General Chat

Ann of Green Gables,

I'll have a cutting of one of your appendages please...a mastectomy last year has left me rather lop-sided.

Dee
:(((

If you're counting carbs, a great substitute for potato is cauliflower. You can mash it with cheese and sour cream and also "rice" it in the food processor for curries, chillis etc. Sometimes it's really hard to tell the difference.

I also use soy beans for peas and strips of summer squash for noodles for Stroganoff

Rose

Jean -- thanks for that idea. It never occurred to me to put cauliflower in the macaroni and cheese. Duh. I do make it occasionally (high-fibre, lower-carb whole wheat macaroni ...) and always wonder what I could do with it to follow my One More Vegetable rule -- and that is absolutely perfect! Next on the list of what to spend my Saturday morning filling the freezer with, that is.

Read a letter in today's Telegraph from a Lady( the titled kind) who said does no one have a Sunday Roast,served cold on Monday,rissoles or burgers on Tues,Shepherds pie Weds.
Most weeks we have a Sunday roast,cold on Monday,and one of the above and a nice sandwich with a salad on Tues..I find it economical and OH doesn't complain.
I make scones quite a bit as they are so easy,and I don't measure.OH has taken a fancy to banana bread as well.
Never buy ready meals,and always use the stock from chicken for a good broth with loads of veg.
I too like my slow cooker also my pressure cooker.
Meat and potato pie is a favourite with my grown up grandchildren(and my little g.grandchildren,)but these days I cheat and buy frozen puff pastry.
Made a lot 2 weeks ago for 17 of us at a family celebration on the day they arrived as they all came different times,and it is something that doesn't spoil.
Most had 2 helpings.
There is nothing like home cooking.

I make homemade burgers too. When I make macoroni cheese I add cauliflower as well and have a one-pot meal. Cheee pudding is nice hot or cold. With 2 diabetics in the house we both watch the carbs like hawks and so meals are considerably smaller than many households When I make spaghetti bolognaise I use three ounces of spaghetti for the two of us, about half the recommended amount. If I make toad in the hole we do not eat potato at all, and when we occasionally have fish shop fish we do not have chips as the batter alone sends the sugar sky high. Thats the only ready meal we ever have apart from cooked ham. Jean

Oh, I'd eat one of those rag pud things for a treat, have no fear!

Hints from the low-carb cookery, in case anybody wants to try.

For shepherd's pie or anything calling for potatoes like that, substitute squash.

Butternut squash -- I know we call things by different names sometimes; this is the one with a round end and a long neck, the longer and thicker the better, and smooth thin skin.

Mashed potato is 30 grams of carb per cup. Mashed squash is (I'd have to look it up to be sure) 8 or 12.

So use mashed squash where you would have used potato. Little bitty changes like that really can be very good for you.

Squash pancakes are also great, although grating hunks of peeled butternut squash is a job best assigned to the person who can be told that if he wants to eat, he has to grate. Grate 'em up, add an egg and as little flour as possible just to hold it together, fry up in veg oil as pancakes, eat with anything in place of taters.

Amazingly, even turnip (rutabaga) and carrots are less than half the carb value of potatoes and sweet potatoes. Parsnips, they're bad ones.

We have just had homemade burgers very lean mince, fine chopped onions bit of garlic, fine herbs, serve with fresh salad lite sour cream and chives dip.
followed by fresh fruit salad, Kathryn I hasten to add we only have rag puds every once in a while. as a treat.I love the cheats though sometimes use w/w mash with spring onions in. great for topping over
shepherds pie,ala Delia Smith, Joan what a great idea putting it in a book, many years ago we did a book for church funds all the oldies put recipes in and some men and littleies, I sill use it

when can i come to tea please?

i got veg for veg stew tomorrow,
i love baking,
love pies too

"Hands too hot"? Is that an excuse for not being able to bake? Explain how that one works -- I'd like to be able to use it!

Me, I just point out that if I bake, someone will have to be cleaning the flour off the floor, the ceiling, the cats ...

Cheats ways to cook....

Quiches......ready made pastry, grated cheese, sliced tomato fry off mushrooms, bacon or gammon diced......then more cheese.....whip up 2 eggs plus some garlic salt and blackpepper and a drop of milk and pour over......in oven for 1/2 hour.....about 160 to 180 depending on fan oven or not.....

Pasta bake...

Cook pasta ..... I use the shell one......cut up chicken fillets.....cook off some bacon and chop up......cut up some cherry tomatoes.....add some fromage frais or cream and a tin of condensed chicken or mushroom soup......160/180 1/2 hr....

Fish pie.... frozen fish.....microwave for 2 mins then 30 second bursts until cooked.....defrost some prawns in hot water.......parsley sauce granules made up......Aunt Bessies mashed potato.....again black pepper and sauce.....

No good with cakes, pies or pastry though......hands too hot.....

no, these blasted appendages!!

"sorry to be so graphic" Ann? You mean about how you'd be too thin if you lost 30 pounds?

Phfft!

well for a mere man
I can make a fantastic victoria sponge
and my friut cake is heaven

:O)

gonna look for some high fibre pittas tomorrow!!

well thanks very much for that Kathryn - I shall take note of what you have said and give it a go. I'd be too thin if I lost 30lb!!! [if only] but I really need to get shot of at least ten pounds and I'll be OK - prob is I have a 32 JJ bust and that alone weighs a stone!!! sorry to be so graphic - if it weren't for these appendages I'd be the right weight - anyone want some cuttings?

Ann, it really is possible -- it isn't even really really hard. I've actually managed to keep it off, and I'm about to take a kick at some more. Phoenix in September, you know.

It was a 45 grams of carb per meal diet. The other diabetics in the group couldn't believe they'd done that to him, but he hadn't been diagnosed well (treated for Type II when it should have been obvious sooner that he was Type I) and it was a blood sugar emergency. Then after 3 months the nurse kinda said Oh, well, you can stop that now.

I only eat one meal a day, so I took the brunt of it!

You absolutely have to cook your own food. He was eating frozen burritos that had 45 grams of carb each, and lord knows how much fat. I can make a burrito with a high-fibre whole-grain tortilla and homemade chili filling that's the same amount of carb and twice the size.

Him, good old No. 1, he's the one who's 6'4" and weighs about, and I am not kidding, 140. Very unhealthily thin. But eats like a gigantic hog. He's easy to hate.

Anyhow, it isn't hard, but it takes diligence. Vegetables, vegetabales, vegetables. And meat is fine. I pay little attention to fat -- we eat lean meat, I cook with little bits of veg oil, and so if we eat a fair bit of cheese (no carbs), I figure we'll live.

Cooking stews/casseroles ahead, leaving out the potatoes and dumplings and crusts and barley and pasta (peas and yellow corn are very bad too), and loading them with celery and onion and green beans (and herbs and garlic for flavour) -- stick to it, and it just works automatically.

Me, I love sandwiches. So jerk chicken caesar sandwiches are often on the menu.
- cook chicken (skinless boneless - breast, thigh, drumstick) with some bottled jerk sauce (or without, if you're not a fan of hot and spicy), chopped up
- chopped romaine lettuce, cucumber, tomato and sweet onion
- thick caesar dressing in a jar
Stuff in a low-carb pita half.

I get small high-fibre pitas that are 10 grams of carb each -- normal ones can be as much as 30. Reading nutrition labels is hugely important and you will be *amazed* at the huge variations.

You can stuff yourself with 4 of these half-sandwiches and have a grand total of under 50 grams of carb.

If you ate two chicken salad sandwiches using regular white or whole-grain store-bought bread, you'd likely have over 80 grams of carb. Make 5 changes like that, and you'll see the difference in a month -- without even eating a whole lot *less*, just different.

crumbs - losing ten pounds per month!!! I'd very much like to do that!!!

Have to cook from scratch -- diabetic in the household so carbohydrates have to be counted, so that insulin can be adjusted.

chili -- legume beans are the best kind of carbohydrate, so he eats chili from the freezer for lunch often

stews -- lots and lots and lots of vegetables (except potatoes and sweet potatoes, maybe in moderation) -- the rule when cooking is: One. More. Vegetable. usually a cup of frozen green beans.

curries -- saag chicken -- lots of spinach, and added red peppers and mushrooms, with moderate serving of brown rice

Chinese -- skinless boneless chicken breast (fat is a problem too), lots and lots of vegetables, brown rice

It's amazing what happens when you cut out the white foods -- potatoes, pasta, bread, flour, sugar. (We eat bread, but whole-grain sliced very very thinly for sandwiches, or high-fibre pita, for instance, and lower-carb, high-fibre pasta.)

I lost 30 pounds in 3 months on *his* extremely low-carb emergency diet two years ago.


Everything mentioned in this thread so far ... well, we do eat that kind of thing sometimes, but it's cheating. ;)

Well its round to Ann of GG
to have cakes then

mmmmmm