Can the fatty coffee really hold me to lunch?

Hey everybody,

 

I clearly have not had much time to jump on here during the last month or so.  I am working on a few posts but life, a couple races, and a host of other things have stood in the way of getting things out the door.  I still respond to questions that I get directly.  I figured while I am working to get back on the wagon I would at least drop a post here and there of some of the questions that I get.  So here is a first.

 

Question from a friend out in Tennessee:

I can't find your coffee butter, coconut blog. I might try dumping the avocado in the morning. I put a scoop of coconut oil and grass fed butter in the coffee mug this morning wondering if that will hold me until lunch. Looks like you need the heavy cream to get the fat into suspension...what kind though?

Here is the link to my phatty coffee post.

I am not so sure the heavy cream gets things into suspension, maybe with very thorough blending but I just stir it with a spoon but if it sits the fat all floats and separates.

Coconut oil is the number one ingredient in the coffee due to the MCTs that are very healthy and are a great energy source especially when in ketosis.

Cream and Butter are next and share the number two spot since cream is really mostly butter

The key to the cream and butter is that they are from pastured cows. Pastured animals have naturally occurring omega-3s (EPA and DHA) from the grass and other green stuff they eat. Kerrygold is the only widely distributed pastured butter that I know of and you can find it at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.   However, you may have some local farms that provide pastured cream and butter to local stores and markets. Grass-fed cream may be harder to find and may only find it at Whole Foods. I generally buy a half-gallon of grass fed cream and make butter from a little less than half ot it and it works out great and is a little cheaper. Check out this post on that.

If you can't find a clearly marked grass-fed cream I would just opt for the highest quality cream you can find in your local stores. Many of the organic creams imply they are at least partially pastured and probably have decent fat ratios.

As for getting you through until lunch. This will largely be up to how dependent you are on carbs. If you are in ketosis and have already done a little intermittent fasting then one phatty coffee (1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp coconut oil, and a shot or two of cream) should be fine. If you are not in ketosis and still a little carb dependant then it might be rough for a day or two. You might want to keep the avocado in the mix and go to a half and then a quarter and dial it back slowly. Good luck and keep me posted on how things are going!

Thanks

Chuck

Quick Mixed Seafood Snack in Cream Sauce

I got up had a few eggs for breakfast, went for a mid-morning run, had a delicious post run shake, and a few minutes later was still starving.  The peanut gallery suggested I make something quick and random for a snack and the blog.  I grabbed a bag of Trader Joe's seafood blend I had recently picked up but wasn't sure what I was going to do with.

This ended up being a pretty tasty snack, although I think the recipe could be refined a lot.  If nothing else this will give you an idea of non-traditional snacks you can whip up quickly when you need a solid Paleo option.

• PREP5 mins
• Cook
  5 mins
• READY IN10 mins

Ingredients:

• 1/2 bag of Trader Joe's seafood blend
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1/2 cup pastured cream
• 1 tbsp homemade butter
• 1 tbsp coconut oil
• 1 tbsp coconut flour
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• A pinch of curry powder
• A pinch of lemon zest
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Note: all these measurements are approximate since this was truly on the fly.

Directions:

1. Thaw the seafood in cold water for a few minutes
2. Saute the minced garlic in the coconut oil, butter, thyme, cayenne, salt, and pepper until garlic is browning
3. Add the seafood and cook for about a minute
4. Add the cream, coconut flour, and lemon zest, mix thoroughly and simmer for 5 minutes
5. Pour into a bowl, top with a pinch of curry powder, and tear it up.

The coconut flour made it a little grainy. I might try and find another way to thicken the sauce in the future. All in all it wasn't to shabby.

Enjoy!

Chuck

Homemade Snowville Creamery Butter is as Good as it Gets

I was in Whole Foods the other day hunting down some heavy cream.  I so wanted to buy another half gallon of Snowville Creamery heavy cream that I talked about in the "A Heavy Cream Dilemma" post but a half gallon is a bit much to get through for coffee.  I snagged one of the Whole Foods crew and asked if he could get quarts or pints of this heavenly delicious cream.  He wasn't sure but told me they would be at the store that weekend.  First thing Saturday, the family and I headed out with smaller cream deliveries as our goal.  We got there early so the two young ladies, Morgan and Heather, were just setting up.  I told them of my dilemma and they explained how they were in the process of expanding to include production of smaller heavy cream sizes. They loaded the kids, Steph, and I up with stickers, pins, samples of their yogurt, and creme fraiche. The creme fraiche was really pretty amazing. While the kids were spreading several yogurt samples around the surrounding area, the ladies suggested that I try making butter with the cream which might make purchasing a half gallon a more reasonable thing.  I figured why not and grabbed a half.  A half gallon is about $10 so when you are looking at all the surrounding half gallons of milk it seems pretty expensive.

Sunday morning I figured it was time to give this butter making a try.  The carton had instructions right on it. I dumped half of the carton into my food processor and let it rip.  After a couple minutes I peeked inside and to my surprise saw some change occurring.  At this point things were looking a lot like whipped cream and from a sample was pretty tasty.  I ran the blender for another minute or two and saw about the same thing.  At this point I wasn't so sure the butter was going to be like the butter I like to throw in my coffee or on my sweet potato.  I flipped the food processor back on and a few minutes later I heard a significant change in the sound.  I opened it up and this time BAM it was butter. It was like magic.  OK so maybe you have seen this before but I never had. Five minutes in the processor and the cream had been transformed into butter. I strained the butter, hand pressed it into a mold, and harvested the resulting butter milk.

The butter is some of the tastiest butter I have ever had and knowing how the animals are pastured gives me the highest confidence in the quality of the fat.

I did a little math and this really turned out to be a pretty good deal.  At $10 the half gallon of cream produced one quart of cream for a week of coffee, about one pound of the best butter ever, and a couple cups of butter milk for Steph's cooking experiments.  Normally we end up buying two pints of cream at $3.50-$4 a pop and Kerrygold butter at $3.50/8oz for our coffee.  In comparison, that would be $15 for the same amount of cream and butter not including the butter milk.  From that perspective this stuff is a really good deal and I am convinced this is some of the best quality and best tasting cream you can get.  If you are lucky enough to be in an area that Snowville distributes to give them a try and I bet you'll be sold.  It looks like the Brady's will be making our own butter from now on.

Thanks again for stopping by!
Chuck

I want to go Paleo but can't ditch my delicious coffee!

Hi everyone, this is Steph, I truly fall into the category of one of those who cannot under any circumstance compromise on my coffee.  This was a huge cheat of mine for a while but Chuck slowly offered up alternatives until I got to the coffee I drink today. This recipe might not be exactly what your old coffee was like but you will be surprised how good it can be.  Most important is don't skimp on the coffee. When you are ditching the sugar gue juice the least you can do for yourself is get some really good coffee.






Ingredients:

• High quality whole bean coffee
• 1-3 tbsp pastured heavy cream
• 1/8-1/2 tsp stevia powder 
• NOTE: make sure what you pick up is pure stevia as many of the products out there have other additives.  We use Sweetleaf Stevia Powder 
• Optional
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp coconut oil
• cacao powder
• fresh nutmeg
• cinnamon
• etc

Directions:
Start light and keep adding stevia and heavy cream to your coffee until you are happy with the mix.  Over time you will likely use less and less stevia. If you get brave try adding some grass-fed butter and/or coconut oil. I don't do this all the time but when Chuck mixes me one of his Phatty Coffees I am usually surprised at how delicious it is and he doesn't use stevia at all. We keep fresh nutmeg, cacao, and cinnamon right by the coffee maker and we may throw a pinch of some of that stuff in when we want to mix things up.

This new Paleo coffee may not fully replace your caramel macchiato at first but it is a great alternative and it won't take long before you won't miss the sugar drinks at all.

Thanks
Steph

A Heavy Cream Dilemma

Since my wife and I adopted Phatty Coffee as our regular morning drink, our heavy cream needs have increased significantly.  To get the best quality fat in your cream you have to find one that comes from pastured cows.  While organic, non-gmo, no antibiotics, etc may imply pastured it is not necessarily the case.  So we have a few go-to creams we choose from.  The other day at Whole Foods my wife noticed a half-gallon of cream. from Snowville Creamery.  I had never noticed this before probably because I wasn't looking for heavy cream in a half gallon size.  This cream gives you all the info you need to be confident you are getting the highest quality pastured fats.  The pints we normally get range from $3.50 to $3.99 per pint.  This half gallon was $9.99 saving us $5-6.  I swore when I picked this up the expiration date was 3 weeks out and we could easily get through it in that amount of time. Well I was wrong!  When I got up the next morning and looked I noticed the expiration date was three days away.  I thought for a minute and wondered if I could freeze the cream.  Then I thought ice cube trays.  Well it worked like a charm.  The amount of cream in each ice cube is a little deceiving and while I initially thought one was enough it is really more like three or four.  Drop the number of cubes you need in your cup, microwave it for 30 seconds or so, add some pastured butter, a little coconut oil, and top off with some rich fresh ground coffee and you are on your way to a great day!

Thanks for stopping by!
Chuck

A New Way to Look at Breakfast

I have ran into a number of people recently that have either asked me what I eat for breakfast or explained to me what a healthy breakfast is to them. These pictures are the visible image results from searching for "healthy breakfast" on Google. At a distance these images have a lot of fruit, oatmeal, toast, orange juice, and an occasional egg. Clearly the web is more in agreement with the people I have run into than what I believe is a a healthy breakfast.

Here is a decent example of one of these healthy breakfasts; two pieces of whole wheat toast, a cup of berries, glass of orange juice (16oz), and a small bowl (1 cup) of oatmeal. If you are Paleo and especially if you have played with intermittent fasting then this breakfast probably scares the hell out of you. If you are new to Paleo or are stumbling upon this blog randomly then you would probably agree this is pretty healthy.  There are a whole host of reasons why a standard American healthy breakfast, like this one, is not as good as it seems but for this post I want to focus in on one of those variables and that is carbohydrate.

Let's break down the macro nutrients for this average standard American healthy breakfast:

• 750 Cal
• 145g Carb
• 5.5g Fat
• 18g Pro

Carbs are essentially sugar, all carbs become blood glucose within a short period of time, so this healthy breakfast basically included 145 grams of sugar AKA ~2/3 a cup of sugar.  That is a ton of sugar! It also includes very little protein or fat which to some may also seem a benefit.

At first I decided the only way to write the rest of this post was with a lot of scientific detail.  Later I decided to focus on the big picture and if you are intrigued and want to learn more I would point you to the big guns who have already broken down the science behind all this. 

So why is all this sugar bad?  There was a time not too long ago when I also thought this was a healthy breakfast.  I would think to myself, "These foods are going to give me energy and get my day going right.".  RIGHT??  WRONG!

We have several metabolic methods of producing energy, including methods that utilize fat and glucose. While you are sleeping your body enters a fasted state.  When you wake up your body is in a prime condition to begin utilizing  glycogen and fat that has been stored for energy.  In addition a series of hormones including growth hormone and epinephrine are active and can increase metabolism. As soon as this breakfast enters your body digestion occurs and sugar enters your blood stream.  The sugar quickly raises your blood glucose levels, the more complex carbs are broken down a bit slower resulting in elevated blood glucose for an hour or more.  Your body reacts to this with the hormone insulin.  Insulin removes the sugar from the blood by pushing it into your cells during this process fatty acids in your blood are also stored.  Essentially eating this sugar has turned off your body's natural fat burning capabilities for the preference of storing this currently abundant fuel resource for later use.  Between two and three hours later something interesting happens, the insulin completes its job and maybe goes a little too far resulting in a sugar crash.  Now mid-morning you find yourself a bit groggy and what better than to head for a snack to pep you up.  This is just supposed to be a look at breakfast but it is easy to see how three meals a day and a couple high carb snacks can easily result in high insulin levels throughout the day.  This means you are in fat and glucose storage mode most of the day.

When is it possible for our body to burn fat when our hormones are constantly telling our body to store fat? The answer is, there really isn't any time.  While you are sleeping your body will enter the a fat and glucose burning state but the energy required is significantly less than during the day.  You can exercise but if you have ever calculated the amount of work required to burn off a certain number of calories this can be an insurmountable task.  To burn off that breakfast I would have to run close to 6 miles.  Don't get me wrong exercise is an important component of health but not the most efficient way to lose fat.
 

Instead of turning off the body's natural glucose and fat burning capabilities we should strategically embrace them.  Fat that is consumed does not cause an insulin release like carbs and sugar do but can be used for energy.  Protein can cause an insulin release but mainly in larger doses.  So a perfect breakfast is a relatively small amount of food that is primarily if not completely comprised of healthy fats.  The fats you consume give your body a fresh supply of energy to kick start your day without the mid-morning crash while enabling your body to stay in a fat and sugar burning mode. The idea is not to starve yourself but completely avoid carbs and keep your fat to protein ratio high.

So what does my breakfast look like?  I generally have a Phatty Coffee or maybe two (~175-350 calories). This gives me a good dose of fat from coconut oil, grass-fed butter, and grass-fed cream. Some days that is all I do until lunch.  Other days, especially days following a hard workout, I have one or two eggs, maybe some almond butter on top (especially delicious with over easy eggs), and on even fewer occasions I have some meat as well. Beyond my Phatty Coffee, I find that the less I eat the more energetic I am.

So there is one unanswered question, "If not at breakfast, when do I eat my carbs?".  The answer is, the later the better and preferably post-workout.  After a workout your body needs to replenish the energy (glycogen stored in the muscles) that was burned and can also use some protein to support the recovery process. During this period of time insulin is a good thing to help an efficient recovery. Later in the day the body is also more resistant to glucose and fat storage

Resources to find out more about how all this stuff works:

1. Check out John Kiefer.  He has written a couple books on how best to incorporate carbs into your diet. 
2. Check out HowStuffWorks description of the fat storage and burning process.  It is a nice description although the last section "Losing Weight and Losing Fat" does not make much sense if you think about what the whole article is laying out.
3. Check out the FatBurrningMan he has plenty on these topics including intermittent fasting, fatty coffee, and his podcast is excellent.

In the meantime try rethinking breakfast, drop the carbs and sugar for a few weeks, and see if you don't look and feel better.  Of course if you have any health conditions talk this stuff over with your doc first!

Thanks for stopping by!

Chuck