Tag: low carb dinners

Sausage and Onion Frittata

Emma2 Comments

Image result for sausagesHopefully, wherever you are in the world, you get to eat outside regularly. As you may know, the authors of this blog live in Scotland where outdoor eating isn’t possible for most of the year.

We’ve just enjoyed an exceptionally beautiful May in the West of Scotland, though, and it did present opportunities for al fresco dining. Frittatas are delicious anyway, but when you eat them outside, they taste that little bit better.

The frittata is a friend to the low-carb diet. Try this one with some green salad leaves.

Sausage and Onion Frittata

  • Servings: 2-3
  • Difficulty: easy
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  • 4 good-quality pork sausages
  • 2 small onions, finely sliced
  • 100g mushrooms, sliced
  • 4 large, free-range eggs
  • 1tbsp oil or butter
  • 75g strong cheddar cheese, grated
  • 2tsp wholegrain mustard
  • A few sage leaves, chopped
  • Salt and black pepper

Grill the sausages according to the packet instructions until cook through. Chop into chunks.

Heat the oil or butter in a large pan and fry the onions and mushrooms until cooked. This takes about five minutes. Add the sausage chunks and cook for another 30 seconds or so.

Mix the eggs with the cheese, mustard and sage leaves. Add to the pan and tip to coat everything evenly. Lift the edges of the frittata with a spatula to allow the uncooked egg mixture to run underneath. If necessary, you can finish off the frittata under a grill set to medium-high.

Serve with a dressed green salad or some broccoli with butter. Count 10g of net carbs for two servings and 7g for three.

A Day of Low Carbohydrate Eating

Emma2 Comments

One person’s low-carbohydrate diet will look very different to another’s. When you eat low-carb, meals start to lose the distinction higher carbohydrate meals have.

At some point in the 20th Century, marketers decided that some foods were breakfast foods and some should be defined as lunch. Therefore, breakfasts should be cereal and/or toast, and at mid-day you should eat sandwiches, or bread and soup for example. That means you need ready-made products – boxes of corn flakes, or packets of pre-prepared slices of bread filled with cheese, ham and various other choices.

A low carb diet doesn’t usually include cereals and sandwiches, so anything can be eaten for breakfast or lunch. Leftovers from last night’s dinner, eggs and bacon for lunch – why limit yourself to a time of day food marketers have decided to earmark for certain foods?

To this end, I thought I’d document a day of low-carb eating. See what you think.

Breakfast

low carb breakfastsCream cheese and cucumber slices. We’ve been growing cucumbers this year – successfully too. I sliced some up and had them with some Asda soft cheese. It looks a bit like ice-cream doesn’t it?

Lunch

diabetes dietPrawns in home-made pesto, with baby sweet corn. I’ve got a couple of basil plants so I stripped the leaves from most of one, and blended them with 150ml extra virgin olive oil, one clove of garlic, salt, 40g sunflower seeds and 40g grated Parmesan. I use sunflower seeds rather than the traditional pine nuts as sunflower seeds are much cheaper.

This quantity will make you enough pesto to last a week. Store it in the fridge and use as a salad dressing, mixed with roast aubergines, peppers and courgettes, or spread on top of roast chicken.

Dinner

low carb saladsAvocado and chorizo salad. Recipe here.

I also ate an apple and cheese. The carbohydrate count for the whole day was roughly 50g.

 

 

 

 

What do you eat? What’s your favourite meal of the day – or your best meal? Let us know in the comments.

 

Disclaimer: my meal choices are not necessarily recommendations – it’s just what I ate one particular day.

Taco Salad – Low-Carb Dinners

Emma2 Comments

‘Tis the season… for summer salads! Take some veggies, plenty of spice and good quality minced beef and what do you get? A Taco salad. The whole Taco thing is more popular in the US than over here, but if you take the meat and spices bit alone you’ve got a good low-carb dinner recipe.

I adapted this recipe from the book AltShift (an alternate low-carb/higher carb diet).

Taco Salad

  • Servings: 4
  • Difficulty: easy
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  • 500g minced beef
  • 1pkt crunchy salad leaves mix (roughly 150g)
  • ½ onion, finely chopped
  • 1 fresh chilli, chopped (leave the seeds in if you like it hotter)
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 1tsp cumin seeds, ground in a pestle and mortar
  • 1tbsp smoked paprika
  • 75g grated mature cheddar
  • 2 spring onions, chopped
  • ½ courgette, diced

Dressing:

  • 4tbsp sour cream
  • ½ tsp onion granules
  • ½ tsp garlic powder
  • Salt and pepper
  • ½ tsp paprika

 

Fry the beef and onion in a large saucepan or frying pan, stirring regularly to break up the clumps, until it is evenly browned. Add the cumin, pepper, salt, paprika and chilli and cook for five minutes more. The excess liquid should have evaporated and the mince should be evenly coated with the spices. Leave to cool to room temperature.

In a large bowl, empty out the packet of salad leaves and add the chopped spring onion and diced courgette. Mix together the sour cream, onion granules, garlic powder, salt and pepper and paprika. Mix the dressing and cheese in with the meat and tip the mince into the bowl. Mix well to combine everything and serve.

Serves 4. Allow about 5-8g of carbs per portion. You can use turkey mince, which will make the recipe cheaper too.