So, sometimes doing the low-carb diet thing can be rough.  It requires a lot of willpower.  Not just to resist things that aren’t compatible with the diet, but also to alter behaviours that will have you doing things that will upset the diet and knock you way out of ketosis.  Like, oh, a sizable amount of drinking Thursday night.  Followed up by pizza Friday night, and a real, full-blown entirely sugared up soda.  Yeah, when I weighed this weekend, I was very unhappy with myself.  So, from Saturday afternoon on, I’ve been strictly “good” (ok, I did dip my finger in for a teensy bit of incredibly delicious, creamy, chocolate frosting) diet-wise.

Today for lunch, I went to a bit more effort than I usually do.  First, I grilled up some portabella mushroom slices:

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Next up, I’ve been working on some beef shoulder steaks (HEB sale special, I’m not made of money).  Normally, I thaw these out (these have been thawing since Saturday), throw some spices on them, and toss ’em on the grill and call it done.  With these, partly out of lazy last night, and partly out of a fit of fancy, I marinated them overnight.  The marinade was a homebrew concoction, with wine (cabernet sauvignon) and spices (salt, pepper, garlic, soy sauce, tabasco).

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While the first steak was grilling on my trusty Foreman Grill, I broke out some frozen broccoli florets (I’d have preferred fresh broccoli, steamed, but I cooked and ate the last of that last night with my steelhead trout).  Cooked them in the microwave most of the way, then finished up the last bit with butter and slices of colby-jack cheese melting on top of them:

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While they were cooking, my first steak (these are pretty thin, so they grill very quickly) finished:

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I have to say, after tasting the steak (I’ve had some of this shoulder steak before, I bought 4 packages of it when it was on sale) this time, the overnight marinating was definitely worthwhile.  Far more flavorful and tender than before.

Here’s a shot of everything put together, what I actually ate for lunch today:

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Altogether, delicious.  Aside from the prep time on the steaks, this was pretty quick – I went home, grilled and nuked everything, ate, flossed and brushed my teeth, watched twitter blab about Apple at WWDC a bit, in around 45 minutes.  I’ve got more mushrooms grilled and waiting, and steak for another 4 meals easily.