High. On, yes, a new thing.

The little health embarrassment – that minor unable to breathe thing, you know – has cleared up muchly thanks to, well, drugs. Plus clean living, I suppose, but its not as if that’s all [...]]]> So it’s been a bit of a rough ride. Sorry to’ve slipped out of touch.

High. On, yes, a new thing.

The little health embarrassment – that minor unable to breathe thing, you know – has cleared up muchly thanks to, well, drugs. Plus clean living, I suppose, but its not as if that’s all voluntary.

In there just make things interesting I caught a stomach bug. That cleared up too. My weight then took an alarming upward turn, which may or may not have had anything to do with the meds – although I have not changed the eating and exercise habits that have kept me slowly but surely losing weight since I got home from my trifling misadventure a year and a half ago. Although admittedly I let the exercise slip some – again, surprising how problematic not being able to breathe (or sleep) makes that. Then again the weight uptick happened after I’d started exercising more, so who knows?

Anyway, the weight has now, at least for today, dropped back to … less unsatisfactory levels. (Mind you we’re talking about a total swing of about seven pounds, which is still radical enough to rattle my cage, since I’m used to no more than maybe three pounds up after setting a new low.)

Also, what with this thing and that thing, I’ve let myself get behind in the writing. Of which I’ve a mess to write. And, uh, well, rewrite.

And, as with the walking (with Emma Dog, of course!), and the kettlebell swings, I’m finally picking back up on the writing. Yay.

So, after all that preamble, back to the titular New Thing on which I am professedly High.

Not drugs; I don’t do recreational chemicals beyond what you find in a cup o hot chocolate, and that sugar free. And while they are controlled, or at least prescription only (for reasons, most likely, having far more to do with other people’s finances than our health), the drugs I am on are not particularly entertaining.

Nope, it’s the latest version of what’s already become a low-starch standby for me: this flaxseed “foccacia” bread. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a tad bland, but it’s still pretty successfully bread-like. Recently my good friend Roslee Orndorff gave me a bag of almond flour to try out – it’s also low-starch (and low-sugar), being just ground-up almonds, and hence low glycemic load.

The “fauxccacia” recipe calls for two cups of ground flaxseed. So I subbed half a cup of the almond flour for half a cup of that. I did not get to try it when it was nice and hot, but had some yesterday, both regular and toasted.

And … it’s pretty good. has a bit more flavor – bit more body, maybe. Also feels a little less gritty. Now, it has a bit of a nasty, cheesy smell when it’s actually toasting – the straight flax bread doesn’t smell all that fantastic, either. But it tastes good. Better than the more-than-acceptable original.

So, great! Got a new weapon in my low-GL arsenal! The craving for breads is a tough one to get past. And bread-like foods are good for, um, leavening the slightly stark meat-and-veggies regimen I follow.

(And, yes. That is what I’m high about. A new, improved bread substitute. And yes, I have … modest standards for getting high.  Deal.)

Meanwhile, I need to get back to writing I, you know, get paid for. There are also some subsidiary things to do that will in the fullness of time show up here on the blog.

Such as, I am contractually required to produce a map for The Dinosaur Lords. And I am actually mastering my Campaign Cartographer 3 (CC3) software to the extent of finally being in process of converting my crude sketch of the Tyrant’s Head and the Empire of Nuevaropa into something legible. As well as digital, hence transmissible.

So you can expect to catch that soon.

Also, expect to see further installments of my handy and informative An Adventurer’s Guide to the Dinosaurs of Paradise, which I see I’ve sadly neglected.

And finally, I will ere long toss up two moresenses-shattering free sample chapters of The Dinosaur Lords for your entertainment and edification. Which will still amount to, oh, rather less than 5% of the majestic whole. They don’t call it epic fantasy for nothing, kids.

Which means I best hop back to producing the real stuff now. And you know what that means:

As always, thanks for reading!

My suave new hat.

It was another fairly warm day here in the Duke City – we’ve had several in a row. I had various errands to run, including shopping for supplies to do some serious cooking this [...]]]> So I just got back from giving a field test to the waterproofing of my jaunty new hat.

My suave new hat.

It was another fairly warm day here in the Duke City – we’ve had several in a row. I had various errands to run, including shopping for supplies to do some serious cooking this weekend.

Which I launched into tonight. First  I made up a batch of my red chile cream-cheese fudge, which is what’s for breakfast most days. Dinner was oven-roasted chicken with low-carb barbecue sauce and fresh-baked flaxseed-meal bread. A bit prep-intensive, yes.

But I have to say it was pretty good.

Meanwhile, winter snuck in whilst no one was looking. Got all cold and stormy, like.

After I did the dishes I decided to take Emma for a walk around the block, since there’d been no chance for a real walk today. It had rained but wasn’t currently.

Until we stepped outside. Of course. Then first thing we got a pretty spectacular lightning display right overhead. I decided to tempt Fate and go for it anyway. And as soon as we got around the corner it started to rain. Slowly at first. But picking up to a pretty brisk pace.

And … the hat worked. Shed water peachy-keen. of course, it didn’t do much for Emma. Who naturally acted as if I was flaying her with blunt knives when I toweled her off after we got safely inside.  Now she’s snoozing on the sofa while I sit in my recliner wrapped up in a blankie to write this.

I’m feeling better. Much better. You may have reckoned that. The steroids seem to be working – on the breathing problems, at least; I still do not resemble the Incredible Hulk, no matter how angry I get. I’m breathing free and easily most of the time.

Especially at night. For some utterly unknown reason I’m also sleeping better. Hence getting more done. This is Good.

This weekend we have Pat Rogers’ and Scott Denning’s Halloween party. Otherwise known as the Party. It is to all other parties as Amber is to other cities: they are pale reflections of its magnificence.

In the next day or so I’m planning to whip up a batch of my popular red chile pumpkin soup for the party. Feels like the season for it.

Hope it finds you safe, and warm, and dry.

And as always – thanks for reading.

With coffee and, eventually, French Vanilla ice cream, thank you very much.

As I mentioned yesterday on Facebook (took me some serious scrolling to find the original post, what with the way my Wall has been slammed by birthday greetings. For which, well – [...]]]> So, low-starch/sugar birthday cake successfully made and frosted, and the first piece consumed!

With coffee and, eventually, French Vanilla ice cream, thank you very much.

As I mentioned yesterday on Facebook (took me some serious scrolling to find the original post, what with the way my Wall has been slammed by birthday greetings. For which, well – thanks, everybody!) I had initial reservations about the frosting. No matter what I did (including adding extra Splenda, some butter, and my go-to spice, Saigon cinnamon) it tasted somewhat acrid/bitter to me.

But you know what? It’s pretty darned good. Both with and without the ice cream.

So: yay! A good start on the day. Along with enjoying reading and replying to the aforementioned deluge of birthday wishes.

Naturally, I will tinker with the recipes some. Think I’ll just use melted unsweetened chocolate in both batter and frosting henceforth, both for texture and ease. The cocoa powder tastes fine, and the slight gritty texture it seems to add to the fudge is a plus is my book. But I like … moister, creamier in the cake and frosting.

May add a bit of oil to the cake mix, too. On the whole, it’s pretty good.

To my surprise, a night in the fridge (I like my cake cool. Go figure) seemed to mellow the tang of the frosting some. That said, next time I will go with the butter cream frosting (my own low-sugar implementation, o’ course!) mentioned by Robert Mossack, per the recipe Jb Matoushek kindly pointed me toward.

Not to put too fine an edge on it, I may make me another cake as soon as this one’s eaten. Because why not?

I’d send along pics, except I contrived to break the nifty little camera Rich Zellich and his wife Michelle kindly gave me as a fet-well gift last year, boo hoo. So I’m back to the cell phone camera, which ain’t great but is still better than my mad sketching skilz.Which are definitely sketchy.

But really? ot much to show. It looks … cakelike. And more to the point, tastes that way!

So now, after promising to do so earlier, I’m gonna bag this Internet thing, go play me some Mass Effect for the first time, and go catch Cowboys & Aliens at the movin’-picture show.

Thanks, all! I am indeed having a Happy Birthday.

And I’m happy to be having a birthday.

With my birthday coming up Wednesday I’ve decided to try to making this recipe for sour-cream chocolate cake, except substituting flaxseed meal for flour and Splenda for sugar. We’re talking seriously low starch, low sugar.

I was inspired by this flaxseed “foccacia” bread, which is very breadlike [...]]]> Wish me luck, kids. I am so going for it!

With my birthday coming up Wednesday I’ve decided to try to making this recipe for sour-cream chocolate cake, except substituting flaxseed meal for flour and Splenda for sugar. We’re talking seriously low starch, low sugar.

I was inspired by this flaxseed “foccacia” bread, which is very breadlike in both taste and texture. Plus it makes superior toast to the flaxseed and psyllium-husk “pancakes” I made earlier. Which, mind you, are pretty good (plus it came to me the other night that I need to try using that batter to make corn dogs.)

While the basic “foccacia” bread is a tad on the bland side – I’m gonna tinker some; huge surprise – it already struck me as fairly cakelike. I thought of just tossing in some (extra) Splenda and a bunch of cocoa powder and hoping.

But what I decided to do is try the cake recipe with straight-up substitution of the flaxseed and Splenda.

This is death-or-glory cooking at it finest. Or at least its hairiest-assed.

I’ll let you know how it turns out – tasty birthday treat? Inedible glop? We’ll find out.

In, like, half an hour.

Stay tuned….

Update, 8:54 PM MDT – Well, it’s baked into something which looks suspiciously cakelike. Now the Great Mystery is how it’ll taste.

Must cool considerably before I test it, of course.

Update, 9:10 PM MDT – Taste test accomplished! And the result is -

(Check comments to see!)

PS – Why, yes. I am a stinker.

Yes, toast. Just now – for the first time in well over a year – I enjoyed a piece of toast. Warm, buttery, tasty toast.

And you know what’s really cool? I did not break my low starch/low sugar eating habit.

I didn’t even bend it. This toast is dead-center for la Vida Low-Starch which I am [...]]]> Toast.

Yes, toast. Just now – for the first time in well over a year – I enjoyed a piece of toast. Warm, buttery, tasty toast.

And you know what’s really cool? I did not break my low starch/low sugar eating habit.

I didn’t even bend it. This toast is dead-center for la Vida Low-Starch which I am determined to live! (Which I continue to do very nicely, thank you very much.)

So right now you’re probably asking yourself, how the Hell did Vic do that? Or is he just crazy in the head?

Well, sure. But not about this. Here’s how I did it….

Simple, really. You take:

6 eggs
1 tbsp ground flaxseed
1 tbsp psyllium husk powder (unsweetened and unflavored!)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder

First, blend the eggs for about two minutes or until they’re good and mixed-up. I used the stick blender my good friend Larry gave me for the first time, and it was good. Also the whisk attachment.

Then mix in the dry ingredients and the vanilla.

Let stand five minutes for the baking powder to work its poofy magic. Preheat a skillet to medium – I use a little bit of olive oil, plus renewed portions of butter. Pour the batter out in pancake-sized dollops. Basically, cook until both sides are brown enough to suit you.  I let it cook initially for a minute each side, but sometimes it took a bit more. (It’s a good sign the dollop is ready to turn when you get bubbles up through the batter.)

You do want to make sure each cake, or piece, is cooked all the way through. The uncooked batter is ungood, frankly.

And that’s it. I pat off excess oil with a paper towel and stash in an ever-handy Zip-Loc bag.

Had a warm one right away, buttered, with some cinnamon and Splenda sprinkled on. It was good. So I had some last night with my steak and green onions. Which was also good.

So this morning I decided to go for it. Got my old toaster down off the high shelf in the utility room where it had languished for months, cleaned it off, fired it up.

The bread smelled great toasting. I admit it didn’t taste as great, but it did taste awfully good. Which is, you know, what I asked of it.

So: success!

Now, as those of you who’ve tried a low-carb regime (mine is not, strictly, although if something works for low-carb, it works for me) know all too well, missing bread is one of the great impediments to sticking with your program. Because I eat carbs, except for starch and added sugar – and some odd food items like pizza with the outer crust cut off and much Mexican food also work for me – the lack is less.

But I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit I missed bread sometimes.

This whole thing started out a month or two ago when I decided I needed much more fiber in my diet – soluble fiber, specifically, rather than the insoluble fiber you normally get in things like high-fiber cereal. That meant: psyllium husk powder. In my quest to consume substantial amounts of it without too much difficulty (such as, say, nausea) I sought to incorporate it in various recipes. One of which was the pancake recipe from which the above partially descended. Which proved not bad.

But also … not great. The psyllium husk cakes are gritty, a bit overly chewy, and taste a trifle odd. Also the stuff turns to rubber quickly when mixed (seriously – it generates mucho mucilage), which makes it hard to get consistency size on your cakes, especially the later ones. And also is hard to clean off utensils; the blender was a nightmare to clean up afterwards. (The stick blender would be superior, but still … the stuff’s a royal pain in the hinder parts.)

So then I found out about flaxseed, which – while not as chock full o’ soluble fiber as I need – is full of good things and lacking starch as well. Meanwhile I found other means of getting down my daily dose of psyllium. So I swapped the psyllium husk powder for ground flaxseed.

The result was not bad. Certainly easier to manage and clean up afterwards. But the flaxseed pancakes were way flatter than the psyllium ones. And apparently the flaxseed is less flavorful, because they tasted mostly like … well, fried eggs, actually. Again, not bad – but most certainly not a bread substitute.

Then I discovered a recipe for “low-carb bread,”, and hybridized the two, plus some changes of my own to arrive at the above.

I already cut out most of the sweetener and cinnamon from the original recipe, since right away as I ate my very first one I realized that I wanted to use the “pancakes” as bread rather than purely pastry – and as my example shows, you can always add sweetener and cinnamon. What I get are better tasting than either predecessor, and much more breadlike. Really, rather like a hybrid of bread and pancake.

Some notes for the dietarily observant: I do use table sugar, and there’s some corn starch in the baking powder. I also feel confident their negligible quantities, as opposed to all the fat and fiber we get from the eggs and the psyllium/flaxseed blend, will fail to tick the blood sugar appreciably. Although this waits confirmation by my blood-glucose meter (which in turn reminds me to change the battery in that puppy, pronto!)

I will, of course, continue to tinker with my recipe. May try adding the cream of tartar from the second recipe to get it still more breadlike. Plus it could stand a little enhancement in the flavor. Though make no mistake: it is good.

It is bread. And it makes a pretty fair toast.

There will also be more elaborate experiments – when I get back out from under a bit (again!) I’ve got some low-carb bread machine recipes that call for the use of wheat gluten, which I’m leery of. But since wheat gluten is allegedly “sticky” and “chewy,” and psyllium husk is those things in abundance, I think I’m gonna try a straight-up substitution.

It could, of course, go south. I may end up with a charred brick, or yet having to clean a Lovecraftian rubbery mass out of the bread-machine pan. And … so what? I need to get looser about experimenting. About trying new things and new approaches to see what works. And when some of ‘em don’t – as some of ‘em won’t – well, that’s just data, right?

Drive on!

You too. And, as ever and always -

Thanks for reading!

This need probably not surprise us, given my Big Writing Binge of recent history. Notwithstanding that I took all of yesterday off, doing even more nothing than I intended.

I’ve spent much of the last 14-15 months learning how to push my limits without seriously overstepping them. Seem to [...]]]> Nothin’ left in the tank today, that is.

This need probably not surprise us, given my Big Writing Binge of recent history. Notwithstanding that I took all of yesterday off, doing even more nothing than I intended.

I’ve spent much of the last 14-15 months learning how to push my limits without seriously overstepping them. Seem to have to have missed a bit on that last thing, this time through the obstacle course.

Ah, well. No big thing. It’s a learning process, and will continue. Presumably as long as I do. Life, after all, is yet another skill.

Nothing of huge moment to do today anyway. I do soon need to get the draft cleaned up enough to be seen, thus sent in, and add back some of those Parts I Cut Because I Feared The Book Would Run Too Long. But not today.

I do need to issue forth, to my dismay, for basic supplies – such as cashews, which given my low-starch/low-sugar dietary habits form a staple snack in lieu of things like chips.

Also, Emma Dog needs a walk, because she’s getting painfully bored and also lest she turn into a cheese. (Daddy got two miles in with her Uncle Joe last night, meaning he’s at reduced risk of fromagification*.)

Sadly, I need to hold off the kettlebell swings, at least for a while, since I’m getting some odd pain at the front of my left knee. Overhead presses seem OK … when I have, like, energy again.

Otherwise? Carp. No idea. Figure out what I want for dinner that will require minimal effort to get in my face (although I have already made a batch of starch-free psyllium-husk powder “pancakes.” They don’t suck!) Watch some movies. Maybe try to get myself to see something other than old MST3K episodes on Netflix Streaming. Although I do indeed love me some MST3K, especially when it’s Joel.

Tomorrow? That’s a whole new day.

Or so rumor has it.

*Totally a word. A word I just made up. I get to do that. I’m a professional.

It also just took 10 minutes for the “Add New Post” page to load.

That’s it. I’m going DSL. Tomorrow it’s off to Southwest [...]]]> No, seriously. How does anyone eat a whole raw carrot? It takes me an hour to chew my way through half a carrot. At the end of which my face needs a nap.

It also just took 10 minutes for the “Add New Post” page to load.

That’s it. I’m going DSL. Tomorrow it’s off to Southwest Cyberport (and, yes, the nerds. The good, nice, and hopefully not-at-all-vengeful nerds.)

At any rate, I defrosted them. Chopped up a quarter-onion or so and plopped it in water in a pot – enough to cover the brats, so there aren’t [...]]]> I can’t promise this will bring back seriously freezer burned bratwurst; these were freezer-burned, but I don’t know how badly. How do you measure that, anyway?

At any rate, I defrosted them. Chopped up a quarter-onion or so and plopped it in water in a pot – enough to cover the brats, so there aren’t really any precise measurements here. I threw in a pinch of salt and maybe half a teaspoon of black pepper. Brought it to a boil and added about a teaspoonful of honey. When it was well-mixed I added the brats, in this case three.

Simmered for fifteen minutes, stirring and turning frequently. Then I broiled them for three minutes a side. Done!

With a can of black beans and some Dijon-style mustard you have a tasty meal that also sports quite a low glycemic load. Would also go nicely with my go-to side dishes of olives and walnuts.

Sadly, I succumbed to the lure of starch and ate them on bread. The fact it’s wheat bread saves me from the horrors of high fructose corn syrup (since I searched to find some that lacked it – don’t assume anything!) It does not in fact help with the GL.

I need to lose weight. Seriously. Going low-GL would help. It has in the past. I probably need to go hard-core Atkins for a while.

The difficulty is I’m still detoxing on my news/opinion fast. It may seem like a wussy rationalization; it may even be. But in my experience and observation trying to change too many things at once is a recipe for failure.

There seems to be a case made for total life makeover working. That entails stuff like changing your appearance, your friends, where you hang out, even where you live. We’re talking everything. I’m not going to do that. Most of my life serves me fine.

Slowly but surely I’m getting things under control. I’d like to speed up the process. I guess I’ll do what I can.

On other fronts: while I ate my tasty revivified brats and black beans I watched a Nova episode called “The Four-Winged Dinosaur,” about microraptor. Microraptor was a chicken-sized beast with well-developed aerodynamic feathers on all four limbs. It’s presumed to have somehow used all four limbs to glide – something no other known animal, past or present, has done. The show chronicled microraptor’s role in a dispute between mainstream paleontologists, who say birds descended from dinosaurs, and a Santa Claus-bearded bird paleontologist who maintains they didn’t either.

Now, I won’t claim detachment: I come down firmly on the “birds are too dinos, dammit!” side. For the very unscientific reason I suspect most scientists do: because I want to, dammit!

That said, I’m afraid I have to call foul for the other side. The basic dispute here was over whether microraptor had sprawling (hence non-dinosaurian) hind limbs, or basically upright, hence definitively dinosaur. They did wind-tunnel tests with a reconstructed microraptor in variations of the “upright hind limbs” configuration. When they found one that worked fairly well, they stopped. Without testing the “sprawled” configuration to see if that glided better.

That doesn’t seem fair.

That said, and quite aside from disagreeing with him about the whole birds-are-dinos thing, I never quite got the insistence that, should microraptor have indeed had sprawling hind limbs, that was the “death” of the theory birds descended from dinosaurs. He appeared to believe it would demonstrate that microraptor wasn’t a dinosaur, but instead an ancestor of birds, which he claims (if I have this straight) diverged from dinosaurs about the time they split up with crocodiles.

How does that follow? What if, for example, microraptor was a so-called evolutionary dead end, and nothing much descended from it?

3 cups chicken stock or broth 1 cup heavy or whipping cream 1 15-oz. can pure pumpkin 1 tbsp. Splenda/brown sugar blend 1 tsp. ground cumin 1 tbsp. red chile powder (I use “Hot”) 1/2 tsp. ground coriander 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

In a medium-sized pot, bring chicken stock and heavy [...]]]> Due to overwhelming popular demand (i.e., somebody asked) here it is.

3 cups chicken stock or broth
1 cup heavy or whipping cream
1 15-oz. can pure pumpkin
1 tbsp. Splenda/brown sugar blend
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tbsp. red chile powder (I use “Hot”)
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

In a medium-sized pot, bring chicken stock and heavy cream to a boil.
Whisk in canned pumpkin, Splenda/brown sugar blend, red chile powder, coriander, cumin, and nutmeg. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until soup thickens slightly and flavors blend, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

===

Adapted from this recipe I found on teh Interwebs.

Notes: For followers of a low glycemic-index diet (which I serious need to resume being, and fast!) and SuperFoods, this is pretty near ideal. Plus it tastes good.

It’s a hearty soup – you could probably tell. It’s popular with the SF crowd as a comfort food, especially on our more wintry winter nights.

Feel free to monkey with this recipe to suit your own taste. I did.

The red chile powder I use comes from my favorite local-growers market, the Fruit Basket, which I naturally call furuba. It’s beautiful stuff, dark and rich and velvety. Unless you live in Albuquerque you won’t find this particular brand; if you want to make this soup right, seek out a Mexican bodega or a specialty store with a good selection of ethnic foods. The “chili powder” they peddle in the spice section of your local supermarket is not a Mexican condiment, it’s a crime against humanity.

If you don’t want to use the Splenda mix try a couple tablespoons of plain old brown sugar.

It’s astonishingly hard to find chicken broth without starch in it, let alone high fructose death syrup and God knows what unholy crap. Why they put that in chicken freakin’ broth is beyond me. The last two times I made it I made my own chicken stock. Which is fairly easy and if you Google it yourself you can browse around and find a method that suits you, so I won’t even bother posting any links.

If you wanted to toss in some garlic salt, or crush a clove or two of fresh garlic and put that in, I won’t stop you. It adds richness. It doesn’t add any garlic taste I can detect. Then again I eat a lot of garlic.

Anyway: it’s easy, it’s good. If you’re not revolted by pumpkins, or at least the concept of pumpkin soup, and especially if you like a bit of zing in what could otherwise be kinda bland, why not try making it yourself?

Recommended reading:

The Glycemic-Load Diet: A powerful new program for losing weight and reversing insulin resistance

SuperFoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life

As always, if you buy these books by clicking the links above, while you’re helping yourself, you’ll also be helping this site and me. Thanks!

Turned out I had 3 cups of chicken broth left over. Using the proportions from the pumpkin soup, I put in a cup of heavy cream and brought it to a boil. To add a bit of [...]]]> As threatened last time, I made an experimental batch of green chile chicken soup for dinner tonight.

Turned out I had 3 cups of chicken broth left over. Using the proportions from the pumpkin soup, I put in a cup of heavy cream and brought it to a boil. To add a bit of zing I chopped up a celery stalk or two, very fine, and maybe a quarter onion, and crushed a few cloves of garlic. I turned the liquid down to medium heat, added the veggies, and about a third of a container of frozen green chile (defrosted). I then tore up a bunch of the boiled chicken, tossed that in, along with a cup or so of grated Colby Jack. I then simmered and stirred for an indeterminate amount of time, no less than half an hour, I suspect.

I told you this was gonna be pretty ad hoc.

It was a bit thin yet when I stopped cooking it. But it tasted right. Which was enough for me.

And when I really dug in it tasted, frankly, great. Success!

I suspect it’ll taste even better when I reheat the leftovers in a day or two. Things made with chile, in my experience, taste better for a bit of aging.

While I went and spoiled the effect by eating a buttered flour tortilla – better than bread, anyway – this recipe, like the pumpkin soup, is very low-GL. Probably lower, since unlike the pumpkin soup I used no sweetener in it at all.

There was a restaurant here in Albuquerque called the Steaksmith – long closed now – which along with good steaks (go figure) did killer green chile chicken soup. I’ve lusted for it ever since the restaurant died. Over the years I’ve tried other people’s versions. Some were good, none measured up. This – this at least approached the Steaksmith recipe. Damn good.

ASFS is having another cookoff this year for its December meeting. Last year, when the theme ingredient (à la Iron Chef) was pumpkin, my red chile pumpkin soup won a prize. This year’s special ingredient is chile. While it’s been suggested I enter the RCPS again, I may just trot this out on them.

On other fronts, I’m concerned about Emma. I went out around sunset to go to Smith’s for sundry supplies, including frozen hot green chile (no, it’s not an oxymoron) for the soup. I wasn’t gone more than a half an hour if that.

Usually when I leave the house for any length of time Emma gets very excited on my return, and demands that I greet her, make much of her, and reaffirm her status as member in good standing of the Milán Pack. This time she wouldn’t get off the couch. Instead she just sat there looking, literally, hangdog.

I worried then, and somewhat now, that she might be sick or in pain. But really, she acted more as if she were depressed. Or even more, ashamed – as if she’d accidentally pooped on the floor or injured one of the cats or something.

But the cats were both sleeping placidly in the bedroom. TJ on the foot of the bed, Squeak in the clean laundry I’ve yet to sort and put away (guess which one’s the black one.) And if there was any unsanctified evacuation I still haven’t found any evidence. Which renders that unlikely.

I gave Emma some Dog Brownie treat that my friend Gail Gerstner-Miller made, with part of a coated aspirin inside, in case she was in pain for some reason. The treat crumbled as she bit into it. The aspirin part fell out. As she always does when I give her a pill (usually heartworm med) she carefully licked it up too, before rooting around for the last fragment of goody. She’s a good dog.

She retired shortly thereafter to her pen, which she often uses as her sanctuary when she’s afraid or doesn’t feel good. She didn’t petition as usual to go outside and get her dinner; I had to invite her outside. At which point she got up readily enough and went out, and she ate with her usual appetite.

But when I brought her in early, figuring she wouldn’t want to stay out too late tonight since she was feeling punk, she went right back and climbed up on her fleece pad on the couch. Which is her usual hangout. When I went to pet her, she got all hangdog again. She even ducked her head from my touch.

I wonder if her head is feeling sensitive? I know better than to go in straight over her eyes. But actually, she acted as if she were afraid of me somehow.

I don’t do a lot that would make her afraid of me, I think. I seldom so much as raise my voice to her. Don’t need to: she’s awfully good. She’s smart, and eager to please. And why she’d act afraid of me after I’d merely gone away for half an hour mystifies me completely.

I also wondered if something traumatic had happened, somehow, during my brief excursion. But that would almost certainly have freaked out the cats, especially the noble and excellent but timid TJ.

So we’ll see. I hope she’s feeling better in the morning.

I’ll keep you posted.