Category Archives: Healthy Life

Healthy Life

You Say Potato…

And I say Turnip. Or Kohlrabi. Or Daikon.

It’s not that I don’t love a potato, but I don’t like the high carbohydrates that come with it. I have always been a potato eater and love it prepared many ways, but if you’re trying to keep your carbs as low as I need to in order to not gain weight, then the potato has to be eaten sparingly or not at all.  I actually haven’t eaten a potato in over two years except for the boxty I tried in Portland last March (and gained 2 pounds from!) or the ¼ cup of boiled potatoes I may splurge for at the annual Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner this St. Patrick’s Day.  Mostly, I don’t miss them – mainly because I have found workable and delicious alternatives. The flavors are different from the potato and in some cases, more tasty.

The one place that I haven’t found a good replacement is for a baked potato. The potato has a unique texture when it’s baked and so far, nothing else I’ve tried has been a proper stand in for it. So, if anyone has found something that bakes up the same way, let me know.

 

Root Vegetables
Root Vegetables

Root vegetables, from top left: Turnip, Kohlrabi, Rutabaga (on top) and Daikon Radish

In the meantime, my go-to trio for most potato substitutions consists of turnips, kohlrabi and daikon radish. The turnip was in Europe long before the potato and doing the function of a potato in many dishes. It is wonderful in scalloped turnips, in stews, boiled and buttered, and many other ways that I am still discovering.  I have a hard time describing its flavor, but either you like it or you don’t. You do need to peel it unless you have a fresh from the garden turnip because I’ve found the skin a bit bitter. A member of the mustard family, they have a slight peppery taste, much like a daikon radish has. Larger, older turnips tend to be tougher and have more of that peppery taste, so they need to be cooked with other vegetables. One of my favorite recipes is turnips with green beans.

Kohlrabi is a recent discovery for me and one that I wish I had discovered sooner. It’s an odd looking light green vegetable with the stems coming out in several places at the top to support lots of lovely leaves that are also delicious in a salad, cooked like spinach or chard or added to soups, stews and casseroles. The root bulb actually grows above ground and should be picked when it’s about 2 to 3 inches in diameter. To me, it looks like a broccoli stalk in color and in texture. You peel the skin, which is like a thicker version of a broccoli stalk skin and the inside is a very pale green. It works very well in the same ways that the turnip does. By the way, all three of my go-to vegetables can be cut in planks and fried or roasted with seasonings and are wonderfully flavorful.

The daikon radish is a large root with a peppery flavor that isn’t too strong and is milder than a regular radish. Like other radishes, it’s great cut or shredded and added to salad. But you can also shred it and make hash browns. Or cut it up and add it to stews, soups and other potato dishes.

My favorite way to make a mash is to add equal parts of turnips, kohlrabi, daikon and cauliflower to the pot of boiling water and mash them together with butter and little but of heavy cream. Add seasonings and you have a great substitute for mashed potatoes. Add some flour and eggs to the leftovers and you have a mashed cake like a potato pancake.

Another overlooked vegetable, and one that I stubbornly refused to consider for years because I disliked it as a child, is the beet. It has a sweet, earthy flavor that is hard to describe. I tried cooking a couple of golden beets with green beans and ham the other night and it was delicious. So, I have added beets to the potato sub list. Beet greens are also tasty leaves that goes well with the kohlrabi leaf and can be used in the same way. I never thought I would be that crazy about leaves, but these are changing my mind.

Used a little more often as a potato substitute, cauliflower is also a great stand-in, not only for potatoes but for rice. You can put it in a food processor and chop it down to the size of rice, then cook it in rice dishes and it fills in very well.

How wonderful are these vegetables to a low carb lifestyle? They are awesome. Take a look at this chat I put together showing you some comparisons. I pulled the nutrition information from Spark People and/or Atkins or elsewhere on the internet, so I believe it is accurate. I used 1 cup diced as the quantity for each one.

 

table1

 

This list includes rutabaga, which is similar to a turnip but is a little sweeter. In many parts of Europe, including Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia and parts of England, it is called a turnip and is used for neeps and tatties (potatoes and turnips).The turnip mostly known in the US is the white globe with the purple top or a plain white globe. The rutabaga is also called a swede because it originated in Scandinavia. The two have different flavors but can be used the same way. The rutabaga is the highest in carbohydrates of the potato alternates that I’ve listed.

So, if you want to cut back on your carbs and calories, try using one of the root substitutes for your potato. Unless you want a baked one, that is and if I find a good substitute, I’ll let you know.

Healthy Life

Zero Effective Carbs Equals Zero Flavor

2 Comments

Yesterday, I went to my local health food store and purchased two loaves of Julian Bread’s zero net carb breads, their regular bread and the cinnamon bread. First, these were in small supply at this big store that carries health food products and the cinnamon bread was frozen. They sell so few units that it’s best to freeze the bread. The bread lists online at Julian Bread’s web site for $7.95 a loaf, pretty pricey for a small loaf of bread, but from this chain market, it was $9.99 a loaf. Way too pricey!

But I had hopes that the taste of the bread would make up for it. This was not to be. I toasted up one of slices in the toaster. It was very thin, but it held together well and didn’t fall apart when I removed it. Often low carb breads tend to crumble. These breads are gluten free also so that is a plus for it. I buttered it, split the piece and my roomie and I both tasted it. No flavor! I would say it tastes like cardboard, but I’ve never eaten cardboard. It just didn’t even have a taste of salt or anything else a bread should taste like. Worse, the butter flavor disappeared in it.

Today, I tried a piece of the cinnamon bread with peanut butter and strawberry jam on it. It brought nothing to the party. The only flavors that came through were the toppings. Not even the cinnamon is distinct enough. It’s not even like a cracker.

So, I would have to say that this is not worth the money to purchase. You can make a better tasting low carb bread from scratch that only has a couple of effective carbs in it or buy a low carb bread mix from New Hope Mills or Bob’s Red Mill or LC Foods. Even my low carb soda bread has more flavor with a taste that’s very close to the real thing.

If you want to make low carb breads, I can’t stress how easy they are to make even though you may have to special order a few products. I get mine from Netrition.com. It takes about a week and the shipping is $4.95, no matter how much you order, so order several at one time, They carry New Hope Mills, CarbQuick, Bob’s Red Mill, Dixie Diner and LC Foods products, so they’re a great place for one stop shopping and shipping.

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 11/16/2013 1:06 PM

Healthy Life

About the special products I use…

products-images

Since I use several low carb products, I wanted to talk a little bit about them.  First, I am not receiving any compensation from the makers of these products and they probably don’t know I have a blog or mention them, so I’m not trying to plug any particular product — just letting you know what I use and why.

As I’ve mentioned, my body isn’t a very efficient fat burner so the amount of net carbs I can eat daily and lose weight or maintain my weight is very low.  The minimum recommended on the Atkins diet for their induction phase is 20 net carbs a day.  That is just about the maximum I can go and still lose anything.  If I go up to about 23 net carbs, I am a maintenance weight.  If I go over that, then I begin to gain.  While this might sound like a problem, it really isn’t as bad as it sounds as there is always something you can eat with no carbs.

Liquid Sweeteners

But it does make me very aware of the net carbs in some products, like powdered Splenda, Equal and Stevia that may only have a little, but the carbs are in the filler that the actual sweetener is in.  By using a liquid sweetener, I can eliminate the carbs completely.  It may sound like worrying over nothing, but if I use four packets of sweetener a day, that’s almost 4 net carbs I can use elsewhere.  For instance, it can be a whole low carb dessert!

If you are baking with a powdered sweetener, one cup is about 24 carbs and that’s a lot extra in your food.  There are times where the powdered sweetener is needed for a texture, but you can cut some of it and use liquid for the remainder.

There are several manufactures who make liquid sucralose.  Just check it out on a search and you’ll see various brands.  Liquid sucralose is just the concentrated sucralose in a water suspension rather than the powder.  I use EZ-Sweet, which is readily available from Amazon.com, Netrition and other suppliers.  You might even find it in grocery and health food stores.

Flours

Since I love breads, flour is a big problem if your body doesn’t use carbohydrates well.  I am not even going to question how products such as CarbQuick, Atkins (no longer being produced) and Bob’s Red Mill flours reduce the carbs in the flour they produce.  Some are a mix of various flours that may not include any wheat flour while some have managed to block some of the carbs in the product so that it isn’t absorbed by the body.  I’ve said before that many of the new products coming out have been developed to help diabetics more than folks trying to maintain a low carb lifestyle, but it’s benefited all of us.

Being special products, these flours tend to be at least double the regular flours.  If you buy a loaf of pre-made low carb bread, they run about $8 a loaf.  You can bake them for less than that.  All of flours I mentioned are available from Amazon and Netrition.   Other brands are also available.  I’ve used several of them.  I generally go with CarbQuick because it’s versatile and the lowest net carb count of the ones I’ve seen.  But there are time you want a finer flour and Atkins or LC Foods both produce a finer textured flour for baking breads and cakes.

Don’t overlook almond, coconut, and other nut flours when baking.  They are lower in carbs and work very well in baking.  They are also gluten free for those who can’t eat regular flour. My Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe can be made using just almond flour or a combination of almond flour and coconut flour without using any of the wheat flour products that contain gluten.  Soy flour is another option, but I personally don’t like the taste of it, so I use it in very little quantity.

As I go along with this blog and use these products, I’m going to try to feature them a little more under the Yummy LC Products header.  Some of the products I use are mixes for breads and cakes, while others are ingredient items.  Either way, I’ll put items there that I use and I’d like to introduce to you that I think will help you to enjoy a low carb lifestyle if that’s your goal.

First published on my blog 10/08/2012.

8/2012 12:20 PM

Healthy Life

My Low Carb Healthful Living

Anyone who has followed a low calorie diet, then compared it to a low carb diet will notice that low calorie doesn’t always equal low carb and vice versa. I can attest that just counting calories and following a low calorie diet will not always work and often leaves you hungry as well as frustrated and unhappy.   I was never a huge overeater although I probably ate a little more than my body needed.  If I went on a strict 1000 calorie diet, I could lose weight, but I was often hungry.  It’s also not easy to maintain and it is depressing to think you can’t enjoy any of the foods that you really love.  What’s the point in life if you can’t enjoy it?  So you slip off and eventually revert back.

I think people need to find out how their body processes food, how much of it and what kinds.  I went on a low carb diet for the first time when I was just out of high school and lost a lot of weight that I kept off for about six years before it began creeping back as my diet slipped back to old habits and I was exercising less.  The same pattern repeated when I went on a low calorie diet and I kept the weight off again for several years, before the pounds returned with friends.  In between, I’d had success with several other diet options, but none of them a plan for life.

When I went on Atkins this time, I noticed that the plan had changed its approach.  Instead of 40 carbs to begin, the diet was now talking net carbs, which are the carbs that your body actually uses of what you consume.  Two weeks at 20 net carbs to start, then you gradually add carbs until you stop losing weight, drop a few carbs back and that’s what you eat to continue to lose.  Then you go back up to the stall amount and you’re at the carbs you actually burn.  Makes sense.  Along the way, you audition food to see which foods may stall your diet and which seem to help.  Starch and sugars are really the culprits and since this helps you limit them, it also makes a low carb diet a good choice for diabetics or anyone who needs to control their blood sugar.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that the max number of net carbs I could eat and not gain weight was about 23 a day.  Not a happy number for me.  So, 20 carbs was my ideal for losing weight and that means a fairly slow weight loss.  Over the past four years, I’ve lost 142  pounds (as of April 15. 2014).  Considering that I am not a really active person, that’s not bad.  I am retired and I don’t do a lot of exercising, so I am thinking that if I can establish some kind of regular exercise program, I might be able to up the carbs a little.

Now, when I say 20 carbs a day, that might cause a panic, but again, this is net carbs – carbs that my body actually uses.  All the rest are pass through and there are a lot of those.  Still, on average, I eat about 40 to 65 carbs a day.  But when you consider all the things you can eat that have little or no carbs in them, like many meats, cheese, eggs, and some vegetables, then you see that the majority of your carbs can be spent on vegetables and fruits with lower carb counts and reduced-carb food items.

All of these new products with reduced carbs, make it possible to eat delicious food you love and still stay within your low carb lifestyle.  And I think that will be the key to not gaining the weight back this time.  If you can have delicious and “legal” food, then you’re less likely to wander.

Which brings me to one of the reasons I decided to blog my recipes and my stories.  If I put it out there, I hope it will help to keep me on course over the years and will encourage others to do the same.  I just wish I’d known how my body handled food earlier in my life and that the food substitutes had been as plentiful as they are now.

Originally posted on my blog on 08/26/2012