Hi Karen et al

Nothing momentous. But I must add that the chicken recipe of yours I did yesterday and the asparagus frittata I had for breakfast were really superb. A welcome change and I am scouring the health food shops daily to try and find a few more ingredients to expand the range.

3 small things...

1. I couldnt find pure oat flour so have got ground up natural oat bran. is this the same thing or can it be used as an effective substitute. It is 20 carb gms per 40g serve but has 6.4g of dietary fibre. It seems really high in carbs and incredibly healthy to be adding into biscuits and muffins!!! (You can tell its a whole new way of thinking for me!!)

2. What do you use to thicken sauces (apart from cream)? Is arrowroot ok?

3. Every day I have mixed salad leaves, rocket, lettuce etc with a garlic vinaigrette with one of my meals and I definitely have to find out what the horrible spicy leaf is in there and what it looks like. It tastes kind of peppery and as theres only the odd leaf or two, I tend to only find it once its been chewed up. Hence I'm having trouble spotting it to remove it before it gets past my mouth. What is it and what does it look like?

Thanks

Nicola

Hi Nicola,

You can grind up oatmeal to use for oat flour. I suppose the oat bran would work too!

The carb count of arrowroot is 6.78 per Tbsp. There is a product call Not/Starch available by mail order. Click on the CarbSmart banner on this page. They have it. Doreen also posted an idea and recipe for a stir-fry sauce thickened with ground flax that she was quite pleased with. You can thicken other sauces with flax as well. This is the link to the thread:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...=&threadid=4430

I think the nasty green stuff you are referring to is rocket. We call it arugula. Here is a picture of it. It's on the right hand side down around the bottom.

http://members.tripod.com/aerogreen/sshot.htm

Karen

I just bought some xanthan gum that's supposed to be good for thickening. Apparently 1 tsp will thicken 1 cup of fluid. If it has any carbs at all, they're very low.

I've never used it, so I suppose I should experiment a bit before I ruin that yummy chicken gravy!

Rachel

That's right Rachel! Guar gum works too, but I find the texture a bit "slippery"

Karen

Add the xanthan powder to some of the liquid first (it will dissolve in both hot and cold liquids) ... then add it to the rest, stirring like crazy ...... It has a tendency to clump, but unlike cornstarch, the clumps will dissolve as long as you keep stirring! It gives a gummy texture, like how pectin thickens a jam, rather than a smooth creamy texture the way flour or cornstarch would. Perfectly fine for gravies, stir-fry sauce, home-made syrups, etc...... Creamy sauces seem to fare better with egg yolks as the thickener, but that's just personal opinion.

The carbs in xanthan gum are nearly all fiber, by the way ..

Doreen

How uncool of me not to like rocket ... I shall save my money and buy the old unimproved, without rocket variety of leaves. Still wondering - is cheese whey powder - whey protein powder. Also, Karen your daily menus make me drool. Are all the sauce recipes on this site? I also await cauliflower rice with anticipation.

Happy Birthday to Io.

Nicola

Hi Nicola,

Io wags back at you!

The recipe for the goat's cheese sauce--it's called Cool Goat's Cheese Sabayon--is in the recipe section.

I work in a restaurant, so sauces abound. I'm very lucky! It would be a good idea to post just a section of sauces. I'll start working on it.

You can start working your way up to rocket by starting with radicchio. Groovy, baybay!

Do you have any of Donna Hay's--the great Australian cookbook author-- cookbooks? They are loaded with great low-carb recipes and ideas.

I saw a post last night by Doreen about cheese whey powder. She believes that it is powdered cheese like the stuff you put in Kraft Dinner. I think it's in the thread that you posted the same question to. I've never seen it, so I'll go with Doreen. It may be under a different name in Canada.


Karen

Just my CA$0.25 worth.

all the vegetable gums are 100% soluble fiber, as is pectin (another vegetable gum, or should I say, fruit gum?)

they'll all have a 'slippery' texture to some degree and are all essentially tasteless (not everyone can taste the differences) though the xanthan is the preferred (most neutral taste and somewhat less slippery)

the not/Starch product is available by mail order from either US or Canadian sites (like mine). I don't think there is an Oz site that carries it yet though there are now Distributor and Broker sites here in NA [grin] as well as Retail, so who knows what's happening next?

the not/Starch product is a proprietal and spiffy blend (lumps a lot less) of xanthan, guar, acacia and carob gums, and is of course 100% soluble fibers.

the high soluble fibre content in ground flaxseed is what makes it an excellent egg replacer and vegan thickener/binder from way back ... so it would seem that soluble fiber = vegetable gum = soluble fiber, if ya know what I mean.

PS: the hot spicy green might well be mustard cress (looks like a parsley almost) or that purple/green japanese mustard with a broad leaf (I've found them in many a gourmet greens mix and they can be very startlingly spunky, more so than arugula or rocket in my opinion).

Thanks Judy

I had some suspicions about the purple green stuff so i think that must be it because i thought I'd had rocket plenty of times and hadnt noticed. This is definitely spicy so i think it may be the japanese stuff.

Nicola