Salads

We’re all familiar with the old fashioned chef salad –cut up cold cuts, cheese, and hard-boiled egg on a green salad (usually iceberg). But meal salads have become much more popular in restaurants and at home, in a variety limited only by the imagination.

Low carb “meal salad” tips:

• Use lots of dark green salad greens, which are much richer in nutrients than the traditional iceberg lettuce. Now that bagged greens are in every grocery store, salad making has never been more convenient.

• If you are using bottled dressings, check the label for carbs. Many “light” dressings have sugar added to make up for the loss of flavor when oil is reduced.

• Choose dressings with oils high in monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil.

• It is very easy to make dressings yourself – it literally can take less than a minute. Whip up an oil-based one in the bottom of the bowl, put the salad on top, and toss. For a creamy dressing, just mix some of your favorite herbs and spices into some mayonnaise. Thin down with water or lemon juice.

Examples of Salads include:

• Greek salad (put extra protein on, such as hard boiled eggs, chicken, or seafood)

• Chicken (cooked without breading, of course) atop salad greens, chopped snow pea pods, chopped red pepper, and walnuts

• Low carb cole slawwith chicken, pecans, and bits of apple

• Tuna salad with greens, tomato and avocado

• Salmon on top of greens, blanched green beans, mushrooms, and sprouts

• Chicken with greens, cucumbers, pecans, and crumbled blue cheese

• Steak with greens, thinly sliced red onions, green pepper, and mushrooms

Roll ups and Wraps

There are three basic kinds of low carb roll ups:

1. Lettuce: Roll “mushy” stuff, such as tuna, salmon, egg, or chicken salad up in a large lettuce leaf, along with anything else that sounds good (as long as you don’t overload it). (A similar alternative is to use the “protein salad” as a dip, and use celery, Bell pepper, cucumber, etc as dippers.)

2. Meat: Roll cheese and veggies up in a slice of roast beef, ham, etc.

3. Low Carb Tortillas: Roll whatever you want up in a low carb tortilla and make a “wrap”. My husband eats hot dogs this way.

Soups

Soups are very versatile, and can provide a vehicle for leftover meats and vegetables. Most soup recipes can be low carb if you just take out the starch (noodles, rice, potatoes). There are a few low carb canned soups, but the vast majority are not – you have to read labels carefully. Make up a big pot of soup and freeze portions.

Leftovers

The easiest lunch of all – just make extra at dinner and have it for lunch the next day!

More Advices:

• Pack lunches the night before and store them in the refrigerator overnight.

• Purchasing lunch foods in larger containers instead of single-serve packages costs less. Buy yogurt and applesauce in larger containers and spoon it into a smaller container for lunch. Buy quality bulk bin items, including fresh-ground peanut butter, nuts, dried fruits, and granola.

• Test out new lunch box recipes at home before they make it into the lunch pail.

• Watch the temperature. Harmful bacteria grow best between 40 degrees F and 140 degrees F, so it’s important to keep perishable foods outside this danger zone as much as possible.

Here are seven steps you can take toward that goal.

1. Stop Drinking Sugary Beverages

For those who drink them, sugary beverages have a lot of negatives. Most sugary drinks have very little nutritional value, and they don’t do a good job of filling you up. For example, 100 calories from apple juice would leave you hungrier than if you ate 100 calories worth of an actual apple. Therefore, you may be inclined to consume more “empty calories.”

2. Start Eating More Vegetables

Surprised? Don’t be. People usually greatly increase the amount of vegetables they eat when they begin a low carb way of eating. My recommendation is to start doing this first. Which vegetables? Not the starchy ones, such as corn and potatoes, but the non-starchy veggies, such as greens, cauliflower, avocado, mushrooms — in fact, most vegetables do not have much usable carbohydrate.

3. Start Eating More Fat

I can hear the cries of protest now, but hear me out! Yes, people who eat a diet that’s lower in carbohydrate usually eat more fats. But believe it or not, this is a good thing. Fats fill us up, and make it less likely that we will overeat, especially in conjunction with consuming less carbohydrate (a diet that is high in carbs and fat is probably not a good idea). We need fats for our bodies to run smoothly. And there is absolutely no reason to think that adding fats to our diet is a bad thing. Even leaving the debate on saturated fats aside, you can add fats from such sources as olive oil, nuts, avocado, fatty fish, and flax seeds.

4. Make sure you are Getting Enough Protein

Check on your protein intake to be sure you are getting enough, and don’t be afraid to experiment with adding more. The National Academy of Science says we can safely eat up to 35% of our diet as protein, and truth be told, protein tends to be self-limiting — in other words, it’s really hard to eat too much.

5. Go for Quality over Quantity

As you are increasing your vegetables, protein, and healthy fats, cut down on the portion sizes of your high carb foods. Did you know that in Italy people eat about a cup of al dente (slightly firm) pasta in a meal? Just because the restaurant down the street brings you a giant plate of pasta doesn’t mean that’s a good portion size. Half a cup of potatoes or rice is a standard serving size. Get out measuring cup and become acquainted with how much a true portion is.

At the same time, don’t waste the carbs on boring or less-than-delicious food. Have a 2 x 2-inch piece of a really great cake, or a small scoop of premium ice cream. One square of really good chocolate can satisfy better than a big low-grade chocolate bar.

6. Choose Brown over White

Select brown rice instead of white rice, and whole wheat bread instead of white. Also, when possible, eat your grains whole instead of ground up into flour. Some people find a “no white diet” to be an easy way to cut back on carbs — no potatoes, white rice, white sugar, or white flour.

7. Pull a Switcheroo

Start substituting lower carb foods for high carb counterparts. Try a high-fiber low-carb cereal. Cook some spaghetti squash instead of pasta. Have a package of nuts at the movies instead of popcorn. Try some low carb recipes to replace high carb favorites.
about.com

1. Become Informed
Read about various low carb diets, or zero in on one. Ideally, read one of the books and become familiar with the principles. Above all, don’t fall for the common myths about eating low carb – such as that there are no vegetables or fruit, that it can’t be healthy, that it has to be boring, etc. Like other ways of eating, low carb eating can be healthy or not, balanced or not, and there is certainly no reason for it to be boring. Rest assured that science is on the side of cutting carbs – perhaps not for everyone, but for many of us.

2. Start Making Easy Changes
While you are learning about low-carb eating, you can start to make some changes towards reducing unhealthy carbs in your diet. Choose one or two things to change at a time. You may be surprised that some results can be achieved with less effort than you thought.

3. Decide on an Approach
There is no one low carb diet. The popular plans span a range of carb levels and food choices, though essentially all of them cut out most sugars and starches. Again, the best thing to do is to read one of the books – go to your library and browse, and zero in on something that looks doable to you. Essentially all of the popular books can be purchased used online for very little money.

Alternatively, if you just know you’re not the kind to read a book and follow someone else’s idea of a diet, the “No White Diet” works for many people. Basically, you just stop eating food with sugars, white flour (pasta, bread, cake, donuts, etc), white rice, and potatoes (some include milk). This effectively cuts back on the carbohydrate in your diet, especially the high glycemic types. Just realize that there are also white foods, such as tofu, cauliflower, and onions, that are low in carbs and good for you!

about.com

Answer: “Low carb diet” (also called “reduced carbohydrate”, “controlled carbohydrate”, or “low glycemic” diet) is a broad term, encompassing many popular diet books (examples: Atkins, South Beach, Zone, Protein Power, Sugar Busters, Carbohydrate Addicts Diet) as well as eating plans that don’t follow a rigid format, but advise limiting the consumption of a lot of foods that are high in carbohydrate. Some diets limit the amount of overall carbohydrate, while others focus on certain types of foods, generally ones high in starch and sugars. (Since starch turns to sugar in our bodies, many diet writers do not make a distinction between the two.) Still others focus on how glycemic the diet is.

The “No White Foods” approach is a fairly popular low carb diet, means simply eliminating sugars, white flour, white rice, and potatoes.

A common mistake is to equate “low carb” with the very low carb phase of some popular diets, such as the Induction Phase of the Atkins Diet. These phases are usually meant to be quite short, with more carbohydrate phased in after that. Other diets begin at a higher level of carbohydrate, but still less than the USDA Food Pyramid suggests. Any diet whose primary focus is the reduction of carbohydrate in any way is what is meant by “low carb” on this site. In terms of percentages, since the usual “mainstream” recommendation is a diet with 50-65% calories from carbohydrate, I consider a diet with 40% or less energy from carbs a “low-carb diet”, though most of them don’t measure it in this way.

about.com

we eat low-carb diets to keep our blood sugar normal and stable. To fully understand the connection, it’s helpful to first familiarize yourself with how the body processes blood sugar.

What Do Carbohydrates Have to Do With Blood Glucose?

Everything. All foods with carbohydrate — whether rice, jelly beans, or watermelon — break down to simple sugars in our bodies. This is what causes our blood glucose to rise. The carbohydrate in most starchy foods (potatoes, bread) is simply a collection of long chains of glucose, whichbreak down quickly and raise blood sugar.

What Do Our Bodies Do When Blood Sugar is High?

When our blood sugar goes up, our body responds by secreting insulin to stabilize it. The sugar is then taken out of the blood and converted into fat; insulin’s primary function is facilitating the storage of extra sugar in the blood as fat.

What are the Problems with Blood Sugar Going Up?

For many people, this system works fine. Sometimes, though, people reach a point in their lives when it goes awry (or it doesn’t work well from childhood). This is called insulin resistance, and one of the consequences is that there gets to be too much insulin in the blood as the body tries harder and harder to bring the sugar down.

When insulin is high, weight gain is more likely, since a main function of insulin is fat storage. Conversely, people with high insulin levels are more likely to lose weight on low-carb diets.

Keeping blood glucose normal has other health benefits, such as the prevention of heart disease and diabetes. Even non-diabetics have an increased heart disease risk with higher blood glucose levels.

about.com

Salads

We’re all familiar with the old fashioned chef salad –cut up cold cuts, cheese, and hard-boiled egg on a green salad (usually iceberg). But meal salads have become much more popular in restaurants and at home, in a variety limited only by the imagination. It’s basically any protein atop any combination of salad greens and vegetables.

Low carb “meal salad” tips:

Use lots of dark green salad greens, which are much richer in nutrients than the traditional iceberg lettuce. Now that bagged greens are in every grocery store, salad making has never been more convenient.

• If you are using bottled dressings, check the label for carbs. Many “light” dressings have sugar added to make up for the loss of flavor when oil is reduced.

• Choose dressings with oils high in monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil.

• It is very easy to make dressings yourself – it literally can take less than a minute. Whip up an oil-based one in the bottom of the bowl, put the salad on top, and toss. For a creamy dressing, just mix some of your favorite herbs and spices into some mayonnaise. Thin down with water or lemon juice.

Examples of Salads include:

• Greek salad (put extra protein on, such as hard boiled eggs, chicken, or seafood)

• Chicken (cooked without breading, of course) atop salad greens, chopped snow pea pods, chopped red pepper, and walnuts

• Low carb cole slaw with chicken, pecans, and bits of apple

• Tuna salad with greens, tomato and avocado

• Salmon on top of greens, blanched green beans, mushrooms, and sprouts

• Chicken with greens, cucumbers, pecans, and crumbled blue cheese

• Steak with greens, thinly sliced red onions, green pepper, and mushrooms

• Cobb salad

• You get the idea

Roll ups and Wraps
There are three basic kinds of low carb roll ups:

1. Lettuce: Roll “mushy” stuff, such as tuna, salmon, egg, or chicken salad up in a large lettuce leaf, along with anything else that sounds good (as long as you don’t overload it). (A similar alternative is to use the “protein salad” as a dip, and use celery, Bell pepper, cucumber, etc as dippers.)
2. Meat: Roll cheese and veggies up in a slice of roast beef, ham, etc.
3. Low Carb Tortillas: Roll whatever you want up in a low carb tortilla and make a “wrap”. My husband eats hot dogs this way. Example of a wrap

Soups

Soups are very versatile, and can provide a vehicle for leftover meats and vegetables. Most soup recipes can be low carb if you just take out the starch (noodles, rice, potatoes). There are a few low carb canned soups, but the vast majority are not – you have to read labels carefully. Make up a big pot of soup and freeze portions. Rainbow Soup
Leftovers
The easiest lunch of all – just make extra at dinner and have it for lunch the next day!
[ad#co-1]

about.com

The 3 Basic Ingredients of Gravy
You can use all kinds of fancy ingredients for gravy, and some of them are delicious, but all you really need are three basic ingredients:

1. Pan drippings (usually with most of the fat removed)
2. Liquid (usually stock or broth; milk gravies include some milk)
3. Thickener

What are “Drippings”?
Drippings are what’s left on the bottom of the pan when you’re done roasting a piece of meat. They include the fat from the meat, juices left from the meat and vegetables cooked along with the meat (if any), any basting liquid used in the process, and, most importantly, the brown stuff stuck on the bottom of the pan.
The Basic Procedure for Making Traditional Gravy

1. Remove the meat and vegetables from the roasting pan.
2. Pour off the drippings, ideally into a fat separator. My favorite one has a strainer on top that sifts out larger pieces.
3. If you can put your roasting pan on the stove, this is ideal. Heat it and deglaze the pan with chicken broth or stock, stirring to dissolve all the brown bits. If you are using flour to thicken the gravy, add it now, with about the same amount of fat from the drippings as flour. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes (this is to remove the “raw” taste of the flour.)
4. Whisk in the rest of the drippings (not the rest of the fat, which would make the gravy too greasy). A whisk helps avoid lumps.
5. Whisk in more broth or stock, if needed. If you want to use alternative thickeners (see below), this is the time to add them.
6. Bring to a boil. Cook for about 5 minutes — longer if you want to reduce the gravy more.

The gravy will have some salt and seasonings from the meat, but you may need to adjust amounts.

What About Low-Carb Gravy?

The only potentially problematic part of the gravy for people who are cutting carbohydrates is the thickener. There are a few alternatives here. I have included links to some low-carb gravy recipes around the net using the various thickeners.

Consider just reducing the sauce with no thickener.
This is called “au jus” rather than gravy. The nice thing about gravy is that you don’t need as much thickener as some other sauces, since a certain amount of gelatin-like substances are in the drippings. Just boil the sauce down until it is the thickness you want.

Consider whether you really care about the carbs in flour.
One tablespoon of flour will thicken a cup of gravy, and adds 6 grams of carbohydrate. So ¼ cup of gravy thickened with flour has about 1½ grams of carbohydrate. This just might not make that much of a difference when you come right down to it.

But there are alternatives:

• Cornstarch- Cornstarch has a little over 7 grams of carb per tablespoons, and that tablespoon will thicken about 1½ to 2 cups of gravy. The gravy won’t be as opaque, and will be glossier.

• Arrowroot – Arrowroot has the same carb count as corn starch, and about a teaspoon will thicken a cup of gravy. Again, the sauce will be clearer and glossier.

• Reduced Cream – Recipes such as this one by George Stella use cream to thicken, and then the mixture is reduced. Cream has 6.6 grams of carb per cup.

• Sour Cream – Some low-carb recipes suggest whisking in sour cream to thicken the gravy, such as this one from Low-Carb Luxury. Sour cream has about 10 grams of carbohydrate per cup.

• Vegetable Gums – Xanthan gum, guar gum, and proprietary products made from them, such as ThickenThin not/Starch, are thickeners with no carbs (and they contribute fiber). You have to use the plain xanthan or guar gums with care because you can easily go too far and get a sort of slimy mess. If you sprinkle it slowly and stop at the right time, however, gums can be effective. ThickenThin is less tricky, in my experience. These products can also produce a somewhat “slick” texture that bothers some people more than others.
  [ad#co-1]

  about.com