Veggie day #4 under way.  Thursday mornings are always very quiet.  John sleeps later because of poker on Wednesday night and I don’t go to the gym, so it is good jammie time and a little blog reading.  I made up some coconut flour waffles for breakfast:

I got going on work right away.  I usually finish up early on Thursdays because it is normally a busy day and without going to the gym, I get an earlier start.  Yay!

Lunch time was a new fangled PB&J.  I used some of my wheat bread and mixed up some peanut flour with water and cinnamon.

Orange marmalade on top. I also decided on cooking up veggies for lunch, just for something different. 23 grams of protein with lunch!  Love that peanut flour.

John had also brought cookies that he baked off to the game last night.  I don’t know if any of you recall that I got some frozen cookie dough through fundraiser a few weeks ago.  After I had a binge on dough, I have not had any of those cookies (or dough) since that time.  I just haven’t wanted any.  Well, he brought some home as they were not as popular as the candied nuts were (those are gone).  I broke a cookie into 3 pieces:

I ended up eating the whole cookie.  It was okay.  I like the raw dough better. Salmonella be damned! I enjoyed it with  a nice latte today.

For a veggie meal tonight, I wanted eggs and cheese, but not an omelet.  So – I pulled out an old recipe we have done before.  Cheese souffle!  En francais everyone!

Based on Alton Brown’s Souffle. I love how he makes something that seems intimidating pretty easy to do.

• 2 tablespoons almond meal
• butter for greasing casserole dish
• 1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/3 cups low fat milk, hot (1% milk)
• 4 large egg yolks
• 6 ounces reduced fat cheddar (I used 3 oz of Cabot 75% reduced fat and 3 oz of 50% reduced fat).
• 5 egg whites
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 375 F.  Use butter to grease an 8 inch souffle dish.  Dust with the almond meal (you can use bread crumbs or grated parmesan cheese if you don’t have almond meal).

In a bowl, whip the egg whites with the cream of tartar to stiff peaks and set aside.

Heat the milk in the microwave until hot (but not boiling!)

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and cook out the water.

While this is melting, combine flour, dry mustard, salt, and garlic powder in a small bowl.  Add this to the melted butter and mix well.

Cook for 2 to 3 minutes.  Now add in the milk, whisking constantly and bring to a boil.

Remove from heat.

In another bowl (yeah, this makes dishes), beat the egg yolks until they are a creamy yellow color.  Add a little bit of the hot milk mixture to this and whisk to temper the egg yolks.

Keep adding a little more milk and whisking well.  After you have done about half the mixture, just add that back to the pot and whisk well.  Hopefully, you have avoided scrambling the egg yolks.  Add the shredded cheese and stir to mix and melt.

There should be enough residual heat to do this, but if not, put over low heat. Smooth and creamy!

Fold the cheese mixture into the egg whites a little at a time.

Don’t stir as you don’t want to deflate the whites.  Just turn the batter over with a spatula.

Pour this into your baking dish.

Bake at 375 F for 35 minutes.  You might want to put it on a cookie sheet in case you get souffle runoff!

Check it out!

Entire recipe is 1308 calories, 82 grams of fat, 40 grams of carbs, 2 grams of fiber, 97 grams of protein. Note, this is based on using 1% milk and 3 oz of 75% reduced fat Cabot and 3 oz of 50% reduced fat Cabot cheese.  Do not use fat free cheese.  The cheese has to be able to melt. Just don’ t do it, please.

So, if you divide this into 6 servings, each would have 218 calories, 14 grams of fat, 6.5 grams of carbs, 0.5 grams of fiber, 16 grams of protein.  Not bad!  In fact, very good!

Yum!!!!

Eating vegetarian today is not a problem.  Although a side of crispy bacon would be pretty awesome with this.  Don’t be afraid to try this.  There are steps, but it really isn’t all that hard and tastes soooo amazing.  It took about a half hour of prep to get it in the oven with me stopping to read directions and take pictures.

Question: Have you ever made or eaten a souffle?