Strawberry and Goat's Cheese Spinach Salad

This salad is our go-to meal for eating out at a friend's house.  When someone invites us over to dinner, we offer to make them something at their place.  This salad works as a starter or main (after all, when we have it, it's our whole dinner!) and with a few tweaks, it is quite palatable to non-keto people as well.  'The acceptable face of keto' we call it.  Also, it is easy to put together in an unfamiliar kitchen with ingredients that are pretty easy to find.

Ingredients:

40 g baby spinach

25 g avocado

30 g strawberries

100 g Eroski goat's cheese

28 g olive oil

7 g red wine vinegar

2 drops stevia

Note on goat's cheese:  Make sure your goat's cheese is <0.1g per 100.  Besides Eroski's home brand, Capricorn goat's cheese (UK) is good (although you can't find the values on the outside of the package, trust me), and Trader Joe's (US) also carried some.

Cut the avocado, strawberries, and goat's cheese into thin slices and toss over your bed of baby spinach.

For the dressing, combine the olive oil, vinegar, and stevia and pour over your salad.  Adjust the olive oil as needed if you use a cheese with different values.

fat:  63.1 g, protein:  22.7 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.5:1

Variations:

Toasted pecans are another lovely addition to this salad, and allow you to cut out a bit more olive oil or cheese.  Make sure you adjust down your carbs elsewhere, such as by going down to 35 g of spinach.

Blue cheese also works well on this salad if you can't find an appropriate goat's cheese (like in south Texas).  It's too strong for my tastes, but Tristan likes it even better!  Alternatively, we've even used brie on this salad in a pinch, which is much milder.

Bacon!  I tried it on a strawberry salad in Austin and became a believer, so if you need a bit more protein in your diet, sprinkle some on.  Like the pecans, most bacon has carbs, so adjust your spinach (or other carb) down a bit to compensate.

Samantha's Favorite Breakfast

We've done a lot of bacon and eggs combos.  Tristan tends to like to grab bits of any ingredient in the kitchen and throw them into breakfast in one skillet, but I am a flavor purist.  I want to savor the taste, individually, of each food.  

Ingredients:

30 g  or 2.5 slices thick cut bacon

50 g white mushrooms

105 g or 2 eggs

10 g heavy whipping cream (40%)

23 g bacon fat

9 g european butter

20 g heavy whipping cream

decaf coffee

Fry up the bacon to your liking and reserve the bacon fat.  If you are not using american bacon, you will not have the copious amount of bacon fat left in the skillet.  To achieve similar results, increase the butter to the necessary amount of fat and fry the bacon in some of this butter.

Cook sliced mushrooms in bacon fat/butter.  Salt to taste.

Scramble eggs with 10 g whipping cream.  Cook in remaining fat that has not been soaked up by the mushrooms.  Make sure you allow the fat to cool a bit so that you do not fry the eggs immediately.

Use remaining 20 g of cream in a creamy decaf coffee.

fat:  63.6 g, protein:  23.9 g, carb:  3.1 g

ratio:  2.4:1

I was never much a fan of scrambled eggs, but whipped with cream and lots of butter and bacon fat, these are delicious!

Spinach Salad with Bacon Vinaigrette

This salad is one of our go-to recipes.  In fact, the picture to the right was taken during our road trip, so its easy to put together when you're somewhere unfamiliar!  It is also a warm salad, so good for cooler weather when the idea of a cold meal is unappealing.

Ingredients:

Spinach Salad:

25 g sliced white mushrooms

50 g spinach

10 g green onion

50 g hard boiled egg

55 g bacon

Bacon Vinaigrette:

3 g yellow mustard

10 g red wine vinegar

1 g truvia

38 g bacon fat

Plate the spinach and arrange sliced raw mushrooms and chopped green onion.

Boil egg for about 6 minutes or until hard boiled.  Slice and place on salad.

Fry bacon to desired crispiness and crumble over salad.

Weigh your remaining bacon fat to get desired amount.  If you are outside of the US, then your bacon may not render a frying pan full of fat (yes, fellow Americans, I too was shocked that there is bacon that does not yield buckets of bacon grease!).  In that case, add as much olive oil as needed to the pan to reach the 38 g.

Over low heat, whisk in vinegar, truvia, and yellow mustard.  It may help to comine the ingredients before adding back to the pan.

Once rewarmed over the stove, pour over your salad, making sure to hit those mushrooms, so they soak up all that dressing!

fat: 63.4 g, protein:  24.5 g, carb:  3.1 g

ratio:  2.3:1

Variation:  If you are bothered by the idea of raw mushroom on your salad, you can always add it to the dressing when you are cooking it on the stove.  However, when you pour the hot oil on the salad, it does act as a sort of partial cooking.  Also, if you don't need quite so much protein, just use less bacon.  As you can see from the picture, there is bacon to spare!