It’s been one of those boring food weeks. Mainly because I haven’t been grocery shopping and simply ate whatever happened to be easily available.
It got me thinking about “Low Carb Cooking For One”. It can be boring, but at least it’s easy. I’m home alone for most meals since I work from home and my daughter is in school all day.
I find it easiest to snack throughout the day. Here’s a list of Low Carb Snacks I usually keep around the house. Things like almonds & string cheese, Quest Bars, turkey & cheese roll-ups, etc.
When I do cook, I often cook plenty. It’s not easy to just do “low carb cooking for one” and create an entire balanced meal. I shouldn’t say it’s not easy. More that it’s a pain to mess up the entire kitchen just to feed one person. So I cook plenty, and then have mix & match leftovers to put together easy meals for a couple days.
This includes things like deviled eggs, boiled eggs, tuna salad and other things I know I’ll eat on through the week. It just makes more sense to make plenty and not mess up the whole kitchen every time you want a good meal. Having things like this on hand also helps you stay on track. There’s nothing worse than being hungry, or having a craving, and nothing being easily available. Those are the moments we’re most likely to give in and snack on something we shouldn’t. 😉
In this picture, I had leftover broccoli & cheese (and I added Ricotta Cheese as well). I just fried up some Lil Smokies (smoked sausages) and heated up the broccoli – and called it lunch.
I also make up a full batch of low carb cookies or one of my low carb bread recipes. The dough keeps very well in the refrigerator, so I can just make up a few fresh whenever I want some.
I usually make the base recipe, and then add what I want to it when I’m ready to cook – so one batch of low carb bread makes Spinach Parmesan Bread, plain bread or Ham & Cheese “biscuits”.
A combination of leftovers and convenience foods is ideal for a single person on a low carb diet. If you have a family to cook for, just cook more of the things *you* can eat so you have leftovers to work with. Add in convenience foods like bagged salads, pre-cooked meats (ham, etc), steam-in-the-bag veggies, etc and you can put together a balanced meal fairly quick…
One of my absolute favorite snacks is bacon. I think I like that better than my wife’s low-carb chocolate mocha cheesecake (although it’s a close race). We often cook up a large batch to snack on throughout the week. Somebody said “bacon is meat candy,” with which I thoroughly agree — unless you keep it in the freezer; then it’s meat ice-cream! YUM!
Um, do you have your wife’s recipe for that low carb chocolate mocha cheesecake?! π Sounds delicious!
I’ll get her to send it to me, and I’ll post it here if you like. It’s VERY rich and VERY calorie-dense, so we limit it to a small serving each day for both of us, and the whole thing lasts us about 2 weeks. It’s good enough that it is an act of will to only eat a small portion each day. It’s also not super-low-carb, so it might be a problem for somebody who wants to stay close to “induction” levels. She only makes up the recipe about once a year, usually for my birthday.
Sounds fabulous! I look forward to the recipe π
My wife sent me a PDF of the recipe, which I don’t know how to post here. I also found some typos in it, so I will get her to revise it for publication — I think I will post it on my blog (or get her to post it on hers) and send you a link when it’s up. She is on jury duty today, so that probably won’t happen until sometime tomorrow. A teaser, though: It doesn’t have any sugar alcohols (unless you add some in the unspecified type of artificial sweetener), so the 9g/serving carb count is for real. Better yet, 3g of that is fiber, so the net carb count is only 6g. But the recipe makes 16 servings — and I have to restrain myself to keep from eating 6 or 7 “servings” at one sitting.
I look forward to checking out the recipe once it’s online π Thanks!
Sorry for the delay, but the jury duty ended up taking more than just the normal one day, and my wife has been covered over with catching up at work. I got her to post it this evening on GuestDietBlog.
There IS something to be said for “boring” food (she says after she posts the Decadent Cheesecake recipe). There’s an interesting “food reward” theory going around these days that says that people actually do better if they don’t get so much reward out of their food.
Be that as it may, holiday season is coming up, and people are going to enjoy special recipes. They’d just as well be low carb, though, to avoid ruining their weight loss efforts through the end of the year!
You make a great point, Georgene. I’m an “emotional eater” and enjoy my food WAY too much (lol). Which is, of course, the reason a low carb diet works so well for me – given I don’t have to watch portions etc. I have actually been giving that a lot of thought this week, and may post more on it soon…
Hi, Terry! It’s been a while, but I have added part 3 of my Low-Carb Journey to http://guestdietblog.com/2011/10/my-low-carb-journey-part-iii/
When Georgene took a look at your blog, she was very impressed with the layout and appearance, which she found very attractive. She asked me to ask you if you did the layout yourself, or if you hired it done (and if the latter, if you would refer us to your designer). We have updated the look of our blog with a new header, and while it is a big improvement, it’s still not as good-looking as yours.
Hey Howard,
I started with a free travel theme, and just recently had it personalized with the header & my own photos. I hired Melissa Evans and her contact info is here: http://www.zenwebstudios.com/contact She’s great!
I’m off to read your post, thanks for the link!