If you crave bread, and I certainly do after being on a low carb diet for years, Sami’s Bakery out of Florida offers some decent stuff. It can get a little pricey with shipping, but the items I get freeze well so I buy a bunch at a time. The dinner rolls and the regular sliced 7-grain bread are my favorites. The pizza crust is also decent. They are high in fiber. They need to be toasted, but I have not just gotten used to them, I actually enjoy them now. I don’t eat them every day, but they are low enough in carbs to have once or twice a week.
ETA: I’d stay away from the brownie. I found it inedible.
Yeah, the stems are fine, I just don’t like the texture of the stems cooked with the leaves. I save them for soup or stir fry something.
Arugula is also really nice salad green that’s more peppery than spinach, but it’s not super bitter like some “fancy lettuce” (I’m look at you, radicchio). Many people don’t know you can cook it like spinach, it’s really good. I like it briskly pan-cooked with garlic until wilted but not totally collapsed.
My fair weather favorite: 2’ thick delmonico (ribeye) steak grilled rare and served on a bed of sweet baby lettuce. Optional accompaniments: sauted onions and mushrooms with a splash of soy sauce spooned over the steak and a glass of dry red wine.
Stir frying is a good way to get in the lean protein and veggies.
As far as cookbooks, any good, basic diabetic cookbook should point you in the right direction. Betty Crocker has a few that are simple enough for the beginning cook, with “educational” pages and more involved variations for those who are more advanced or want variety (diabetics were the original low carbers ).
If you don’t like the smell of ground beef cooking you can boil it and drain it before throwing flavours through it. A lot of dieters do it to lower the fat content.
I have this slow cooker and it is perfect for cooking for 2-4 people. The slow cooker I had before was enormous and I found that I wasted a lot by over-cooking. A 1.5 quart fits a 2 pound roast perfectly, cooks it a little faster, and there’s less waste if you’re just cooking for yourself. I make chili and soups in it too- i just used it yesterday to make Ethiopian red lentils.
I like to cook a pork roast in the brine from a jar of pickled jalapenos. Cook, shred, add some of the liquid back to it and add bbq sauce, or not. I cooked beef shank with a bottle of crappy beer last week and made barbacoa for tacos. Just cook, shred, eat. Slow cookers are the best.
I know you want to get away from ground beef, but it just isn’t going to happen on low carb.
My favourite is taking a pound of ground beef and stirring it up with high heat in a pot untill it is all brown and crunchy and then dumping in 796 mls (roughly 3/4 of a US quart) of diced tomatoes and lower the lower the heat to simmer. Dice up a red onion, and open up a small can of chopped mushrooms. Stir in the pot.
And then to make it really special I stir in a couple of dollops of natural (no added sugar) peanut butter which also thickens it up.
Then I let it simmer and bubble for as long as I can stand it.
Ditto. And I actually love ground beef AND the smell of cooking it. Yet, though I eat very few carbs, I still hardly ever use ground beef for anything other than burgers.
Other than burgers, pretty much the only time I eat beef at all is when I want a good steak. Otherwise, pork and chicken are my two primary go-to meats for most meals. And sausage is the default for breakfast.
A favorite of mine is veggie lasagna (or a pasta casserole). I use 100% whole wheat pasta, but it can be made lo-carb easily bu substituting eggplant slices. Add veggies of your choice (I like shredded carrots, lima beans, chopped zucchini and yellow squash, chopped broccoli, and spinach - all available frozen, so there’s minimal prep time), tomato sauce, low-fat cottage cheese, and low-fat part-skin shredded mozzarella. It takes only five minutes or so to assemble, an hour to bake, and feeds one person for a week (and freezes well, if you don’t want to be eating the same thing all week).
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