Boy, do I have some awesome friends! I am one lucky person! Last May, I was privileged to meet and make friends with Dana Carpender and her husband (That Nice Boy She Married). Dana, if you don’t already know, is the author of 500 Low-Carb Recipes: 500 Recipes from Snacks to Dessert, That the Whole Family Will Love, and she also hosts the enormously popular Hold the Toast! low carb blog, which is where I originally became acquainted with Dana. I was not entirely surprised to learn during the cruise that Dana has sold more than a million cookbooks since her original publication How I Gave Up My Low-Fat Diet and Lost 40 Pounds (Revised and Expanded Edition). [wp_campaign_1]
Why I love Dana’s Cookbooks
Being a Low Carber myself, this book is one of my “go-to” cookbooks (and I DO love to cook – and, um, eat, too). While there are many fantastic recipe sites on the internet (and certainly plenty that copy and paste Dana’s recipes without attribution), you can’t really be sure that a recipe that sounds great has actually been tried and true. You can relax, though, with Dana’s recipes. She has tried them six ways from Sunday and the results are recipes that work every time, even when you don’t think they are going to.
For example, a few weeks ago, I wanted a Pumpkin bread recipe, and rather than fool around, I visited Dana’s blog for Slow Cooker Pumpkin Bread. Sounds a little strange – right? I mean, who cooks quick breads in a slow cooker? Well, it was a WIN! If you aren’t conversant with low carb cooking, sugar and flour (which are both big no-nos in low carb cooking) have chemical properties that interact with each other and the other ingredients to result in the well-known soft texture, rise, and crumb that we all associate with baked goods. This texture is much harder to come by when conventional flours and sugars are not used. But Dana has overcome this limitation, and I can tell you – the Slow Cooker Pumpkin Bread was wonderful! I can’t wait to make it again! [wp_campaign_2]
Dinner plans for tonight!
But that’s for another day. My hubby is off working hard today, and I always reward his hard work with a good dinner, especially on the weekends. Lately, I have had a hankering for old-fashioned Buffalo-type wings, without the bones….so I am going to take Dana’s well known Heroin Wings recipe from her cookbook and adapt it for chicken tenders (won’t be hard). Just because they are so good, I’ll make more than enough to have for leftovers during the week. That’s another “secret,” which I’ll talk about later. I cook up food during the weekend, so all we have to do is reheat during the week. Saves time, saves, energy (both mine and the planet’s) and we never have to come home from work tired and hungry, wondering what are we going to eat!
