan pour in the chicken broth. Add in the cream cheese and heat gently. Drain the asparagus, if using canned, and rinse it to hopefully get off some of the sodium and BPA (blech). If using fresh steamed, chop and add to pot along with your seasonings - sorry, I don't measure these, just whatever works for you. I don't like spicy but I'm sure some pepper or a bit of hot sauce would be good if you do.

Heat until the cream cheese is melted or soft, then use a stick blender to puree the soup. If you don't have one, go out and get one! I use it all the time and I got mine at Goodwill for $3.93! I see them there all the time but you can find inexpensive ones as well. If you don't have one, you can carefully blend in a regular blender. NOTE: Asparagus has woody stems so it may take some extra work to get it pureed, and you may need to actually spoon through your soup and remove some of this if you want it nice and smooth.

If I have time, I sautee some chopped onion (and sometimes a bit of sliced carrot) and fresh garlic and add just the broth and simmer until vegetables are tender. Then I add the cream cheese and asparagus and blend together. Sometimes I then also add a bit of cooked ground beef or leftover chicken or some sort of cheese, a bit of parmesan or Italian blend are my favorites, and stir until meat is hot or cheese is melted. It all works and keeps the carbs very low!

Peanut Butter Coconut Oil Yummies

About the same time I got serious about cutting out wheat and sticking to a more real-food-type diet I also began ingesting coconut oil. The downside of this is that I don't know which endeavor is producing which positive benefit. But no worries, I'll just keep doing them both!

I think it is so sad that we have been told that fat is evil and that it has been sucked out of so many products, rendering them less filling and less tasteful - this is unnecessary and I believe unhealthy deprivation, although I do not know what the best route is if you eat a lot of processed carbs. I can only speak from my experience that on a good-carb (nonstarchy veggies and meat) diet, fat does not make you fat! Fat fills us up and keeps our metabolism running smoothly.

This is a good blog post from a good paleo blog that explains it well.

I began my coconut oil journey with some Virgin Coconut Oil from one of my favorite companies, Vitacost.com. They have nothing to do with my mentioning them, I just love their service, prices and products. If you want to take a look, click through with this link and you and I can both save $10 if you place an order.

Or just go to Vitacost.com and take it from there. I like that they have a comment system so you can see others' opinions on different products and they have free shipping if you spend $49 or $25 on Vitacost brand productts.

Anyway, their coconut oil is good. But if you don't like coconut, it might be too overpowering a flavor. It was for me at first. So I purchased Spectrum Refined Coconut Oil at my local grocery store (Kroger). Our Walmart has it as well. The refined oil does not have the coconut taste. Their web site declares it has been tested and has all the benefits of the unrefined - I hope this is true!

What I do is mix the refined with the nonrefined and it tones the coconut taste down and I'm beginning to like the coconut flavor now. I've also just used the unrefined and it tastes fine with the peanut butter. The refined is also good to cook with as some dishes may not taste quite right with a coconut flavor.

You can google coconut oil and find many links that expound on the benefits of this amazing fat. It has a long shelf life and does not need to be refrigerated, though in the summer mine stayed melted in our warm house, so for certain recipes, I put it in the fridge until it got a bit solid. In the winter it stays solid on the shelf here as we keep it cool. Coconutoil.com is a good place to start as well as a book called The Coconut Miracle by Bruce Fife. You can click on the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon and read quite a bit there.

There are some amazing stories about coconut oil helping people with Alzheimer's disease and any number of other maladies. Many people add it to smoothies and some make "fat bombs" with it. You can also replace butter in recipes with it or cook your morning eggs in it. I love butter so I prefer to cook with that. I get my dose in by making little peanut butter tartlets, and these are easy to tweak to your liking.

This is how mine look when I make them. Not especially pretty but practical!

There is no set recipe but I will just say what I did for this batch -

1/3 cup coconut oil (I used a mixture of refined and virgin and it works best if it is a soft solid)
1/3 cup peanut butter (almond butter would be yummy too)
your favorite sweetener to taste - they are great with honey, but I usually use stevia powder
optional - a few dashes of cinammon, a few drops of vanilla extract and/or melted chocolate poured on top.

Just stir everything together until fairly smooth and taste for sweetness. You will probably have tiny chunks of coconut oil but that is fine. Then I place silicone cupcake liners in a container and spoon the liquidy mixture in. Glad makes small snack containers with lids I use sometimes as well. Put in fridge until they set. They soften up quickly around the edges, so I usually eat them with a spoon. They are quite yummy to me! One little tartlet and I am full for hours.

If you feel like cheating with the sugar a little bit, they are extra delicious with Peanut Butter & Co. White Chocolate Wonderful peanut butter! I believe it has 10 grams of carb for 2 tablespoons but also has a bit of fiber and you are halving your amount with coconut oil.

They make a Dark Chocolate peanut butter too but I haven't tried it with that yet. I can find this at our Super Target, Walmart and the two main grocery stores I go to. At this point I eat about two tablespoons of coconut oil a day (would eat about twice that if the budget wasn't so tight), and I am losing weight for the first time in a long time. This may be due to dropping wheat instead or maybe both, who knows! But I recommend doing some research and seeing if you think it might be worth a try. I cannot express how much better I feel after starting on grain free and adding coconut oil. I want to tell the world to try it!!

A New Beginning

I am beginning this blog to help me document for myself (and hold myself accountable for) the journey I began a few weeks ago and plan to continue for life. I would be happy if others joined in and accompanied me as it will be a challenging maneuver and sharing the highs and lows can help us all.

Almost a month ago, I became inspired by the Wheat Belly book by Dr. William Davis and also at the same time had been looking at Paleo books and blogs while still maintaining my low carb training intact. Oh yes, I also read "Why We Get Fat" by Gary Taubes, which illustrates folks who look just like me and my ol' wheat belly! Between these similar ways of nurturing bodies, I have begun my travels to the land of better health, and so far I am highly encouraged!

Before, I had trouble with low carb because I had a dire addiction to the comfort of bread and butter. I thought it was fine that I ate whole wheat toast - healthy after all, right?! But I gave up sugar (and processed foods) a long time ago and did not budge in my weight. It was the grains that were getting me, even though I thought they were healthy in moderation. Brown stuff, right? Brown rice, whole wheat. Dr. Davis and Gary Taubes taught me otherwise and just in a short time I have had such a transformation that I know they are correct, for ME at least. I realize not everyone will feel they need this transformation - I certainly probably would not if not for the aforesaid belly!

And I have discovered almond flour, my pale and pulverized savior! As an avid cook I have experimented with different almond flour bread and muffin recipes and made them my own, and this has been so far not nearly as difficult as my low-carb venture 15 years ago. My shorts are already loose and I am in danger of appearing to mimic the youngsters who wear their pants down low with their knickers showing! I am excited, motivated and so much more energetic to tackle this thing, and I have an adorable walking buddy named Poppy to help me achieve the exercise routine that is part of my agenda!

As for me, I am an obese, 51-year-old mother of two wonderful 15-year-old daughters that I adopted from China as a single mother. They are my heart and I want to be here for them as they grow up and have children (no pressure kids!). I have worked for years to eat healthier and healthier (real foods, no sugar) but to no avail on the weight, which is causing or worsening most of my health conditions.

I found out I had diabetes a few years ago - with a fasting blood sugar of 536. This is not good! I also had severe hypertension, and had had it since my 20s untreated, with a blood pressure at one point of 237/134. I walked regularly, ate modest carbs, or what I thought were so, cooked almost everything from scratch yet my ill health and weight persisted.

This year I have added atrial fibrillation to the motley crew of health maladies, which is at times debilitating with my heart feeling like a little person pounding to get out of my chest as my heart jitters around in its own little dance, the left side of my chest bouncing along. I get little sleep now as this is very uncomfortable and at times I cannot drive as I have bouts of near passing out, a brown-out some call it, where the world fades away. There is dizziness and nausea at times, and it comes and goes as it pleases with no pattern except that it is every single day for hours.

I also have asthma, acid reflux, and arthritis. And I have no insurance and not a solid income at the moment. So I need to take my health into my own hands and see what I can do to fix all this.

I had done low carb before and when I did it strictly I did well and lost 16 pounds. But then the kids came along and life got all too busy as I became a full-time mom working full-time from home with a baby. When my baby was 6, we adopted a nearly 7-year-old and I also became a homeschool mom and English teacher to my Mandarin-speaking daughter - a daughter who had been eating noodles every meal of the day and was not anxious to give them up! When with a noodle-eater, it is difficult not to join in with the noodling!

But all that has changed, and again so far I am doing really well. I am occasionally naughty as it is difficult with our very limited budget to make different meals and my kids do not have wheat bellies and do not want to give up their noodles! But they actually love everything I have made with almond flour and I have cut back on their carbs as well with no complaints yet! I will continue this blog with recipes and sharing information and sources and just documenting my progress, or lack thereof. Please join me if you want and follow along!