Heavy winds and rain are blasting my area as we approach the end of March. (I think it came in like a lion, but not sure it will depart like a lamb.) We can only hope April looks more like spring than March has. When the month started, I promised to post the recipe for a great salmon salad. Then it totally slipped my mind as I started getting more of the St. Patrick’s Day recipes up. But here it is. This works great if you have left-over salmon, or you can grill a piece before you make it. You can also use canned or packaged cooked salmon.
This is another yummy recipe from Paleo Leap’s web site, so it is good for Atkins, South Beach, Keto, and Paleo.
1 cup Salmon, grilled and flaked (8 oz)
1 hard boiled Egg, diced
1 Mini Pepper
1/2 Avocado, diced
2 slices Bacon, cooked and broken into pieces
1/4 Onion, minced
2 tablespoons Mayonnaise (homemade or your preference)
1 pinch Cayenne Pepper
1/2 teaspoon Lemon Juice
1 tablespoon fresh Parsley, minced or 1/2 teaspoon dried Parsley
2 tbsp. Olive Oil
1 drop liquid Sweetener
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups of fresh greens (Spring mix lettuce, spinach, arugula – your choice)
To make the dressing:
In a bowl, add the mayonnaise, parsley, lemon juice, cayenne, sweetener, and olive oil then whisk until it is blended.
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the salmon, diced eggs, bell pepper, avocado, and red onion. Add the mayonnaise mixture and toss it together gently. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Divide the greens into two bowls, then top with half the salmon mixture into each bowl. Serve.
Makes two healthy servings.
TIP: If you’d rather have shell fish, make this with shrimp, crab, or lobster instead of salmon. It will work just as well.
At this time of year especially, when there are holiday parties, dinner invitations, and family get-togethers, it becomes a challenge to maintain your low carb plan, or any diet plan for that matter. Temptation is everywhere. It’s not easy to avoid eating food that looks so delicious and tastes so wonderful, but you can exert some self-control and minimize the damage.
Believe me, I know about this. For the past six years, I have fought this battle over and over. I lost 142 lbs (for about the fifth time in my life) on a low carbohydrate life-style change. Anytime you go out to eat, there is a challenge to not exceed your effective carb count and mine is a ridiculously low one at 22 net carbs per day. Restaurant food can be filled with hidden carbs in the form of sauces, sugar, and other unknown factors. Most spices are either zero carbs or fractional. But dining is also a social occasion so you can’t always avoid it.
Here’s five things you can do to stick to the plan when eating out.
Bread Rolls – By Taken byfir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.auCanon 20D + Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=163135
1. Say No to bread
If you’re like me, this is not an easy one when the temptation of wonderful breads like the brown bread at Outback or the cheddar cheese biscuits at Red Lobster tease you from right on your table. Do what I do when I first walk into Texas Roadhouse and say, “No rolls, please,” as soon as your server reaches for that basket of tempting yeast rolls. Say none when asked what kind of bread you’d like when it’s included with the meal.
If you’re dining with others, this is not as easy to accomplish and that’s where your will power has to come in to keep the bread basket away form your reach. Don’t hesitate to tell your dining companions that you don’t want to eat the bread and ask them to keep it away.
If you just can’t help yourself, limit the damage. Eat a half a roll or just take a small slice. Sometimes that is more difficult than saying no, but if you take the time to savor the bread and eat it slowly, it can be satisfying.
2. Swap the vegetables
Most places are willing to substitute a different vegetable for the one listed on the menu.
Potatoes, rice, and pasta are high in carbohydrates, which adds a lot to the meal when you are counting carbs. They are also high in calories. As for a different vegetable that they offer, such as green beans, broccoli, cauliflower or mixed squash. This makes a big difference and keeps you on track.
I’ve only run into a couple of places where the chefs are so fussy that they refuse to change out their selected choice. In that case, choose a different dish.
Often when ordering breakfast, I say “no bread, no potatoes” and the restaurant usually offers a substitution such as sliced tomatoes or fresh fruit. When going for the fruit, ask if it is berries and/or melons as they are the lowest options in carbs.
Broccoli is a great substitution for potatoes or rice. Photo by By Quadell – Self-published work by Quadell, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65964
3. Choose simple protein dishes
Dinners that are primarily meat, poultry, or fish are your best bet for a dinner that doesn’t have hidden carbs or calories. Grilled meat is one of the best way to avoid many additions and the meat is usually just seasoned without any extras. BBQ sauce adds carbs and calories, so you want to avoid the sauces. Low carb has an advantage when it comes to a butter sauce since most don’t add any carbs to the count unless it has a little lemon or other flavoring in it. Don’t hesitate to ask your server what the ingredients are in the sauces.
4. Buffets can be your friend
While they can be very tempting and this requires quite a bit of will power, a buffet offers many choices in salads, vegetables, and protein dishes to give you a quite a bit of freedom to create a variety of dishes. Once again, stay away from the starches and dishes with sauces that might include flour or sugar. Select ones that have a butter sauce. Pick some pieces of cheese from the cheese tray to add to the broccoli, if you wish, rather than going for a casserole-type dish that includes flour and possibly bread crumbs in the sauce. In most cases, stay away from the desserts.
A few buffets in my town (Reno, Nevada) do offer a a small selection of sugar-free desserts, but that doesn’t always equal low carb. Cheesecake is usually a safe bet so long as you don’t eat the cookie base, which is usually made with flour. I know one place that makes it with almond flour. Top the cheesecake with fresh, unsweetened berries and you have a great low carb dessert.
5. Eat half of what you’re served
Be honest, now. When you go out to dinner at most places, doesn’t that plate arrive with more than double the food you normally eat at home for a meal?
Most restaurants are generous with their proportions and for many of us, it’s easy to keep right on eating after we are full. I did this for many years before I decided that being overfilled was not good. Ask for a to-go box when you order and put half of your meal in the box before you even begin. Or, cut your portions in half and slide them over a little on the plate to remind yourself to save that to take home. Not only do you cut back on your food intake, but you gain an extra meal for the same price.
Sometimes, no matter what your best intentions are, you just can’t pass up that absolutely amazing-looking dessert or that incredible chicken dish with a thick,rich sauce. It happens and you can’t beat yourself up for giving in to the temptation. The key then is to get right back on track with your diet plan the next day and continue to wage the battle to keep the extra pounds from coming on-board.
Happy Holidays to everyone and make good food choices.
Banner photo by Mark Miller (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Mix FromLC Foods – Cost $8.98 Makes 9 cinnamon rolls
Package contains about 1 1/2 cups of mix to make the cinnamon buns plus a packet of cinnamon filling mix. You need to add heavy cream, butter, seltzer water, and yeast. You also need butter and walnuts (or pecans) for the filling.
I mixed according to the directions and used 2 tablespoons of Diet 7-Up for the carbonated water. The dough was extremely sticky. The directions say the dough needs to be stiff to roll and to add extra carbonated water if it isn’t. It didn’t say what to do if the dough was too soft. I add 2 tablespoons of protein powder and mixed it in and it was still too soft and sticky. I added 1 tablespoon of carbolose low carb flour and it was finally not too sticky to handle although still too sticky to roll out. Next, I separated the dough into three equal-sized balls.
I made the cinnamon filling according to directions using 2 tablespoons of water and 1 tablespoon melted butter. Very thick filling. I put 1 tablespoon of carbolose on the bread board, took the first ball and shaped it into a cylinder about 5 to 6 inches long, then put it on the board and pressed it into a 3 inch wide by about 9 inch long strip. It was too thin to press to 12” long without it tearing. I turned it a couple of times during the shaping to keep it from sticking to the board and shifted the flour under it.
Then I spread the cinnamon mix onto the strip, which was not too easy as the cinnamon mix wanted to stick to the fork I was using and pulled the dough a couple of times. I spread chopped pecans on top since we don’t use walnuts at our house. Then I cut the strip into three one inch wide strips and rolled them from one end to the other to make the roll.
Once they were all done and in the baking pan, the instructions say to put in a warm 70-85 degree oven to rise. I don’t know about you, but my oven, which I bought about 5 years ago, doesn’t go down below 250 degrees. It’s electronic ignition, so it doesn’t even have a pilot light to give off heat. I used my toaster oven, set to the unmarked area below 150 degrees and hoped it wouldn’t destroy the yeast before its time.
It took about twice as long as recommended for the rolls to almost double in size, so that was about 1 hour 15 minutes to rise. This might be because I live in a high altitude location and that does affect the rise. Then I brought the oven up to 400 degrees and allowed it to heat for about 5 minutes, then put the rolls in for 15 minutes to bake. At this point, they look like they will be very tasty although the dough itself is brown rather than white bread type dough. The mix contains flax meal, wheat isolate, wheat starches, wheat gluten, inulin, and other products that substitute for wheat and sugar.
The mix does not include icing, so you need powdered sugar substitute if you want to ice the rolls. You can purchase LC Foods powdered sugar or you can make your own by putting sugar substitute in a blender or food processor and running it until it turns to a fine powder. You’ll need about 2 tablespoons of sugar-free powdered sugar to make a simple icing. I put 1 tablespoon butter in with the powdered sugar and add enough water to make either a spreadable frosting or a drip frosting, whichever you prefer.
So, making the rolls didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped and if you’re trying it, I would suggest not adding the carbonated soda until you have all the other ingredients mixed to see how thick your dough is, then adding it a little at a time. I still think you will need a low carb flour, possibly coconut flour or almond flour to roll or pat the dough out on in order to prevent it from sticking to the board.
How about taste? This is the bottom line. Is the taste worth the expense and effort to make these? My taste test panel was only two people and we thought that the rolls had a very good flavor, lots of cinnamon taste and were slightly crispy outside with a soft center. I pour two tablespoons of melted butter over the rolls when they came out of the oven and that added a buttery taste to the rolls that is very nice. I made a powdered sugar icing and spread it over the top, which added a sweeter taste to it. We did notice a slight bitter aftertaste, which I think came from the stevia used in the mix or from the inulin.
Overall, I would say it is a very good cinnamon roll and not too difficult to make. It is almost $1 per cinnamon roll and they aren’t very big ones, about 3 inches in diameter. My rolls are uneven in size, but that is likely the baker’s fault and I didn’t cut them evenly. I might buy these again and try them, but it wouldn’t be too often at the price for the mix. I have a couple of other options to try, including cinnamon bread from Dixie Carb Counters. I will do that over the next few weeks and post a review.
I give these cinnamon rolls 4 out of 5 tasty spoons.
Disclaimer: I have not received any promotional items to review and no one from any of the companies whose products I review has asked me to do so. I have purchased the product and am giving my honest opinion about it. Should any company send me a product to try, I will state it up front and will still give my honest opinion.
My cookbook designed with small batches of food for two people will be launching on March 14, 2015. It is called Meals for Two: Low Carb Cooking Magic and is the first of a series of Low Carb Cooking Magic books that I will be publishing. It is available on Amazon.com and CreateSpace.
Some of the recipes have been featured on this blog but the recipes are scaled down to feed two or maybe four people so that you don’t have a bunch left in the ‘fridge or the freezer. I have thrown away more leftovers than I care to think about.
There are many new recipes in the book that have not been, and will not be, posted here. Every recipe in the book has a photograph, but the printed version of the book is in black and white. Unfortunately, it was just too proportionately over-priced to print in color. So, I am posting the photo pages here on Skinny Girl so that those who purchase the print copy can view them in full color. That’s not all, if you purchase the book from Amazon, the purchase will include the Kindle version for free!
So please check out the listing at Amazon and I hope you’ll buy a copy, try the recipes and send me feedback! I’d love to hear from you.
