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.

Tasting Savory Spiced Pecans

Savory Spiced Nuts

I have always believed that a big part of being a good cook is having a good eye for picking out other people's recipes.  So, this post is all about what an awesome job I did scouring the internet for the perfect savory spiced pecans.  I was two for two with these babies, and sometimes you've got to pat yourself on the back for the little things when you're cooking for a diet which will inevitably include a lot of failures.

My first success was with the Crankin' Kitchen!'s savory spiced nuts.  Tristan and I like plain salted macadamias, and raw brazils are his favorite, but we both agree that pecans just need a little something extra to pass as a snack food.  

snatched from crankingkitchen.wordpress.com

I love the herby natural flavor of these nuts.  I originally chose it because it used egg white to bind the herbs, something I was familiar with from making sweet versions (expect a future recipe review).  You could probably use butter instead and get even better numbers than what I got (below).  It says to use three different types of nuts, but we used all pecans.

per 55 g serving:

fat:  39 g, protein: 6.5 g, carb:  2.5 g

ratio:  5:1

 Savory Spiced Pecans

After my first success, I jumped straight into round two (we bought a really big bag of pecans).  I was in love with the flavor combination I was seeing and was willing to give a buttery version a try.  

snatched from www.thekitchn.com

I can see a definite addiction coming on in the Kitchn's savory spiced pecans. One of my favorite snacks is making chex mix from the recipe on the chex box.  These have a similar flavor, but I look forward to devising my own perfect mimic of 'chex mix' flavored pecans.  My only minor alteration to the recipe was adding 6 T butter rather than 5 1/3.  Once they have fully cooled, they absorb all of the butter, fantastic!  

per 60 g serving:

fat:  43.8 g, protein:  4.4 g, carb:  2.5 g

ratio:  6.5:1