Support and ideas for those on low-carb diet

Another lower carb we use a lot is chickpeas. The chickpea fritters are the first recipe posted in this thread, I make chickpea biscuits to eat with cheese and have made stillhere's farinata or chickpea bread. All delicious.
Home grown veg not important, just that it tends to guide what we eat a bit.

We don't have any home grown veg. That's a useful point about avoiding veg that grow below ground, thanks.

I really love omlettes, with a little cheese and herbs, (plus fried potato in the past). Will try the mixed veg idea.

We have loads of cooking apples, never thought of mashing it with other veg.

I think quorn is ok as low carb, so can make curries etc with it.

I love falafel, not sure if the ready bought ones are OK. Need to do a lot of homework and buy new ingredients for this way of life.

Cross-post! Like stillhere we have a big veg garden so all sorts of veg get eaten. Yesterday's Jerusalem artichoke soup was delicious but afterwards.......

Lentils are not great for low-carbing, especially not if you are in a strict phase of an LCHF diet. Vegetables that grow above the ground are best. There are lots of lists of carb values in food on the internet. I can see that it is difficult as a vegetarian to find protein sources beyond egg, fish and nuts though.

Oh yes, for me the aim is to avoid using just potato or flour and to incorporate as many different veg as possible, to get maximum nutrition but avoiding very dense carbs. So at first parsnips and carrots also were avoided, but when you grow your own veg, and it's winter, that is harder to avoid.

I have found far more ways to use apples though, we do have potato mash, but it's likely to be half apple, or half butternut squash, celeriac, kohl rabi or some other veg, even chunks roasted in with roasted mixed veg. We never have just roasted potatoes anymore, it will be chunks of carrot, onion, leek, squash, tomato, pepper etc. After a while it becomes habit.

Diced mixed veg with just a little potato is also nice. Fry it all until cooked, add spicy seasoning and herbs and break eggs into it. A variation of huevos rancheros, so cheap and easy but tastes wonderful with a little grated cheese on top. Potatoes become just another veg rather than the main item on the plate.

Thanks. I presume I must avoid potato which I usually use as it thickens well. But could use celery, carrot, kale etc?

Oh yes, loads of lentil soups eaten here. Lots of people strain it, I think you should keep it all and whizz it. Yes, just fry an onion and veg (all veg soups need onion or leek and garlic in my opinion), then add lentils and veg stock or water, and boil for a few minutes, simmer for maybe 25, then blitz. Soups that are too watery can be simmered for longer to reduce them, water added if too thick.

Hope you don't mind me joining in. I'm interested in your way of eating too.

I am veggie also like Wilma (no fish) and have tried low carb in past. It did work, I lost weight well, but I couldn't keep on with it long term. I was eating cream cheese a lot and other high fat items.

I too am not a cook, I am overweight because I eat rubbish food.I need to lose weight for my health.

I do love home made soups, so was thinking of which soups that would be filling and low carb to make. Could I just do lentil and veg? Thanks for any ideas.

Just your mention of butter makes me realise how much I have changed my eating habits over the years, Wilma. I used to eat it half an inch thick on Weetabix when I was little, the same with home-made bread and honey. Now I rarely bother, except with jam. I love avocado and lemon juice sandwiches, but never bother with the butter. I use olive oil for dressings and frying, unless it's deep frying, which is very rare.

Vegetable fritters - which is what we are having tonight. Coarsely grate any old veg that grates well, chop finely those which don't. If it makes a lot of liquid you can get away with just adding a little flour until it makes a stiffish batter. If it is very dry you can add an egg. Or you can drain off wet veg and add an egg anyway. Add any seasonings you like, and fry. They only take a minute or two on either side, a heaped dsstsp at a time, flattened down.

Tonight our fritters will be courgette, butternut squash and a little onion. They will be served with chicken breasts and this sauce

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sweet_chilli_sauce_65562

No just ordinary local Normandy butter (the cows are grazing outside as I write). I leave a lump out in the butter dish though. I don't trust the spreadable stuff, it must have something added.

Do you buy the spreadable version of butter?

You are welcome! Actually I quite enjoyed doing the menu plan before I got up.
With plain avocado I do lemon juice, salt and pepper. In a salad I do oil and balsamic vinegar. Love them!

Mamie that is so kind of you, thank you. All my life I've been sure I wouldn't like avocado, so I'm buying one just to taste it LOL!

Thanks for explaining Wilma that all sounds difficult for you.
Perhaps the most helpful thing we can do is to post the day's menus with ideas for veggie variations where possible?
So for us today...
Breakfast: Muesli (we make our own with more nuts than fruit) with full-fat plain yoghurt.
Lunch: Avocado with tuna mashed in mayo and hard-boiled egg (cream cheese instead of tuna?) Fruit.
Dinner: Moussaka. We bake the aubergine slices first in a a generous splosh of olive oil in the oven, then line the dish. We make a lamb ragu but you could make a rich tomato sauce with onion, celery and carrot. Add a teaspoon each of cumin, oregano and cinnamon. Add the ragu to the dish then cover with a thin layer of mozarella and feta. Bake at about 175°C for half an hour.
We are not as strictly low carb as when we were losing weight, hence the muesli. I think red berries would be the alternative.

Honestly, I don't have a typical day when it comes to food, partly because of health issues. I could list the health problems I have, but the big ones are MS diagnosed in March after being diagnosed with a rare neurogical condition called Transverse Myelitis and long term Depression. The recent diagnosis has been the driver to make our lives healthier and after watching the documentary about how the food industry made us fat (heard about that on here), it spurred us on even more.

During the week our basics are bread, eggs, baking potatoes, salad vegetables. cheese and my favourite - baked beans. The rest of our diet is rubbish food that we know is unhealthy, but love eating. I am being honest here to give you an idea of how much I want to turn around our eating habits. After a lifetime of dieting, I want to start cooking balanced meals and understand the principles behind the lchf approach. Having read several pages at the beginning of this thread, I know you changed the title so lchf was removed, but I can still see how I can get support here.

I have got a well stocked store cupboard and have copied some of the recipes for ideas.

I have a question already about the recipe for Braised Fennel. The instructions say reduce to a syrupy golden glaze. Are the carrots and fennel still solid (but soft) and everything thing else makes the blaze, or do they go mushy and become part of the syrupy golden glaze?

I think the problem historically in France was that they were not allowed to kill game which was reserved for the aristocracy. This meant that the crops got eaten before they could be harvested. It is also why hunting is enshrined in the rights of man (and I do mean man) and our weekends are disturbed by constant gunfire while we cower inside because they are mostly rotten shots.
Graham Robb's book "The Discovery of France" is fascinating on this.
Back on topic, dinner was delicious and ended with personally imported stilton.

Fascinating. I would have liked to see 'The Americas' split up, though. I find it surprising that we were able to feed ourselves better than the French back when, I would have thought they had slightly better weather in their favour.

On calorie count v selecting food types for dieting. This webpage has estimated number of calories in the diet increasing historically from 1700 to 2010 (the second graph down) You can select the countries shown.
ourworldindata.org/data/food-agriculture/food-per-person/

There are other charts on the page, showing global figures.

I feel like a spy from 'Allo, 'allo. Listen carefully, I weel say theece only warnce.

I am ex-janerowena, on the run from a spying relative.

Anyway - yes, we do eat an awful lot of veg and very little meat. However, I think you would have to tell me what you need to use and I would then come up with a recipe, because I rarely follow other recipes, I usually make up my own. Also, being coeliac, I tend to use less flour, purely because I have got out of the habit.

This week, mixed roasted veg, liberally doused in olive oil, spices and herbs will figure largely, because I have so many to use up before we get hit by frosts. We still have squashes, (butternut, pattypan and spaghetti) large and small tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, leeks, mangetouts, beans, rocket, lettuce, purple sprouting broccoli, a type of perennial cauli a bit like PSB, spinach and rocket. Plus of course all the apples and raspberries, and thanks to my buying a really late variety, for DBH's birthday dessert we were able to have strawberries!

So tonight I think we shall have roasted veg, and then a spinach nest mixed with whatever cheese I think needs using up most, and a poached egg popped in it.

Of all the crops that puzzled me most this year, it was pumpkins. They disappeared, so I thought, until one of the spaghetti squashes got botrytis so I cleared it away. Underneath it was a long string of teeny baby dark orange pumpkins, that had been meant to be football-sized.

You can roast immature unripe squashes, they just don't have as much flavour and need more seasoning/sauce/whatever.

Wilma as you're vegetarian and don't like to cook, I understand how hard you must find it to lose weight!

My sister is a strict vegetarian so my meat/fish-heavy recipes are usually of no use to her.

Much British vegetarian food is pretty tasteless as it doesn't have the spices and herbs to pep it up, so a veggie who doesn't like to cook is likely to rely on pasta, bread, ready-meals etc.

Out of interest, what's a typical day for for, foodwise?

Don't worry, I have been singing "Maybe Baby" ever since!
I think JaneRowena does a lot of veggie stuff, she may be able to help.

Mamie I have just noticed the spell checker changed your name to Maybe - sorry about that - I hate getting names wrong - teach me not to preview my post.

I already have the dietdoctor books and a couple of others, so I will have plenty to refer to for help. I am vegetarian and the dietdoctor website had a vegetarian week in February, but I wasn't keen on most of the recipes. Hopefully this thread will give me some ideas.

Welcome everyone!

It's only high-falutin' if you have an empty storecupboard - once you have some spices, herbs, condiments, etc to jazz-up the most basic of foods you're off.

Breakfast: big portion of de-frosted and drained spinach sauteed in a spray of olive oil, two eggs dropped in, few chopped anchovies on top, lid on until eggs set - if out of anchovies a dash of Lea & Perrins. Coffee

Lunch: will be leftovers from the lamb dish that was slow-cooked on Sunday (see slow cooker thread)

Supper: Defrosted mackerel fillet, tarted-up with mustard and things and served with roasted butternut squash (frozen from Waitrose). Wine

All really easy and filling, nothing fancy.

All welcome! I do think some of the recipes on the thread are a bit high-falutin' and I apologise for that, but you have to get a bit creative when you have a huge glut of butternut squash and courgettes in the garden.

Breakfast was scrambled egg and bacon. Lunch is Jerusalem artichoke soup, an apple and a pear. Tonight we are having chilli con carne (which will include a small quantity of red kidney beans so not very low-carb) served with mashed avocado, full-fat yoghurt, grated cheese and a glass of red wine.

Thank you Maybe. I will read through this thread and no doubt have questions later.