A note about the recipes

As mentioned elsewhere in these pages, the recipes posted here are merely tending towards an ideal. If I had the budget, the time and the skills, all these recipes would be vegan, healthy, ready in no time, they would require no effort and use only organic ingredients produced locally.

They are not. They are definitely on a budget, as I can't afford the fancypants ingredients that turn food into Cuisine, and they are at least ovo-lacto vegetarian with vegan options when possible.

Another point that requires explanation is what I mean by "low-carb". I usually look up for "low-carb" this or that when I search a recipe, because it's the easiest way to find recipes using a limited amount of sweeteners. That being said, I dislike the trend that consists in subbing the amount of sugar with the Splenda equivalent and still consuming unnecessarily overly sweet products. (Plus, there's no Splenda where I live.)

The "low-carb" I am aiming at is in fact more of a "reduced carbs" diet, very low in simple carbohydrates such as refined sugar and relying essentially on low glycemic index vegetable sources of complex carbohydrates (I have beans and peas in mind, rather than rice and mashed potatoes). I am no advocate of no-carbs diets, however tempting it is to free oneself from the burden of insulin injections before any food intake.

When possible, I am using in sweet confections a cyclamate-based liquid sweetener called Cologran. Considering the low cost of this sweetener, its complete absence on the other side of the Atlantic surprised me at first, but as it happens the component is still banned there, a ruling made on the basis of equivocal studies realised in the sixties (according to Wikipedia, cancer risk increased in the rats fed with the equivalent of 350 cans of diet soda per day for a human, so I feel pretty safe quantity-wise). This sweetener was approved for commercialization in Europe, and did not cause any further controversy.

Sometimes using liquid sweetener is possible. Sometimes sugar is needed for the bulk or for the chemical reactions, for the moist as eggs are sometimes needed for the rise. I am still experimenting, feel free to follow.