May Meat Up

[Shinita]

I had a big cycling tour (for me), 36 km with some uphill… I got dead tired, barely could come home… I need to cycle more often I know…
Shopping was moderately successful. I got some cheap young Gouda (yep, it isn’t good but edible, I won’t use proper tasty cheese for my whisps as they lose flavor and I go for the crunch anyway, the protein is still there etc. but I will buy the surprisingly tasty and similarly cheap Emmental cheese from ALDI I think other times for that role. and for pizza, partially. to eat as it is, we keep our tasty ones. by the way, “cheap” is still more expensive than Gouda was before the war but yep, things changed) but I saw no pork chuck Not even the empty place with the label. So I bought 800g beef shank… Luxury but tiny and I had no ruminant meat in 2024 yet (except a tiny bit in a little spread). I am wondering what to do with it, I want it to count. I probably will simply fry it and use a little bit to make my own spread.
But now I addressed the “problem” of having 8 huge chicken “thighs” (there are other things included and one is almost 400g). Alvaro was happy to have chicken for breakfast, he ate a whole one… I ate the drumstick after midnight when my body, as usual, tracked my protein intake and found it lacking. It was an odd day. After 4 modest days and one fat fast day (~1100 kcal, 1000 is the plan but I needed a little extra) I did a big cycling trip (we both got burned a tiny bit, the sun is serious even though it’s spring…) and STILL wasn’t particularly hungry at 3pm! I ate a biggish meal but it was mostly fat even with 3 sausages and 2 eggs. I was pretty okay for hours but then I tracked, it may or may not have caused me to miss protein (65g… NOPE! though it’s probably survivable but my previous day had 25g!) and I had 2 glorious boiled eggs. Runny yolks and firm, peelable whites, how did this happened, it never did before or at least very rarely! Yay! But then came midnight and as usual, I couldn’t pull it off, I only was around 77g protein. So I had chicken but carefully, not the whole thing.

I am not hungry yet though I consumed some calories already (mostly coffee with the usual things in it. nowadays I use egg white and cream. right now milk too because the “cream” is the stupid thing, a tiny additive totally ruined it. not bad but not good either, some neutral weird textured thing. never ever ever ever will buy it again and will check the ingredient list in unknown “whipping cream” packages. what a crazy world where I need to do it with cream so milk being proper milk adds some flavor the stupid thing lacks). Alvaro had lunch (fish curry. I will subtly taste it but I doubt I will like it much), mine will start with the rest of my chicken, most probably. And I better start to eat the 1200 quark I have bought, they always have a close expiration date, it’s not so bad now, hence the amount (and because Alvaro gladly helps) but I am used to cheeses (some of our current ones expire in August or in October! that’s handy, we see some lovely rare sale and buy a lot - but we still always eat them way earlier. especially the normal Gouda, Alvaro’s main cheese. I don’t have such a thing, I like various kinds and variety is important for me I do have a soft spot for Masdaam cheese and I have a big piece in the fridge now).
I definitely have a cheese phase but I never eat much cheese. I just enjoy and desire it more so don’t skip several days as I did before. Oh yes I ate cheese today too, tasted the young Gouda and tried it in cheese whisp form too. It makes a very colorful one. Some cheeses stay yellow, others get reddened in the microwave for some reason. More sugar, maybe? That would explain it.

We had rain multiple times and now we have sun.
And Alvaro saw a new, big spider with a hole (he researched it, some kind of wolf spider) with her babies all around her, like sprawling over her eyes… The baby spiders respect others as much as cats, he said. I plan to go out with the camera and shot this marvel. Later. He knows where the hole is, we can find them again.

Tomorrow is still holiday as it’s the Monday after Pentecost (I had to look up the word for it, never knew it), Alvaro is at home and I still don’t do anything particularly strict eating wise (my normal desires should work just fine, I do my best to do my usual IF but I accept I will eat more fat than I do on my good days). Tuesday will be a possible fat fast day but we will see.

I planned to shot my lunch yesterday but I was so very tired and out of it (WHY physical tiredness affects my mental abilities so much I have no idea) - and the sausages weren’t so beautiful after their session in the air fryer. it works by the way but pan fried is a bit nicer…? but air fryer is simpler and the difference isn’t important - that I totally forgot. My 2 fried eggs became a yolk with 2 whites and a separate yolk as my fat fast day showed me that a fried yolk is just the best No too wet whites to keep it from getting crispy… I have mixed feelings about sunny side ups. Never liked it much as while I LOVE runny yolks, I don’t really like fried whites. They are lacking and even if I eat them together… Nope, not good enough, I strongly prefer scrambled eggs where yolks are everywhere - but they aren’t runny. Boiled eggs are nice when runny and I love firm boiled egg whites so when the yolks get hard-boiled, I start to eat very little yolk with all the lovely whites. And then I need to do something with all the leftover hard-boiled yolks… I developed recipes but I still can’t just eat a ton of hard-boiled eggs and leaving zillion yolks. Hence my attempts to make soft enough boiled eggs while keeping the peelability. Not easy but yesterday I was super lucky.

But I got carried away again. Without finishing all my thoughts about eggs
I could write about them forever, most probably.

[beannoise]

Hey look at me. I remembered to take a picture of my food!

Busy week- first round of student orientation. Flower beds have exploded. Hubby is threatening to get a machete.

I have figured out why carnivore works for me while also solving the mystery of 20 years of nagging health problems and seemingly random, severe reactions. Why dairy is okay, but cheese is hit or miss? Why avocados make me miserable. Why I don’t tolerate fragrances? Salicylates.

I’ve spent the last almost two years working with my rheumatologist, allergist, and a gastro doc. None of us connected the dots, even though I’m textbook for the high risk group for not being able to clear them out of my system. I even have aspirin and NSAIDs listed as allergens on my medical charts.

It took being very, very sick this week after olive oil, mint tums, and pepto, for things to click. (My doctor did know I was using pepto, but it was kind of a “duh” moment for me.)

Anyhow… maybe this could be helpful to someone else here since I think most of us are carnivores-after-trying-everything-else:

Salicylate Sensitivity

That’s a very basic, but decent, overview. If anyone is interested in digging deeper, I’ll start another thread and supply some academic articles.

As I’ve dug into it, I can’t help but seeing Mikala Peterson’s story. (This is much more common in people with rheumatoid diseases).

[Geezy56]

Pancakes today. They were carnivore.

They were made using my paffle recipe of egg, pork rind panko, butter and baking powder.
They were very different than the waffles.
I couldn’t taste the pork rinds but the flavors was a little nutty and the texture had a mild crunch as though I were eating a whole grain pancake.
I thought they were great with a little butter on them.
Next time I’ll be topping them with a couple of over easy eggs.

[beannoise]

Easy food today.

Thin sliced beef broiled:

And chicken broth “soup” from precooking some wings for tomorrow.

Just kind of meh sort of day, but food is good.

[Shinita]

I made pancakes too. But it’s easier for me as Hungarian pancakes are super thin (and filled, I have quark for that role now), I can get away with zero dry stuff And that’s good as I can’t buy pork rinds here (without more sunflower seed oil than lard in them and I probably never will wrap my head around that…).

I couldn’t get easily hungry today So I ate a few bites here and there and I probably will only have a single decent size meal, dinner. I made my soup yesterday and today we ate some. I went out of my way to add some vegs so Alvaro could eat it and he was complaining about the collagen smell… Yes, the duck wings (minus the meatiest part) had a lot of skin but my soup isn’t bad… The meaty pork bones were very nice I don’t like cooked fowl skin (except if it’s a proper stew with lots of paprika, for some reason it works there) so I put it into the air fryer, maybe it helps. I haven’t eaten that yet.

[…]
Oh it was okay but now I have even more schmalz… I will make the chicken liver and heart stew soon, Alvaro is looking forward to it too!

So, I am back to my strictest possible woe starting tomorrow.
I made a plan for tomorrow, carnivore fat fast day, very simple, just fat, sour cream and 2 big sausages. It turned out my fattier grill sausage is fattier than the pork belly I used last time (not a very hard thing to do as the pork belly is very meaty and sausages tend to be very fatty but of course there is a big variance)… It’s so easy to plan (and do, this far) carnivore fat fast days… My vegetarian ones were more limited and less meal-like. I liked the items but it was still very obviously designed to get a high fat percentage, it felt a bit forced (not eating it, just the meal showed I am trying very hard to get the fat percentage, not making a normal, tempting albeit fatty meal). And I still only got 88% fat while I easily do 90% now. Without my beloved pork jowl, even. I could even eat sponge cake but then I would need some quite fatty other items, not like that is hard when I only eat super little… I probably could do 1000 kcal at 99% fat easily. I only have a single day (due to my healthy protein/muscle paranoia) so that makes it quite trivial.

My meat today wasn’t so pretty but lookie, a beautiful and quite big wolf spider with adorable babies
I try to make flower pics next time though these spiders are way more interesting but they may not be everyone’s cup of tea… And I do love my flowers too.
We are pretty sure it’s geolycosa vultuosa, the Hungarian name has “from/of Hell” in it as it has a painful bite. But why would it bite us when we mind our own business except of course admiring and photographing the beauties is a must! And Alvaro have found many tinier burrows! I am excited and will go to check all of them daily!

The babies are supposed to be on her back and they are very orderly there indeed on the photos I have found. These ones didn’t get the memo (or that is only for longer travels), they are simply everywhere, crawling all over Mom

I am very pleased. Alvaro wanted to see kingfishers too but we should appreciate what we have. Kingfishers are a very rare sight for us.

We expect another rainy day but I hope we will have sunny days afterwards, the rain was needed but we got plenty. Rain isn’t good for cherry season, ours isn’t here yet but soon. Other important red fruit seasons arrived (still in their very early days) so it will be somewhat interesting what I will do from now on. Right now I vaguely plan carnivore-ish during workdays and hopefully won’t stray too far on weekends either. I eat whatever I want so we will see what that will be but I have very nice carni items and plans now and if I need a break from eating much meat, I always can do a fat fast. It is probably easier than eating eggs, dairy and little meat.

I try to stop drinking coffee (so much). I have too much fun with my new coffee, finally I have found a good one!

[Geezy56]

Big stack of carnivore pancakes and eggs.

[Karen18]

@Shinita well done with that big bike ride and love the spider pic though i did look at picture first and was trying to workout what it was! Once i read it was a spider i could see it straight away☺
@beannoise you plants look fab… hubbies threat i would be threatening him with machette

Yesterdays food

Only ate about a third of the deli platter
Legs have been so sore from Saturdays exercise so i walked into local town yesterdayy. Did a bit more in garden … i bought a few more plants the day before that required potting out so i am gradually replacing the ones that didn’t grow back last year. Trying to put more perennials in but i do like petunias and some other annual bedding plants. I lost a bit of interest last year while waiting to see what would grow back and seeing just weeds come up in a number of planters but certainly back in the spirit of gardening this year. Just glad the weather has been good for being outside. I am loathe to go out when it is too overcast or cold. Since being on these strong blood thinners i am feeling the cold so much more than i ever did when i was younger.

I am at the dentist this morning, just sitting after initial trearment, wairing for the new crown to be designed and tbe fitted… 20 mins to write this lol. Amazing how different technology is now, i can remember when i would have had to have a temporary cover fitted and return for a 2nd appt some time in the future for it to be fitted. Got to admit some new technology is really good! Brunch when i return home will be chicken again… the skin on chicken breasts… when i packet yesterday i was pleasantly surpried to see 3 breasts …i thought there was only 2 when i bought them! They were really nice.

[Shinita]

It’s raining, I think it will be enough for a while…

I did a fat fast day. I hope. I ate at 6pm but I am not satiated yet, maybe a bit later. I had to add a cheese whisp and I am at 87% (even though I had more fat than in the photo) but it is good enough for now. My meal was quite fine. I had the planned 2 sausages, butter, lard and sour cream. (And some coffees with leftover milky egg milk but I won’t open my last big box of cream just yet.)

Good tasting sausages. It’s so… luxurious to eat this fatty But it’s a tad above what i find optimal. Not a problem for such a small meal though… I probably wrote that last time as well. I am looking forward to my future fat fast days (I will need more sausages eventually) but it will be lovely to eat a proper amount of pork tomorrow.
I was 80kg in the morning. Ouch. My first weight goal is going back to my 2022/2023 weight, 75kg. The second is going back to 69kg, that was my weight when I first went keto several years ago. My lowest weight in the last decades was 62kg but my belly was fat even then. I wonder how I will look if I ever go back to that weight, I probably have a tiny bit more muscle now and I probably will gain more until then as even that is easier for me than losing any fat.
But it will be nice to eat a modest amount anyway. Today was so convenient again, no cooking, quick meal, almost no thinking about food until 6pm… I start to get the “fast” in fat fast, the feeling is somewhat similar Good practice for EF I hope.

[Geezy56]

Those sausages look good. I miss the good sausages that I used to get when I lived in Germany. It’s so hard to find really good sausages here in the states commercially. If I want good ones I have to mail order from a good sausage maker in another state.

[Geezy56]

Paffle lamb burgers again today.

[Shinita]

Paffle lamb burgers again today.

They are quite pretty And lamb I want lamb too I don’t care I have beef now, I want mutton Next time we go to the city, I will try to get some, again.

The sausages had some not so great ingredients (tiny sugar and MSG. IDK what people
say about the latter, I don’t want that, I want the proper flavors. I feel nothing off this time though so both are minimal) but nothing bad enough for me not to eat them.

Next time I will only eat one sausage on fat fast days, they are leaner I remembered, even my meaty pork belly is fattier, oh well. Variety.
Maybe that was the reason I had some satiation problem right after my meal but after my little cheese, eventually it became fine. With a tad of nausea despite the really low amount of fat in my day. Just like in the beginning of my first carnivore trial, too big percentage of fat weight wise (and it matters if I like it that way), most probably. But when I had that, I already decided to make my fat fast meals more normal. I do love eating fat, it’s nice even alone - but still unnatural somewhat? No real force but not what I would do normally. My body surely responded to that as my other fat fast days of my life were just fine. It seems eating 40-50g pure fat alone isn’t natural to me now (I have been trying to eat as lean as comfortably possible, in the end even leaner in the last almost 1.5 decade and it changed me a tiny bit), especially not mentally but maybe physically either (but they are intertwined).

Anyway, if I want 2-3 fat fast days per week, they better be normal So I probably will eat mostly fatty meat. And won’t have much idea about my macros despite it’s important for fat fast, allegedly… Oh well, not really a problem, what if I am off but it works well? Fine by me.

But I probably can eat sandwiches too (butter or cream cheese and cured pork belly… mmm. carnivore sandwiches are my favs. I know I wrote a few times I disliked sandwiches on high-carb. I still can’t understand how anyone can eat sandwiches for lunch. the “normal” ones I mean. that’s an emergency snack or travel food, not a lunch… lunches must be cooked and traditionally starting with soup here. when I joined my coworkers at lunch, we went to some cheap simple restarurant, they were everywhere and had some proper, cooked, fatty food as normal people do. maybe it’s different elsewhere but no matter the circumstances, sandwiches never suited my needs. but let’s go back to my carni sandwiches on fat fasts). Despite all the egg whites in it. It fits if I am really careful. And it makes eating butter more normal. I do normally eat butter all alone as it’s awesome especially when I am a tad hungry already during cooking but only a little bit. Not 30g (and 20g lard too).
But I have tracked and I still need extra fat. Cream helps a lot as I can eat huge amounts without adding anything else. It is not pure fat but way fattier than a fat fast day.
Scratchings are the best as they are proper snacks (I do love if they are a tad meaty but can do without), nothing like eating lard with a spoon

(Off carni fat fast is easier, I just eat a lot of chocolate after my normal food… IDK if I would enjoy it properly, surely it depends. It’s not something I would find nice at the moment, for example.)

But now I have a normal day, I fry some pork (green ham + timmed fatty bites from some super fatty pork shoulder I think, oh it will be glorious), eat some eggs and we will see what else. I don’t plan my day, it’s enough I focus on fat fast days so much, at least those are very simple and I will reuse the better ideas.

[Geezy56]

Carnivore pancakes with venison sausage mixed in the batter.

[FrankoBear]

Staying on plan as much as possible. Crunching out the last teaching week of the college/ university semester with student assignment reviews. Too much coffee.

But eating eggs in the morning and beef at night. Heart is behaving.

[robintemplin]

Heart is behaving…. Reason enough to celebrate!

[Geezy56]

Fry ing up a bunch lamb skirt steaks. Very fatty and in some places a little chewy but that’s just good collagen. Definitely delicious.

[Shinita]

Even if my food looks good, I just forget to shot it. Thankfully I did it when it was raw:

Back: green ham (even the fatty one is lean below that tiny layer but that little fat is still so precious to me I still have the lean parts.
Front: some of the meaty bones I have bought, the ones not going into the soup as they were so gloriously fatty and I had to roast them. The right one is ribs, the left is anyone’s guess, some huge bone with some meat on it. They were nice. Had better stuff but not bad and wonderfully fatty.

I keep learning things about Alvaro, even after decades. Important dietary ones.
I opened a huge, 500ml box of cream yesterday and I know he can’t do anything with it nowadays (he decided milky puddings are better than watery ones with whipped cream on top, some months ago) but still asked about it. And it turned out he is very much against cream as it’s “just fat”, fat he doesn’t need. Keeping his figure is no easy task! I was baffled so he reassured me it’s not bad tasting at all but pretty useless and unnecessary for him, he can’t use it in his cooking AT ALL. Wow. He doesn’t drink coffee (more than 2-3 times a year, at least) but cream is such a great addition in so many recipes… Not so much in Hungarian cuisine, true, we use sour cream in everything instead but still, I have some “normal”, non-carnivore recipes where I can use it (or sour cream but cream is fancier, more noble, I prefer it ).
Fine, I suppose I must made dishes with it then and feed him some of the results.
I can’t even imagine living without cream myself. It is one of the best tasting things in existence… Very fatty, yes so I use it sparingly (except on fat fast days) but it’s amazing and tasty enough that a little goes a long way enjoyment wise.

500ml is very, very much especially now that I don’t use a lot in coffee so I suppose making a big amount of ice cream (like, 240g. did I ever make so much at once?) is nearly unavoidable. Or some fat fast day with lots of whipped cream, wouldn’t that be nice?
{In the end I just put 280g whipped cream into the freezer. I will do something with it later.}

Today I had some creamy coffees, they were fabulous… Cream is one of the tastiest things in existence, sometimes I wonder why people overcomplicate things when simple ones are just the best? Maybe their tastebuds are different or they want new, complex things… I eat way simpler than in the past and I get curious sometimes, I should understand.

It’s a fat fast day, similar to my first one so pork belly, butter, a fried yolk… I don’t want too much added fat alone and I have cream cheese so I plan to use that.

[…]
I always plan OMAD dinners for fat fast but oh well. Alvaro had his lunch, I enjoyed some cream… More cream… Oh well, let’s just eat then. So I did.
Not in the photo: all the cream I had and some cream cheese:

I haven’t tracked yet but I suppose all the (unknown amount of) cream is good enough instead of half of the added fat here I couldn’t bring myself to eat…
It was okay once or twice but I had enough, I want somewhat normal food on fat fast days too. Thankfully eating cream is no chore And I will get fatty pork for scratchings soon!

I do wonder if I could manage 80% fat somehow. No idea how much protein but this far I could have okay days with either 130-150g protein or with 20-25g. If I go above, I can’t stop until 130. I love protein, I love fat but I pretty much need to choose one of them to indulge in if I want good macros (and if I choose protein, I need to make sure I eat as little protein as possible, it’s just a big enough amount).

Oh we will see I feel quite fine now, I had my food joy, it was simple and convenient… I can make fat fast work really well even longer term I think. But I do want to try to make it better, who knows, maybe I am able to do it now… I am not like I was before, I keep changing. One thing I very well learned when I tried carnivore was that while my body may seem to have some fixed rules regarding my macros, different food choices may change it to some extent. And I finally manage to keep my egg and dairy consumption lowish (not always but I don’t need it always) and it changes things for the better. I may have new options now.
So I will subtly change the fat fast rules to see what happens. I am quite fine with more calories as long as I can get more proper food. Maybe I will have a nicely fatty OMAD in the end? My fat fast is already OMAD and eating my food at once always helped with satiation…

[Karen18]

Food over last couple of days

Met Sian at the local cafe on Wednesday so that Freddie could meet Raymond. Ot was a horrible rainy day but the little munchkin slept through the whole time in the cafe!

Went and had a late breakfast with my ex colleagues yesterday morning… a nice catch up this time, because i was dancing in afternoon i had to go dressed to impress which kind of took them all by surprise as i usually go scruffy and bare faced they’re not used to seeing me as a dolly bird

Dancing both yesterday and today …afternoon dances, both super afternoons. Took ages to get to Lichfueld dance today with a hold up 1/2 a mile to our exit slip road off A50 and then the road slip off the top roundabout to the A38 was also bunged up so we did a back loop and country route and arrived about 15mins into the dance. (usually arrive half n hour early to get coffee in cafe first!) Fortunately no hold ups on way home but we always take a different road home these days. Off to Moulton in Northamptonshire tomorrow night for more dancing.

I am on the waitlist for tomorrows CrossFit so may not get in… my bad for leaving it too late booking it!

[Shinita]

they’re not used to seeing me as a dolly bird

I didn’t know this expression before

---

Alvaro managed to find the new announcement of the beef farm so we will have some veal! We go pick it up on Wednesday! Never had veal before
I researched the cuts AGAIN… It’s not easy. There are various diagrams and obviously the Hungarian and English ones have even less to do with each other than the English ones and Hungarian ones separately. But apparently the one I wanted the English name for is ribeye. Oh my, it sounds exciting! It isn’t even a particularly expensive cut in the list, it was one of the less expensive ones (well the list was tiny. and nothing was very expensive except one but that is crazy expensive. that’s tenderloin, it’s 10 times more expensive than my cheap pork and more than 3 times more expensive than the apparently ribeye. and I wouldn’t even like it as it’s not fatty. I have this with pork tenderloin as well, somewhat expensive and I don’t like it. pork chuck is loads better, well that is just the perfect cut no idea what is the perfect beef cut for me but ribeye sounds good).
So, if I am right, we ordered ribeye, brisket and meaty bones. I like meaty bones and it was super cheap For real, chicken thigh on sale and pork meaty bone level! So the cheapest things I buy except very bony fowl stuff. We will see how much and what kind of meat will be on those bones but it’s cheap enough that if it mostly just gives me some soup, it’s still okay. But one can hope

Exciting times. Alvaro cooks beef tomorrow, by the way. Not a carnivore dish but the meat is tiny and it’s not like I am able to eat carnivore on weekends now that my fav fruit season arrived. I won’t go too far though. Especially not with fruits but some taste is inevitable. But carnivore-ish is still my default so I except to have such days all year round now, sometimes more than other times but I don’t need winter or spring months for having several in row, do I? I don’t think so.

I got hungry in the evening, had some cheese and sausage, today ended up being about 1200 kcal and 85% fat. I would be elated if I could have such days instead of normal fat fast ones… The extra protein felt really good but I could stop at what, 33g? Wow. But I ate normal food, how was it so low? Very unusual. I will experiment so much in the near future!
My relationship with food is pretty good now, I simply don’t have times when appetite overrides hunger/satiation. So when I don’t need food but wish to have some so I have some. Nope, I truly only eat when needed, it’s great and quite new to me. I always had such days, sure but I often ate without hunger or real need. And I really don’t get hungry very easily now and my hunger isn’t very hard to ignore for a while. So I am hopeful.

[Geezy56]

Smoked four racks of lamb ribs today.

[MeganNZ]

I’m moving in @Geezy56 ! Your food always looks amazing