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I don't have a brilliant article idea, so here are some random notes:

* That Nice Boy I Married and I bought a side of grass-fed beef from our friend Scott Merritt, who raises it in Texas. Scott's main business -- selling tee shirts to gaming and science fiction fans -- was bringing him to Indianapolis anyway, so he grabbed some big coolers and brought us a metric buttload of beef. So far we've eaten two sirloins, two rib eyes, and some ground beef, and it's all wonderful -- tender and full-flavored. I'm looking forward to a winter of short ribs and pot roast!

Long-time readers here may have noticed a repeated phenomenon: Dana needing to learn the same lesson more than once.* You know, like how I went hyponatremic -- low on salt -- last summer, and then managed to go badly hypo on the Low Carb Cruise this year, despite knowing how important salt was/is.

I've been working on recipes that will work for fat fasting , or, in larger portions, fit in with my aim of keeping fat, as a fraction of my calories, ultra-high. I came up with this last night, and it was superb. Great for breakfast, too, warmed up with fried eggs on top.

It was a spectacularly beautiful morning here in Southern Indiana -- warm but not scorching, light breeze, crystal clear, brilliantly blue sky. That Nice Boy I Married and I went out for a walk first thing, taking our caffeine-of-choice along. (He had a car cup of coffee, I had a sports bottle of iced tea.) It was lovely.

I got basic blood work done a few weeks back, and I thought I'd share the results with you. I wanted to C&P it from the patient portal website, but I can't figure out how to do that, so I'll just tell you. I'm 53 years old, and have been eating a low carbohydrate diet for 17 years. I have, in the past several months, been deliberately increasing fat and decreasing protein as fractions of my diet, while keeping my carbs very low, generally under 20 grams per day.

My lipid panel is as follows:

Total cholesterol: 202 (Oh, nooo! It's hiiiigh!)

For the past three days I've had the same magnificent breakfast, and it's all because I just happened to have some stuff in the fridge:

Last Thursday night, my Toastmasters club had our annual Bash-at-the-Lake. Not only did I wind up with some leftover cucumber salad and grilled chicken -- my contributions -- but That Nice Boy I Married, unbeknownst to me, snagged a huge pile of leftover pulled pork, brought by my good friend Virginia, a native of Kentucky, where they know their pulled pork.

Hooray! I've recruited my first low carb columnist! That makes me a really, truly Managing Editor, right? And I'm so sure that she's right for the job, too. I feel super-smart right now.

Have you seen the latest Hamburger Helper ad? It's about how life interferes with your making good nutritional choices, leading to your picking up a "big bag of greasy, deep-fried easy." It's a great line, actually.

Then, in standard advertising form, they present you with the solution to your problem: Hamburger Helper, of course! It's the quick-and-easy way to serve your family a "home-cooked meal."

Here's what I had in the fridge, needing to be used up:

The remains of a pork shoulder roast, with maybe 4-5 ounces of meat left on the bone.

The drippings from the pork, which I'd saved in a snap-top container on the grounds that they were way too tasty to throw away.

A Tupperware(tm) container of good, strong homemade broth, made from both chicken and turkey bones. Probably about 6 cups worth, but I didn't measure it.

In the fridge, but not so urgently needing to be used up were:

Two packets of traditional shirataki

Some mushrooms

Scallions

So here's what I did:

I hear it often: "How can I afford to eat low carb? It's so expensive!" My unvarying response is "Any food that makes you fat, tired, sick, and hungry wouldn't be cheap if they were giving it away."

But is low carb food really so expensive? Where are Americans actually spending their food dollars?

Turns out they're spending it on exactly the stuff we should be whacking out of our diets. Take a look.

Worried about that Swedish study "proving" a low carb diet causes high cholesterol, raising heart disease risk? Don't be.

Just came up with these yesterday. Don't know why I didn't think of this sooner!

Boursin Stuffed Mushrooms

These are the easiest stuffed mushrooms I ever made, and some of the best.

1 pound mushrooms
8 ounces boursin cheese -- (about a package and a half)
1/2 cup chicken broth
hot smoked paprika -- to garnish

So simple! Preheat the oven to 350. Remove the stems from the mushrooms, reserving them for another use.

Simply fill each mushroom with Boursin, arranging them in a baking pan as you go.

Here's a 16 minute video of Dr. Eric Westman, arguably the country's premier researcher into the science of low carbohydrate dieting (and a super-nice guy) being interviewed by Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, one of the leading voices in the Scandinavian Low Carb High Fat movement (and a super-tall guy. Nice, too.)

I like and admire Eric Westman so much; he makes me so proud to be associated with this movement.

Have a driving desire to see my backyard? Dying to meet Dexter the Pug, Jed the Hero Dog, and Gracie the Incidental Beagle, not to mention me and That Nice Boy I Married, Jimmy and Christine Moore, Amy and John Dungan, and Andrew Dimino? Get to know a whole bunch of really nice low carbers? Eat low carb food off of paper plates? Get a little sunshine, God and the atmosphere willing?

Have I got an event for you! It's the 3rd Annual Low Carb Meet & Greet! And it's coming up sooner than we expected.

Just up at CarbSmart, an article about a young film maker working on a project we all should support. Please take a look, and give what you can.