Live Keto Cook Along: Keto Philly Cheesesteak with Cheryl McColgan 2/1/2021

Okay, hello, hello. Hopefully I've got this all set up properly. It's been a bit of a challenge figuring out how to stream to Instagram. Instagram does not allow any like outside, um, services for their streaming, but I did find another service that lets me stream to YouTube and Facebook at same time. So hopefully I've got it all set up properly. So if you're joining, this is the first edition of Monday Cookalongs with me, Cheryl McColgan, from Heal Nourish Grow. I know, I just thought with everybody being at home more and, uh, cooking more because of the whole COVID thing, that this could be a fun way for us to get together on Mondays. Of course you can make comments, ask questions. I'll be trying to keep an eye on that as much as possible as we go through the recipe. So if you had already signed up online, it's at livecookalong.healnourishgrow.com. If you put your email in there, you'll get the ingredient list on the Friday prior. So if you were signed up, you got the ingredients on Friday, and that gives you the whole weekend to purchase what you're going to need for the recipe. So all of these recipes are going to be very simple, very easy, um, done relatively quickly. It's a Monday night, you know, we all slog through the workday. And the last thing anybody wants to do is, you know, come home and make something super complicated. So all the recipes will be pretty easy. If I get requests from you guys for things that you want to make or a certain kind of, you know, meat or ingredient that you want to focus on, definitely shoot me an email or a message and I'll try to incorporate that in future editions of the Monday Cookalong. But what we're making tonight is Philly cheesesteak in a bowl. Because as you know, this channel is all low-carb and keto, so we don't do the bread. But you could also, you know, if you're not low-carb or keto, you could put this on bread if you wanted to. You can eat it in the bowl like I'm gonna do. You can basically do whatever you want 'cause I'm not there to stop you. And so you could, you know, make it work for you. Obviously eating this way one meal or one night a week is not really a problem, right? So you can just, you know, eat what we're making and then, you know, the next day move on to like however you normally eat. So anyway, like I said, so it's going to be the Philly cheesesteak in a bowl, and then I'm also doing Parmesan, uh, zucchini crisps kind of like as a little side. Um, quite often in our house we really, uh, keep it pretty basic on a lot of meals. And so I might just make— if it were just me and I wasn't hosting this little gathering for you guys, I might just make the, um, Philly cheesesteak in a bowl and not worry about a side. But we are making the zucchini tonight, and I'll show you how to do that. Very easy. So I guess we're gonna get started here. Um, one of the things that I did have a challenge is I don't know, I can't quite show you my cutting board exactly with this angle, and I might change it on Instagram because I can easily move this camera. The other camera for YouTube and stuff is not as easy for me to move, but I think you might be able to see a little part of my cutting board here. So, but anyway, I'll be telling you what I'm doing, obviously. So if you can't quite see it, you'll still know what is happening. And this is just basic chopping skills tonight. There's nothing super— oh, what are we drinking? Well, I am drinking my Evening Ketones. So this is the decaf version. It's, um, one of our winter flavors. It's pom berry. So that is what is in my glass here. Um, Normally I would be drinking wine, but my husband had to go out on a little mission here, I think with one of our sons. And so he's not here to say whether we're gonna do Monday wine or not, but it's not an unusual occurrence. So that could happen later. But for now I've got my ketones and we're gonna go ahead and get started. The one thing I forgot to get out that I do wanna show you guys is some fat. That I've been using lately. So this is pure beef tallow. I get this from US Wellness Meats. I have a link that you can get discounts and stuff in my bio and on my website. But basically they do all grass-fed, all grass-finished, sustainably raised kind of stuff. And so this beef tallow, the reason I'm digging this lately, and I need to grab a spoon, but the reason I'm digging this lately is because there's been a lot of discussion online about is it really just sugar that's making us all fat? Maybe it's actually the PUFAs, polyunsaturated fats, and these, you know, like weird vegetable oils that are so pervasive in our society. So if you take nothing away else from this little, um, video tonight, I hope that you'll take away that you really should strongly avoid soy and corn oil altogether, like as much as possible. And the problem is, how many times do I drink ketones a day? Oh, so I usually drink them twice a day. It just depends. I kind of have like a whole system that I've been using the last 18 months that I started using that product. But basically twice a day is optimal. You can just drink them once a day. You can drink them as a pre-workout. They do help with sleep. If you drink the decaf one, it helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system. So you can take them a few hours before sleep, which is what I like to do. So yeah, twice a day. I can follow up on that a little bit more later. Just message me if you have any other questions about that, because I'm always happy to share about all that stuff. But the beef tallow has stearic acid, and so stearic acid actually signals your fat cells to release fat rather than hold that in. So that's nice for everyone. So if you're going to use a cooking fat anyway, you might as well use one that helps you, right? Again, stay away from the polyunsaturated fats, please, please, please. If you do nothing else, for your health, like if you don't change to low carb, if you don't change to keto, if you don't cut out a lot of processed sugar, cutting out those polyunsaturated fats is a really huge thing that you can do for your health. So, anyway, onto this. I'm gonna go ahead and start getting the pan going on low so that I can get that melted down. And then we're gonna go ahead and start with the vegetables that we need for this. So I'm using a red and yellow bell pepper and a green bell pepper just 'cause we like peppers a lot in our family. You can use whatever color you'd like. This particular recipe, I think I said for, um, you know, I put different instructions in there for like 2 people, 4 people, whatever. Basically like a quarter to a half pound of meat per person, and then you kind of need to adjust the peppers and onions accordingly. And I will go ahead and just like adjust this a little bit so that you can see the cutting board. But basically the way that I'm cutting the peppers is I'm just cutting them in strips like this. That's kind of the traditional, uh, way for Philly cheesesteak. And if you're on the other camera, you can't see that as well, um, as me chopping, but I can just show you that you see it's like a little strip bell pepper. So basically you cut the bell pepper in half, and then I just pull out the innards, and that kind of leaves you with this little half shape. If you're, um, a chef or a person that likes it to be like super particular, some chefs will cut off the— each end of the pepper. So you can just make like nice straight little strips. So I'll just show you what that looks like for fun. Um, but it just makes them, you know, more uniform. They don't have the curves on the end. For me personally, like when I'm cooking normally, I don't mind if it has the curves on the end, so I just do it like that. But you can make it basically however you'd like. Um, so, and then now I'm gonna have some really weirdo-shaped ones here. Um, so if you're just joining, this is my Monday cook-along. You can get the ingredients ahead of time by going to livecookalong.healnourishgrow.com. Sign up for that list, and then that way I send you the ingredients before we cook together on Monday. So all I do is I'm again cutting off the top of the pepper, cut it into half, and then I just pull out the seeds and the white membrane. It doesn't really, you know, you can leave it in there if you want. It doesn't do anything bad. It just— some people think it tastes maybe a little bit more bitter than the rest of the pepper. And yeah, so peppers do have some naturally occurring sugar, um, but you know, my take on keto and my take on food in general is if you're eating whole natural foods. So even people that don't really want to change their diet significantly to be in ketosis, I think you should at the very least strive for most days to be eating as much whole foods as possible. So I mean, nobody ever got fat eating peppers, right? It's like all that other stuff that we eat. So, and even, even so, you can look up the carb count for peppers. It's really not that much. It's totally easy to fit it into keto lifestyle or a keto meal. So I really wouldn't freak out about that at all. You know, nobody ever got fat from eating veggies. So I would just say, you know, obviously I keep it on the low-carb veggies as much as possible, but occasionally I'll have like a higher-carb veggie. So the other, you know, questionable thing that people ask sometimes about keto is what about onions, right? Because onions have a fair amount of net natural sugar as well. But you know, the other thing to consider when you're making stuff like this, you're really splitting this pepper and these onions that you're chopping over several servings. So, you know, the fact that there's a few in it, if you did put it in on your carb counter and, you know, make the recipe, it's not like you're eating this whole onion, which this whole onion might have, I'm just gonna guess, you'd have to look it up, but I'm gonna say it might have something like 10 carbs in a whole onion, but if you're splitting that between 2 people or 4 people, it goes down to, you know, 2 carbs, 5 carbs, so whatever that is. So again, if you have any questions, be sure to pop them in there. I'll try to keep an eye on it as much as possible, but if I miss you, just message me afterwards. So for the onion, the way I like to cut these for fajitas and for this kind of cheesesteak dishes, I just cut the onion in half, you know, cut off each end there, and then I'm gonna slice it. This direction so that you end up with like half-moon shapes of onions. So that just gives you some nice onion strips. I know people always like to ask this stuff to be really precise. I don't have a strict way of judging. Mama say these are about like quarter-inch slices, but if you want them thicker, I don't mind. Do it however you want. It's your meal, you're gonna have to eat it. And so I'll just show you what's happening so far. You can see I've got the peppers and the onion here in my pan. And so I'm gonna keep going and I need another drink here. But so this will take, I do need to get the heat going a little bit higher now. You wanna cook the peppers and the onions until they're tender. And so depending on the power, of your cooktop. It's going to take somewhere around 10 to 15 minutes. Also just want to show you, this is like my favorite little, um, spatula I always use. You know, when you have nonstick pans, you should always use rubber spatulas or wooden spoons, something that won't scratch the pan. And you can see this one says, save water, drink wine. So we know what my favorite stuff is, but Anyway, I'm just going to give this a little stir to break up the onions so that they're in individual strips. And I've got my little salt, um, this is Redmond Real Salt, of course. And I just have it in this nice— you know, salt's actually self-cleaning. I learned that recently. So putting it in a dish like this and leaving it sitting on the counter is not like a weird, um, thing. But basically Just put a little salt in there with your veggies, and then I'm gonna do some freshly ground pepper. Now, if you don't have freshly ground, who cares? Just use regular, or if you don't like pepper, leave it out. This is like a very, like I said, these recipes that are gonna be on Mondays, this is meant to be pretty quick and easy, not meant to be stressful. It's just like we're, you know, making something that's delicious to eat without a lot of work. And I dropped this on the floor, so I'm gonna throw that away. Yeah, I really try to, like I said, on a normal basis, day to day, I keep my food pretty basic. That also helps you if you are trying to lose weight or maintain your weight. It's a good tip to keep things basic because when you start to get overly palatable, food, you don't mean like your food shouldn't taste good, right? But if you start to do like a lot of sweet keto treats and things like that, you're gonna find that it's— they're easier to overeat. If you keep it to just like meat and veggies, it's pretty hard to overeat meat and veggies. So that's just a little tip for you as far as like weight loss, weight maintenance. Keeping things a little more basic will help with that. So, okay, while that is cooking, I'm going to go ahead and prepare the zucchini. So I said 1 zucchini for every 2 people. I would prefer a zucchini that was larger, but I got this on Kroger delivery, so I didn't get to pick it myself. So I'm just going with what I have. This will still be enough for 2 of us. I'm not super worried about it for us. I have— you can see my handy dandy air fryer over there that I love. I also have a link for that if anybody's interested. But basically, um, I've ended up using the air fryer much more than I ever imagined. Mine comes with this nice little basket. That's what I'm gonna make the zucchini in. But don't despair, you don't need an air fryer. This works just as easily in the oven. If you're going to make this in the oven, then you want to have your oven to about— which I— sorry, see, this is the first one. I should have told you to turn on your oven already because we're going to be cooking here and you're going to need to have the oven on. So anyway, you want your oven on, let's say, 375. If you have a convection oven, the rule of thumb is you can go 25 degrees lower because the convection oven circulates, um, the air, so the heat's distributed more evenly, right? So anytime you see a recipe that says conventional oven 350, you can put it in your convection oven setting 325. That's pretty much adjustment all the time. If you're just joining, we're cooking live. This is gonna be happening on Mondays now, so sign up to join us and you'll get the ingredients before it happens. But like I said, oven at 350 for this one, 350, 375, it doesn't have to be super exact. Do I consume? Well, I would say if you're gonna have nuts and you're just trying to maintain your weight, They can be like a nice treat or snack if you're somebody that needs snacks. I would say like after being keto for a long time, I really, number one, don't need snacks that much 'cause my blood sugar's so even, I don't get those hunger things as much. You know, snacking can sometimes be boredom too, which you gotta watch out for. But nuts easily fit in on keto from a from a macro perspective, they're slightly higher carb, but most of them have a lot of fiber. So your net carbs on those are gonna be fine. The thing to watch with nuts, if you're using those, like you said, you're just maintaining your weight, we can probably get away with that a little bit more if you're maintaining. But if you're trying to lose weight, nuts can be very caloric and, you know, quite easy to eat more of them than you should. So I would just say be careful, pay attention to the ones you eat. Some are more definitely low carb than others. Pistachios are good, almonds are good, walnuts are good. The other argument there though is kind of going back to my thing about stearic acid and certain things on keto is that for a lot of people, nuts can be inflammatory. Some of them do have PUFAs that we were talking about earlier. So it really just depends on your goals. Goals. Um, if you're in maintenance mode and you love nuts, I mean, have them a couple times a week and just see how it agrees with you. And, um, you know, notice if you get any little weight fluctuations from that. There's always going to be, um, some day-to-day weight fluctuations. But if you notice like, hey, every time I have nuts I'm up a pound or two on the scale the next day, then maybe they're a little bit too inflammatory for you, or maybe they just won't work for you. So hope that made sense. If I didn't fully answer that, be sure to message me later and I'll be happy to follow up on it. But the short answer is nuts can work in a keto diet. You just need to be careful if you're trying to lose weight that they might be too many calories or too easy to snack on, and so that might be at odds with your goals. So hopefully that makes sense. Peppers and onions are looking good. I'm starting to get some brown on them, which is perfect. I'm gonna try not to set off my fire alarm, but I can't make any promises because the Unless I turn on my really loud fan on my range hood, then there's a chance it's gonna go off. It goes off like pretty easily at the drop of a hat. Okay, so getting the zucchini ready. Basically what we wanna do with the zucchini is we're just gonna slice them lengthwise, but we want these to be pretty thin. So if you had a— and also this is one of my favorite knives, it's giant. I've had it for years. You wanna cut them pretty thin to be more chip-like, 'cause we're gonna try to get 'em crispy. If you have a mandolin, that's ideal. I don't know why after all these, like over 30 years of cooking, why I don't have a mandolin. I've always wanted one. I think it'd be super useful. But in general, I try to go for less tools in my kitchen 'cause it just complicates things, right? And it's just extra expense. So on the occasion that I need to do slice, pretty thin, I can usually handle that. So I'm going to go ahead and go for it now with the zucchini. And so this is the first one, and you can see that's pretty thin. That's going to be thin enough. I need to get— I'm going to put these in a bowl because what we're going to want to do once we get them all chopped is toss them with some salt, pepper, in oil and Parmesan. So I want to get that kind of ready here. So I'm just going to be slicing these thin. And that's a good one. So get them as uniform as possible. They don't have to be perfect. They're still going to taste great even if they don't totally crisp up like a chip. They're going to be fine. So no stressing out. I know like not everybody loves to cook or cooks a lot, Um, so again, whenever I do these recipes on Monday, they're gonna be relatively basic and they're gonna be geared towards being quick, easy, delicious, and not difficult. Okay, so, uh, now this happens occasionally when you're trying to slice thin, but he's still going to taste great, not worry about it. So the other thing, you know, when you're using the oils is basically you want saturated fat oils. So beef tallow, lard— save your bacon grease. My grandma always used to do that. I grew up in the South, so I'm actually pretty lucky that even though I grew up in the '70s when the low-fat craze was like starting to take hold, is that we were in the South and we were poor, so, um, they all saved everything. And I grew up on a farm too, so we had lots of vegetables. My dad had like a 1 or 2-acre vegetable garden, which is quite large. We had a whole fruit orchard. Uh, he had probably like, I don't know, 20 fruit trees, something like that. We have strawberry patch. Um, oh yay, I'm glad to hear that. So Sid, I don't know what your real name is, Kita said just go to livecookalong.healnourishgrow.com. If you get on that list, then I'm going to send you the ingredients on Fridays, and then on Monday you show up here again and we just do this together. While I'm chatting with you, you're, you know, chopping and doing all the same stuff I'm doing. So, um, I would love to have you. And also let me know, since you're a new cook, um, what I can help you with, because like I just said, I've been cooking for— this is really sad to say, but well over 35 years actually, if I really think about it. Um, again, growing up in the South, we, um, all my family cooked a lot. And, um, it's like, number one is how we show love. Number two, it's a necessity, right? Because, you know, stuff's expensive. When you eat out all the time, it gets really expensive. So cooking is a real blessing. It allows you to control the quality of your ingredients. It allows you to control not getting poofas in your diet. It allows you to control so much more than going out to eat. And Also, if you're a new cook, you just need like a few really good tools. You don't need everything. Like I was saying, like the mandolin— I still don't even have a mandolin, even though I would love to have one. Um, yeah, I know it's— I know I'm not— I don't even look 35 right now. I'm just kidding. Um, but no, I grew up learning how to cook for my grandma and my mom, and my parents were divorced when I was younger, so Um, they divorced when I was like 14, and I already cooked a lot with my mom. But then like once my dad was gone, I had two, uh, three younger siblings. Two of them were 6 and 7 years younger, and the other one was one year younger. So quite often, uh, when my parents were divorced and, you know, Mom was trying to work and do that kind of thing, I was tasked with cooking dinner for my siblings. And so, um, so yeah, so that's why I've been cooking for so long, and then I just never stopped. Because I love it and enjoy doing it. And like I said, it's a way that I feel loved by my friends and family, is cooking them a nice meal. But, and again, you know, it also just makes it so much cheaper than eating out. So I just gave that some more stir. I've got now the zucchini ready. And so now I'm gonna go with a monounsaturated fat because the monounsaturated fat, still not as great as saturated fat health-wise based on everything I've read and been listening to lately. And I know nobody wants to believe that 'cause everything we've been taught forever is that saturated fat is evil, right? But I've got tons of articles on my site if you wanna learn more about that. We've been fed a lie for so many years and I'm so happy that we're just going back to like real foods again. But monounsaturated fats are okay. Olive oil and avocado oil, it's liquid at room temperature. So this is one thing just for convenience I like for something like this. I'm just gonna drizzle a little bit of olive oil. If you're freaking out about how much olive oil you should put, you know, somewhere between 2 tablespoons or 2 teaspoons and 1 tablespoon. It just depends on, again, like these recipes are like based on how many people you're cooking for. So if you're cooking for 2 people and using 1 zucchini like I had here today, I'm gonna leave that out because I'm making a mess, um, then you're probably only going to use like 2 teaspoons of olive oil. If you're making 2 or 3 zucchini because you're cooking for more people, then you're probably going to want to put more like, you know, a tablespoon or 2 in there. Just, you're just looking for enough to like coat them so I don't know how well you can see that, but, um, give that a little stir. And then again with some salt and like quarter, you know, teaspoon of this amount, a few shakes of pepper right here. So we're not, you know, we're not being super precise because, because this is a weeknight dinner and this is how you get— once you start cooking, you don't have to measure everything all the time. You don't have to to do these like serious, you know, 15-ingredient recipes. You can just do a few things and make something really nourishing and good for your family. So, um, I've got that ready to go. I'm debating something here. So I've got this screen and I'm gonna— here's my other go-to is coconut oil. And I've got this— please don't buy Pam, it's so bad. It's got like silicone and stuff in it. Just buy something that's got like real oil and one of the preferred oils, which is like coconut or olive in this kind of can. If they, if they did do like saturated fat in this can, I would do it, but they can't because it's solid at room temperature, so that wouldn't work, right? Um, but anyway, I'm gonna give this a quick spray over the sink so I don't make a huge mess, and this will help make the things nice and crisp. Now, like I said, an air fryer is not a necessity. This works just as great in the oven. So no worries there if you just have an oven, and it's hopefully been preheating since we did talk about that now, and it's gonna be ready to go in there. So again, with the portion size, I've got shredded Parmesan cheese here. I'm gonna say for this amount, I've got like about a quarter cup here, okay? So maybe a quarter cup per, per 2 people, per 1 zucchini. That's what this is working out to. And I'm thinking I'm happy with this amount right now, but what I might do is sprinkle a little extra on top once I put these on the sheet. So I've got that mixed up, and then I'm gonna— if I was putting in the oven, I'd have a cookie sheet, and I would maybe even use aluminum foil if you're averse to like a lot of cleanup. You could just use that. But so now I'm going to put the zucchini on here in a single layer. So you're just spreading them out, and this shouldn't take too long. You could probably dump them all on here and shake them, but since it's only two of us and I just got this one little zucchini, I'm just kind of putting them on here. Shouldn't take too long. Plus we're chatting, right? So it's all good. Um, if you're just joining and you're wondering what the hell is going on here, um, I'm having Cook Along Mondays, and if you're interested in joining in the future, I can send you the ingredients ahead of time. You just need to go to livecookalong.healnourishgrow.com and you'll get those ingredients ahead of time. So just about got the whole zucchini on here, and it's like really just the perfect amount. I'm probably going to regret doing this because this cheese is going it's gonna like melt onto this grate and it's gonna be really hard to get off of there. But you know, luckily my husband and I have kind of a deal is that, you know, I cook every night. He rarely cooks. He does the grill sometimes. But, uh, whenever I cook, then I'll have to clean up. So it works for me. So this will be his problem. We'll probably just soak it, uh, overnight and then put it in the dishwasher and I'm sure it'll fine. Um, but we'll see how this happens afterwards. So now I've got some extra cheese in the bottom of my bowl, and like I said, I was probably going to end up putting extra little cheese on the top anyway. So I'm taking that cheese and I'm putting it on here, and then we're gonna put a little bit more. So hopefully you can see that pretty well. Let me get it super close here. But you just got your zucchini and I'm going to put a little bit more cheese and trying to like really just hit the tops of the zucchini so that I don't make a huge mess in that pan. Like I said, uh, because then, you know, I don't want anybody firing from the cleaning up job, so we keep that going as long as I can. Okay, so I'll show you this again. I mean, hey, if you love cheese I'm not stopping you. Put as much cheese as you want. It doesn't bother me. Again, it's based on your goals. If you're trying to lose weight, cheese is another thing that you can go overboard on, right? So it's very caloric. And although I'm not a huge proponent of calories in, calories out, um, you know, energy balance does still matter. So if you're trying to lose weight, then, you know, cheese, you need to be a little bit careful. If you're just maintaining or whatever, Cheese is a great treat. Okay, the peppers, pretty much— I don't know if you can see this, but some of them have some nice brown on them and they're soft now. So I just turned that off so that can chill out while we finish up here. Now I'm going to show you this a little closer again so you can see the cheese on there. And now these are ready for the air fryer, so I'm going to go pop these in. If you're putting in the oven, put your cookie sheet in there. I'm gonna start with, um, maybe like 10 minutes and we'll see how they're doing. So I'm just adjusting the temperature here, and then I'm going to put 15 or 10 minutes on here. I mean, you can always, you know, you can always add time later. I just, I find if I get distracted and I use too much time on here, then I won't actually stop it in time. Okay, so I've got that in the air fryer, 375 for 10 minutes for now. We'll check on it. Now I'm going to show you the meat. So this is shaved beef steak, right? This is pre-done by Kroger. This makes it super easy. Um, this is a pound of this. I don't know, 14 ounces, so almost a pound. So for 2 of us, and we don't eat buns, we can generally do between a quarter pound and a half a pound of meat per person depending on how hungry we are. So especially if you're not used to eating bread, make sure you have enough meat so that you're not, you know, you don't have that temptation to add the bread just for filler. Meat can be a filler too. This, I believe, was about $5 or $6. And then I wanted to show you, I also bought this, because if you can't find shaved steak in a box, which is pretty common— I don't think you'd have trouble finding that— but you can just get whatever beef you want, or chicken, or whatever, you know. But we're doing Philly cheesesteaks, that's beef. Um, so this is beef eye of round steak, and it was on sale, so this whole thing was $6, and that's for just over a pound. So, um, always look for deals. You can quite often sub meat. It doesn't have to be the exact same thing that people are calling for, unless it's like obviously a ribeye steak. You're not, you know, other things aren't going to taste like a ribeye steak. But for something like this where you're putting cheese and peppers and stuff and you're not like eating a steak that has to be a particular thing, then, you know, it's fine to make substitutions. Never stress out about that. And if you have any questions about that, just ask me because I'm pretty good at, um, How— oh, how do I take my coffee? So I'll see if I have a pack. So this— I'm totally obsessed with this. I've been using this for the last 18 months. This is Keto Cream. It's basically everything you need for your coffee in one packet. It's got MCT oil, it's got collagen, it's got delicious flavor, and it's got erythritol Erythritol sweetener, which is of course keto-friendly. It's absolutely delicious. I'm so obsessed. I use this every single morning. Um, when I don't have it or when I'm fasting and I have to drink my coffee black, I'm really cranky about it. So, um, this one is like a half pack that we sometimes will have, like an extra little half pack later in the morning. But usually I just do one pack a day. It does have some calories, but here's the thing, it doesn't raise your insulin and it allows me to extend my fasting window, right? So if I drink, I usually get up pretty early, um, and then I'll have my coffee like the second I wake up. But usually I have my coffee sometime between 6 and 7 with Keto Cream in it, and then I go throughout my morning. Whenever I start to get a little bit hungry, then I'll drink my caffeinated ketones. That's usually somewhere between like 10:30 AM and 12:30 AM. And then whenever I like finally get hungry, that's when I eat my first meal of the day. So that's really how I utilize these products. I just, they help curb your appetite, they help you extend your fast. There's a lot of great things about 'em, especially when you're transitioning to low carb for the first time. They help a lot with electrolyte balance and that kind of thing. So that's how I take my coffee generally. I even travel with them. I take those packets with me everywhere. I take my little frother, with me everywhere because you need, um, you know, it doesn't need to be mixed in the coffee and a spoon isn't, um, perfect for that. So I use my little frother every morning for that and then I take it traveling with me. So, um, if I were using these, I would just be slicing them really thin as possible to go into the cheesesteak. I'm not going to do that now just because I trust that you guys know how to use a knife and that you could slice this thinly if you needed to. I'll use this sometime later in the week for something else, but I just wanted to show it to you so that you know that don't be afraid to make substitutions. Don't be afraid to use what's on sale. Don't be afraid to make things up. Like, a lot of cooking, I don't know, I feel like it's got this mystique about it sometimes, which is really weird because it's just cooking food, right? And if you just have some basic seasonings and basic ingredients, it's gonna be fine, I promise you. So I'm gonna put this away so it doesn't get overheated. And, um, this other camera is kind of interesting because it has like a much wider angle of the kitchen and the whole situation. It's actually kind of good. And then the one on Instagram is like very tight and I can't adjust it. So anyway, I apologize for that, but So now I've got the steak. And in the interest, again, of keeping this a simple, easy weeknight meal, I'm gonna cook this in the same pan. It's got plenty of room in there. It's gonna take up the flavors of the peppers and onions. It's gonna take up some of the salt and pepper flavorings. You can always add more, of course. We're gonna taste it at some point. I'm just gonna like make a little spot in here I'm going to add the meat and this is going to cook pretty quickly because this meat is so thin. And I would say even if you like your meat well done, it's going to cook so fast. Don't be tempted to overcook it. Right. So we're just looking until it gets evenly brown on both sides and we're going to be done with it. And I have no idea where the person who's eating dinner with me is. Actually at this moment. I said it, I think he was tasked with a last-minute chore with our boys and I have no idea. Can we use garlic? Oh, absolutely! This would be fantastic with garlic. I mean, a traditional Philly cheesesteak, I've never seen any recipes for it have garlic, but if you love garlic, throw some garlic in there. I'm gonna be super happy about that and tell me how it is. But definitely add garlic in there. Um, I'm not doing that tonight just because I'm being lazy and it's not like quote-unquote like like the sort of the original recipe. But you know, there's like gourmet versions of everything, right? Like if you're gonna make a gourmet Philly cheesesteak, add some garlic in there. Any other questions? Or we can talk about keto stuff. I've been a yoga instructor for over 10 years. I've been doing it for almost as long as cooking, but not quite that long. So feel free to jump in with any questions because at this point now we're like basically almost done here, if you can believe that. Um, hello, uh, no habla español. Sorry, I grew up— I did live in Texas for a little while, so I know some little basics, but I can't give you the recipe in Spanish. All I can basically say is gracias. And, um, donde está el baño. I know that in almost every language, which is where is the bathroom. So, um, but hopefully you can kind of visualize what's here. Uh, you want the ingredient list, I can send that so you could do it on Google Translate. But yes, this is coming along. Meat's getting a little brown. And again, since it's cut so thin, it would really, um, it would really cook very quickly. Uh, this whole thing, if I wasn't talking so much— I don't know how long I've been on here now at this point— but if I wasn't talking this much, this meal could really be done between chopping everything cooking it, all of that, definitely under half an hour. It might even only be 20 minutes. This is like a super quick and easy weeknight meal. I'm not a big fan personally of meal prep. Um, let's see, do you have any questions? Whoa, 112 pounds in a year, that's amazing! Lots of juice. So, okay, well, because we're just waiting for this to cook, I'm gonna go ahead and talk about that. So Uh, the loose skin thing is interesting. Um, I don't know if people are familiar with Dr. Jason Fung, but he is a big proponent of fasting, as am I. Um, if you do a lot of fasting, his thought is— so the people that he's had lose that amount of weight, like a huge amount of weight, which by the way, again, that's amazing. Um, He says that people— that his people don't have a lot of loose skin because they've done a lot of fasting throughout the weight loss. And what happens when you fast is your body goes looking for protein. And people kind of like to blame fasting for muscle loss, which is stupid because your body's smarter than that, right? This is what Jason always says. He's like, why would your body go break down muscle for energy when you could just, um, have these excess proteins in your body body, which are a lot of different things, right? Um, the excess proteins come from extra skin, from cellular cleanup. There's just so many things. Hey, oh, I don't know your real name, but I recognize your username. Um, there's so many things that your body can utilize for protein while you're fasting that is not your muscle. You're not losing muscle when you fast, right? Your body is going around doing autophagy, which is cellular up. If you've never heard about that before, it's amazing. Definitely Google it, or there's a big article on my site all about fasting where you can learn about autophagy. But so this is a very— as many of my answers are, this is getting very long-winded. But, um, what can you do about loose skin? So I don't know if we have a lot of evidence that you can do a lot about loose skin after the fact. If you had been fasting throughout the whole time that you were losing all that weight, your body might have consume some of that. Now, I think also if you did some fasting now, your body might still focus on consuming some of that excess skin for you. So it's not a perfect answer, but it's just something to try. If you're not already incorporating fasting, I would definitely try it, do it on a regular basis, and maybe that can help with some of the loose skin. If, if that's not working, then it— you know, this is not a fun answer to say, but then surgery basically like kind of your other option. And when you've lost something like 112 pounds, the amount of loose skin that you have can be quite massive. I have a lot of friends on Instagram and other places that have shared some of that with me and shown it. And unfortunately, there just may not be any easier way to get rid of it other than surgery. But I would definitely try the fasting first and just see if you can notice any changes. Definitely take a lot of photos, stuff like that. So, and again, if any of these questions don't get fully answered here or you have other thoughts or wanna follow up, I'm always open to, you know, answer all kinds of questions about this stuff. So turn this off. This is about done here. So hopefully you can see that meat's all browned, the veggies are nice and soft. The zucchini just rang, so I'm gonna check that out. And so, okay, so the zucchini is definitely cooked at this point, but it's still got a lot of moisture in it, so they're not crisp. So I'm going to start this again. And again, I'm going up to like 375, and then I'm going to do it for 10 more minutes because our point in this is really that we want the zucchini to be more crisp, more like a chip. Um, they're still going to be delicious even if they're not super crisp. That's just how I envisioned the recipe is I wanted that to be like little chips to kind of go on the side of the Philly cheesesteak. Uh, so, and then also, if you do happen to ever get an air fryer, which I gotta say, like, again, I've been cooking for years, I don't like extra cooking tools in the kitchen, but it has been a real blessing. I've used it far more than I thought I would. Um, what if we use pork mince but it gives a lot of oil and fat, so it should be okay. So I'm going to read this question again so that I can— so everybody can hear it, uh, and then I'll answer it. So pork mince, um, it goes out a lot of fat. So particularly if you're keto, and particularly just in general, Saturated fat is not the enemy. It doesn't cause heart disease. There, I mean, there's so much evidence to back that up now. You can go on PubMed. There was one in the British Journal of Medicine recently that did a review of all the literature, and really there is no evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease. So on a regular basis, if you're worried about fat because of heart disease, I would stop worrying about that. If you're worried about the amount of fat because it makes it too heavy for you, you have gallbladder issues and it's hard for for you to digest fat. If you're really overweight and you're trying to lose a lot of weight, there are some other reasons why you might not want as much fat in your diet or in your meals, which I totally understand that. So if that's the case, um, in your pork mince— say this pork mince that you're getting renders down, it has a lot of fat— just pour that extra fat off, save it for later, use it for something else. Or you can use a less fatty cut of meat. But again, I'm all for using what's at the grocery store, right? So if you happen to get a really fatty cut, it breaks down, there's a lot of extra fat, just pour it off. That's all you need to do. If you love that and you're not worried about weight loss and it tastes good to you, leave it in. I mean, the beauty of all this is you're in charge all the time. And I think people like to overcomplicate this stuff, but particularly with keto, you know, fat is an energy source that's replacing carbs, right? So, um, to get to your amount of calories for the day, or to get to your amount of energy balance— I hate using the word calories because it's not really— it has such a bad connotation, right? And it's all energy balance. It's not— and it's a lot based on hormones. And so if you're eating keto and your insulin is very stable, your fat cells aren't being signaled all the time to store extra fat, so it's less of a concern. So with the fat, I would just say eat to satiety, eat till you're full. If it looks like a lot of extra fat on your plate and you know that's not palatable to you, just pour it off. But the fat is an energy source that's replacing carbs when you're not eating carbs. So don't be afraid of it. And you might need extra of it if you're very active or if you're an athlete and you're not eating carbs anymore. You're going to be eating a lot more fat. So that's just kind of the way it is. Um, so hopefully that made sense. Uh, so if you're just joining, we're cooking live in my kitchen tonight. This is the first edition. This is gonna be happening on every Monday for a while, at least until I see if people like it or find it useful. Or, um, it's just a fun COVID thing, right? Like, so many more people are cooking at home, eating at home, and I just want to offer, you know, something that can take one day out of your week where you don't have to figure out what's for dinner. So I know if I'm, if I'm me and I even love to cook and I'm just like always like, oh, what do you want for dinner tonight? What do you want for dinner tonight? It's like a slog, right? So if you have one night a week where you're like, oh, I'm just gonna cook with Cheryl and she's gonna send me the ingredients, I'm not gonna have to worry about it. That might be fun, right? So just like one less meal to worry about. And if you can't cook with me live at 6 PM Eastern time On Mondays, this will be recorded, so you can come back to it and you can see what the ingredients are. I'm going to try to be good about like editing the description when the video goes up to be saved, that I add the ingredients for you guys, so that hopefully, um, like if you didn't join live tonight, you're like, hey, I'd like to cook this little easy cheesesteak meal, then you can come back to it and make it some other time. So, um, What else? See how quick that was? I mean, it's like, now we're just waiting around. I also don't know where Peter is, so I don't know when we're gonna actually eat, because the last part of this recipe would be— I'm going to show you this now so I don't forget, because he was— should— he was going to be here, and then I was just gonna plate this up and we're gonna eat, but he's not home right now, so The last part of this is smoked provolone. You can also use whatever you find. So for example, when I went to Kroger the other day, this is smoked mozzarella and we had some of this last night for— or no, yesterday in omelets with— I forget what we had with it. Anyway, smoked mozzarella. So I do have some of this left as well, but I bought this especially for the recipe. Oh, there's the door opening. So he is going to be home. So anyway, You're gonna put one slice per person, or if you love cheese and you're not worrying about losing weight, you might use two slices, however much you like. Um, but basically, since we're not putting on this on a hoagie bun or anything, we're just gonna melt this in the pan that I used to cook the meat and the peppers in. And so all I'm gonna do is lay the slices on top of the meat. And I'm already looking at this pan and this is like, we're definitely gonna have leftovers, right? But I think I'm gonna use 3 pieces because I'm feeling like one this size, I'm feeling like that's just not enough cheese in my life for tonight. So I've got the heat back on this again, and if you just cook this, it would probably be hot enough that you could melt it easily just on top of the meat. But since it's been off for a little bit now, and what you may want to do anyway is just to add a lid to the top of this so it holds in the heat a little bit, helps melt the cheese. So got my lid here, that's going to go over the top. Um, and because the zucchini is still not where I want it to be. I'm just going to turn that off so that'll continue to melt. Um, yeah, I totally need 3 pieces of cheese. I mean, I could have done 2 each, but I'm gonna— I've got this other one on the side that, you know, we might eat that too. I don't know. Um, so we're getting pretty wrapped up here, so anybody that has any further questions, whether it's yoga, keto, cooking, health and wellness related. That's what I'm all about. So it was— yes, it was smoked provolone. You could use regular provolone if you don't like the flavor of smoked. I just think the smoked gives it like a little bit of extra, um, flavor basically. So, um, but really you could use— you could use whatever you have on hand. You could use pepper jack, you could use cheddar, you could use— but provolone's a pretty traditional Philly cheese steak one, so that's why I use that. But again, I'm all about improvising and using what you have or whatever you can find on sale. So please feel free to not have to use that exact thing. And let me check on the chips again. So now we're getting somewhere. So this was not the way they were looking when I just checked before. Now they're getting brown and toasty. I'm gonna pop one of these off of here. Okay, now we're where we want to be. So once I get more crisp the cheese browns, then you're done. So I'm gonna get these off of here, and basically now we're all ready to eat. So if you cooked along live, uh, have a great night, have some wine if you want. A Monday night wine night never hurt anybody. You know, my favorite is Dry Farm Wines because it has less than 1 gram of sugar in the entire bottle. And I also have a link in my bio for that where you get an extra bottle for free. So if you've never tried it before, I've been using them for years. Absolutely love it. So yeah, I think that is about it. So I'm going to sign off. Hopefully when I end all these broadcasts, they actually went to where they were supposed to go. Oh, I am. Oh, wow. Okay, so I saw all these, uh, Instagram— sorry about that, Instagram people. I'm gonna be better about checking the comments later because I didn't realize they were gonna come through to the streaming service. But, um, so if I didn't answer your question, make sure you message me and I will get back to you after this is all done. Um, but yeah, thanks for watching. If you want to join next Monday, again, it's livecookalong.healnourishgrow.com. That will send you the ingredients Friday before. And so hopefully I'll see you next Monday. And still trying to figure out how to turn this off. Where do I go here? Oh God, let's see. I, I guess this is never ending. I know how to end this one, so I'll end this one first.