Tuna and egg salad

This is very simple to make, but satisfying enough for dinner for 2. It is a variant on a Nicoise salad, but does not have any potatoes in it.

Ingredients

For the salad

4 hard boiled eggs, sliced
1 Tin of tuna in oil, drained
Half a jar of black olives, pitted
Lots of rocket, enough to make a thick layer in the bowls before you put the other ingredients in
4 tomatoes, sliced

Optional ingredients for the salad: 

Capers, green olives, anchovies, toasted pine nuts

For the dressing

Olive or cold pressed rapeseed oil
Balsamic vinegar, good stuff is better as its flavour dominates this dressing. You don't need much
1 tsp english mustard
Salt and pepper

Instructions

Get a jar with a screw top lid on it. A clean jam jar is fine, but a screw top plastic food storage container is better. Pour in about 1 cm deep of oil. Add the mustard and salt and pepper. Pour in some balsamic vinegar. Less than half the quantity of oil should do the trick. Close the lid and give it a good hard shake.
Line the serving bowls with rocket. Arrange the other ingredients on top. Drizzle the dressing over.

Low Carb Hospitality

I attended an event at Google in Dublin a couple of days ago. The catering was very impressive, but as you can see from the picture, not very low carb. This was afternoon tea for those feeling peckish after lunch. There was something similar in the morning and lots of options for lunch - low and high carb.

The point here is that it can be very difficult to stick to a low carb diet (or indeed any diet) when someone else is feeding you. To be fair to Google, they asked me twice by email if I had special dietary needs and I thought, 'I'll be fine'. I presumed they were asking if I was a vegetarian. Maybe I should have told them I was gluten intolerant. Might have gotten me somewhere.

If lunch had not had as many options as Google customarily offers I would have been in trouble. Even a visit to the local Spar is unlikely to produce much low carb joy.

So the message is to bring your own lunch if you don't think you will be able to eat what they give you. Thanks to the reduced appetite that comes with a low carb diet the sugary treat tables did not bother me. And they had very nice coffee to give me something to do during the breaks.

Why sweeteners are bad for you - Dr. Kimber Stanhope

There is a growing body of evidence that supports the health benefits of a low carbohydrate diet. Dr. Kimber Stanhope is one of the leading researchers in this area. In this video she talks about the huge range of sweeteners that exist and discusses responses of test subjects to variations in these sweetener levels in their diets. 

Green lentils with smoked coley and cabbage

This is a good filling main meal. It requires some chopping to get it started, but cooks away on its own without requiring any of your attention.
This serves 2 adults and takes about 50 minutes in total.

Ingredients

200g Green lentils - I got mine in Dunnes Stores
1 litre of vegetable stock - Marigold is good, but any that is not full of rubbish will do
3 Carrots, finely chopped
1 Onion, finely chopped
3 Sticks of celery, finely chopped
1 Tbsp of Olive oil
2 smoked back rashers, chopped
4 bay leaves
200g approx of smoked Coley
About 5 leaves of green cabbage, stalk trimmed out and discarded

Instructions

Heat the oil in a thick bottom pot. Add the bacon and vegetables and cook for about 20 minutes on medium. Stir occasionally to stop it sticking. Add the lentils, stock and bay leaves. Bring to a simmer and cook covered for about 25 minutes until the lentils are almost done. Cut the cabbage into strips and cut these cross ways - this just makes it easier to eat without scalding your chin. Add the cabbage and fish to the pot and push them down beneath the surface of the liquid. Cover again for about 10 minutes. Ladle into bowls and serve with a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil on top.

A video illustrating the many benefits of a low carbohydrate diet

People sometimes wonder 'where will I get my energy when I am not eating carbs?' - at least not in any significant amount. This video explains the processes that lead the body to use ketones as its primary energy supply instead of glucose. There are a wide range of benefits to this and Dr. Volek even talks about record breaking distance runners who eat very low carb diets. It looks like carbo loading before a race may have been another dietary myth. 

This is an hour well spent.

Stuff to grow in your garden to help with a low carb diet

It goes without saying that growing lots of different types of vegetables will help you keep a varied low carb diet interesting, but some stuff is better to grow than others.

Herbs should be top of your list. They take little effort and can make a dish. Many of them are just not available in the shops. They don't have the shelf life, or consumer demand to justify stocking them. Dried versions are not much like the fresh ones. Growing your own herbs can also save you quite a bit of money.

I have these and am planning on adding some more:

• Thyme
• Rosemary - I am not having much success, but am going to try again as this is delicious in stews and roasts
• Mint - plant it in a large bucket with the bottom cut off which you sink in the soil. Prevents it taking over your garden
• Chives - nice substitute for spring onions and they go to see and make nice flowers in your garden
• Marjoram - very hardy
• Sage - grows all year round. Needs to be controlled, but rarely becomes a problem plant
• Parsley - you will need to replace this every few years. Flat leaf tastes best, but is not as tough as curly parsley

• Leaves in a little plastic bag from the supermarket are a very expensive way to make salad. This is fine for infrequent salad eaters, but at least during the summer months you will be eating a lot of salads, both side and main. A good source of salad leaves from your garden can save you a lot of money. I used to plant rocket every year, but a couple of years ago I didn't bother digging it up at the end of the season. It came on stronger than ever the next year. Its on its third season now and is showing no sign of slowing down. 
• Garlic from supermarkets is often pretty bland. Fancy ones are available in smaller markets, but they can be very expensive. The best bet is to grow some of your own. If you use as much garlic as I do, it is unrealistic to expect to grow enough to meet all your needs. But is is nice to supplement the supermarket with some better flavoured stuff of your own. I buy a range of varieties and plant then in the autumn for summer early summer harvest.
• Chard. This is hardy, delicious and good for you. It is very resilient to pests and like like the rocket I am still on last years stuff. It produces a lot of leaves and can keep you substantially in greens for about half the year from a square meter or 2 in your garden. It can be steamed, stir fried (a bit of sesame oil is great on this) or just added to saucy dishes like curry or the provencal sauce that I use a lot.
• Beetroot. A close relative of chard, but grown for the roots rather than the leaves, although thinnings and young leaves are very good salad leaves to supplement your chard. Beetroot is also very hardy and can be used in some delicious recipes. I will post some of these over the coming months as we get into beetroot season.

Tips to convert a normal recipe to low carb

While there are plenty of resources on the web for low carb eating there will be times when you want to make something you are used to, but without the carbs. Like spaghettiless bolognaise. Also there may be high carbers in your house or maybe you are not happy forcing a weird diet on your kids! Whatever the reason 

• Pick a recipe that does not rely entirely on carbs - potatoes boulangere for example are pretty much out
• Make sure there is enough protein and fat in the recipe to fill you up in the absence of carbs
• Add extra vegetables - both on the side and chopped small and cooked into sauces. This is both for fibre and nutrient reasons and to help fill you up
• Add a side salad as often as you can. Growing some leaves for this purpose yourself makes sense if you are going to be using a lot of them
• Make a note of what changes you made and whether they worked - you can fine tune this way

Some normal dishes that work well with this are

• Bolognaise sauce with vegetables and a side salad
• Veg curry without the rice - add a few handfuls of red lentils to increase the protein level
• Roast dinner on Sunday - without the roast potatoes and with extra vegetables

There are some brutal low carb recipes out there. Hopefully you can avoid the worst of them. They make the low carb lifestyle a tough sell. There is really no reason to suffer on this diet if you take some time to get used to what you can and can't cook.