Sauerkraut, wiener and potatoes!

A wiener, sauerkraut and a half baked potato! What a great luncheon idea! True, many folks do not like (even hate) sauerkraut, but I would say to them, 'Sie wären ein mieser Deutscher'! As man man with just a bit of pure Aryan German blood flowing in his veins, I fully embraced the concept of eating semi-rotted cabbage soaked in vinegar! Mein gott!

My other signature lunch time meal, which also employs a wiener, is the Anthony Wiener Pork N Beans dish I created some time ago! (And no, the picture at right is not one of Anthony's actual penis, as I've been told it is too small to photograph)!

This SWP meal, as I like to call it, goes together like a dream in that you only have to bring a hotdog wiener to a boil, nuke a small russet potato for about four minutes, add some sauerkraut and then nuke the whole mess for another two minutes or so. As a finishing touch, I also often add a dab of sour cream to the potatoes. Bon appetite!

Nutritionally, this meal is relatively low in calories and carbs! At about half a buck in cost, it's also kind to the pocketbook.

Taco deluxe with a salad!

A good crunchy taco falls into the world of things that make me very happy. Give me a couple of those and a beer and I'm pretty much set for the day. Sadly, beer was off the menu for lunch, so I had to settle for a simple salad with red wind vinegar, instead.

My idea of a really great taco is to keep the fixings simple and stupid...

1 hard taco shell

3 tbsp (36g) taco meat

1 tsp chopped onion

2 olives, chopped

1 leaf of Romaine, chopped

1 tsp shredded cheese

½ tsp taco sauce

OK, so not so simple. The salad, on the other hand, was plain Jane Romaine lettuce with a little chopped bell pepper. The dressing was also Red wine from Kraft. Following is the nutritional hit list!

Three hundred calories for a filling lunch time repast is not too shabby.

So, it's come down to this?

While in a never ending search for meals that would fit well into my latest diet (aka Ketogenic*), I've come across a real wiener, er, winner.

Column headers are; calories, carbs, fat, protein and sodium

OK! So, it don't look like very much and, you know what? It isn't! Just 166 calories (with enough salt to last me a few weeks). And, yes the salt issue aside, this is a low carb, high protein repast that was just the ticket for an otherwise so so Tuesday in September!

*The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fueling brain-function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source.

A ketogenic friendly style lunch!

After posting a short piece on counting calories in raw versus cooked hamburger patties, I decided to go that route for lunch on an otherwise nondescript Saturday in September!

My approach to dieting, in general is to go for a ketogenic approach which emphasizes a low carb high protein method of eating. This is a proven path to weight loss that is not without some cautionary warnings for people with certain health conditions.

Quarter pound, 4 oz, 113 grams!

OK, so my approach for this particular meal was to eliminate the buns, throw on a slice of onion and garnish with a side of Lima beans. Why Lima beans? Well, Lima beans are a very good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber, (as are most other legumes). In addition to lowering cholesterol, Lima beans high fiber content prevents blood sugar levels from rising too rapidly after a meal, making these beans an especially good choice for individuals with diabetes, insulin resistance or hypoglycemia. So, a high protein and fiber addition to this meal was not a bad thing!

When I cook my burgers, I like to use an old Joe Foreman grill. The design insures that a lot of the grease will be drained from the finished burger. After cooking, three on a slice of white onion along with a generous amount of ketchup. The pat of butter was the real thing while the salt I used was potassium chloride not table salt.

The end nutritional result? 260 calories, 15 carbs, 15 grams of fat and 16 grams of protein! The meal was also delicious and filling!

WTF for lunch!

In the old days there was the infamous SOS (or as it was commonly referred to by the dysphemism 'Shit on a Shingle'). A meal that was composed of creamed chipped beef on toast and which was very common for troops to eat in the second World War.

My 21^st Century concoction of chopped wiener with pork and beans on toast is called a WeinerToastaFarter meal or WTF for short, a term which I'm sure doesn't need any additional translation, but which may also have other unintended connotations...

In truth, this is a pretty good mix of foods! Nutritionally, it contains about 124 grams of Van Camp's Pork and Beans along with a 100 gram cut up wiener – the total calories therein were approximately 300! That was my lunch for this day....party on and stay clear of my wake!