Thought we needed a shiny new thread for the New Year.
The thread is intended to support people who are already on the diet or want to start losing weight / gaining health benefits by low-carbing.
Here is a simple explanation of this way of eating and how it works.
www.dietdoctor.com/lchf
You do not have to count calories, weigh anything, exercise furiously or feel hungry.
You do have to cut out sugar and sugar-substitutes and avoid starchy foods like potatoes, bread, rice and pasta.
You need to eat lots of vegetables (especially those grown above ground) and protein which can be cheese, eggs, meat, fish etc. You can eat olive oil, butter and other natural fats. You can eat limited amounts of fruit, dark chocolate and some alcoholic drinks in moderation.
You need to avoid anything labelled low-fat and most processed food and drink.
Here is a link to the Mumsnet low-carb bootcamp thread, for those who want to lose weight more quickly than the diet adopted by most people on the existing Gransnet thread.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/low_carb_bootcamp
Here is a link to the original Gransnet thread - though there is absolutely no need to plough through it before you start. 
www.gransnet.com/forums/dieting_and_exercise/1214778-Support-and-ideas-for-those-on-low-carb-diet
We aim to help each other by offering ideas, recipes and support. Welcome aboard!
Funnily enough we have been driving home from Calais in the car today and I had to "lose" one piece of bread from each sandwich to keep the carbs down (just can't eat then anymore) but it was easier said than done as a passenger at 130kph.
How difficult! Cocktail sausages? Cheese? You might just have to eat what you can and explain that it is a medically required diet.
Not very helpful I am afraid, it is a tricky one.
Sounds delicious BBbevan.
We are having slow cooked belly pork with mixed roast veg (no spuds); stilton and Yorkshire blue to follow.
Off back home to Camembert land tomorrow.
seacliff I only tried the Nigel Slater courgette recipe and they turned into a wet sludge - my fault not his!
Lovely breakfast this morning. Berries with a blob of Greek yogurt and some flax seed. Then a long walk up Ivinghoe Beacon. Back to the no-carbs plough mans lunch. Salmon, spinach, asparagus and green lentils for dinner tonight. I have lost 5lb and am really enjoying both the food and the challenge.Would recommend to anyone
I don't think you will regret the purchase of the book, Pippa.
A favourite with the GCs (but not low carb!) to make with the spiralizer is Tornado Potatoes (not in the book), cooked in the microwave. I used to cut using the included metal skewer and the blade with no holes, then transfer to a wooden one. I now have wooden ones narrow enough to use in the machine.
Pippa, if you are interested in a recipe book, this is a glorious one with over 450 photos. I think Lakeland sells it, but I found mine cheaper on another site, sorry can't remember which. Not cheap but worth every penny. I recently ordered 3 low carb cook books and 2 had no photos at all and one contained recipes completely at random with no alphabetical index!
I hope you enjoy your Spiralizer, I love mine.
Pippa if you're not already on Pinterest, then I recommend you join. You can search for information about anything on there and the results are in picture form. You click on the picture to get some information, then if you want to continue you click to go to the website. For recipes the websites will usually be blogs or food websites with more than one recipe you might be interested in.
You can save results in categories you create for yourself (called boards, as in pinboards), so you can find things again.
Word of warning, if you're not already on Pinterest, it is VERY addictive. 
Thanks Mamie I'm really fussy about texture, so I doubt if I will try it. I'm happy enough with cauliflower couscous as rice or mash. Don't know what we'd do without cauliflower, although Tesco does a mixed vegetable couscous that we like too.
Recently we've had Cauliflower Tots and Broccoli Tots as a side. It's a low carb take on Tater Tots which are very popular in the US. The results depend on your mixture, but they're like potato croquettes. For the life of me I can't find the recipe I used, but it was from Pinterest. Some recipes use a lot of breadcrumbs, so you need to find one that doesn't and if I find the one I used, I'll post it here. TBH, I doubt we'll have the broccoli version again because it was a real pain getting the blender clean afterwards. Those tiny green dots got everywhere!
Funny, I'd just been Googling Konnyaku, which is another name for Konjak. It's got lots of other names too, depending on the country and use. I've heard of Shirataki noodles and that's another name.
I spotted it in a Groupon email at the weekend in an offer to buy multi packs from the Better than range. I'd never heard of it before and it was the nutritional value that made me interested because basically it doesn't have any.
It's been around for hundreds of years in Japan and in parts of China and takes on the flavour of the other ingredients in your recipe. The flour used is starch resistant and not absorbed in the same way as regular carbs. The jelly is used as an alternative to gelatin by vegans. It's sold in water in plastic bags for many purposes, including as a diet product. It looks like the company that makes the Better than range has simply made it look like pasta, rice and noodles, so it can be sold in the West as a healthy product for weight loss.
Looking on Amazon and checking on the Diabetes UK forum, there's three brands that are popular in the UK - Better than, Eat Water Slim and Bare Naked (the most popular). Some people don't like the texture and others say they have a funny taste, although that seems to be down to not rinsing the product well enough when you take it out of the packet. The big downside is the price - it's expensive, which is presumably why it was in my Groupon offers.
The Amazon price does vary quite a bit and you do get a lot in one packet, so I might order one the next time I buy something from Amazon as a way of reaching the free P&P amount. If anyone else tries them, do let us know. Apparently it's popular with Weight Watchers followers, so if you know anyone doing WW, please ask them about it. It could make life for us veggies easier.
I saw that there had been a lot of snow, my neighbours have gone walking in the Jura with all the other retired farmers from round here.
We have been watching Montelbano again and I think that apart from the pasta and Adelina's arancini, quite a bit is low-carb (well the fish anyway).
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