Month: February 2023

Bagels are a staple of the typical person’s diet. We see bagel shops all over and in every store, however your typical bagel is very high in carbohydrates and also very processed. What if you could have your bagel and eat it too? Well you can with a low carb bagel based off the Fat Head dough recipe inspired from the Fat Head movie…if you haven’t watched this movie yet do yourself a favor and watch it! With just a few ingredients you can have bagels again. Do they taste like New York bagels, no, however they are hearty and have a nice chew to them.

What you will need:

• 1 3/4 cup pre shredded/grated mozzarella
  cheese
• 3/4 cup almond meal/flour *see recipe notes below
• 2 tbsp full fat cream cheese
• 1 egg medium(at room temp)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt to taste
• parchment paper
• bowl for mixing(safe for microwave or oven)
• Stand mixer or food processor(optional)

Pre-heat oven to 425F. Mix mozzarella cheese, almond flour and cream cheese in the bowl. We do not have an microwave so I either place in my oven for a few mins on a lower heat around 200 degrees F or a double boiler on the stove top. If you have a microwave heat for about one minute, stir and then about 30 secs more. You’re basically looking to get the cheese nice and pliable.

Place the now pliable cheese flour mix into your stand mixer bowl or your food processor. If you don’t have this equipment you can mix by hand so just leave it in your bowl you heated in. This will take longer and a considerable more work but can be done. Add the egg, baking powder and salt. You can also add other seasonings you might like. Mr. Low Carb likes it when I add garlic powder.

After the ingredients are incorporated nicely scrape the edges of the bowl. Mixture will be the consistency of a soft playdough. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper. The dough is a bit sticky so I find spraying the paper with a bit of avocado oil helps. Alternatively you can chill the dough for a bit, I haven’t found the need for this. I also spray my hands with a bit of oil for shaping the dough.

Shape the dough into a log, split into 6 equal sections, roll into a ball and shape into a bagel by placing a hole into the middle and carefully spreading it.

Once all the bagels are shaped cook in the oven for 15 min or until golden brown. Let cool as they will still cook once removed for a bit until fully cooled. Once cool cut and enjoy. These would be perfect with eggs, peanut butter, and anything else you enjoy bagels with. Great for toasting or in a toaster oven. See our bagel pizza recipe, who said bagels are just breakfast food? Store in the fridge for about 5 days or so in an airtight container or ziplock bag. Be sure they are completely cooled first

Each bagel is approx: Calories 203Calories from Fat 151Total Fat 16.8gTotal Carbohydrates 4g(2.4g net carbs) Fiber 1.6g, Sugars 1g Protein 11g

Sometimes you just have a hankering for some different foods. We love Chinese food but don’t always love how it makes our tummies feel. Feeding my family that is the size of an army, or some would say, with 3 teenage boys we have to be creative with our food budget, keeping tummies full and keeping it low carb. Browsing for inspiration I came across an interesting recipe from one of my favorite sites Peace Love and Low Carb for a egg roll in a bowl. It looked interesting so I thought I would put my own spin on it and give it a whirl. This recipe makes 4 servings and for an army you will want to triple it. Bonus is that even tripled it’s still very budget friendly, especially if you have an Aldi near you. The original recipe called for sesame oil however we opted to use coconut oil instead as sesame oil is highly processed and high in polyunsaturated fats and omega 6 than we like and can cause inflammation. Since we work hard to keep inflammation down we do not use that. My kids ate 2-3 helpings each, it was a big hit. Adding extra veggies in that you might have and like would make it even better. We added a little extra broccoli slaw mix. I had sauteed mushrooms in mine as did one of my sons, the rest don’t like mushrooms so we did not make it in the full batch hence why it’s not in the recipe. This has such a nice crunch to it. Crumbled bacon would be amazing added to this dish because everyone knows bacon makes everything better! Bon petite

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons organic coconut oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup onion, diced
• 5 green onions, sliced on a bias (white and green parts)
• 1 pound ground pork(You could use shredded chicken or whatever type of meat you like and it will turn out wonderful)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• sea salt and black pepper, to taste
• 14 ounce bag coleslaw mix- we used broccoli slaw
• 3 tablespoons Coconut Aminos or gluten free soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• Optional: 1 tablespoon Sriracha or garlic chili sauce, more to taste. We did not use as we do not like spice.

• Heat coconut oil in a large skillet over medium high heat
• Add the garlic, onion, and white portion of the green onions. Sauté until the onions are translucent and the garlic is fragrant.
• Add the ground pork, ground ginger, sea salt, black pepper and Sriracha. Sauté until the pork is cooked through.

Add the coleslaw mix, coconut aminos, and red wine vinegar. Sauté until the coleslaw is tender.

Top with green onions and sesame seeds before serving. My family is not big on green onion so we left that off and it was still delicious. Add more Coconut Aminos or Soy sauce if you’d like a bit more as well.

Notes:
Approx Per Serving – Calories: 297| Fat: 20g | Protein: 20g | Total carbs: 7g | Fiber 1.5g | Net Carbs: 5.5g

I can’t think of anything my kids like better than pizza. There’s just something about the mix of the crust with the sauce and delicious melted cheese and mouth watering toppings. In my reality though the sauce, cheese and toppings make or break the pizza. I could take or leave the crust. Since going low carb we have been experimenting with different ways to get our pizza fix in from time to time. Tonight’s experiment is pizza toppings on chicken! The inspiration is from Kalyn’s Kitchen with my own tweeks thrown in.

Here’s what you will need:

• 1 14oz jar low carb pizza sauce, reduced to about 1 cup
• 4 chicken Breasts
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1tsp garlic powder
• 1cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• pepperoni to cover the chicken breasts
• 2-3oz of crumbled bacon…because bacon makes everything better

I doubled my batch because I cook for an army!

• Preheat oven to 425F. Put pizza sauce in a small sauce pan and simmer on low for about 20 min to reduce sauce to about one cup. If you skip this step it may be too watery.

While the sauce is reducing trim the chicken breasts and slice in half. Put chicken into a heavy ziplock bag and pound flat with a meat mallet till nice and thin.

Mix oregano and garlic powder in a bowl and sprinkle over both sides of chicken breast. Heat olive oil in the skillet and add the chicken pieces cooking for 1-2 min on each side, the chicken will not be cooked through just browning for added flavor.

Choose the smallest glass baking dish you have that will fit all the browned chicken pieces without extra space and lay the chicken in the dish in a single layer. Top each breast with the pizza sauce and cheese. Then top with pepperoni and crumble bacon. Pop in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the cheese is melted. Pepperoni should be slightly crisp. Some pieces will slide into the bottom of the dish, just scoop them up.

Serve hot and be ready for thank yous!

Notes: If you don’t want to use jarred sauce making your own pizza sauce is pretty easy to do so feel free to make your favorite recipe. Experiment with different toppings. Mushrooms would probably go really well! Unfortunately only a few in my family like mushrooms.

I have been asked how I menu plan and if I would show an example. Before starting low carb we focused on Paleo and still like a lot of Paleo recipes some of which we have to tweak to make lower carb, which is just fine. Our kids all have an assigned evening for cooking dinner. They used to have to pick the recipes they wanted to make and they will eventually get back to that as we start to make a list of our favorites. Mr. Low Carb has the rule to not have the same recipe within two weeks of each other which kind of bums the kids out that they can’t make the same thing over and over again. We also have a left over night and a Crock Pot night which each kid has a week for that as well, so each child will have the crockpot meal once every 7 weeks. So how do I keep everything straight? I print out a calendar for each month, write the meal down for the date and on the back of calendar I write the date and the website or book its from. In my favorites I make a folder for each month with the meals bookmarked. Sometimes this means moving from one month to another to keep it straight. I wish I could have things book marked in multiple folders. So lets just see how this looks.

Sorry, my chicken scratch is hard to read. This gets hung up in the kitchen cupboard and at the beginning of each week I print the recipes for each day and pin those in the cabinet as well. We have a corkboard on the inside of the door. I go grocery shopping typically on Saturday for the coming week. Breakfast is usually eggs, eggs muffins, greek yogurt, etc. Lunch is usually left overs, sandwiches with low carb bread I made, or something pretty easy to eat. So as you can see Friday the 8th is Meat Pie, the 9th is Bacon Cheese Burger soup. There are always veggies or salad served even if it’s not on the calendar. I do not have all of Feb done just yet.

This is the back of the calendar. I do this incase the printed recipe gets lost or I forget to bookmark it in the month folder. It really comes in handy.

Here’s my book mark folder for February. This is where I come to print the recipes at the beginning of the week.

And that folks is how we menu plan here at the Reif Oasis. It’s not perfect and some months are better than others at planning. Some months I fall off the planning wagon completely and then we are miserable because we are scrambling the morning of the meal which is no fun for anyone! So I really try hard to stick with it, totally worth the effort. I hope this helps give others some ideas for menu planning.

I signed up for the free 30 day trial membership of the Diet Doctor website so I could binge watch the various documentaries all in one place! So far I have watched Fat Head, Cereal Killers 1&2, Carb-Loaded, Statin Nation 1&2, The Big Fat Fix, and Fat Chance. All of these are well worth the watch, full of great information, not boring, gives real studies not hype. I can’t encourage everyone enough to find these and watch them.

Currently I am watching the documentary My Big Fat Diet
and I am in tears!

The tears could be due to PMS but I think the majority of them are from seeing the change in these people’s lives. This is different from the other documentaries I watched. It is about a study done in Canada on Traditional First Nations people style of diet. Watching the interviews of these people and the results they’re getting, how they are supporting each other, their self esteem raised, and so much more just got me real emotional. There is one gal that said one of her biggest goals was to be able to shop at a regular clothing store instead of a Big girl store! When she was able to buy something smaller than what she normally gets I just wanted to jump for joy for her. I know that celebration because just a few weeks ago I got to experience that same joy of having my normal size clothes be too big on me! I got that joy of moving to the smaller racks at the store.

Seeing some of these people that have tried everything and they are still sick and overweight and they have kids they want to be around for just really hits home. They now feel a renewed hope and show their kids a better way. It’s these kinds of testimonies is why I do what I do. It’s why I educate on diet and NeoLife. I want to help others and help give renewed hope.

I have struggled with weight, even as a child I was a little pudgy and would get made fun of. I wasn’t fat but I wasn’t slim either. My mom did the best she could but low income means cheap food and even though she cooked everything at home it wasn’t from good ingredients.

For the first time I finally feel that hope too that the weight and inches will stay off. Seeing my husband have results warms my heart. So if you watch just one documentary watch My Big Fat Diet!

That is the age old question….or is it?

When I was a child we didn’t snack…yes I am dating myself here…..we ate at meal times and outside of meals was pretty much not heard of. We didn’t have snack time at school, during after school activities, etc. It would ruin your appetite for meals and it wasn’t something that was called for in the budget. It just wasn’t done. I grew just fine without constantly eating throughout the day. Actually it wasn’t up until about 15 years ago or so that this whole concept of eating 4-6 or more times a day was healthy. Many of us bought into this theory. I mean it made sense, eating 4-6 small meals a day would keep your metabolism up and keep your blood sugar level through the day. Ahhh, it sounds so perfect, doesn’t it? Continue reading “To Snack……” →

I have a few favorite sites that I like to find inspiration for favorite recipes to try, share, tweak or for inspiration on creating my own however I have never actually interacted with the creator of the blogs. Imagine to my great delight when a creator of an amazing blog is a member of a diabetic group I am part of on Facebook! How cool is that and she even took the time out to come visit my little blog! I was honored and humbled. You can be sure to be seeing recipes from Caroline’s Keto Kitchen in the future! Be sure to visit Caroline’s blog and check out her amazing creations…be sure to have a napkin handy to wipe the drool off your chin. Not that I ever want anyone to be type 1 diabetic or diabetic at all, but it is wonderful to have a fun blog by another T1D like my husband. It means a lot.

Doesn’t that title just make you want to break out in song?! I know it makes me want to! If you’re in the Midwest then you know this week has been a killer weather wise. First a snow storm and then record breaking temps and not the warm ones!  These temps leave you chilled to the bone! Just thinking about them sends a shiver through me.  What is better on a freezing cold day than a cup of nice hot chocolate?  Nothing that I can think of other than a nice hot cup of LOW CARB hot chocolate!  How does less than 2 grams of carb per cup sound?

This was so easy to whip up and only needed a few ingredients.  Continue reading “Baby it’s COLD outside!” →

In our house we really don’t snack, we eat at meal times….for the most part. I may like to have a chia pudding for part of breakfast or maybe a dessert for dinner because it’s just that versatile and easy to just keep in the fridge. It’s fully of yumminess and just takes a couple minutes to put together. It can be done with any liquid you choose! I choose full fat organic canned coconut milk, but unsweetened almond milk, coconut milk from the carton, whole milk and even water. So here’s what you need: Milk of choice, chia seeds, cinnamon and no sugar sweetner(optional) and a jar or other container to mix it in.

Canned coconut milk will get really thick as the liquid and the cream separate. Continue reading “Cha Cha Cha Chia..no not the pet! The pudding, silly!” →

In our home we have a meal schedule and most days the kids each have a day they are responsible for planning the meal and cooking it. This gets filled out for a month so I can grocery shop weekly…well that’s what happens most times but life can get crazy so we roll with it. Anywho it’s been a great learning tool for the children to learn more about how to cook low carb and that they don’t have to give up all their favorite foods. Tuesday is leftover night every week and this is one thing that rarely changes, unless we have no leftovers that week, and last night was no exception. The only difference is I had to go into the tax office and get some work done so I was taking my dinner to eat there. It was a pretty sparse dinner of salmon and spinach and I knew I needed more but wasn’t really in the mood for anything else. I think everyone has been there at one point and time, you’re hungry but not hungry for anything. So digging through my fridge to see what else we have that I can take on the run I spy:

Ok, maybe it really wasn’t waving at me. It was just sitting there looking ugly as always. The truth is I really don’t care for avocados. I try to because I know they are good for me and I am trying to change my taste buds. I buy them and use them and find ways to get them into my diet. They are good on a burger though! So I grabbed the lazy avocado and remembered reading somewhere they lend a great texture to low carb puddings. So I said, “let’s give that a whirl!” I had everything on hand to whip up a pudding concoction.

The amounts I used, which can be adjusted to taste:

• 2/3 Cup Coconut Milk
• 2 tbsp Cocoa Powder
• 1 large avocado
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp pink himalayan salt
• Natural sweetener of choice, I used about 5 or 6 drops of liquid monk fruit.

Add the coconut milk, cocoa powder, and sweetener in the blender and mix it up. *Note: If don’t this for one serving the blender doesn’t work well as it’s too big. Next time I will put the ingredients in a bowl to mix well first.* Next add in the rest of the ingredients and blend well. Using a single serve blender here would work well or an immersion blender. The big blender was more of a pain, but I made it work.

You can see a personal size blender like a nutribullet or an immersion stick blender would have been better. Blend till smooth. Taste for sweetness and adjust by a little if needed. Please please please, pretty please do not use Aspartame or sucralose as they are super bad for you. *A word of caution if you chose to use Xylitol and haven’t consumed it before or are making this for something else…it can cause great intestinal discomfort and diarrhea. If not using something like Monk Fruit or Stevia then use a tad of Erythritol which is a sugar alcohol that the body doesn’t metabolize such as what Swerve brand uses, we have had no trouble with this at all though we use it pretty infrequently. * Only add sweetener a little at a time because you can’t undo it.

Once fully blended and tasting how you like chill for a bit because who likes warm pudding? You could freeze in a shallow bowl for more of an ice cream effect. Whichever way you choose you will end up with a smooth creamy decadent treat that tastes so yummy you think it should be so bad for you! We don’t eat desserts often, usually only at family gatherings so this was a nice treat!