A new low-carb support thread for 2016

granjura without effort and careful seasoning vegetarian meals can be dull and tasteless, particularly if they involve pulses.

seacliff has said that she doesn't enjoy cooking and wants quick meals.

Also, she admits to needing to lose a lot of weight which means she has a big appetite so will hardly be satisfied with, say, a tofu stir-fry or fritatta.

I think a low-carb diet for a vegetarian is hard work. What recipes did you have mind?

I could cook some casseroles etc on my days off, and possibly freeze some. Just when I get home from work late and tired and want something easy and quick.

I'll read back through the older posts and see if she's added any ideas, thanks.

I do love bakes like cauliflower cheese. I suppose I could add as many above ground veg as possible, plus a few chopped nuts and some cheese sauce? Sounds quite nice, is that allowed?

Seacliff that would work nicely.

When you say you don't like cooking what exactly do you mean? If you're talking about making a cheese sauce that's cooking, in my book. Perhaps if you let us know exactly what bits of cooking you are good at or enjoy then we can help a bit?

I'm trying to say there's 'cooking' and 'cooking' - if that makes sense

We do a lot of veg curries which we cook and freeze using the vegetable surplus from the garden. As an accompaniment I usually chop aubergines and stir them in dry turmeric and cayenne and then roast in the oven in a bit of olive oil. Usually serve plain yoghurt with it too. The tagines (no prob with using an ordinary casserole) involve veg like courgettes, carrots, aubergines, tomatoes etc, spices like raz-al-hanout, cumin, cinnamon and so on, some dried fruit and shhhh a teaspoon of honey.
I make moussaka which could easily be done with a rich tomato sauce without the meat and mushroom lasagne using leeks instead of pasta. As a substitute for béchamel I use mozzarella and cream or cream cheese.

You can make white sauce with just 1 spoon of cornflour- herbs, salt and pepper, for things like 'gratins', lasagna, etc. I know cornflour is not 'allowed' on low carb- but .... We have been doing 'gratins' (chicory, and fennel are aour favourites) just with grated best quality aged Comté or Gruyères for real taste, without the sauce- as we are in phase one. I'm sure it would be ok in phase 2. Could try to do with chickpea flour perhaps?

I did lasagne the other day with the mozzarella and creme fraiche mix and it was yummy! I use mozzarella and feta for moussaka. I tried boursin over chicory and ham and it was ok-ish.
Tonight we are having roast duck de-glazed with limoncello, cauliflower mash and whatever OH decides to do with the kale he has just picked. We did a chicken waldorf for lunch, had forgotten how nice it is.

It's such a very small amount of cornflour, and this is a 'low carb' as opposed to a 'no carb' I really wouldn't worry. Or you could just use cream fraiche and cheese for the sauce, it's not too bad.

seacliff I wrote a long post to you, but it disappeared before I could post it , so I will try again in the morning.

Veggie lunches and breakfasts are really easy. Today I just had lovely crisp celery sticks filled with cream cheese.

We do eat a lot of pulses, but they do take a long time to cook and so I soak, cook and freeze them in bulk - that way I can make quick snacks like houmous, or chickpea fritters in bulk, and then freeze them again. I like spinach and lentil fritters, we often have those for lunch with salad. Wrapped in a large lettuce leaf instead of a wrap, with greek yoghourt and salsa, they are lovely.

Yesterday we had turkey, tomato and butternut squash casserole, with pinto beans. It made a lovely soup for today.

A big favourite with us is black bean chilli. I can't ever say that I find cooking with veg a quick process, but I make huge quantities of ratatouille all summer long and freeze it all, so that all I have to do is defrost some, add a load of black beans and some chilli. The males have rice with it, I don't bother. I think preparing in advance when you do have some time is key, when you aren't living on much meat. We only have meat a couple of times a week, I would be happy without it but my family love it. I mostly live on quinoa with chopped roasted mixed veg for lunch, or a thick vegetable soup.

I think the strangest thing is, I am still making things like biscuits and cakes for my family, but have very little desire to try them myself. I even make them deliberately with non-GF flour now, so that I can't be tempted. I made rye rolls to go with the soup for them today, but had none. I think I would have felt seriously deprived a year ago!

seacliff I eat eggs and dairy, so I'm a lacto-ovo veggie (but I don't like peppers or mushrooms! ). I'm very much the same in that I don't really 'cook' and have always been like that even before I turned veggie in 2000. I was diagnosed with MS last year and have a serious sugar addiction, so I need to clean up my act health wise. Also my DH is approaching the age when my FiL was diagnosed as insulin dependent diabetic, so we have good reason to make the lchf approach work. Previously I was a Slimming World dieter and although this works well for us, I know it feeds my sugar habit.

But you do have to do some cooking if you want to eat any healthy diet and that's the same with the lchf diet. I do try to keep it to about 15-20 minutes though and do what I can to make that happen. So I use frozen vegetables including frozen onions (diced) and don't have a problem with buying fresh vegetables already prepared from the supermarket (^Cooking Vegetarian The Lazy Way^ by Barbara Grunes was the first veggie book I bought! I didn't find Rose Elliot that good tbh ).

A quick meal for me is a 3 egg omelette. I usually add cheese like feta or mature cheddar and some veg like onions and peas. I do it in a frying pan with olive oil.

See my post the other day for Lidl's rolls if you want some bread.

My other find is cauliflower couscous. This is cauliflower broken down into couscous size pieces and it can replace rice or mashed potato. It doesn't taste like cauliflower when you add it to a recipe. It's good on it's own as well as added to something like a stir fry. It's also good as a pizza base and there's loads of recipes for this online. You cook prepare the base first in two quick stages by cooking it and then flattening it out and baking it. I've prepared the base once in advance and that worked well. Once you've got your base you top it like any pizza. Find a recipe online to check out the exact method for preparing the base. You can also use it as a pie crust, but I've not done that yet although I'm going to try it with a quiche.

I do a lot of crustless quiches. Quick and easy to prepare. We do rely on eggs and cheese most of the time, so it is a challenge making that interesting. Celery and soft cheese doesn't appeal to me because I don't like celery - sorry Anya !

Until recently I'd never cooked a stir fry in my life. I did try to manage with a frying pan, but it was difficult to cook all the ingredients evenly, so before Christmas I decided to buy a wok. Not used it yet!

There's loads of recipes online in blogs and on pinterest, so Google is your friend, but watch out because a lot of Americans rely on sweeteners, which is not the lchf way. I've enjoyed finding recipes that work for us, but we're just starting again after the holidays tbh, this time with a bit more knowledge.

The key think to remember is it's low carb, not no carb and healthy fat, not high fat. It's not easy, but I think it will be worthwhile for us in the end.

Hope this helps. Most other GNs cook 'proper' veggie meals and kindly post their recipes for us.

Morning all. Have been quiet for a bit as we have been driving down to the south of Spain for a three week holiday. We stayed one night in an apartment hotel so we could eat our own food from home, bought salads and cold chicken from supermarkets and also brought snacks of mini-cheeses to keep us going on the road (1000+ miles). Managed to arrive with no weight gain and (more importantly) no IBS for OH.
Now settling down to enjoy lots of lovely fresh fish, Spanish cheese, veg and fruit (and wine).
How is everyone else doing?
I think a new bootcamp has just started on Mumsnet if anyone is interested.

This is a great thread. I have a fatty liver caused by too much fat around my middle, so I'm dieting. The low carb diet really suits me. I've lost one and a half stone so far. I want to lose the same again. Christmas was a bit of a set back. It would be rude not to eat all those lovely chocolates I was given. Anyway, onwards and forwards.

You will have to ask for only very dark chocolate next year Sadiesnan.
I find self-catering in Spain pretty good for low-carb, apart from not overdoing the dates and dried figs, which is always a temptation.

The trouble is I don't like dark chocolate. Still, Christmas is only once a year, so not too much harm done.

I have discovered that I am also lactose-intolerant - that was a big blow. Just before Xmas, too, at a dinner party with clotted cream. Now I know what has been causing my cough all year, though. So now, I am trying to follow a low carb, GF and lactose-free diet and sometimes it does my head in! Also I wrecked my stomach using Diclofenac for ten years, so red wine and dark chocolate cause me problems, so now chocolate is right out for me as I could only manage the cheap white stuff before. And wine is out unless it hasn't been filtered through whey protein instead of egg white - it's much cheaper using that method apparently.

Someone up there is definitely forcing me to lose weight whether I like it or not. Cheese is such a handy form of protein on a low-carb diet. I shall take lactase tablets, but only for meals out, I do feel perhaps I should be trying to cut down on my greek yoghourt and brie consumption!

Chicken stirfry tonight, but tomorrow we will be having a beef, mushroom and lentil curry on cauliflower rice.

Thanks everyone for your help with veggie ideas, and Wilma sorry for delay in replying, I haven't had my diet head on yet this year, so just read this. I too just did a big reply and it disappeared!! agreed VERY annoying.

I love celery and cream cheese, assume full fat Philly. I love Cheddar cheese but presumably you can't eat too much, high in calories (altho I know you disregard them on this way of eating)

I could do a huge salad for lunch with grated cheese, hard boiled egg, not sure which salad dressing, understand balsamic vinegar is too sweet.Just oil and lemon with herbs?

I love omlettes.

Stillhere, the lentil & spinach fritters sound lovely, could you please give me your recipe, then I could make a batch and freeze some.

I'll miss my home made museli with nuts and seeds, I could have greek yoghurt with chopped nuts/seeds alto I don't like it much plain flavour. Prefer fruit with it.

I could do a quorn lasagne with leeks, and mozzarella and creme fraiche mix - that sounds nice.

I'm going to give this a try, because last time I remember, losing the urge for sweets and crisps, so wonderful. I just got fed up of eating the same old things after a while. I do know that any successful weigt loss means a permanant change of life/habits, I know I need to do this, just have to find the will power. Thanks again for all suggestions.

seacliff we eat loads of cheese. One of the joys of being on holiday in Spain is that we can get English stilton at the moment!
You can have berries with yoghurt, no problem. Once we had got past the strict weight loss bit, we started having our homemade muesli again.
stillhere that sounds tough to manage. Poor you.

Right - a low-carb pudding challenge.
We are in Spain and on Sunday we have some of DiL's family coming for lunch. We are doing a barbecue and salads, but I need some pudding ideas. I bought large dates and almond paste to stuff them with in the market today. I was also going to make a frozen chocolate mousse (semifreddo) but the holiday home has no whisk (there seems to be an electric one with no blades)....
I bought cream in Iceland and have loads of eggs. I can get good dark chocolate in Lidl too. Any creative ideas?

Creme brulee?

Buy a whisk?

Creme brulee is lovely but too much sugar (also a bit close to the universal Spanish creme caramel pudding).
I could buy a whisk and do it all by hand.....

Try the electric one in the holiday home. It might be a cunning bladeless version which would do the job...[hopeful emoticon]

Try using two forks as a whisk held "face-to-face" with the tines overlapping.