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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!

The question should be what can’t they do for you? This is a powerful combination! There are benefits to all three separately but all together their pretty much unstoppable!

Healthy digestion is at the core of all health. Without a healthy digestive system and gut you will feel sluggish and not adequately absorb the nutrients from your food. An unhealthy digestion and gut also leads to health problems and weight gain and really who wants that!

Low Carb way of eating is a great way to encourage hormone balance, Continue reading “What can Low Carb, Healthy digestion and concentrated food nutrients do for you?” →

I find it absolutely amazing and scary how many things have added sugars snuck into them. Take taco seasoning for example, a seemingly innocent mix of seasonings and spices right? Wrong! at least for prepacked store bought…and don’t even get me started on bullion bases! Look at the added sugar and carb amount in this Old Elpaso seasoning:

While 3 carbs may not seem like a lot that Keep on reading!

Before starting out on our LC journey we had been Paleo”ish” for a few years but do to life craziness, which is a whole other story, we would fall off the wagon quite often and slip back into processed junk. It is amazing how many Paleo and Low Carb recipes cross over each other and yet how many Paleo recipes are much higher in carbs as they use more starch. I still have a great number of my favorite Paleo recipes that were lower in carbs to begin with or have converted the higher carb ones to lower carb. However I digress, what did we do about tacos? I mean tacos are one of America’s favorite comfort foods and how can one live without them! The kids would typically still have them on regular shells and tortillas and Mr. Low Carb and I would usually have them in Romaine lettuce all while missing the nice crunch of a taco shell. Here enters “cheese shells” and oh my the yum! I must credit Kim from Low Carb Maven for the initial recipe and inspiration. I never in a million years would have thought of just melting cheese! I have tweaked and added various spices and things and my own little spins. How does one make these shells you ask….plain melted cheddar cheese! That’s it! To make these you can melt the cheese in a skillet on the stove or in the oven on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or even in the microwave if doing single serve. Since I cook for an army or so that’s what it feels like I choose the oven method as it allows me to cook several at one time. I was concerned that the shells would not hold together once packed with meat, lettuce, tomatoes and sour cream, however I had a lovely surprise. These shells are not only sturdy but very pliable so when you bite into them they have enough give that they don’t break apart like a typical hard shell does. Each shell has about 1g of carbs! If you leave tomatoes off you are having almost no carbs! They are oh so filling, 2 tacos and your set for the evening! Be wary of store bought taco seasonings as many have added sugars in them which will add to your carb intake. I have taken to making my own which you can read about here.What do you need? Cheddar cheese, baking sheets, parchment paper and an oven and a taco shaper or wooden spoons or dowel and cups to shape the shells.

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and place one rack in the upper third and the other rack in the lower third. Line 2 baking sheets(bar pans, cookie sheets, jelly roll pans, etc) with parchment paper…NOT wax paper. Do not skip this step or you will have a mess. I use about 1/3 cup of cheese per shell, though this will vary depending on how finely grated your cheese is. You don’t want too much cheese as it won’t melt evenly. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different cheeses, in fact a parmesan cheddar mix is nice. Mozzarella cheese does not work well as it’s too soft. You can also add seasoning to the cheese once it’s on the baking sheet. The cheese should be in about a 3″ circle on the pan, each pan will hold about 3 shells.

• Bake for 5 minutes and swap the lower backing sheets and bake another 5-10 minutes or until little holes have appeared in the surface and the edges begin to brown.  Oven temps will vary so be sure to watch closely, if the cheese gets too cooked it will not shape correctly. I learned this the hard way. My oven is about 5 mins and then 7 min after rotating the pans.

Once cooked, remove from the oven, give the cheese shells just a second to cool before removing, but work fast! They need to be shaped while still pliable. Simply drape them over a wooden spoon or dowel suspended by glasses or cans until the cool and are crispy or a shaper. Leave on the pans to cool flat for chalupa or tostada shells.  The cheese is extremely hot and burned my fingers the first couple times, I found using tongs to remove from the pan and drape over the wooden spoons or shaper saved my fingers.

These are the finished shells, don’t they look yummy?

A couple notes to mention. The hanging method of the cheese does not produce uniform shells. This is not a problem if you are only making a few shells that will not need storing, however if you are making a bulk batch as I do the wooden spoons and cups is a bit cumbersome, takes up a lot of counter space and uses up all your spatulas and other large utensils. I finally got this Taco Shaper I had been eying and it gave me uniform shaped shells as well as not hog up my whole counter and utensils! That’s what I call WINNING!

2nd issue…Melted cheese is greasy and while is it draped and cooling the grease is going to drip onto your counter so I highly recommend putting some paper toweling or something else to “catch” the grease to avoid a gross mess to clean up after. You can alternatively make the shells into a bowl for a taco salad by shaping it into a small bowl. If you have any left overs store them in an airtight container in the fridge. Bone Petite

While you are waiting pictures and posts of the deliciousness that comes from my kitchen you can have a nice laugh at the goofy post my 17yr old son wrote up. He wrote it as if it were me writing. It’s all in good fun and just something to bring you laughs. Enjoy.

My family and I have been eating Lowcarb for nearly 5,000 years, and we’re not planning on stopping for another billion. Haha, did I fool you? Because I’m just kidding, we’ll never stop eating Lowcarb! I’m not even 5 sentences in, and I’ve already told you one of the rewards. A Long life span!

That being said, this task proves much harder than it looks. It is a difficult objective to eat healthy, because if you’ve ever tried it before, you’ve probably found that the “food” tastes like a moldy sponge that was pulled out of a sewer and wrapped in an insult. And That’s where I come in!

I am Shari and am the proud wife to my wonderful husband and proud mommy to our 8 kiddos. Having a big family is pretty great and interests are all over the place. There is never a dull moment in our home! My husband, aka Mr. Lowcarb, is a type 1 diabetic and if you have T1D or have a loved one that has it you know it is nothing easy to deal with and can cause a lot of health issues. In November of 2018 I started learning about Low Carb and how insulin and other hormones work together, I knew a lot before but always love to learn more and boy have I! This lead us to decide to give a new lifestyle change a try and after the results we have had so far we will never go back to the standard american diet(SAD)!

Since starting our low carb journey shortly before Thanksgiving of 2018, what a time to give up carbs!, I have been having loads of fun finding different recipes to try for my family and tweaking them along the way. After posting many pictures on Facebook of the deliciousness I was making I had several requests for the recipes which I happily share however it can be difficult to do on social media and as a result this blog is born. This is also doubling as a school project for my son. I hope you enjoy the foods you will see as well as other posts about low carb and our lives on it.

Please be patient as we learn how to work this blogging site and get things in order.