Losing Weight Improve Your Waistline

Kitchen Gadget: Stylish Handheld Spiralizer

by Leave a Comment

I’ll freely admit that I can be a little bit addicted to kitchen gadgets, but my addiction is more under control now that it was.. honest! 

I know I sound like a broken record, but not having pasta has been one of the more annoying and painful aspects of switching to a low carb diet. The bean based “pasta” is edible, but I’d always quite liked the taste of spiralized vegetables aka courgetti. 

I’d had several spiralizers over the last couple of years. The tabletop one was a disaster (for me) and the handheld one I’d been using was a pain to use and even more of a pain to clean. 

The guys at Joseph Joseph have an excellent track record in producing practical kitchen and household gadgets that look great and work. Price-wise they aren’t the cheapest, but you’ll often find their products at reasonable prices if you shop around a little.

Their take on the spiralizer is excellent. It looks well, it doesn’t take up a lot of space and using it is very easy.

Joseph Joseph spiro spiralizer

It comes with three different blades:

  • coarse
  • fine
  • grater

The coarse one works well for doing courgetti. The “fine” blade would probably work best for shredding vegetables for a salad or similar, while the grater is meant to be for doing carrots etc., in tiny bits. I’ll freely admit the only attachment I’ve been using is the “coarse” one, but it works well so I don’t need anything else!

You can see it in action in their video:

I’ve used it several times over the last few days and it has won me over for three reasons:

  1. It’s very easy to use. Other handheld spiralizers were hard work to use and didn’t work that well. This one works really well
  2. It’s very easy to wash after use. This for me is key. I’ve got some kitchen gadgets that I’d love to use more often, but cleaning them after use is such a pain that I tend to avoid them
  3. The little hopper thing means that you don’t end up with stuff spilling all over the place AND you can also use it at whatever angle you like (within reason)

Once you’ve spiralized the vegetables, which in my case is most often courgette, it’s just a matter of sautéing them a little before serving with the pasta sauce I’ve made. 

Overall I’m really happy with it.

Low Carb Pork Schnitzels

by 1 Comment

When you’re trying to stick to a low carb diet anything with bread or bread crumbs is off the menu. So when you’re perusing the shelves in your local supermarket you cannot simply pick up a pack of chicken or whatever in any kind of bread crumbs. That won’t work. However there is absolutely nothing to stop you from making your own, though using low carb ingredients.

Pork schnitzels are simple yet tasty. The traditional recipe uses bread crumbs, but it’s super easy to swap that out for almond flour or ground almonds (which is practically the same thing).

low carb pork schnitzels with almond flour

All you need are a few pork boneless pork chops, eggs, seasoning and almond flour.

My local butcher not only had the pork chops, but was able to remove the excess fat as well as pounding the meat for me, so that it was a thinner and more suitable for schnitzels. Yet another reason why shopping at a local butcher is always a good idea! 

So how do you make them?

It’s incredibly easy.

Beat an egg or two in a shallow bowl or plate – you’ll be using this to dip the meat into.

In another bowl or plate mix about 100 grams or a couple of tablespoons of almond flour with your seasoning (salt, pepper and sage seems to work well)

Dip the meat in the egg, then coat in the almond flour mix and then simply fry it. Repeat for each schnitzel. 

Fry the meat on a medium flame and make sure to turn them from time to time. Just make sure they’re cooked all the way through.

Serve with some lemon.

I also did some cauliflower mash to go with mine, which turned out very well.

Baking Low Carb Bread

by 1 Comment

While I like cooking in general I’ve never done much with baking bread. I was very good at eating bread, but I’d never made my own. I think I might have made an attempt years ago, but I don’t think it was a success. 

When you’re avoiding carbs and trying to stick to a low carb diet bread is off the menu. Normal bread is very high in carbs, so there’s simply no way to eat it without breaking the basic rules of the diet. 

But there are low carb versions of many bread based foods, so you can, for example, get low carb wraps and even loaves of bread, though they’re pretty expensive. So making your own is probably the best solution.

As somebody who has very little confidence in my ability to make bread I needed a recipe that was pretty much idiot proof. This one from Ditch the Carbs ticked all the boxes for me. It has a handful of ingredients and is super simple to make. You just measure out the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, mix them, add the wet ones and bake it. 

You can see a couple of photos of my first attempt below:

low carb almond bread

It came out pretty well. The only issue I ran into was that I didn’t have any greaseproof paper to line the baking tin. However as the tin I used is non-stick I was able to extricate the final product from the tin without too much difficulty. 

I had to try it pretty much immediately, so I went for a bit of butter just to see how it was and I was not disappointed! 

low carb bread with butter

I’ll admit I sort of demolished most of that loaf yesterday evening as it was both really tasty and also a culinary achievement for me having never been any good at baking bread.

Most of the ingredients for this low carb bread or variants are readily available in any supermarket. The only exception being psyllium husk which you can get in larger supermarkets, health shops or online. I couldn’t find it locally here in Carlow, so ended up getting it online.

I’ll definitely be making this bread again now that I’ve got over my initial fear of baking! It’s handy to have a low carb bread for things like paté, cold cuts etc., Also if you have visitors who aren’t on a low carb diet they sort of expect you to have bread in the cupboards, so this solves that for you too.

Spice up Your Water Bottle

by 1 Comment

Whether it’s for weight loss or just for general health drinking water is beneficial. Most of us probably don’t drink enough water and we probably aren’t properly hydrated most of the time. I know I didn’t for a long time. Sure, I would drink copious quantities of liquids, but I wasn’t drinking water by itself a lot of the time. If I was dining out I’d drink plenty, but up until quite recently I wasn’t in the habit of drinking water throughout the day. Sure, I was drinking enough, but it wasn’t really a natural habit up until quite recently.

In the office we have water coolers that dispense mineral water so I’ve no excuse. So these days I usually have a glass of water on my desk alongside my mug of coffee.

So what about water?

Recently Twinings, who are best known for their teas, launched a new range of products aimed at adding a little bit of flavour to your water. They call them “Cold Infuse” and the concept is really simple, yet brilliant. You basically drop a bag of the infusion into your water bottle and give it a little shake. The infusion adds a bit of flavour to the water and before you know it you’ve probably developed a mild addiction 🙂 Okay – “addiction” is probably a loaded term, but the infusions definitely make the water a lot more interesting, so I’ve found myself drinking quite a bit more than I had previously.

Here’s a short video that explains how it works:

 

They’re sugar free, caffeine free and just damn tasty!

I got their “starter kit” a couple of weeks ago and since then I took the plunge and got the full range of flavours:

  • Watermelon, strawberry & Mint
  • Passionfruit, Mango & Blood Orange
  • Blueberry Apple and Blackcurrant
  • Rose Lemonade
  • Lemon, Orange & Ginger
  • Coconut, Pineapple & Green Tea

I’ve found that you can usually get three or four bottle per infusion bag, though if you want a stronger taste you might get less. I still haven’t decided which flavour is my favourite and to be honest I haven’t really disliked any of them.

You can get them directly from Twinings or via Amazon.

Obeo Need Your Support

by Leave a Comment

I’ve mentioned Obeo a few times in the past. They’re an Irish company that produces organic waste bags. Unlike the standard biodegradable bags that you’d put in a kitchen food waste caddy, the Obeo bags replace the bin completely. So instead of having to deal with the messy and smelly bin you simply dump the entire thing into your brown bin.

Unfortunately a couple of months ago the business came under pressure and they decided to stop trading:

Obeo email from June 2018

When I got that email I, along with quite a few other people apparently, were quite shocked and disappointed, as we thought the product was really good.

Fast forward a few weeks and the Obeo team decided to pivot their business a bit and to raise some cash by getting commitments from people for annual subscriptions. Note they’re not taking any money from anyone, they’re simply asking people if they’d commit to an annual subscription and if people do pay upfront they’ll get a full refund if the campaign goal isn’t reached.

You can read more about what they’re trying to do here.

My take:

Obeo is a very nice product. It solves a problem, which is what products should do.

The company behind the product is very small and they had done very well with their product being carried in some major supermarkets. Reading between the lines I suspect the production costs combined with having to extend credit terms to some of these shops might have combined to cause them the issues they ended up with. By switching to “online only” they should be able to keep going and potentially expand over time.
I wish them the best of luck

Disclosure: Much as I love the product I cannot commit to the subscription myself, as I simply do not produce enough organic waste – mainly because I travel quite a bit over the year. I’ve always bought Obeo in batches but I never subscribed.

 

Low Carb Pasta (Sort of)

by 3 Comments

When you’re on a low carb diet there are a number of foods that are simply not on the menu. Pasta is a prime example. And that really hurts!

You can, of course, replace pasta with spiralized vegetables. So, instead of spaghetti you can serve that tasty pasta sauce with courgetti.

But what if you just want pasta? Or something with similar consistency to the pasta that used to be a staple of your cooking?

There are a few products that you can get that are low carb versions of pasta and other things that ordinarily wouldn’t be compatible with a low carb diet. Unfortunately they’re not readily available in supermarkets near where I live.

However for the last couple of months Aldi has been stocking a number of “alternative” pastas, which are aimed at the gluten free market. They are, however, all low carb, so they’re a very good substitute.

bean based low carb spaghetti pasta

It’d be great if these were stocked with the “normal” pasta and other products, but for now at least they’re available, even if they’re in the “special buy” sections.

So what are they like?

I’ve tried most of them over the last couple of months and overall I think they’re pretty good. Sure the taste isn’t exactly the same as pasta and the consistency is a little different, but if you’re yearning for a pasta dish and want to stick to your low carb regime they’re a viable option.

In terms of preparation they’re basically the same as pasta. Boil water, add salt if you want and chuck the “spaghetti” in and let it cook for about 4 minutes. Drain and serve.

The one thing you will find, however, is that the spaghetti is both a lot shorter than normal spaghetti and also quite a bit more brittle, so you can easily end up with broken bits – though that obviously doesn’t impact the taste. Their consistency is also a little odd so when you’re trying to weigh out the right amount it can be a bit of a struggle getting them out of the pack without pulling out the entire packet’s contents at once.

Verdict? They’re perfectly edible and as long as I can get them easily in Aldi I’ll be able to add “pasta” back to my menu, which is very welcome indeed!

One Year Doing Low Carb

by Leave a Comment

I started the low carb / keto diet thing roughly one year ago.

weight loss over one year

Have I lost weight? Yes. The graph above shows that I’ve made reasonable progress in terms of losing weight. Since mid-January, however, the weight loss has more or less stalled and I’ve been fluctuating up and down quite a bit. I probably need to make some changes to my lifestyle to get that graph back on track!

How do I feel? Generally pretty good. Definitely better than before I started.

Will I continue? For now I’ll be continuing to stick to a low carb diet as much as possible.

I’m not doing pure “keto” nor am I tracking my food intake as closely now as I was when I first started. I’ve changed quite a few of my eating habits over the past year. While overall it hasn’t been “horrible” or extremely difficult it hasn’t always been easy. I definitely miss things like bread and pasta. I don’t really miss rice and have been able to replace it with a number of low carb alternates like cauliflower rice. I’d describe my diet as “low carb” as that’s the simplest way to describe it accurately. Following a strict ketogenic diet might be possible for me when I’m not travelling, but it’s almost impossible to do that when you’re travelling.

Potatoes are also something I’ve got mixed feelings about. In some ways I miss them. A bag of chips covered in vinegar and salt is really tempting at times, but mostly I’ve just swapped out potatoes for more green vegetables.

When I’m not travelling I check my weight most mornings shortly after I get out of bed and before I have breakfast. I’ve had some pleasant surprises and nasty shocks over the last year. When I was on holiday recently in Peru I “misbehaved” quite a bit, but oddly this wasn’t reflected too much in the scales. I put on a little weight, but nothing dramatic. Other times I’ve been on my best behaviour yet I’ve had quite sharp weight increases in a short period of time. So the only thing I can really takeaway from that is that the weighing scales is a hard master to understand.

Challenges? Breakfast in some hotels. In Europe it’s usually fine, but in some parts of the world the breakfasts are very carb rich, so when you take those out of the equation you sometimes end up with a rather sad assembly of options.