Support and ideas for those on low-carb diet

Tonight we are having spicy mackerel, salad and chickpea fritters. We love these fritters:
serves 4-6
1 cup chickpea flour
1 cup water
Chopped half onion
Chopped inch of ginger
Half tsp cumin
Pinch chilli

Mix ingredients to smooth paste. Leave to stand and then fry as for small pancakes.
They are not for the first phase of the diet, but fine when a few low gi carbs have been introduced.

Salmon and pesto with roast vegetables.

1 large salmon steak per person
Coat the top of salmon generously in pesto (fresh is best or home made) and wrap each one loosely in foil. Set aside.

Chop into bite sized pieces (per person)
I sweet pepper
I red onion
4-6 mushrooms
Toss in oil, plenty of fresh ground pepper and spread on baking sheet in hot oven (200oC) for 35 - 40 minutes. Less if you prefer them al dente.

Half way through add salmon.

Mamie we love smoked, peppered mackerel. I'll try this next week.

This is a Rick Stein recipe for fresh mackerel (sooo cheap in the markets here). You rub it inside and out with a spice mix, start it off on top of the stove and finish under the grill. OH had forgotten how hot last season's chillies from the garden were, so it was quite feisty!
I think the whole meal cost about 4€.

If anyone is interested I can run recipes through my nutritional analysis programme that I used when I was teaching. It will give the traffic light analysis as well as more detailed information - the label you get on supermarket food.

Very useful for home-made dishes.

What an inspiring thread. Those chickpea fritters sound proper delish.

My daughter made fine ribbon pasta this week from courgettes, using a julienne gadget (very Zen activity). We ate them with bolognaise sauce. Pretty good!

On the Mumsnet LCHF threads they do a lot with courgette ribbons. Must try it, especially in the courgette glut! We have cauliflower or celeriac mash a lot now. So yummy and you get the same sensation as buttery mashed potatoes without feeling stuffed afterwards. I haven't tried cauliflower rice yet either.

Can't say courgette float my boat except find them a useful addition to cake em.... forget I said that.

Blueberries and double cream for breakfast.

OH is frying the egg and bacon!
I like baby courgettes but agree that the big wooly ones are not much good. We try to pick them like that but always find a few stray giants later...

Decadent!

Merlot I might take you up on that offer. Thank you.

Something else which would be a good support is to mentioned recipe books which have a high proportion of low carb recipes or ones which are easily adapted.

I've used 4 recipes from the original Hairy Bikers Lose Weight one. They are very tasty. We're having their stuffed peppers tonight., it's a favourite anyway.

There is a small amount of carbohydrates in the few bread crumbs they add, but not enough to worry about.

Meant to say I've used four of their recipes this week alone.

having read all the comments about thi and read up a bit I am very interested in this diet. I've been on SW for years now and my weight loss seems to have stagnated. I was wondering if this would work for me. Can someone sum it up for me in a few sentences please. What I have read says no grains and high good quality protein but can I still eat fruit and veg freely and is wine allowed? Thank you.

We moved to low GI carbs quite a while ago- but I am very tempted with the no or low carb diet. Just don't know how to even imagine living without (low GI) carbs- especially in winter- but as Summer approaches, it becomes more easily conceivable and tempting.

I was shocked though, that my suggestion to make béchamel (white sauce) with half skimmed milk and a dessert spoon of cornflour was just too much carb! really?

Yes, I am interested too.
I did WW for a couple of years but have always found weight loss easier if I avoided bread.

However, I do love cake some carbs which makes it difficult.

So much easier to start it now with the summer ahead, granjura.

We're having roast chicken today with brussels sprouts and braised fennel. The fennel is braised in a tablespoon of oil, white wine, lemon juice and water until it has all reduced - it's a Rose Elliott veggie recipe but I've left out the carrots. I'll then do a lime and tarragon sauce with creme fraiche.

Hopefully I won't miss the crunchy roast potatoes like I did last Sunday.

This site is American, but the basics are there Teetime.
www.dietdoctor.com/lchf
I used the threads on Mumnet a lot and read Zoe Harcombe.
Granjura, the flour would be fine in maintenance mode but not at the beginning when the diet is much stricter. Mumsnet do a bootcamp thread every so often. Your bechamel should be full-fat milk though.
We had minestrone for lunch, plus fruit. Dinner is lamb, slow cooked in a spicy crust in the oven, served with spinach.

Thank you mamie I'll look it up

Teetime I'm doing my own version if you're intersted.

Very simply:-
No carbs from bread, pasta, rice, potatoes
No sugars

Only one piece of fruit a day in the morning
Loads of vegetables, but go easy on starchy root ones such as carrots etc

Lots of water (I like a slice of lime in mine)

And one small glass of red wine.

Everything else is GO.

So I'm getting essential carbs from the (one) fruit and vegetables.

I've lost 4lbs the first week (as everyone is sick of hearing!) so it obviously works.

Sounds yummy Merlot

I'm doing sole in a creamed horseradish sauce tomorrow. I've also bough fennel so I'll be using your recipe to go with it. And using up some left over leeks that need eating up to.

Thanks

In the 1960s I was told about a low carb diet devised by Professor John Yudkin in his book 'This Slimming Business'. He also wrote a book about the dangers of sugar in another book, 'Pure, white and deadly'. Unfortunately the food industry got its claws into him and his reputation as a diet expert was rubbished. Fiona Phillips had a programme on TV last week making exactly the same points and most frighteningly showing the vast amounts of sugar in soft fizzy drinks - no wonder there are so many overweight children (and adults) with bad teeth. The good news for me is that 'This Slimming Business' is back in print in a revised edition and I have ordered it - who knows what happened to my original book!

It seems that no matter what fad diets come and go, the low carb one will keep coming back.

When my mother wanted to lose a bit of weight - she was always slim - she gave up bread and potatoes, ate Ryvita at breakfast instead of toast and drank PLJ. That was it.....simples.

I saw the programme about sugar as well and agree about how scary were the amounts of sugar in processed foods and fizzy drinks. The Atkins diet was rubbished in its day but then the bread/pasta/rice industry had to fight back somehow I suppose.

The best bit about a very low carb/high fat diet is that the food is LOVELY

I know I am being a bit dim- but can anyone explain, in simple terms for a simpleton- why HIGH FAT is good: I totally get the no carb and no sugar- but why does it have to be compensated by high fat in extreme amounts? Surely one can cut carbs and sugar, and have some sensible fat, but surely loads and loads of eggs, butter, full-fat cream, etc (and have always believed that a little butter or olive oil is better than substitutes- I know too many women with osteoporosis who have cute ALL fats from their diet forever...) - eg, in an extreme manner, the more the better... can't be good for you? Don't get it (sorry).

I put this link on the other thread but will repeat it here GJ.
www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/03/saturated-fat-chd-in-europe/
Basically the data here shows that the higher the level of saturated fat in the diet the lower the number of deaths from CHD. The science is explained at the bottom of the article. I don't want to derail this thread which is meant to be a support thread, but before we started the diet I spent a long time reading around the subject. You really have to do that to understand how it works. As I understand it the premise is that saturated fat in the diet does not turn into fat in the body and helps control insulin better. I am not a scientist though!
We haven't gone mad on fat but have eaten butter, cheese etc whenever we want. We have both seen a huge fall in cholesterol.