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Sheila Butler, whom I know from Trinity Episcopal Church here in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana, sent me a great email recently that included her and her husband, Prince's, success stories, plus a bunch of product reviews. I just had to share!
Sheila writes:
I got your new cookbook, (15 Minute Low-Carb Recipes) haven't had a chance to try anything but I have read it cover to cover and it looks fabulous.
Prince and I are almost at the end of 5 months with only one indulgence meal in all of that time. I have lost 21 lbs and Prince has lost about 25 lbs. I seem to be speeding up and he is slowing down. By far the easiest weight I have ever lost. It so helps having Prince do it with me and he is becoming quite the chef. He makes the absolutely best pancakes, I accused him of giving some of the boys' ones. He uses any of the low carb mixes but he adds a little salt and a little Splenda as well as some cinnamon and it is amazing how much that salt helps the flavor.
A chip that I absolutely love is the Carb Solutions Nacho Chip. Much more like the texture of a Pringles but tastes like Nacho Doritos. They are $2 a bag at Wal-Mart but you get 2 servings to a bag for 3 carbs a serving. They also have Barbeque but I find these too sweet and they are 4 carbs a serving. One serving is really filling though often I just eat the whole bag. Nature Zone on the West side sells many low carb items too and they often have samples to try. I tried the Keto tortilla chips, corn, excellent, but I felt the carb count was too high for the amount you got. The microwaveable pork rinds from Wal-Mart are favorites at our house-- I love them with cream cheese and salsa. You find the chips by the pharmacy department, they have the best buy on chocolate too, I buy it in bulk.
Oh, another product you might want to try - it is called Soy Slender, it is a sugar free soy milk sweetened with sucrolose. The chocolate is to die for, tastes just like chocolate milk to me. Prince raves on the Cappucino if you like cold coffee and the vanilla is like a vanilla milk shake and pretty good on low carb cereals. It runs about $2 a quart and for some reason since I have been drinking it (about a quart of chocolate a day) my weight has dropped much quicker. It counts for about 1 carb for 8 oz glass. I know you don't like soy products much but I love this stuff. Prince says it glumps him up worse than milk, he says he talks funny for about an hour and feels like he has mucus in his throat. I don't have any problem with it at all. I find it in the health food aisle by the freezer section. It is a shelf milk but tastes best ice cold or hot. Makes great hot chocolate for only 1 carb and tastes so much better than Swiss Miss.
There's a low carb bread from Bread of Life called Carb-Lite. They have hamburger buns, hot dog buns, rolls, bread and cinnamon raisin. The bread is only 1 carb per slice and is excellent toasted.
Wow! Sheila, this is so helpful for so many folks. Thanks so much for the terrific story and product reviews - right now I don't have a lot of time to go out looking for new products!
Another Reader Product Review
Cathy Sparks writes:
Yikes!! At your recommendation we purchased a small bag of Keto Tortilla chips and were sorely disappointed. At our local "low carb" establishment, they had free samples of the Atkins Crunchers at the check-out counter. My husband picked up a few of the cool ranch flavor and said they were world's better than the Keto brand. He said the deciding factor was the big "CRUNCH" that the Crunchers had. Just a side opinion in case you hadn't tried them.
Hey, Cathy -
I've tried the Atkins Crunchers, and I do think they're quite good, but to me the Keto chips are much more like regular tortilla chips, both in flavor and texture, than the Crunchers, or indeed, any other low carb chip I've tried.
However, I haven't seen them in anything but the 4 serving bag - are you sure you didn't get the dreaded Keto Keeters, instead?
It's good to know, though, how other folks feel about these things. So folks, looks like you'll just have to do your sampling yourself.