WFMW - Cooking Bacon (Low Carb Diet)

With our new low carb way of eating, we eat bacon nearly every morning. Sounds yummy, right? Sure, but how many hours will it take to cook bacon for a family of 14? WAYYYY too long (we did it a few days before we found this better way!) Kudo's and credit to my wonderful hubby - he is the one that spent time searching the web trying to find an easier way to cook bacon. This is the way that works for us! Enjoy!

Here is the fast and easy way to make any amount of bacon you want:
1. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Take a cooking sheet ("jelly roll" style) and grease with cooking spray (or whatever your favorite type of grease/oil is).
3. Place the strips of bacon very close together, getting as many slices as possible on the tray (I can usually get 12-13 slices per tray). Don't worry if the slices touch a bit, they shrink fast and even if they come out attached to each other when done cooking, they come apart easily.
4. Put cooking sheet(s) in oven and set timer for 15 minutes.
5. Turn on exhaust fan to low. After a few minutes you might notice some bacon steam coming out of the oven - rest assured the bacon is not on fire. Simply open the oven door and let some of that steam out, close the door and keep the exhaust fan on.
6. Bacon cooks at slightly different rates depending on if it is thick or regular cut and also depending on how many trays you have in the oven at one time.

7. Check bacon at the 15 min. mark and decide if it is done enough for your liking. It will get a nice layer of foam on the top of the bacon when it is getting close to being done, so don't be alarmed. If it is still pale and/or floppy, give it another 5 min. and then re-check. If it is close to being done, but maybe not quite as crisp as you would like it to be, give it another 2 min. and check again.
8. When bacon is cooked to your liking, remove from tray and place on paper towels to absorb the bacon grease. Poor bacon grease from the tray immediatly into a grease bucket/container. This will make washing up the trays much easier later.

Remember bacon has low to no carbs (read the labels!) and dietary fat does not make us/people fat; carbs are what make us fat.

Also, make a few extra pieces to crumble and use on salads or other recipes. It also reheats great in the microwave.

To read my other low carb posts to here, here and here.

For more Works For Me Wednesday see Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer!

Low carb "way of eating" (WOE) or What do you eat?

In response to questions on our family blog about our weight loss and switching to a low carb lifestyle I have decided to bring some of that discussion over to my homemaking blog because cooking and recipes are better suited here. I also am hoping by sharing what we are doing and the recipes I have found to work for us, will not only inspire some of you, but also inspire/motivate me to keep working on finding new recipes and sticking with low carb for the long haul.

Breakfast:
This is the easiest low carb meal of the day for us . We eat 2 eggs and bacon (2-4 pieces) every day. Eggs can be made different ways; scrambled, with cheese, with the bacon mixed in, with some peppers, with garlic, with a touch of Da Vinci sugar free syrups (like their pancake syrup), add cream to your eggs and some flavoring (my friend Karen adds the sugar free DV Toasted Marshmallow syrup) and make a thin batter and cook them up like crepes. When I get a chance I make low carb muffins to go with our breakfast. At first I made these mostly from ground flax seed (I grind my own - more on that in the next post). Flax seed does make a nice muffin, really. My problem is either my taste buds got burned out on them or I'm just burned out on eating muffins every morning. I have been playing around with using Almond Meal, Hazelnut Meal and psyllium with the flax seed. Then, there is figuring out adding flavor to the muffins. Mostly I use extracts (vanilla, almond, maple, etc.) and the DV syrup flavors. We really like making a blueberry muffin with the DV blueberry syrup, and add just a few blueberry's to each muffin.

The other part of breakfast is the morning beverage. Tea is easy, just add some cream (milk and half and half have milk sugar/carbs in them and cream, i.e. heavy whipping cream, is almost all fat/no carbs, but be sure to read the label) and I use just a couple of drops of Sweetzfree. Hubby likes just plain black coffee, but I'm a "foo-foo/Starbucks" type coffee person. I have found that the Torani White Chocolate Sugar Free Sauce makes a pretty decent White Chocolate Mocha. Just add two tablespoons of the sauce, two drops of Sweetzfree and cream to your liking. Yum.

One thing to remember anytime you have any carbs is that you have to have protein with them. So, my faux white chocolate mocha is at breakfast, with all the protein in the eggs and bacon. Why? Protein raises blood sugar levels much more slowly than carbs or even low carbs alone do.

Next posts:
Muffin recipes
Fast and easy way to make great tasting bacon for two, twelve or twenty!