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Simple Recipes Aren’t a Compromise

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When you get home from work the last thing you probably want to do is get embroiled in complex food preparation, which is why I suspect a lot of us leave more involved cooking to weekends or when we have a bit of time off.

Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself being lazier than usual with cooking and I’ve also fallen off the bandwagon a few times and eaten something convenient, but really bad for me.

That’s not good. Sure, you can be tired and lacking in motivation to get stuck in to a big cooking session, but you still need to eat properly.

For me that means that I need to find workable uncomplicated recipes that give me decent meals without me having to spend hours in the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy cooking, but if I get home from work before 7pm I’d like to be eating by 8pm if possible. And that’s probably quite a bit later than most Irish households already!

Over the past couple of years I’ve been trying out different recipes. I like being adventurous, but I am also aware of my limits. One of the other limiting factors can also be access to the ingredients. Pearl onions, for example, are still on my list of things that I simply have not been able to find in any of the local supermarkets.

Just because a recipe is “simple” does not mean that it is bad or not as good as a more elaborate one.

I love Indian butter chicken, but you need to let it marinate for at least half an hour. So when I’m in a hurry but still want something “decent” I’ll often opt for recipes like this one. It’s not complicated. In fact it’s incredibly simple. Of course I will tweak it a little and add both garlic and fresh chilis into the beef to give it a bit of a kick, but it’s still super simple to make. And if, like me, you’re not a big fan of washing up it only uses a single pot!

The key point is that you can eat well without having to spend hours in the kitchen.

Last night, for example, I made a chilli without beans. I made enough that it’ll last for today’s dinner as well. All I’ll have to do is prep some kind of side to go with it, as the sauce will just need to be heated up.

And that chilli was simple to make especially in my Instant Pot!

Low Carb Irish Made Granola

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I like to buy Irish food when I can. Unfortunately when it comes to buying low carb or keto friendly products the options available in most Irish supermarkets is pretty awful – and that’s without even considering the country of origin!

I’d heard of Maria Lucia Bakes, but while they did a “low sugar” granola it was still quite sugar heavy ie. not really compatible with anyone doing a low carb or keto diet. Sure, I have misbehaved with “low sugar” versions of various food stuffs, but when it comes to things like granola I’d ended up making my own in the past or buying a low carb one from a UK supplier.

Earlier this week, however, I was contacted by Maria Lucia Bakes’ marketing team and they sent me out two packs of their new low carb and keto friendly granola. (You can see a photo of the packs above)

For now they have a “macadamia and coconut” granola that is really tasty – I have been eating a bowl of it for breakfast in the morning with some Greek style plain yoghurt since I got it and I really like it.

The granola has about 3g of carbs per serving, though obviously that will depend on how big your portion size is!

Maria Lucia Bakes low carb granola macadamia and coconut

What is in it?

Coconut flakes, sunflower seeds, macadamia nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, linseeds, coconut oil, vanilla essence and cinnamon

It goes well with plain yoghurt, be that Greek or not and I suspect adding a few fresh berries would be a nice addition. It definitely gives me a good start to the day – so much so that I’m seriously tempted to just bulk order enough of it to keep me going for the next few months.

If anyone knows of other Irish food produce that specifically caters to low carb or keto please let me know.

Why the Blogging Hiatus?

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Giant see through clock face

I haven’t been writing as often on this blog as I’d like.

Why?

There’s probably more than one reason for that:

  • I don’t write simply for the sake of it, so unless I feel I have something to say I’ll keep quiet
  • I’ve been very busy. Simple. I used to burn the proverbial candle at both ends a LOT, but I try to not “work” in the evenings these days.
  • I haven’t been as good at sticking to the diet recently as I’d like, so I’ve been avoiding thinking about it

Will any of this change?

Probably, but I’m not going to make any insane commitments.

I should write more often, but as I already said I’m not going to simply for the sake of it.

Over the last few months I’ve fallen off the bandwagon quite a bit. Put another way, I’ve been quite badly behaved. That’s partially due to my travel schedule and partially down to me being lazy and lacking motivation. When I look at how well other people I know have been doing I don’t feel motivated, though I am happy for them.

Now I need to work out how to get myself freshly motivated!

Roast Cauliflower Makes for a Tasty Side

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When you’re avoiding carbs you can easily fall into the trap of finding one or two sides that “work” and you end up sticking to them. Essentially that means that you end up eating them again and again and again. I was a bit like that with the cauliflower mash.

I think I’ve found another side dish which is just as tasty and super simple to make: roast cauliflower.

I came across the recipe when I was trying to make Indian butter chicken recently. While the butter chicken worked out pretty well (and even better since I’ve started cooking with ghee) the side dish was a revelation. Here was a simple way of cooking cauliflower that I could easily use instead of rice or potatoes with a bunch of different dishes. Obviously the original recipe uses a very Indian style of seasoning, but with a bit of tweaking it wouldn’t take much to convert that into a side dish that would work well with a big range of main courses.

I’ve tried making it with both butter and ghee and it would work well with oil – the main thing to keep an eye on is the oven temperature, as burnt cauliflower isn’t that tasty!

MyFitnessPal Adds Alexa “Skill”

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In common with a lot of people I’ve got a MyFitnessPal account. I’ve been a user for several years, though I go through phases with it. Sure, I can login to it daily, but I don’t log all my food and water using it a lot of the time. I will some of the time, but I tend to forget and then it’s too late, so I don’t.

A couple of weeks back MyFitnessPal announced that they’ve created an Alexa “skill”. I was curious to see what it could do so here’s the overview.

For now the skill is only available to users with an Alexa account in the US. So if you’re in Ireland or the UK you cannot enable it. I reached out to them to find out when they plan to add support for Ireland and UK users and the response I got back was non-committal:

Since we just recently rolled out the feature, we’re still working on getting it out worldwide. Unfortunately we weren’t able roll it out internationally when we first launched it.

If you are able to use the skill with your Alexa powered device it’s called “MyFitnessPal Lite” and it offers some basic features for now.

You can log water intake, log your weight and check your diary stats.

You cannot log food, which is really what I suspect a lot of users would want to do with it.

Here’s the command overview:

To log water, you can say:
Alexa, tell MyFitnessPal to log water.
Alexa, tell MyFitnessPal to log 3 cups of water
To log weight, you can say:
Alexa, tell MyFitnessPal to log my weight.
Alexa, tell MyFitnessPal to log my weight of 170 pounds.
To check your diary stats, you can say:
Alexa, ask MyFitnessPal how am I doing today?
Alexa, ask MyFitnessPal for my diary summary.
Alexa, ask MyFitnessPal how many steps have I taken today?
Alexa, ask MyFitnessPal how much water did I drink today?
Alexa, ask MyFitnessPal how many calories have I consumed for today?
To get started, ask Alexa to open MyFitnessPal. You can say:
Alexa, open MyFitnessPal.
Alexa, ask MyFitnessPal.
Alexa, launch MyFitnessPal.

Source: Amazon

Being able to use an Alexa device to log or get feedback on your weight loss or general fitness progress makes sense, so I’d hope they’ll roll out more features AND make it available for those of us outside the US!

More Low Carb Baking

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Once you get over the initial fear or general unease with baking then it becomes a lot easier. So after baking low carb bread a couple of times I thought it was time to try out some other recipes.

One I had spotted that caught my eye was this one for bread buns. It looked quite simple and apart from separating the eggs, which is not something I’ve ever had success doing, it seemed like I’d be able manage it.

To deal with separating the eggs I got an actual egg separator. The KitchenCraft one was cheap and functional.

Yes I know I am a little addicted to kitchen gadgets and some of the stuff I’ve bought over the years is pointless. I’ll admit that. But in the case of the egg separator I feel like it’ll get some usage. You simply break the egg into it and then let gravity do the work. You can of course encourage it a little, but it’s a lot less messy than trying to separate eggs manually.

Anyway ..

The recipe for the bread buns was pretty simple. So I made a batch yesterday. I had to extend the baking time a little bit but apart from that I stuck to the instructions.

The final product worked out pretty well and goes well with a bit of butter

Poached Eggs With Low Carb Bread

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When I’m at home I generally stick pretty closely to a low carb diet. I like eggs for breakfast, but I’ve never liked poached eggs without bread. They just don’t “work” without some kind of bread to soak them up. Of course unless you have low carb bread that becomes a bit of a “catch 22”.

At the weekend I got to spend a bit of time in the kitchen and baked some low carb bread. It worked out very well, though I realise that I probably should have made more!

Bread with a little butter and poached eggs makes for a simple, yet very tasty breakfast. I’ve had it the last couple of mornings, but will have to bake more bread if I want it again tomorrow!

There’s no reason to completely forego the tasty experience of eating carbs while still avoiding them 🙂