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If there were such a thing as an Appliance Graveyard, mine would have plenty of headstones. I have gotten rid of quite a few appliances that used to take up lots of space in my cupboards.

Good news is I didn’t bury those appliances in my backyard like some kind of pet cemetery. I gave them away or donated them.

But why did I get rid of them in the first place?
The answer is…carbohydrates.

Let me explain. For those who don’t know my story, I was the self-proclaimed Queen of Diets that Didn’t Work. I tried diet after diet until I got so fed up, I did my own research and started my own diet. 7 years later, my diet has helped almost 5,000 people across the country lose weight and keep it off for good. What’s the secret? The truth is, there’s no secret. It’s all about clean eating with a plan, getting the right education and support, and learning how to distinguish real-food based science from clever food marketing.

In the past, one of the biggest things that thwarted my weight loss efforts were the excessive amount of processed carbs that are part of most “normal” diets. They’d stall my efforts every time. As a diet expert, I can tell you, if you’re trying to lose a serious amount of weight, those starchy foods absolutely must go. And those clever little appliances that encourage a high-carb lifestyle? They are no longer welcome in my kitchen.

So I did a purge.

Let’s take an inventory of what I got rid of and why:

My bread maker. I used to be the queen of custom bread at my dinner parties. I managed to time the baking of the bread to coincide with the arrival of guests. The house would have an amazing aroma no matter what I was cooking up as the entrée. The bread would permeate. I’d take the bread out of the bread maker and it would still be warm to serve when dinner was ready. My specialty was a lemon-pepper bread. It went with just about every entrée style. The average slice of bread has about 22 grams of carbs in it. I don’t eat more than 80 grams of carbs per day now, so there’s no room for bread in that total. If I eat bread, it will be a warm baguette right out of the oven at a restaurant. And I’ll slather that with butter to keep the glycemic uptake down. No blood sugar spikes for me.

My waffle maker is gone. I know now that I could be making low carb waffles, but I didn’t know that then and I really don’t miss it. I almost never made regular white flour waffles; maybe if company came and requested them, but not often. What I used to make, that was delightful, was a cornmeal waffle that was used as part of a dinner entrée. During the summer it was nice to have the hot cornmeal waffle topped with a nice pile of grilled shrimp tossed in a chunky, cold, tomato salsa. Very summer. Very different. People raved about it.

My pasta maker went to see its maker. It has a happy new home now. The carbohydrate concentration of pasta is even worse than bread. The average serving of pasta has about 40 grams of carbs in it. That’s a big YIKES! On the extremely rare occasion that I eat pasta, I cook up a small amount of commercially made pasta or buy some fresh. The difference is I’m only eating a cup of it (at most) and I pile on the sauce. The sauce is the satisfying part, anyway.

I do have a very happy memory of making pasta with some friends late one night. We went to an evening football game at the university. The game didn’t end until about 10 pm so we were definitely eating late. I came home to make up a batch of penne while guests had cocktails. I paired it with a lovely tomato-vodka sauce. Making pasta really doesn’t take all that long; boiling the big pot of water to cook it takes time. When I want to have those memories again, I can still make the tomato vodka sauce and it’s still a BIG YUM.

Gone too, is my toaster. Hasta la vista, baby! I discovered two things. Did you know you can make “toast” in your oven? You just put it on a cookie sheet and toast it. Yes, it might be a bit of a waste of energy to fire up the oven just to toast bread, but I’ve only done it twice in 10 years, so it probably isn’t that big a deal. The other thing I discovered is you can put buttered bread in a non-stick fry pan and toast it like that; just like a grilled cheese with no cheese. And it can be buttered on both sides to taste even more decadent. I have not missed my toaster in a very long time. Before I donated it, I even had it put up into one of those very high cabinets that could only be accessed by my husband, or get out the ladder. So I surely wasn’t using it daily to toast bagels or frozen waffles. Those days are long gone.

My cupboards are cleaner now. Everything is neatly organized.
My digestive system is cleaner now, too.

Rest in peace, appliances.
Cheers,

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Put it in the pot and let the magic happen.