Especially when dieting in the winter, having a bit of something warm, sweet, and comforting as a treat can sometimes be the difference in sticking to your dietary guns and throwing in the towel. As a lover of chocolate, a mug of cocoa fills the bill for me and this recipe, based on unsweetened almond milk, is not only delicious, it’s low in calories and in carbohydrates. I’ve been a fan of unsweetened almond milk for years, using the vanilla version to enrich sugar free chai, as well.

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Heading into 2012 means shedding a few holiday pounds that Mike and I accumulated on the “experiment” (see his blog) we undertook. So for the next several weeks we will be trudging down the nutritional holy road of near-abstinence from carbs and total abstinence from that carbohydrate gateway drug, alcohol. It’s only day 5 and we’re already feeling a world better and lighter and sleeping more soundly. Normally, we’d have gotten with the program on January 2, but this year we didn’t get started in earnest until January 9, because of a big dinner party commitment we’d accepted down in LA (that included some very nice wines) that we didn’t want to miss out on.

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When you find yourself longing for a return to the ‘old ways’ of eating, you may be thinking about Granny’s Sunday pot roast. But if you really want to return to the old ways, Julie and Charles Mayfield’s Paleo Comfort Food is the ticket.

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Absolutely great article in today’s Wall Street Journal Cooking and Eating section by Kitty Greenwald. I read it just after breakfast, when I was pleasantly full, and still it honestly made me want to get up and head back to the stove. Or book a flight to Boston and catch a cab to Cambridge to visit Chef Tom Maw’s Craigie on Main bistro to enjoy the Fried Eggs with Caramelized Squash and Tomatillo Salsa featured in the piece.

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Fix of the Week columnist, Sam Edelman’s, recipe for Prosciutto-Wrapped Watermelon in today’s Santa Barbara NewsPress (viewing may require registration) made my mouth water. I can’t wait to try this refreshing (and pretty low carb) summer bite.

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As temperatures soar above 100F for days and weeks on end, here’s one sure (and pretty low carb) way to keep your cool: Tinto de Verano, low carb style.

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Couldn’t resist passing on the information in this blog post from Chef It Yourself about cooking a Mangalitsa pork neck roll. As readers of Mike’s blog know, he and I took a three-day seminar a few months back on the proper techniques for butchering and cooking Wooly Pigs, or Mangalitsa as they’re more properly called.

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It was with great relief that I read this headline in today’s paper:

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My garden is overflowing with mint. As I have written in these pages before, the mint I had hoped to contain in a large pot in my Santa Barbara herb garden escaped its confines a good while ago and has since attempted a take over. I keep it beat back to a degree, but all summer long I still have bales of mint that need a use.

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When it’s hot in the summer, cooking outdoors on the grill can be a lifesaver, so I am always on the look out for or dreaming up new recipes for grilling. I just posted one for salmon up on the SousVide Supreme blog that would be delicious, even if you don’t have a means to cook sous vide, so I thought I’d share. Granted no other cooking method will guarantee the buttery, succulent, rare to medium rare texture that you can achieve with a water oven set at 116F, but it will still be good eats.

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