Category Archives: Carnivore

Carnbread Dressing

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This diet just gets weirder and weirder.

I showed you earlier how to make a cornbread simulation I like to call Carnbread. Now let’s turn that oddly bread-like loaf into a stuffing for your Thanksgiving turkey! Or maybe your Thursday night chicken dinner, since this is January.

Carnbread stuffing is made in a similar manner to cornbread stuffing.

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Carnbread Dressing

A meaty alternative to cornbread stuffing
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time30 minutes
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Carnivore
Keyword: carnivore, dairy free, keto
Servings: 10

Ingredients

  • 2 loaves carnbread
  • 2 tbsp dried sage
  • 2 tbsp dried minced onions a teaspoon of onion powder could also be used
  • 2 tbsp paprika
  • 2 tbsp dried parsley
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp rosemary
  • 1 tsp celery seed
  • 2 tsp thyme
  • 1/4 tsp white pepper
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper

Instructions

  • Prepare one recipe of Carnivore Cornbread.
  • Optional, but helpful for a better texture: Freeze the bread overnight or longer, wrapped in plastic wrap or zipper bags, then allow to thaw before continuing.
  • Heat oven to 300 °F
  • Cut Carnbread into 1-inch cubes, and toss in a large bowl with all other ingredients.
  • Spread the cubes in a single layer onto two (or more) baking sheets
  • Bake in the oven until they are crunchy and turn golden brown.
  • Stir occasionally, and taste-test to see if they're as done as you like.
  • Now you have croutons! Stop here if you just want to snack on some croutons, or eat them with egg drop soup or something.
  • To make the dressing, mix the now-crispy croutons with two cups of warm poultry stock.

Stuffing (or dressing, I guess, since I never put it inside the bird) is my favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal. It was, anyway, before I figured out what all that delicious food was doing to my body. Good news, carnivores: we don’t have to miss out on the stuffing experience! This stuff is so close to bread stuffing that I think I could have served it without explanation on Thanksgiving and nobody would have figured out that it’s not made of bread. They wouldn’t have thought it was normal bread, to be sure. The texture isn’t exactly right, so maybe they’d have guessed it was one of those Ezekiel breads or gluten-free breads.

As with any carnivore recipe, you can and should leave out any and all spices that you don’t eat. On special occasions, I go ahead and use the spices I normally skip. I served this dish right alongside my bread stuffing. Guess which one people preferred? This dressing is really good! I don’t know if I would actually put it inside a turkey and bake it. That would probably be soggy and eggy-tasting. Let me know if you decide to try it. I’m not that brave.

Carnivore Cornbread

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AKA Carnbread

Recipe first. We’ll talk later.

Print Recipe

Carnivore Cornbread

A fairly bready substitute for cornbread
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time40 minutes
Servings: 10

Equipment

  • 2 loaf pans
  • 1 blender

Ingredients

  • butter, bacon grease, or lard for greasing pans
  • 3 12.5 oz cans canned, cooked chicken, well-drained Sub your own pre-cooked chicken if you like.
  • 14 large eggs
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1 tsp salt I use Redmond's Real salt. If you use regular table salt, you may want to halve the amount.
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 1/2 tsp crushed dried rosemary (Optional, helps with the eggy flavor)
  • or 2 Tbsp Lakanto monkfruit or other keto-friendly sweetener (Optional, for a sweet version. Omit rosemary if choosing this option.)

Instructions

  • Heat oven to 350°F.
  • Grease the two loaf pans. If the pans are cast iron, put them into the pre-heating oven to warm up.
  • Blend the drained chicken and eggs in a blender until thoroughly mixed.
  • Divide the batter into the loaf pans.
  • Bake for about 50 minutes, or until the "bread" has completely set.
  • Turn out immediately onto a cooling rack to cool.

I don’t do a lot of food substitutes. If I can’t eat a thing, I don’t often try to make something similar to fill that niche in my diet. However, there are occasions–Thanksgiving, Christmas, days-ending-in-y-when-I’m-tired-of-the-same-old-same-old–when a little bready substance seems like it would hit the spot. This recipe evolved from several carnivore recipes I’ve found online that weren’t big enough–or tasty enough, frankly–to feed my large family. I used this recipe recently to make croutons which then became a carnivore “stuffing” to go with our Thanksgiving turkey. The recipe for that is coming soon. Everybody said that my version was just as good as the gluten-free bread version I made for the normal people, and it disappeared just as fast, so I guess they were telling the truth!

A word of warning for the unwary: a slice of real bread has nothing like the nutrient profile of a slice of this fake bread bread simulation. So when you’re eating carnbread (as I just decided to rename it), it is not going to serve the same function as cornbread. You’ll fill up very quickly on this loaf. I ate a few slices last night as my main course, simply buttered and dipped in a delicious meat stock. It was a very satisfying meal.

I’ve poured the batter into individual-size casserole dishes that made loaves just the right size for a hamburger bun, and that works beautifully for a cookout where you’d like to be able to eat a sandwich just like everybody else. Goes great with my homemade clean mayo. You might not be able to eat the whole sandwich, though. It is a lot of food.

You could also use a couple of well-greased muffin tins to make cornbread muffins. Just watch the cooking times as you change the shape and size.

I haven’t actually tried sweetening the bread for a dessert-like treat yet, but I have it in my head to do a maple and vanilla flavored one sometime. Since it doesn’t taste very chickeny, but is a little eggy, I think it will be pretty tasty. I’ll report back on that if I ever do it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this recipe!

Let me know via Gab, MeWe, or SG if you try it. Or if you refuse to try it. Whatever, just come talk to me!

 

 

 

What I Eat in a Day

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A carnivore diet is the easiest thing in the world to plan, but some people still have trouble envisioning what their plates should look like without a side of taters and a dessert. Probably the hardest thing to get used to is thinking of meat (and eggs and dairy, if you add those) as a whole meal all by itself.

I hope you’ll see that my food is not completely boring, that I don’t have to be perfect to get great results, and above all, that it is OK to pile your plate right up to the heavens if that’s how much food you need today. It’s also OK to skip a meal you don’t feel you need it. I’m not suggesting that everyone should eat the same amount or things that I do. This is just meant to give ideas to those who maybe have none. If you’re more interested in keto than carnivore, just imagine a few asparagus on the side of my plates. Sometimes–very occasionally–I even put a few of those on my plate. It’s a way of eating, not a religion.

Anyway, here’s what I ate Saturday, September 3 (yes, this was a month ago. I’m a little behind on everything rn):

First meal: Ground beef “salad”. Cold, leftover plain ground beef, smoked salt, cubed butter, and cubed feta goat cheese. Not pictured are the two slices of bacon I ate before I thought to write this post. This was about 1/2 a pound of meat, I reckon, and an ounce each of butter and cheese. I don’t always eat breakfast, but it’s usually something left over from a previous meal if I do.

Lunch: steak and deviled eggs (there’s a little pickle in the eggs):

Snack, cute little caterpillar. I did not eat the leaf:

I’m kidding, of course. I do not eat bugs, but I suppose that would still be carnivore.

And finally, a small snack in the afternoon after a late workout, cottage cheese with a few cherries, which are not meat. I cannot resist cherries or pears when they are perfect and in-season. That only happens for about 2 weeks every summer, so this is a self-limiting indulgence. They taste just awful the rest of the year.:

I’m sure there are carnivores who would light their hair on fire and read me out of the tribe for that last meal. It’s got fructose! But I’m metabolically quite healthy, and not addicted to sweets in a way that will make me spiral out-of-control just because I had a bite. I’d worked out pretty hard in the afternoon and wanted to close my eating window by four o’clock, and this is the food that presented itself.

You may recall from earlier posts that I do have some problems with dairy. It does cause some inflammation and anxiety, so I limit it. But I also find that including dairy helps me build muscle in a way that meat and eggs don’t seem to do. Dairy is designed to make things grow, after all. It’s a trade-off I’m sometimes willing to make for a few weeks of body-building, but not permanently. At the first sign of an auto-immune flare-up, the dairy is out again. HS is not something I like to fool around with. I’d probably be better off in some ways if I never did that, but after a lot of experimentation, I think I’ve found an acceptable amount of dairy that works for my goals.

So that was a fairly normal day last month. The cherries are an outlier, but I wouldn’t want to lie ye. I’ll try to remember to do a few more of these so the curious can see what other days look like, and hopefully be inspired to make healthier choices for themselves. Any carnivores in the house? What are you having today?

Some Food Discoveries

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Happy food, sad food.

We had a birthday in the family last week, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a piece of my Cake Simulator, this time as a spice cake with peach butter cream frosting (recipes to follow shortly). I veered off my happy carnivore trail for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I wanted to make sure it tastes good, because I haven’t had this version of the Simulation.

Secondly, I accidently bought another round of Nutrisense CGM monitoring, so I had a chance to make absolutely sure this cake doesn’t spike the glucose. I did it for you. I did it for science. I did it because I’m an idiot. Don’t forget to pause your subscription, guys. It auto-renews. Since I didn’t get to do any experimenting at all during the weeks I was intending to, due to an illness, I’m not terribly sorry I have another month to play around with my sugars, though I can’t say I feel good about the expense.

And thirdly, I wanted to see if the oxalate content of tiger-nut flour is enough to trigger my bladder problems. I hadn’t had any in a while, so I couldn’t remember if that was an effect I thought I’d observed or not.

Well, the results are in.

Taste: The thing you’re most concerned with, I’m sure, since that was what I was most concerned with, is how does it taste? I’m pleased to report that it was very, very tasty. A little bit of a bitterness in the mouth afterwards due to the stevia, but while eating it, it’s the best thing ever. Just don’t drink coffee with it, because it increases that aftertaste to a disgusting degree. I can’t understand how anybody “sweetens” coffee with stevia. Blech.

Glucose acceptability:

The farthest red dot to the left is the point at which I ate the cake. I’d been fasting until that point. You can see no spike from this, so I’m pretty confident in saying you can probably have at least one (1/16 of the cake) serving without losing your keto badge for the day. The little “spike” after it was exercise-induced. Your mileage may vary, of course. I’ve seen my glucose spike from “low-carb” foods that didn’t affect Get Along Husband in the slightest, so you want to do your own testing to be sure.

And thirdly, the oxalates. Because I have a lot of scar-tissue around my bladder after all the c-sections (I think this is why, anyway), foods high in oxalate cause me to have a hard time emptying my bladder, usually first thing in the morning. I can’t drink teas or eat spinach (like anybody would want to eat spinach anyway), and many other things cause these problems. And, sadly, tiger-nut flour must have enough oxalate to trigger this dysfunction for me. I was very uncomfortable when I woke up this morning, and took a few hours to finally be back to normal. If you have oxalate troubles, skip this food.

Better be laying in them beans and rice, ammiright? Besides the cake discovery, I’ve also found a very unexpected problem for my children. Over the last few years, I’ve heavily restricted grains and seeds from my children’s diets. We will very occasionally allow organic corn products. I believe grains are detrimental when taken with any regularity. But, because prepping has been on my mind, and rice is shelf-stable for a long time, I thought I’d try re-introducing some rice to my children’s diets, to see if they tolerate it. They enjoyed it, to be sure. Very tasty stuff.

But there was a detriment. Three times I gave them rice, each time a couple of weeks to a month apart. Three times, two of my smaller children got nosebleeds that same night. Nosebleeds? Rice?

So I guess we’ll be relying on some other starchy food for calories in the event we can’t get enough animal-based foods.

One final discovery that I’m sure you’ll be interested in:

Berries are keto food, right? And apple sauce is a no-no, right? Isn’t that what the gurus all say? Well, here you go:

There are a couple of things going on here that confounded this result that you ought to be aware of before you just write off blueberries forever and start eating apple sauce. First of all, obviously, apple sauce is not conducive to ketosis. But it is a 7 on the nutrisense scale, which is better than the blueberries’ 4. These were not particularly sweet blueberries, either. Some of them were still faintly green, and I didn’t enjoy them very much. I hadn’t fasted for very long before either of these tests, but I did throw some protein in with the apple sauce, and I’m sure that blunted the spike quite a bit. I’d have probably gotten closer to the blueberries’ score without the meat sticks. (I love Nick’s Sticks, btw. Not an affiliate link. Just wanted to share.)

The point is, blueberries might not be a great keto food after all. Of course, if you’re not primarily a fat-burner for the last several years, you’re likely going to have different results. Better or worse, I cannot say.

Again, test for yourself. You can get $25 off your first month by using my referral link. I’m not giving you any medical advice, ever. I’m just showing you what happens to a 5-year keto/carnivore when she does this stuff. I’ll have a bunch of exercise-related graphs to show you soon. I may even try a few more plant foods, but the longer I’m carnivore, the less I really care to even find out. I might not bother.

And now, I have a date with my butcher to pick up another whole beef. I can’t believe how much meat these children go through, and if there are going to be food shortages, rice is clearly not an option.

Can I feed this rice to the chickens? Will they explode?

Want to discuss? Meet me on MeWe, Gab, or SG.

 

 

Carnivore Chips

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Also a nice dog treat.

 

Share with puppeh!

I found some uncured turkey bacon with clean ingredients (no weird poly-or-di-anything) for a really great price, so I took it home with me, knowing full well that turkey bacon doesn’t fit anywhere into my regular diet. It’s…well, it’s just not bacon, OK? So, after it sat in my fridge for a while, wondering why I had forsaken it, it had an idea. “Hey, Cindy!” it called to me, “Let’s see if I can be a tasty chip!”

So I did what I was told, and the turkey strips attained their true calling as turkey chips.

This is hardly even a recipe. Just snip the bacon into two-inch pieces, and dehydrate on 167° for about 8 hours. You could probably go faster on 200° in an oven, but I didn’t try that, so who knows?

The taste is OK. It’s still obviously turkey bacon, but it could be a useful transporter of dip from bowl to mouth. You could use this with melted cheese, or liver paté, or even whatever dip you non-carnivores like. The main thing is that it’s crispy and chippy, and I like crispy, chippy things.