And here's another post dedicated to discoveries along the low-carb road...

1. You can make really quite decent pancakes with almond flour. (If you're low-carbing, don't add the maple syrup, obviously. Who wants sweet pancakes anyway?)



2. A blend of Greek yogurt and peanut butter makes a nice thing to dip fruit in. Sounds weird, I know, but it works. Roughly half and half seems to taste best.

3. If you want to lose out as little as possible on the pleasures of local food, it's worth remembering that "nasi campur" (literally "mixed rice", also sometimes labelled "fast food", and consisting of a large selection of meat, fish, and vegetable dishes) can be enjoyed perfectly well without the rice.

Of course, local people find this odd ("but it tastes so much better with the rice..."), but hey, they find us odd anyway. We're the people who walk everywhere, so it's unsurprising that we have crazy ideas about eating a plate of mixed dishes without the rice...

Our favourite nasi campur places have up to now been in the Jalan Padungan area: Zhun San Yen Vegetarian, Country Kitchen, and Tai Pan Corner. But we've also started to patronize Jumbo Cafe on Jalan Khoo Hun Yeang. And, having headed into Song Kheng Hai foodcourt to shelter from a rainstorm, we were happy to discover Midah Special (great fish and vegetables, and we need on a future occasion to test out the carb content of one of those seafood and vegetable fritters...)



4a. A big part of low-carb life is the quest for sufficient fibre... Seriously, I wonder how anyone gets the right amount of fibre... It seems to me that you'd have to adopt the diet of a panda to really get the recommended intake... But because cutting carbs inevitably means cutting bulk, this way of eating means you have to be particularly vigilant.

4b. But here's a fabulous bit of good news: dark chocolate is 10.9% fibre. Is that not one of the most amazing things you've ever heard??

Sadly, it's not a good idea to get your entire intake of fibre from dark chocolate.

And trust me, that vast pile of vegetables that you're always hauling home, preparing, and cooking is just not going to give you enough fibre by itself (unless you literally want to spend all day chewing).

4c. So, we have needed to get to know products like chia seeds (34.4% fibre).

You can do loads of things with these. But the one I do most, because it is dead easy, is make chia pudding. What I've been doing is combining 2 x 173 ml of milk (you can also use coconut milk or nut milk or indeed any liquid really) with 4 tablespoons of chia seeds. (Why, you might ask, 2 x 173 ml?? Because that's the size of my large cup measure. Yes, the large cup measure that's marked 240 ml, but so isn't...) Anyway, once you've shaken the seeds and milk up together, and left them in the fridge overnight, you end up with a nicely creamy jelly kind of thing. It's OK on its own. Or add fruit if you like.


4d. Another little roughage miracle is psyllium husk (82.4% fibre). This soaks up liquid. So you can add a little to the layers of a vegetable bake to give the finished product a drier texture. Or you can use it to thicken curry or gravy. (Don't overdo it, though, or the sauce becomes gloopy.)

Most amazingly, you can use it (along with almond flour, egg whites, and baking powder) to make low-carb BREAD.

The first time I made these buns, it was all a bit of a disaster. I was reading the recipe off my phone, and didn't notice that the top line had slid up off the screen when I put it down on the bench. So I was baffled by the sheer wetness of the mixture -- until I realized that the missing ingredient was the psyllium husk. I hastily added that in, but probably wrecked the texture in doing so. I also didn't take the trouble to watch the video, and made the buns too flat. AND I followed the instructions to put the buns near the bottom of the oven, not realizing that a) my little oven is hotter, and b) I was using foil not baking parchment, which amplifies the heat (or so I read). So the poor little buns burnt on the bottom.

However, once we'd cut the overly crusty bits off, the taste and texture were still pretty decent. So I was determined to have another go. (This is so unlike me. Generally I'm of the belief that if at first you don't succeed, give up, and find something else to do...) Anyway, my persistence was rewarded. I lowered the heat, positioned the rack in the middle of the oven, initially shielded the bottoms with a tray underneath, and ran in and out minding them as though they were babies.

And the second set of buns (pictured at the top) were pretty damn good.

Now if you'd told me, at the beginning of the year, that I'd be blogging about making buns, I would NOT have believed you...

In the words of Pico Iyer, "What do we have to hold on to? Only the certainty that nothing will go according to design."