Some Good #Lowcarb Eatin' This Week! #recipes

Just a few Cheap'n'Easy Low Carb meal ideas, in case you're interested :).

Pork dinner: I love pork with something sweet! Saturday I made a very pretty and delicious roast pork rib (country style) dinner that was easy prep and easy cook! Got some brussels sprouts out of the freezer, and tossed them in a bowl with a little olive oil and sea salt. Washed 3 small sweet potatoes and put them in the oven to roast, right on the rack. Seasoned my pork (this time very simply - S&P, garlic and onion powders) and put it into the oven. Then I sat with my feet up for about 30 minutes while I checked my facebook and email accounts. Poured the brussels sprouts onto a small baking sheet and added it to my oven for the last 30 minutes or so. Fiddled around for another half hour, then dinner was ready. Beautiful plates of color and nutrition! Served my sweet potato with a lot of butter and cinnamon, and a little brown Sugar Twin. Everything else was perfect as it was. Served 3 of us for about $7.

Fish dinner: While I really love crunchy coated fried fish, I've never managed to get it right. The coating either slides off or sticks to the pan, and I'm not sure why. (Christmas gift idea - a deep fryer that doesn't have a nonstick coating!) So I usually just season and bake my fish. On Monday it was pollock, which is so easy! I coat both sides with butter/olive oil mixture, very lightly sprinkle some coconut flour and seafood seasoning on top, and that's it. I had a couple of small potatoes (most low carbers don't eat potatoes at all; I eat 1-2 small ones/week) so I cut those into chunks, tossed with olive oil and sea salt, and roasted them at 375. Then I put a couple of Tbsp of butter in a saucepan with a couple cupfuls of frozen chopped spinach, covered, and set it on the "vent burner." After the potatoes had a 20-minute head start I put the fish in the oven and let them get acquainted in there for 25 minutes. When it was time to serve I turned the vent burner on and added a splash of lemon juice to the spinach while I pulled the fish and potatoes out of the oven, poured drinks, and so forth; since the spinach was already thawed and warm it only took a minute and a quick stir before it was good and hot. $4 for the meal for 2 of us.

Steak dinner: As I've mentioned, I buy chuck - it is my favorite cut, and it is cheap. And I buy the roasts, which I slice across into 2 "steaks" when I get home. I have grilled these, broiled them, fried them, you name it, and they act and taste like the chuck steaks that cost more. Anyway...I fried a chopped-up onion in plenty of bacon fat, then moved it to the side and added a "steak" that I had cut into big (about 2 oz.) chunks. Seasoned with sea salt and granulated garlic. I turned them until they were nice and brown on each side, but rare in the middle (how we like it). With a salad on the side, this was a great meal for about $4.50.

Chicken and bacon: I put my chicken thighs and bacon into the oven in separate pans (because I save my bacon fat) and just cook them together. I think chicken and bacon go well together, and with a big heaping side of my saucy green beans it makes a great meal. Plus, the next day we get another meal out of a big plateful of greens or lettuce (this week lettuce because I'd gotten it on sale), piled with leftover chicken and bacon plus a handful of shredded cheese and some chopped veggies - whatever is in the fridge at the time. Lots of food, very filling, about $3 for both plates of salad fixed the way we had them this week.

Saucy green beans: Everybody loves these, but they're so simple! I melt some bacon fat in a saute pan, and add the powdered onion (not granulated, it's fine powder, like flour), and it makes like a roux - maybe 3 Tbsp of bacon fat and 1 tsp of onion powder will do it. Once it thickens I add my frozen whole baby green beans, some sea salt, and some granulated garlic and cover. As soon as the beans are softened, I stir it all together and return the cover to let the beans cook well (but not mushy). The liquid comes out of the beans and mixes with the "roux" and makes a lovely light but tasty sauce. So easy but really REALLY great! And cheap - about a buck for the whole panful which serves 4 - or 2 when my husband and I have them :). Add some bacon and it's a light meal!

Simple Stir-Fry: Only it's not really a stir-fry because I don't make it like the Chinese do, in a hot wok, quickly. But I don't know what else to call it. I use an electric skillet, and fry my meat chunks and chopped onion in fat. Then I throw in a package of frozen stir-fry vegetables and a package of cole slaw mix, season with soy sauce, ginger, and sesame oil, toss it all together, lower the heat, and that's it. Ready to eat in about 10 minutes. Depending on what I have on hand I also have been known to add a can of baby corn, water chestnuts, mushrooms...whatever. Sometimes I chop up shirataki noodles and add those too (at the beginning, with the meat and onion). But it is filling, inexpensive (under $5 for 4 portions - and the 2 or 3 of us usually eat it all), fast, and easy.

Cucumber salad: Did I already write about this? I take 4 cukes, peeled and seeded and cut into bite-sized chunks...4 tomatoes, de-seeded and cut into bite-sized chunks...1 onion (red is pretty, sweet yellow ones are tastiest, sometimes I use both!) sliced into thin slivers...toss with balsamic vinaigrette and a little sea salt. The longer it sits in the fridge the better it tastes - next-day is excellent! We paid 49c each for the big cukes, the tomatoes were from our own plant, and the onion was about 50c ($1.29/lb, less than 1/2#). The balsamic vinaigrette was $1.79 for the bottle, I used 1/4 of the bottle. So the salad, which feeds both of us for several meals/snacks (8 servings?) cost $3 with the free tomatoes. I've taken this to church potluck and gotten rave reviews, and it is colorful and beautiful as well!

This is what we've been eating the last few days. Of course we've also had breakfasts and other things, but we've had some great suppertime meals using the bounty of groceries I purchased on Saturday morning!

Lovely #Lowcarb Spinach Salad...PLUS lunch!

Last night I made a lovely spinach salad. I finely chopped about 1/4c of onion and fried it in bacon fat until translucent, then added some already-cooked bacon, chopped. Then about 1/4c of coconut oil, 1T of granular splenda and 2T of Ideal sweetener (I mix the splenda with the ideal until the splenda is used up - then I will be an Ideal cook!), a few scrapings of nutmeg, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. This I tossed with spinach leaves and chopped hard-boiled eggs, and it was an amazing salad for supper!

The bacon was $1.49/lb. The whole bag of spinach leaves was $1.99 - I used half. The onion was about 50c. The eggs were 11c each, I used 4. Excellent generous-sized supper for 2, for about $4.00.

Today I spread some honey mustard on a slice of Flatout flat bread and loaded it up with more spinach leaves and leftover (warmed) bacon, then rolled it up - it was really loaded and really thick - and REALLY REALLY GOOD! Excellent lunch!

Tonight: Dreamfield's pasta with EVOO, butter, and cheeses (sauce for hubby but not for me). Leftover grilled ground beef patty on the side. Each of us will eat for about $2.

Shakin' It Up, and Amazing Steak Dinner #Lowcarb #Recipe

I haven't been posting the samo-samo meals I've been eating recently, and in fact have started getting bored. So the last few days I've tried to shake it up a bit, using food I already have stockpiled. (For those of you following my grocery shopping posts, I haven't done a big shopping in at least a couple of months - yeah, I have that much stuff on my shelves and in my big freezer! Just filling in with the perishables, such as fresh produce, and dairy.)

Sunday dinners I like to "fancy it up a bit" especially since my mom spends Sundays with us - the nursing home where she lives has good food, but it tends to be a bit "institutional" anyway. This past Sunday I made some NY strips on the griddle. First I started frying up a pound of bacon because I needed the fat. While that was cooking I seasoned the steaks (onion/garlic/chili powders, sea salt) and let them sit while I halved half-thawed brussels sprouts and yellow squash slices - just had a small amount left in each package I wanted to use up - and quartered, then thinly sliced, a medium yellow onion.

After spreading some fresh bacon fat on the hot hot hot griddle, I put the steaks on. Then I removed the bacon from the frying pan and much of the remaining fat for later use, and tossed the veggies in the same frying pan. They required frequent tossing to brown evenly and cook through. The steaks cooked about 5 minutes on the first side and 3 on the 2nd, then I removed them to a platter and tossed about a cupful of straw mushrooms (from a can) right on the hot griddle with the bacon fat and the seasonings the steak left behind. As the liquid came out of the 'shrooms and I scraped/tossed them, they deglazed the griddle nicely and picked up some wonderful flavor. Meanwhile I also add butter, sea salt, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar to the vegetables.

What a lovely meal! A platter of medium-rare steaks with a pile of delicious mushrooms and colorful vegetables next to them...it was a feast for the eyes as well as the palate! Unforunately, after a day trip the day before, I'd left my camera somewhere out of reach (found it later) and we were too hungry to wait for me to find it...but I will definitely be making this again!

The steaks had been on sale for $2.49/lb - I used 3# of meat - certainly less than $2 in vegetables (and that's figuring HIGH), a $1 can of mushrooms...some butter, bacon fat, and seasonings - dinner for 4 adults plus a toddler for right around $10!

Every time I make a meal like this one, I want to defy the lowcarb naysayers to show me why they think that low carb eating is unhealthy...pfffffft! :)

Today's Good Lowcarb Eatin'!

I've had a craving for days that I finally satisfied at lunchtime: cut 1# of bacon into ½" pieces and fried lightly (to get "bits"); drained off most of the fat for later use; added 1/2 yellow onion, chopped, and fried with the bacon until onion was translucent and bacon was crispy; added a head of cabbage, chopped, with about ½c of water. Covered, reduced heat, and cooked for about 20 minutes, until the cabbage was soft; stirred it all up, then cooked for another 10 minutes. (If you like heat, you might want to add some red pepper flakes!)

Definitely cheap and easy! The cabbage was 60¢; the bacon was $1.79; the ½ onion was about a quarter. It made 3 large servings, so the total per serving was about 85¢. Doesn't get any cheaper than that!

Supper was a pork butt roast, which I'd gotten on sale for $1.19/lb. I brined it with sea salt (of course), chili powder, garlic and onion powder, and ginger - about 1/4c of salt and a couple of Tbsp of each of the spices. Then roasted as usual after a few hours of brining. It made an awesomely tender and flavorful roast that we'll be eating for several days. Each of us chose what we wanted to have with it (nuking frozen vegetables is easy enough); I opted just for some meat, about 6 oz., because I wasn't that hungry. Later I may nibble on some cauliflower dipped in ranch dressing or some veggie sticks.

Today was a great, flavorful, cheap and easy low carb day!

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