Mike Cornelison

Letters from the Lunar Outpost

Month: March 2019

crab-spinwich-recipe

Crab Spinwich Recipe

March 13, 2019 / / 0 Comments

What’s a “spinwich” you ask? A “spinwich” is my term for a sandwich using spinach & egg white slices as a substitute for bread. I coined the word because for purists, it’s not bread if it’s not based on some form of flour and while the slices could be likened to a frittata, a frittata is primarily egg-based with all the fillings mixed right in.

Directions:

Use cheesecloth to drain all the spinach from a 27 oz. can, getting every drop you can into a separate bowl. The drained juice makes for a healthy, tasty drink, ensuring you’re` getting all those good nutrients as they’re listed on the can.

(You can tell from the photo that this recipe features some pretty thick slices of spinach – just call me Popeye because I can never get enough! If you prefer a ratio with a little more filling, cut the spinach and egg white in half by using a 13.5 oz. can of spinach with 80 grams of egg white.)

In a 6.5″ x 8.5″ pyrex baking dish, thoroughly mix the drained spinach with the egg whites and then press down into a single layer. Bake at 425-degrees for 30 minutes. With a metal spatula, first pry the edges away from the dish and then work the spatula underneath, scraping out the entire layer of spinach.

Cut this layer of spinach into two halves and toast in a toaster oven. You may even choose to toast your slices twice, with the main goal being to get the slices dry enough to hold together like a sandwich.

Mix crab and monterey jack in a container and microwave for 30 seconds. The monterey jack binds the crab into a unified filling and is mild enough to let the crab flavor shine through. (You can substitute shredded mozzarella or mayonnaise for a keto-friendly recipe as well.)

Layer sliced tomato on top of the filling, season to taste with salt and pepper and enjoy!

garbage-truck

Living Garbage Free

March 8, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Recently, I was taking an Uber to the airport when a car pulled right in front of us, causing my driver to slam on the brakes, skidding and missing the other car by inches. The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us.

My driver just smiled and waved at the guy and he was friendly and sincere in doing so. I asked him, “How can you smile and wave at that guy? He almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!”

This is when my driver taught me what I now call, “The Law of the Garbage Truck”. He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they’ll dump it on you.

He said, “Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well and move on! Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, on the streets or at home. The bottom line is that stress-free people do not let garbage trucks take over their day.”

Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love on the people who treat you right and pray for the ones who don’t. Life is ten percent what you make of it and ninety percent how you take it!

Have a garbage-free day.

~ Author unknown

The 8-Carb Burger

March 7, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Here is my delicious, super keto-friendly recipe that I call my “8-Carb Burger”. The name says it all, there are only eight net carbs in the entire sandwich. By comparison, a Big Mac has 42 net grams of carbohydrates, a Whopper has a whopping 47 grams and my favorite, the Farmer Boys’ Farmer Burger, has 55!

It all starts with a couple Pyrex dishes. I got a nice deal on a set of three for only $15 at Amazon.

Over 100 years since it was invented in 1915, there’s still nothing that compares to Pyrex – it works equally well both in both microwaves and conventional ovens, the fact that it’s see-through allows you to view layered ingredients at a side angle, it’s easy to see just how clean your dish really is and everything comes clean with a little steel wool without any worries of scratching it.

(Can you tell I love my Pyrex?)

I start with the small 5.5″ x 7.5″ dish to make the buns.

  • 28g almond flour
  • 42g egg whites (or one medium-sized egg)
  • 14g melted butter
  • 1/4 tsp. baking powder
  • salt to taste

Mix it well and microwave it for 90 seconds. Note how the baking powder made the bread rise. Split that dish full of bread into two to make for a top and bottom bun and toast.

With the slightly larger 6.5″ x 8.5″ dish, I add a half-pound of ground beef, season it and then smooth it out to a flat, even layer. Split that layer of meat to make two quarter-pound patties – you can use one patty for now and one for later or use the two patties to make it a double. By using the slightly larger dish to mold the patties in the same shape as the buns, your patties should cook down to fit your buns perfectly.

(Being a bit OCD, I love it when my patties and my buns match perfectly!)

There you have it, The 8-Carb Burger, suitable for the strictest of low-carb diets.

A couple notes on carbs:

Tomatoes have 1 gram net carb for every 37 grams, otherwise, I would normally have more tomato on my burger. As it is, the tomatoes are the only ingredient adding to the egg white almond bread in this burger’s total of 8.7 net carbs. (Those 23 grams of tomato equal 0.6 net grams of carbs.)

Be careful with the mayonnaise you choose. Miracle Whip and other mayo substitutes proudly advertise that they’re lower in fat and lower in calories, but the trade off is that when they remove the fat, they dump in a bunch of
high-fructose corn syrup or cheap, refined sugar as a replacement. If you’re serious about a low-carb diet, avoid those low-fat and fat-free products and go with that delicious, zero carb, fat-laden mayonnaise!

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