Jimmy's at it again!

Jimmy's just blogged about our support group, and our most famous member on his Livin' La Vida Low Carb site, and associated low carb news site Carbwire.com...check out the article and check out Karen Rysavy's site TrulyLowCarb.com...

Desserts -- the sweet life!

We're doing it again Tuesday, March 20...trying an evening event. In honor of our next Low Carb Living support group meetup, an 'homage to desserts', I've invited a very special guest to join us and bring a few goodies. The fabulous Rheinlander Bakery right here in Olde Town Arvada, as you may know, has a sugar-free, low carb brand of desserts and boxed mixes labeled Sweet Deliverance. They have recently launched another brand, Celia's Gourmet, for the gluten free/sugar free market. Co-owner Maro has a fascinating background about how she and her food chemist husband got into sugar free from the traditional bakery business, and she'll be on hand to share her story and some of the unbelievable treats they make. Personally can't believe the amazing things they deliver for so few carbs! I hope you're excited, I can't wait to guiltlessly indulge in some of these goodies. We'll also be serving some yummy "mocktails" to complete our "indulgence"...Baja Bob's drink mixes and a few other treats. Can't wait to see everyone, this meeting will definitely be worth the trip!

What a great day!

we had another low carb lifestyle meetup today...so much fun! we have about eight new members, and everyone's getting really active. it's just such a relief to be among people who understand, accept and embrace this healthy lifestyle...and everyone is so interesting and outgoing...i wonder if that's a side effect of steady blood sugar? we've decided to do desserts and a "mocktail" party for the next one...i hope the turnout is as good, hopefully i can get out of the kitchen on this one and mingle more, i love hearing other people's stories and challenges...it's so inspiring to me both personally and professionally. everyone in that group has so much to offer...knowledge, encouragement, recipes, friendship...i hate to say it, but it's almost odd to find such a good group of people that have so much and yet so little in common. i guess that's what makes it fun and interesting, and will hopefully keep this bunch going. one of the members, tony, reminded me about how good carbsmart ice cream is...i have a hard time keeping it in the house because it's so good that the portion size is a joke, then i get a tummyache...but i'm going to find it and make him a low carb ice cream sandwich cake for our dessert gathering...and i'll have a piece too.

Mama Mia - Low Carb Goes Italian!

Another Denver Low Carb Lifestyle Meetup is coming up...by popular demand, we're going Italiano -- low carb conversions of classics so delicious you'll swear my great-gramma was cookin'! (Except of course you'll get all the recipes...that woman never wrote anything down...)
Pesto white pizza and eggplant parmesan appetizers, a big antipasto "kitchen sink" salad, low glycemic spaghetti and Tuscan meatballs with vodka sauce, and for dessert (drum roll please) homemade Kahlua tiramisu (and a demo on how to make it!). Special guest Sharyn from Low Carb Cravings market in Centennial will bring along for sale many of the products we'll be sampling in our meal, as well as a Pavarotti-sized sampling of other great products (including cookbooks!) so bring your shopping shoes...and a friend or two! Click the Meetup link on the left for info about how you can join us!

In Aspen Cooking

I'm back in Aspen this week, cooking for a family that's rented a beautiful vacation home here for the week. I really lucked out, they're wonderful people and the kids are great. They've been so generous with me, very warm and thoughtful, I love taking care of people like this...it's the best part of my job as a personal chef - meeting new people and having the privilege of feeling like I'm cooking for my own family! Things are going really well with the Low Carb Lifestyle Meetup group, we've got 4 new members so far! I'm really looking forward to our next meeting...the food's going to be amazing and hopefully we'll get to meet a few new members...and Sharyn from Low Carb Cravings will be there too to offer some products for sale...should be great. Anyway, it's a beautiful day here, snowed 5 inches last nite and now the sun is shining, I'm going to hike to get a little fresh air...cooking breakfast every day is killing me - I am not a morning person!

Busy Week! (and a recipe)

So it's been a really busy week, trying to get the Low Carb Lifestyle Meetup up and running. I'm really excited to have worked out a partnership with the Low Carb Cravings market in Centennial CO http://www.lowcarbcravings.com to invite their customers to join our support group. So...a trip to office depot and 200 postcards later, we're getting off some snail mail invites as well as the emails owner Sharyn will be sending. Hopefully this will boost membership so we can do more events! I'd like to get to the point where we're offering something, a meeting, mixer, cooking lesson, etc., once a week. Right now we've got a base of members, but not everyone's active...I've tried everything to get some of these folks to respond...geez, just email me back to be removed from the group or remove yourself if you don't want to play...but knowing that you're causing an effort and not having the courtesy to respond one way or another is just disrespectful to the rest of us...okay, done with rant. Anyway, I was supposed to leave for Aspen today, got another good cooking gig for a vacation rental...$16.5 mil house, so the kitchen's REALLY nice...but I-70's been closed all day...very non-productive. I'll have to high-tail it there in the morning hoping it's clear. Gave me a chance to post some more good articles on the Meetup site http://atkinsdiet.meetup.com/173/ in the files section...and a low, low carb pancake recipe. Check it out, just go to the meetup site and hit the files section...Laura Dolson from http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/ is one of my favorite authorities and source for great info, so there's lots of goodies there from her site and others. Speaking of Laura, she actually saw a post of mine on a community board and wrote to me...i was so flattered and thrilled. Okay, enough rambling, here's a good recipe as a thank you for reading this far!

Bridget's Exotic Moroccan Chicken Salad

-30 oz chicken (canned, leftover or pickup roasted)
-1.5 tsp curry powder (or your choice of curry paste, check carb count,adjust to taste)
-3 T unsweetened coconut milk
-2 T splenda (or equiv. alt. sweetener)
-1/3 cup low carb ranch dressing (Ken’s Steakhouse Ranch = 1 carb per 2 T)
-1/3 cup chopped sweet bell pepper
-1/3 cup chopped green beans
-1/8 cup chopped blanched almonds (or sliced)
-1 T no-sugar/low carb apricot preserves (optional)

Roughly chop chicken. In a separate bowl, mix curry with coconut milk, splenda, ranch dressing and preserves. Add dressing mix to chicken and toss with vegetables. Refrigerate before serving over greens. Recipe yields 17.5 grams carbohydrate in the whole batch, ind. serving count varies with number of servings (Tip: leave out the apricot preserves for a total savings of 5 grams carb.)

Butter Cookie Recipe

So today was our first Meetup...a luncheon for members of our Low Carb Lifestyle Meetup. I met two great people...Mary (who's lost 150 lbs in 2 years) and Tony (who eats low carb so he can enjoy the foods he loves without gaining weight). The lunch was really fun...it's so great to be able to connect with people who are passionate and love food as much as I do. We shared a lot of hints, tips, and coping strategies, as well as re-affirmed our beliefs in the lifestyle. Such interesting people with so much to offer...I think we're all looking forward to getting together more often in the future! See here http://atkinsdiet.meetup.com/173/ for info on our Denver area Meetup. I also gave attendees a little Valentine's Day prezzie...some of my famous butter cookies, some spiced snack chips made from low carb wraps and my favorite Dove low carb chocolates. I'm including my butter cookie recipe here for anyone to try, I'm constantly trying new things in the kitchen, and perfecting the perfect low carb cookie is a lifetime pursuit...these ones are good!

Bridget's Budda Cookies
1/2 c. butter, softened
4 oz. full fat cream cheese or ricotta
1/4 c. splenda or liquid sweetener equivilent
1/2 c. vanilla soy protein powder (available at Whole foods or GNC, check label for sugar additives, should have 0 carbs)
1 egg
1/2 c. almond meal/flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp xanthum gum (binder/thickener available at whole foods or on line)

Chocolate topping:Melt your favorite low-carb chocolate bar (i like Dove individual meltaways in regular, mint or raspberry chocolate flavor) and drizzle on top of cookies, or dip tops of cookies in melted mixture. Melt chocolate bars in the microwave on half power for 1 minute at a time until soft and "stir-able". Add appropriate carb counts for the type and quantity of chocolate you use...a little goes a long way flavor-wise.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream butter and cream cheese or ricotta with splenda. Add beaten egg to butter mixture and combine well until light. Sift together protein powder, almond meal baking powder and xanthum gum...sift well to distribute/combine evenly, then mix into butter/egg batter. Roll small portions of dough into balls, then "squish" flat onto baking sheet with your thumb (you can press in a whole almond, pecan or walnut now to decorate/flavor). Alternatively, you can use a pastry bag and large tip to pipe out shapes, or a cookie press with this dough. Cookies do not rise or spread, so they can be placed close, and the shape will remain the same once baked. Bake until lightly browning (start checking after 12 minutes) cookies will remain firm, but soft. Storage in an airtight container will make cookies soft, open air storage keeps them crispier. Yields approx. 2.5 doz. cookies 1.5 inches in diameter or so. Recipe without additions yields a total of 20.5 grams of carb, calculate individual servings according to portion size.

Low Carb Lifestyle Meetup Denver

So we've got our first meeting set for Monday, February 12...check it out here: http://atkinsdiet.meetup.com/173/ it should be a lot of fun, always good to meet new people who have such an amazing thing in common. It's a lunch, and everyone in the Denver area is welcome (just make sure you join our meetup and rsvp). I'll be making my killer Moroccan chicken salad and a few choice appetizers (gorganzola and hot italian sausage stuffed olives anyone?) then wrapping up with a lesson on low carb cheesecake varieties (oh, you know, some drizzled with chocolate, some with strawberry coulis, mint chocolate...the usual) so no one will go home hungry! Everyone will, however, go home with recipes...and I'll post a few here too...

X Games

I'm back in Aspen this weekend (I lived here for about 7 years before moving to Denver) for X Games...it's such an amazing time to be in town. I'm actually working, cooking breakfast every morning for the Red Bull athletes and crew. It's really great, everyone is so grateful for a hot breakfast...and two of the athletes placed 1st and 2nd in the skier superpipe event last night: Tanner Hall and Simon Dumont...it was an awesome contest. Local boy Peter Olenick came in third, so that was great too. Check out the X Games here: http://www.expn.com and Red Bull here: http://redbullusa.com . Red Bull is doing the greatest gallery of photos on Aspen Mountain, too. It's this amazing display of their sports photography contest with entries from all over the world, all illuminated on light boxes. It looks "otherworldly" at night in the middle of the mountain face, and their opening night party up in the gallery was off the hook...take a peek: http://www.redbullillume.com/?cmd=frontendFrameset&noflash=false&nojavascript=false . So not-so-early to bed, but early to rise for me through Sunday...but managing to have a good time despite the ungodly wake up call! ;-)

Denver Low Carb Lifestyle Meetup

Well I bit the bullet and decided to organize this meetup.com group. Meetup is a website where you can find people in your area who are interested in the same things you are, or start your own special interest group. I think it's great...there are groups of people who meet to do everything from hiking to board games, single moms, winetasting, you name it! It's an easy and fun way to meet new people who share your interests, and I belong to a couple of groups. Don't you think every city should have it's own low carb meetup? The Denver low carb group will be fun, we're currently in the process of planning our next meeting for the second week in February, and we're hopefully going to incorporate a light meal and a cooking/hints and tips demonstration (with samples, of course) so that should make it really fun and interactive. To find out about our group, visit us here: http://atkinsdiet.meetup.com/173/?gj=sj5 and please feel free to join, or comment here to my blog for meeting details if you just want to "check it out"...everyone is welcome!