New Product at my Costco, Folios Cheese Wraps

I have a new favorite Costco product, that is helping to not only stay on my Keto meal plan, but makes coming up with great meals, very easy.  I have used these for the past 2 weeks, and my husband has loved them.  They are so versatile, and I have Created some great recipes to share with you.  

These Folios cheese wraps are essentially made of cheese, and all you have to do is to take one out of the package, put it in the microwave, on it's own piece of parchment like paper that is included in the package, and microwave.  I'm pretty sure you would need to adjust the baking time depending on how powerful your microwave is, but for me, I set it for 30 seconds.  Once it has stopped, I add another 30 seconds or less.  1 minute for me, generally crispens them and slightly browns them around the edges.

Once they are cooked, you need to let them rest and cool for a few minutes, or they will act like cheese does when it is hot, and not keep it's wrap shape.  Once cooled, slowly peel it from the parchment, and put it on your plate.  The oils comes out of the cheese, so I usually blot off most of that with a paper towel, and that my friends is all there is to making this wrap.  

I have made so many yummy recipes with these wraps, beginning with the very first recipe I created on my Keto meal plan, and that was what I call Katie's Veggie Egg Burrito/Taco.   Here is the recipe for you to try, and I know you will really love the taste.

All the ingredients for this recipe can be found at Costco and if you want to get technical, everything else can be found there too such as, the pans I cooked it in, the food processor and even the paper plates and paper towels I like to use in the microwave.  

Katie’s Keto Egg Tacos

·        2-4 Eggs (Costco)

·        Olive Oil (Costco)

·        Generous Sprinkle of Cheddar Jack Cheese (Costco)

·        Small slice of Philly Cream Cheese. (Costco)

·        2 Folio Cheese Wraps (Costco)

·        1 Tablespoon of butter (Costco)

·        Fresh Ground Salt and Pepper (Costco)

      4 pieces of cooked bacon

DIRECTIONS:

1.     Cook your eggs in olive oil, and scramble them.  Be sure to salt and pepper them for extra flavor, or not, depending on your own personal taste or if you are on a low sodium diet.

2.     Just before your egg is fully scrambled, add your sprinkle of Cheddar Cheese and your small slice of Philly Cream Cheese.  Shut off heat, put the lid on the skillet and remove from the heating element on your stove.  Over the next few minutes your cheese will melt and the egg will finnish cooking. 

3.     Stir melted cheese around in your egg, which brings a huge amount of flavor to them.  Set aside. ( I keep my eggs in the microwave on a microwave safe plate, to keep warm until I am finished with the rest of the recipe.)

More Ingredients: 

·        1 Zucchini 

·        2 Mini Sweet Red Peppers (Costco)

·        Fresh Ground Salt and Pepper (Costco)

·        1 Tablespoon of butter (Costco)

DIRECTIONS:

• Clean out the fry pan you used for cooking your eggs, rinse out and dry.  Heat and melt 1 Tablespoon of Butter. 
• Prepare the vegetables in a chopper or Food processor. I found a small one at Costco!  (I don't mind letting it sit out on my counter-top, because I use it so often.)  Add to melted butter in fry pan and salt and pepper to taste.
• Moisture will cook out, and that is what you want, so you don’t have soggy eggs. Those juices strengthen the flavor, so don't drain them, just let them cook out.  Sauté your veges for about 4 – 5 minutes stirring, and when most of the juices are gone, they are ready.  In the mean time, you need to follow the directions on the wraps to prepare and microwave cook, to crispen the wrap sheets.  When they are done, they will look lacy and crispy…. Yum! I pat the excess oil off, just because I don’t like so much oil, but it isn’t necessary for the Keto diet.

Now, lawyer the cooked ingredients in this order:

1.     Wrap on bottom layer.

2.     Add Cooked cheesy scrambled eggs.

3.     Add cooked veggies

4.     Top with 2 slices of crisp cooked bacon.

There you have it!  It looks like restaurant quality and the taste is amazing.  It has a sweet quality from the vegetables, not to mention that they boost the healthiness of your breakfast meal.  I ate mine this way, but my husband has to add hot sauce or salsa to his for an added spicy bite.  Either way, these are so yummy, and a totally different taste than what you are use to having in any burrito.  Enjoy!

I like to write, thus you won't see me adding a calorie or nutrient value list for any of my recipes.  You can easily calculateyour own nutritional information as you go by using one of the many food calculators that are available online.  I happend to locate this one first, so I am sharing the link:

https://caloriecontrol.org/healthy-weight-tool-kit/food-calorie-calculator/

#Shop Costco,#love, #loveCostco, iShopCostco

#iShopCostco

I have wanted to author a blog about my favorite store for such a long time.  It's a snowy day, and now that the power is back on and my computer can power up, I plan to begin! This blog isn't going to be like any of my other blogs, because it is all about my love for a store!  Who ever heard of somebody loving a store, especially one that I nick name the $200 store.  Nobody every gets out the exit doors without spending at least $200, because there is so much good stuff to buy, we all indulge!

I have been having fun with the food, because I have started a Keto mealplan, and Costco was the one that helped me get going.   How does a store help somebody go Keto you may ask?  Let me explain.  I had been thinking about eliminating Carbs in my diet because I have diabetes, and so does my husband.  Interestingly enough, my daughter in law started Keto 6 months ago, and she has lost almost 50 lbs.  We were so astonished, and you know what they say.... "Seeing is believing" and we became belivers.  What a great motivator to have seen what she has done with going Keto, so I began to learn about it and realized that it was the solution to our diabetes issues as well.  If we don't eat Carbohydrates, or at the very least significantly lower our Carbs to a very small percentage of our food intake daily, we just might not need to take insulin, and that my friends was a huge plus for doing it.

So let me make a longer story shorter, you may ask yourself, how did Costco get help you go Keto?  After the first of the 2019 New year, I needed groceries, because I had cleaned out my pantry, fridge and freezer.  I gave away every last bit of carbs I had, to my carb-eating grand-kids, who were more than happy to take them off my hands, and out of my pantry.  At that point, we basically had no food in the house.  OK, I'm stretching the truth... we had some food, but folks when you are use to having breads with your breakfast, sandwiches, and cereal for breakfast, and some crackers for your dips and cheese, and sweet treats for your sweet tooth, along with a scoop of sweet icecream at night while you watch your favorite show.... well... their aint much more left to enjoy when it is gone.  I was HANGRY... and NO, I didn't miss spell hungry.  I was really hangry, and needed something good to eat.

The first store to come into my mind was Costco, because I am a devoted Costco shopper, and I know I can always find things that make my hanger go away.  It was off to Costco, and one think I know for sure is that it isn't good to go shopping on an empty stomach.  I had no choice that day, because there really wasn't much in the way of food to eat.  Everything looked good to me, and believe me, I was ever grateful for all the tasting sample tables, that helped get me through.  This particular day, I strolled my cart very quickly passed the electronics, housewares, clothing and more, and made a left turn directly into the fruit and vegetables.  My mouth started to water as I saw what beautiful fruit they had, though sadly I had to push my cart past the fruit into the refrigerated section.  Fruits are carbs, and though I needed some, with the high levels of my blood sugar, I needed to stay away from fruit for a while.

Entering the vegetable area of the store, Oh, I wanted to jump for joy!  They had it all... Baby spinach to go in my eggs and soups, and the scare for contaminated Romaine Lettuce was over, so I grabbed a large bag of 5-6 heads of baby Romaine lettuce.  Then on to the mini peppers that are so sweet and yummy to add to just about anything I cook.  Their mushrooms were absolutely beautiful and I grabbed a tub of those, and a bag of french green beans. I couldn't pass up the cubed butternut squash.  I love it because it is already cut up.  If you have every cut up Butternut squash, you are left with sticky fingers, that are very hard to clean off.  There is a resin or something in the squash that I looked up once and found that it heals the squash if during it's growing season, it gets nicked or injured, and that resin is sort of a healing thing, so the squash can continue growing.

So one of my favorite things to much on for a snack is cooked green beans dipped in mayonnaise... yum!!! Tastes like Artichokes which sadly were not in season.  By the time I got out of the cold Vegetables, I grabbed a tub of cherry tomatoes, a bag of avocados, and I knew I had more vegetables than could last us for several weeks.  I had to restrain myself, because it all looked so fresh and yummy.  Recipes were running through my mind, and I knew I was going to enjoy making what my husband calls, "Restaurant quality" meals.

Next to the meat section, I grabbed a bag of individually wrapped and frozen chicken breasts, deli turkey breast, and then I found the cheese section.  Cheese is on the Keto diet, so I make good work of finding new cheeses to take home and try in my cooking.

Speaking of Cheeses, I found the greatest new product.  I have never seen it in Costco before! It's called Folios Cheese Wraps. 

They are made from cheese, and are only 1 gram Carbohydrate.  They are basically a wrap made of Cheese. Totally good for Keto, Lactose free and Gluten free meal plans. They are so easy and quick! All you do is put one on a microwave safe dish, and one minute later, they melt and when it cools, it crispens.  I blot  with a paper towel,  the extra fat that comes to the surface during the microwaving.  They crisp up sort of like a crisp corn taco shell.  I made a meal for breakfast called "Katie's Breakfast Tacos, " and will share the recipe in a future post. 

I won't go on with all the other things I purchased that day at Costco, but needless to say, I made Costco live up to it's nickname, "The $200 store".  Actually I think my purchases totaled more than that, and closer to $300, but I cannot tell you how excited I was to go home and start cooking. All of the things I found at Costco, are on my new Keto, or low carb diet, which I don't want to call diet, so lets call it a meal plan.  I love preparing new things and I looked forward to going home and getting something read for my husband and I for dinner. 

This is my story and I started cooking restaurant quality meals, using mostly and almost exclusively the foods that I purchased at Costco.  They looked and tasted so yummy, that I decided to share my recipes! #iShopCostco, and love every minute of it. Enjoy!!!