One New Thing a Week Starting Today and Who Doesn't Love Bacon? Bacon Jalapeno Deviled Eggs

Loving my low-carb lifestyle, it's become a way of life, not just a diet. But noticed I've been getting lazy and having the same old thing. I've just been eating rotisserie chicken in salad or just alone. Last week I made Kale Salad and I loved it and realized that there are so many other low carb dishes out there and I set a goal to try at least one new recipe per week; more if I'm feeling ambitious, but at least one!

Maybe I'll even try to start up my Weekly Low Carb Wrap Up again...we'll see, baby steps here, it's summer and hot!

I get a lot of suggestions on things to make from my sister Lisa and my co-worker Angelica. Lisa recently sent me a recipe for Bacon Jalapeno Deviled Eggs from the blog Real Housemoms. You can follow the link to find the original recipe. I had to tweak it a bit to make sure that my people would eat it. Some don't like jalapeno, some don't like paprika, some don't like mustard and so on and so on...

Started by boiling a dozen eggs. I got a really great tip this weekend from Anne Burrell from the Food Network. I happened to catch an episode where she made Truffled Deviled Eggs and she said she had a foolproof way of boiling her eggs that would make them perfectly fluffy every time and you will never have that green ring around the yolk! Eggs should be two colors, yellow and white! The secret? Place your eggs in a pot, fill with tap water, BTB...bring to boil.  When they boil turn off the burner and cover for exactly 13 minutes and Voila! Perfect eggs!

While I was boiling the  perfect 13 minute egg, I fried my bacon. Is there anything prettier than bacon frying in a pan? Is there anything on this earth that smells better? Ok, well yes, babies smell better, love that baby smell...but you CAN'T eat a baby! Check this out!

Bacon Frying! Yum - Muy Bonito, Que No?

While the eggs are boiling and the bacon is frying, I'm chopping Jalapenos! I'm the Queen of Multi-Tasking! I diced them really small so that I would get a bit of Jalapeno in every bite! Love raw Jalapeno, I put it in salads and omelette's and almost anything that needs a little crunch. It takes the place of potato chips for me. The recipe called for two, but I had a really big one so I just diced up the one. I seeded it first to take out some of the spiciness.

Also Muy Bonito! Green...my fav color!

So eggs were done, ran them under cold water to cool them off so I could peel them. Peeled them, cut them in half, removed the yoke and placed the yolk in a separate bowl and sure enough, beautifully yellow! Forgot to take a picture, but you'll see how yellow my final pictures are below.

I made my egg yolks a bit more simple than the recipe, just mayonnaise, a tad of salt as the bacon would add it's own saltiness, some black pepper about a half teaspoon of regular yellow mustard, not the powdered kind, just the one you put on your hot dogs.

The one thing I did try from the recipe is to add some sugar, I thought maybe it would offset the saltiness of the bacon and you know what? It did! It really added something to it. I only used maybe one quarter teaspoon. Added the bacon and mixed. I didn't add the jalapeno yet as I wanted to make half without jalapeno.

Now in the recipe you place the egg mixture in a plastic bag with a piping tip and pipe them in all nice and pretty but you know what? It's over 100 degrees outside and spending additional time in a warm kitchen when I could be eating in front of the air conditioner was just not in the cards today, so I spooned them in instead.

Here's the bacon only ones that I made. I think they still look rather pretty, even without the piping. The recipe called for a sprinkle of Paprika, but again...my people are not big fans of the Paprika and I think mine was old anyway as it was more brown than a rusty red color, so I tossed it.

Huevos (Eggs) without the Jalapeno!

Here are the ones I really thought tasted much better, but that's because I'm partial to that Jalapeno and the crunchiness! They were delicious!

Mmmm, all that's missing is an ice cold beer!

I only used 6 slices of bacon so with the rest I made BLT sandwiches. Of course I didn't have the BLT as it's not low carb with the bread, but I did enjoy sprinkling my portion of bacon on top of the eggs. Yum!

So technically, this is the one new thing for the week, so I don't have to worry about making anything new this week, but you never know because I know that Lisa and Angelica will be sending me yummy recipes to try! Have a great week everyone!


 

Kale - A Delicious Super Food!

Have you heard of Kale? Have you tried it yet? Did you know that a lot of people consider it the #1 Super food?

Photo Credit - PositiveMed.com

One day last week my cupboards were bare and I had nothing to take for lunch. So I went to my local Von's Grocery Store to see what they had in their deli that I might be able to eat that would be within my low carb way of eating. I saw they had some tuna salad so I was waiting to get some of that when an older gentleman asked the deli clerk for some of the Kale Salad, then he turned to me and said, "Have you had their Kale Salad? It's out of this world." He told the clerk, "Give this young lady some Kale Salad."

Well thank goodness that gentleman was there that day because I never would have asked for a sample and I never would have found out how great Kale is!

Here's a photo of my lunch that day. Tuna was simple, but good, just a bit of onion and celery and pickle. But the star of the lunch hour was the Kale Salad. It had so many great ingredients and I kept finding new things in it! Von's Kale Salad had Kale of course, dried cranberries, fresh blueberries, red onion, sunflower seeds, slivered onions, carrots and pomegranate seeds. The dressing was a Pomegranate Vinaigrette. Now I know this probably had a lot of sugar, but I went ahead and bought some and shared it with my co-worker and decided I would try to make it a bit more low carb.

So today I search for some recipes and I found this video from Aarti Sequeira. I love Aarti! I remember watching her on The Next Food Network Star and was so happy when she won. If you have a chance watch her video HERE, she's got the most pleasant personality and I love her voice!

Her recipe was super simple and she just added Mango. I didn't have Mango, plus Mango is high in sugar which brings the carb count up. So I massaged the Kale as she explains in her video, then while it wilted and softened I made a dressing almost similar to the one she did except that I used Splenda instead of Honey...again, the carb count.

Once the dressing was made I combined it with the kale, some blueberries cut in half, a handful of walnuts, another handful of pepitas, some red onion and lemon juice and salt/pepper to taste! Here's a picture of mine. I had shredded carrots but they are also high in sugar and before you know it that sugar can add up!

I had some leftover pork chops I'd pan fried yesterday for dinner so I re-heated it. The Kale Salad was a perfect companion! Doesn't this look yummy?

Can't wait to try it other ways and with other ingredients. You can also cook it, so can't wait to try that also. Have you ever had Kale? Got any good recipes or suggestions?

To find Aarti's recipe click HERE

 

Beach Trip to Re-Charge!

Yesterday my sister and I decided since it was going to be over 100 degrees in Shafter that it was probably a good idea to head somewhere way, way cooler!

We gassed up the car and decided to head to the beach!

We weren't sure if we should head south to Santa Barbara or west to Pismo. We figured Santa Barbara was probably going to be pretty crowded, so Pismo it was. Little did we know that this weekend was the huge and very crowded Pismo Car Show. We had decided when we left home to have lunch at this cute little restaurant called Alphy's Broiler.

We'd been there before and had a really yummy Oriental Salad made with assorted cabbages, scallions, carrots, chicken breast, almonds, cilantro, crispy wonton strips and their own sesame ginger dressing. It is out of this world and we were really excited to have it again!

So it was sad to realize that due to all the crowds and the traffic jam on the freeway that we wouldn't be able to even get there unless we were willing to wait in huge lines of cars and even then we were pretty sure that it was going to be standing room only. So we opted to go to another really great place in Pismo, Zorro's Cafe and Cantina.

The cool thing about this restaurant is that you can eat outdoors and pets are allowed. So there is always someone there with a cute dog. I've eaten there before with my daughter and her puppy Chorizo. Here's Chorizo sitting tableside at Zorro's back in October of 2011. We've been coming here ever since. Isn't she adorable!

We were lucky and for once there wasn't a long wait. We got a table on the sidewalk outdoors. The weather was awesome, the sun was shining but there was a refreshing breeze coming off the ocean which was only a couple of blocks away. Unfortunately they didn't have an Oriental Salad, so I decided to have their Sombrero Burger, a half pound Angus beef patty on a sesame seed bun with grilled sliced japapeno, queso fresco cheese and guacamole and their spicy homemade chimi sauce. I asked for a sample of the chimi sauce and didn't care for it at all, so I requested the burger with no bread,  no chimi sauce and a salad instead of fries...very low carb and very delicious!

My sister Lisa had the California Burger, same kind of beef, on bread (and she did eat the bread), avocado, jack cheese and sprouts. She said it was great as well.

Then we headed down the street to the beach where we just sat and talked and read a little bit in our books and walked and took pictures and talked to people. We had a great time and the weather was perfect! This was our view as we sat in this small park.

Across the street from where we were sitting we noticed that there was a house for sale. Now this neighborhood has houses in every nook and cranny. People don't mind living in each other's living rooms in return for living ocean side. Here's the house. We peeked through the windows and it was just a cute little house, but we immediately started dreaming on buying this house and how we would fix it up and have coffee in the cute little breakfast nook in the morning and wine on the lanai at night.

The great thing about this house is the view! This is what we would see while we had our morning coffee and our evening glass of wine! We had a lot of fun just imagining what life would be like, the parties we would have, the people we would invite to visit.

Today my sister looked this house up on zillow.com. We figured it would probably be $1,000,000 or there abouts. If this same house were for sale in Bakersfield you probably wouldn't get more than $50,000, but guess how much this house is because it's ocean front property?

Yep, a cool $1.5 million!!! I guess Lisa and I had better start playing the lottery! But it was still fun to dream and we had a great day. Got a little sunburned, had some great food and got to spend sister time together. Definitely we have to do this more often!

 

My Prince Charming

When I was a little girl, like all little girls, I wanted to marry my daddy. But I was told that I couldn't, he belonged to my mommy so I figured I better look around and see what else was out there.

One of the best places to find a man to marry when I was about 11, 12 and 13 years old was television, as I was still a bit too young to hit the clubs and online match making hadn't been invented yet!

So right away I fell madly in love with Heath Barkley, the gorgeous baby brother on the fabulous show The Big Valley which ran from 1965 to 1969.

Heath, Audra, Jarrod, Victoria and Nick 

Heath was the strong, silent type, yet with his blondish good looks he was just The Golden Boy to me.

I watched that show religiously and at night time I would fall asleep dreaming of being his wife and living on The Big Valley Ranch and being best friends with his sister Audra, who was gorgeous!

The funny thing is it wasn't Lee Majors I was in love with…nope, it was Heath Barkley. When Lee did The Six Million Dollar Man television show he didn't do anything for me.

It was Heath I was in love with. Maybe it was the cowboy hat or watching him ride around on that horse, but he was just so manly!

Nick Barkley on the left and Heath with those smoldering eyes staring right into my soul and winning my heart!

In a pinch I would have taken his brother Nick Barkley, portrayed by Peter Breck. Nick was a bit of a bad boy, which is why I didn't love him as much as Heath, but he was just as good looking!



Then all of a sudden Heath had some competition! A new television show came on the horizon called Medical Center, which ran from 1969 to 1976. The main character was Dr. Joe Gannon.

Dr. Joe Gannon was played by the gorgeous actor, Chad Everett. He had these piercing blue eyes!

Dr. Joe Gannon was a surgeon and worked in a busy hospital somewhere in Los Angeles.

I loved that show and I loved Chad Everett and all of a sudden I knew I would have to leave The Big Valley to move to the Big City....Los Angeles to be the wife of a doctor!

I remember so well how I would just dream of both these men, it's makes me laugh now at how young and naive I was!

Who was your childhood fantasy crush? Do you remember these shows?