No Angst Animal August - 31 day Carnivore Challenge - 2023

mental-health-month

#61

Me neither. It’s not hard to get one, it even goes on sale sometimes. Last time I wondered about it but had other plans. Good for you, having a smoker, smoked duck sounds good and it would be a new thing for me to try! I see smoked turkey thighs in the hypermarket sometimes. It’s too expensive, I get smoked pork for the same or less and smoked turkey can’t be as good! But it’s probably nice.


Maybe carni satiation kicked in (without carnivore. I am extremely close but not quite there) but today I had great satiation while eating very little! I guess yesterday’s much meat helped but that can’t cause it alone.

My photo isn’t so great (and tells little about how I ate today) but oh well, here it is. My fav plate that always looks dirty… And yep, it’s rarely super clean, I touch it and that’s it with that dark brown half-shiny edge…

I didn’t eat most of the fattier pork and had other food. As this is very little meat.
I made pizza today, it wasn’t fully carnivore but we love that brand of tinned herring… I will try to make some great sauce myself and that will be better even if still not fully carni. But closer.
The crust was ground roasted lean pork and egg :slight_smile: It doesn’t even remotely resembled pizza (even my wheat one doesn’t resemble it, I have standards despite having just a few proper pizza in my life. I probably wouldn’t like it now but I remember the texture and that’s hard to imitate on carnivore. I don’t even try as it doesn’t matter to me but I do like crispy and crunchy things) but I could put the tinned fish and cheese on top and it was tasty and not my every day food. Alvaro had his own so I ate only half a tin of fish (100g with sauce), few carbs but still not carni.

I had pudding and creamy coffees as well. I make my jellied fluff differently now. And I deleted the paragraph here as probably nothing is that interested in my desserts (but I rewrote it differently…). This one was richer than both my jellied fluff and my keto vanilla pudding. Those are to add protein (only the fluff), satiation and joy in few calories. Not so few after I started to use (more) whipped cream instead of sweetener… Today’s version was good! And carnivore! Next time I won’t use gelatin and will freeze it. It will be an unusually egg white-y ice cream but should be good. Mom made something similar and I get nostalgic sometimes… But that was custard mixed with whipped egg white, frozen. I don’t do such difficult things and I may be confident in my cooking skills but that doesn’t include not making yolks into scrambled eggs when cooking them… I always use them raw if creaminess is needed. It’s so perfect raw, why to take risks? Cooking thicken things but I have other options for it if it’s needed at the first place.

This new recipe happened because I can’t live without my desserts now. I want them. Typically after every meal. I do plan to lose that somehow but who knows how many decades it will take…? Not me.
I suppose I wouldn’t want them every time if I managed to eat a decent amount of lovely meat but today’s leanish stuff just wasn’t that tempting (it matters that I eat leanish pork since long, usually fried though and I prefer that. but it’s nice to have to roasted too. but this one isn’t as juicy as in lucky cases. sigh) and all my other food couldn’t help enough.

Surprisingly low-cal TMAD day (I ate at 3pm and 7pm, I just couldn’t at 6pm), even my protein is as low as it can be.
123g protein, 100g fat, 375g meat. Oh and the fish so it’s more, actually, almost a pound! Coffee between 3pm and 9pm, good enough (no headache but I low-key fancied it earlier and persuaded myself and I was so pleased I lasted until 3pm that I didn’t feel motivation to postpone it even further). So my eating window actually ended at 9pm. I don’t drink black coffee often anyway but when I have whipped cream? Forget it. But I am so modest now, 5g was enough. I used to have amount problems in the presence of whipped cream. I love it.

So I kept my fat AND protein lower than my usual plan that typically fails! Wonderful. I enjoy it while it lasts. And of course, the convenience and satiation. I had no hunger problems today :slight_smile: But I do need some different meat soon… As I did have appetite problems before dinner and I didn’t enjoy my meat so much.

Slept much, still feel some lack of sleep but I couldn’t nap even after my lunch. Didn’t feel ready for my workout, not even for a walk, I did garden work though, in small doses. I so hope the next night will solve this, I have so many plans and some of them requires a properly working brain. A better than usual working one, preferably.


(Geoffrey) #62

Well I went shopping to pick up a pork belly to make some bacon and I found some duck. After looking at the price I decided that I didn’t want it that bad. Maybe I’ll just have to raise one.


#63

Muscovys are best for that. Get a few, one is a pity.


#64

I enjoy semi-soft boiled duck eggs with those dark yellow rich yokes. Boil the eggs. Start with cool rainwater, bring it to the boil with the eggs in the saucepan. Then rolling boil for 4 minutes. Then into cool water again. Having good water to boil eggs is important, I think. I refrigerate the eggs for a day and eat them cold. I enjoy them that way best.

Cooking times vary for egg size. 4 minutes is good for chook egg size duck eggs.


#65

We just had them for eggs. Muskovies and chickens. Muskovies are amazingly good mousers, too. Used to keep the chicken coop free of mice.


#66

I had similar thoughts before except I can’t raise a duck here… But I saw surprisingly affordable whole ducks on sale so I probably will buy one at some point. I wouldn’t buy thigh or liver, that’s insanely pricy and I am very sure I still prefer a good pork chuck any day :smiley: But a whole not so expensive duck for variety? Great. We could make a few dishes with it! We can use every part of a fowl so it’s worth it to buy a whole one sometimes.
I forgot if I bought a duck frame or not lately… I think I did but that was meh. Very cheap though and the cats always love tiny bones with meat on them… Still not a bad base for a soup, I just need to add pork for flavor. But small hens (like 900g/2 lbs for the whole headless, neckless, feetless thing! tiny but tasty!) are better and they are super cheap. Cheaper than any meat except some organs and fowl frame despite having all the nice meats! :smiley:


Maybe I need some fowl again. I don’t even have chicken liver since too long :frowning: Just pork. And 300g deer, we cook it this weekend! And the occasional tinned fish, of course but that is barely anything, I need to buy a proper amount of fish, hake as that is the cheapest and still edible. Not the filet, that’s double price and I like the skin anyway. The cats love the bones with whatever is left on them.

Today started wrong, still a zombie and I almost run out of tea and drank the type I shouldn’t as it made me want some dry thing too so I ate a bit. I still can have a good day macro wise but it’s far from ideal for me to eat without a good reason. Sigh. And I planned to ENJOY my food today. It was good but not as good as waiting until I need food and sit down properly for lunch. But I will have that too and it will be my 2nd and last meal, probably.
Still not ready for a workout but I took a walk in this gloomy weather. The temperature is nice, not cold, not hot, weather forecast says rain again but little and not for sure.

My last pork piece seemed less tempting but I cut it up and it is dark pink, not white as the previous ones, those were too dry. So I have a nicer leanish pork for today. And my leftover fattier pork is there too. And it’s a cheesy day… Hopefully it will work. I never could test if much cheese and a modest amount of meat and egg works for satiation. I know it’s not satiating alone but it’s true for chicken and I still can make it work if I don’t overdo it and pair it with pork. Cheese is pretty easy to overdo when I am in the mood. Normally I use little but sometimes I fancy cheesy egg and some whisps… Whisps are hard to stop eating and I don’t even have the perfect recipe yet. If I only use cheese, it’s too cheesy. I can make it good if I add plants (especially starch) but it’s not the direction I like to take since I made carnivore-ish my default woe… It fits keto wonderfully though.
I wonder if there is a way… For soft stuff, it’s easy, I combine it with eggs, maybe sour cream but this thing must be crunchy and almost all of my carni items are bad at that. But cheese is super crunchy when nuked and I don’t need much from the other item just a tiny bit… Maybe I can figure out something.


#67

Learned something new after I posted yesterday:
When my husband calls me and says, “Hey Honey, wanna work on your tan?”
What he REALLY means is :
“Hey, C’mon on down to the farm and hop on the tractor. You can flip the hay for me…”

So, I spent somewhere around 3 hours of unmatched suntanning enjoyment as the bugs and hay particles traveled up my nostrils. The scenery was lovely, too. :upside_down_face:


(Geoffrey) #68

That’s my favorite thing to do around the farm and that’s working from my tractor. I made the mistake of teaching my bride how to drive our tractor and operate the bucket. Now I don’t get to play on it as much.


(Geoffrey) #69

Scrambled eggs and leftover spareribs to break my fast. Just got back from the dentist and have to eat soft foods because of a temporary crown. Those ribs are fall of the bone tender. They practically melt in your mouth.


(Judy Thompson) #70

@SecondBreakfast hilarious! And sneaky.

Here it is Wednesday already. In my defense it takes a couple days to read up on this thread before I’m ready to post!
@Karen18 sorry you came down with it this weekend, hope you’re better now. You’re food pics always look fantastic!
@Shinita hope you catch up on sleep. Nothing’s worse than that zombie feeling when you don’t get enough!
@FrankoBear Darn, you gotta stop eating with family, they ambush you every time!
@Geezy56 you’re doing so great and your food sounds delish! Love looking at that 2 lb bone in rib eye!

Last Monday I got a 14 lb beef brisket, cut it in thirds and sous vided it all with an added chuck roast, for 72 hours at 140. Thursday night I put all of it in the fridge, then smoked 2 parts of the brisket on Friday for just 3 hours, and froze the third section. We ate the chuck roast for 3 meals, through yesterday.
So after the smoke, the 2 hunks of brisket got wrapped and refrigerated til Sunday morning, when I sliced them thin and put them in a flat low crock pot for 3 hours, juice from the sous vide poured over for moistness.
After church I put the crock in the car and we drove the hour to San Antonio (directions said to let it rest an hour so, perfect!). We had a gathering of musicians and friends to play our book of pop and rock for string quintet, so this was my offering.
These are Texans ya know, and they know their brisket. So, how nice when they said it was the best brisket their ever had!
I don’t normally use pepper anymore but did add it to the salt for the rub. It’s coming here to use just salt and pepper, like in the Austin BBQ places.
The piece in the freezer doesn’t have pepper, hubby can pepper it if he wants :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

So it’s been a few days but at 1 meal a day there’s not that much to post! I still have the boiled egg at 10 am and liverwurst and cheese at night.
3x we had chuck roast, Monday we went out for breakfast and I had 2 eggs and a cheeseburger patty. Brisket Sunday of course. Can’t believe I didn’t get pics of that-I’ll gave to do it again!


Today, air fried chicken thighs and shrimp. I ate most of my share of the shrimp as an hors d’oeurve while cooking! Lol :joy:

Yesterday I made a gravy with the chuck juice, a stick of butter, and half a teaspoon of xanthan gum to thicken it. It was amazing.

Monday’s brunch at the restaurant

Bone broth- Mixed chicken and beef with “chicken paws” from the grocery store

Chuck roast

Omelette after the gig

Brisket smoking


I reheated some of the chuck roast via sous vide to experiment for the brisket on Sunday. It’s a no go - the way I reheated the brisket in the slow cooker was a lot better.


(Geoffrey) #71

One of my favorite things to do, making bacon. It’s so easy and so much better than store bought bacon.
So, picked a a 10 pound pork belly.

Trimmed off the skin.

Pork belly is cut to size to fit my meat slicer ant the skin is sliced to render down and fry for cracklins.


The bellies will now sit in the brine for seven days and then it’ll get smoked for the final product.
IMG_8789

I’ll fry the pork skins for cracklins tomorrow.


(Judy Thompson) #72

After air frying 4 chicken thighs today I put the rest of the tray (8) and a tray of boneless pork ribs in the sous vide bath at 150… Chicken comes out this evening for tomorrow and Friday, pork will be 48-72 hours.
I think this will feed us through about Wednesday with an outlay of under $20.
I love this woe!


(Judy Thompson) #73

I’ll look this up… But I want to know how to do this!
I have a meat slicer that came from my mom’s house. I wonder if that would work?
What’s in your brine?


(Geoffrey) #74

Oh man, you know I love a good brisket. I’ve never heard of doing it sous vide but it sounds interesting. I’m old school with my stick burner but good brisket is good no matter how it’s fixed.
I may have told you before that I’m from San Antonio. So, I was wondering, since you’re involved with the music scene down there, have ever come across a musician ( base player I believe) by the name of Marco Villerial? He was one of my best friends in high school.


(Geoffrey) #75

This is my recipe.

  1. Bacon Recipe

Takes. 30 minutes prep, about 5-7 days of curing, about 2 hours of smoking.

Ingredients

12 pounds (or one slab)of unsliced pork belly about 1 1/2" thick and 6 to 8" wide across the grain to make slicing easy and to make sure it fits in the frying pan

6 tablespoons Morton’s kosher salt

6 tablespoons ground black pepper

1.5 cups dark brown sugar

2 cups dark Maple syrup (optional)

3 cups distilled water

2 1/2 teaspoons Prague Powder #1 (pink salt)

Method

  1. If the skin is still on the belly, remove it and use it to make cracklins.

  2. Pour everything except the meat into a zipper bag large enough to hold the belly. A 1 gallon bag will hold a single 3 pound slab. Zip the bag and squish everything around until well mixed. Now add the belly, squeeze out the air as much as possible and squish some more rubbing the cure into the belly and coat all sides. Put the bag in a pan to catch leaks and place in the fridge at 34 to 38°F for 3 to 5 days. The belly will release liquid so every day or two you want to gently massage the bag so the liquid and spices are well distributed, and flip the bag over.

  3. Remove the belly from the bag, and throw the liquid away. Quick rinse it to wash off any thick deposits of salt on the surface.

  4. Smoke over indirect heat at 225°F until the internal temp is 135-140°F, about 2 hours. You can use any wood you like. Hickory is the tried and true. I’m partial to cherry and applewood. After smoking you should slice off the ends, which may be very dark and more heavily seasoned, and taste them right away. They will be more salty than the innards and the fat will be a bit stringy, but you’ll love it all the same. Just wait til you cook up an inside slice!

  5. Now let it cool on a plate in the fridge. Cold bacon is easier to slice. Use on a slicer if you have one, or use a long thin knife to slice it.

  6. Wrap it tightly with several layers of plastic wrap, and then a layer of foil, and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks or freeze for up to 3 months. Do not wrap in foil alone because it can react with the salt. When you are hungry, cook it just like you do storebought bacon.

Now the sweet ingredients is how I used to make it and for some it may be alright but for me and this batch I’m leaving it out.
Also, instead of just rinsing the brine off I’ll be soaking the slabs in water for 30 minutes to help get the saltiness out. The last ham I did was way to salty so I don’t want that to happen to my bacon.
Anyways, it’s a good recipe and much better than anything you can buy at the store. Even H‑E‑B can’t beat it. Lol!
Oh, speaking of H‑E‑B, they sell pork belly’s that have the skin already trimmed off if that’s easier for you but it is a little more in cost.


(Judy Thompson) #76

Yes, I don’t use pepper much, even. Just put it on that brisket for the gang.
If I left out all seasonings/spices but the salt would it turn out okay?
I figure if ice cream with just eggs, vanilla and cream and nothing else comes out delicious, then I’m pretty easy :rofl:


(Geoffrey) #77

I don’t see why not. Maybe white pepper?

Either way, try it and report back.


#78

@JJFiddle: Oh I finally did! :smiley: I don’t lack sleep anymore, I plan to go to bed early (for me) and wake up early (for me) too, it is a nice plan.
Congrats for the great brisket! :wink:

We don’t have a tractor but we both love cutting firewood… Despite all the potential injuries and they can’t be avoided. So sometimes a piece of wood hits me on the head. Oh well. Still worth it.


It was a bit hard to get satiated yesterday (without simply eating more meat and going way too high protein), I blame all the cheese. Eating early probably didn’t help, I will be more careful in the future.

My lunch, somewhat (a bit was left but I ate some dessert too, used up all my leftover quark and sweet sour cream):

Isn’t this a cute plate with all these different colors and patterns? :slight_smile:
The sausages were okay but not really good, they weren’t even enough sausage-like… Maybe it’s due to their thinness… They spent an hour in the oven (they refused to get properly brown earlier)… Too salty too. But okay for variety and as I wrote, they weren’t bad tasting… Just a tad lacking.

I tried to do OMAD. Alvaro came home super late, poor soul waited for the dairy truck and it didn’t come… I told him he can just come home, milk isn’t THAT important and if it was, supermarket milk is good enough. So we started to eat at 15:40, it’s late enough for OMAD but I didn’t manage to eat enough. So I plan a tiny dinner later. So full now! Meat works the best for my satiation.

I still don’t miss soup, it’s surreal… I haven’t eaten soup since WEEKS… Soup was a mandatory part of a Hungarian lunch (maybe dinner if that is the only hot meal for someone) when I was a kid, at least in my family. The first course, it must have happened. And while I dropped that (too much work for something that doesn’t satiate me. wonderful though), I still made a soup once a week and ate it for some days. But I changed again. Odd.

But we have lots of soup plans for the near future so we will have one every weekend! Or not weekend. The weekend ones will be more or less carby, made by Alvaro. But I have many meaty bones in my freezer so I make a proper meat soup one day, soon I guess!

I got out my last pork slab from the freezer. I will need to buy more real soon. It is big, at least, not those 800-1000g tiny things but cutting off the fat will diminish it quite seriously, it’s super fatty (it’s the 70/30 “scrap meat” I like to buy sometimes to make lard). The result will have the perfect fattiness (around pork chuck level), the fat goes back into the freezer as I have plenty of lard to cook with at the moment.


(Judy Thompson) #79

No I haven’t, but I went to high school in San Antonio too!
These days we work on our own a lot, and occasional pickers circles but Marco would probably not show up there, lol.
If I run across him I’ll sure let you know. We do work mainly up here in Fredericksburg.


#80

I did TMAD and I am super full. Not a carni day but I do what I can to stay close and had more than a pound of meat today, it’s important :wink: Just like not overdoing dairy and eggs. We barely have any eggs now (8?) and Alvaro brings only 50 tomorrow so we use as little eggs as borderline comfortably possible for us. We are good at eating very very few now so this 58 will last for more than a week! (2 weeks aren’t impossible but we fancy eggs sometimes and Alvaro’s cakes use them galore. And this current fruit season suits cakes, not oatmeal so he will eat cakes for breakfast quite often I imagine.)
Guesstimation says 133g protein and less fat than that, perfect. Yesterday was 158g protein (and not much less fat) just because I really tried to keep it down, stupid cheese. It’s so easy with mostly meat…

We will buy some smoked pork on Saturday, there is a cute market nearby (2 villages away), Alvaro was there before, I planned but it got postponed as we went elsewhere or the weather was bad (too hot, rainy)… But it will be fine now, most probably.

The weather is very good now, the really hot weather won’t come back until next week.