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.

Keto Snack Pack

This is another non-recipe.  When you're on the road, the simpler the better.  We do a lot of hiking, so this is the lunch we pack for a day on the trails, but it works just as well for a day walking around a new city.

Ingredients:

70 g dubliner irish cheddar and/or dutch gouda

32 g macadamia nuts

32 g brazil nuts

This particular snack pack combination is especially good for a day of hiking because it's an even higher ratio than usual.  That extra fat comes in handy when you're exerting yourself!  You can also find even fattier cheese brands than what I've put in here at some grocery stores to really knock it out of the park. (Tristan especially likes Trader Joe's Double Cream Gouda.)

fat:  68.4 g, protein:  23.9 g, carb:  3 g

Ratio:  2.5:1

Variations:  We have also used green olives, pecans, and pork rinds in various snack packs, so try any combination you like.

Speaking of travel, don't forget to check out our keto travel network suggestion!

Bratwurst with Sauerkraut and Mustard

Hostels with kitchens - a big help for keto traveling

Another travel-friendly meal!  Sausages and hot dogs are pretty standard fare when camping, so we needed a way to make it keto-friendly.  Don't be fooled, the hot dogs and sausages you find at gas stations and little small town groceries are unlikely to cut it.  We only buy sausages that say 'carbohydrate: 0' on the nutritional label, which are few and far between.  Usually, those are bratwurst.  Boars Head makes a low-carb bratwurst, which we use as our carb value for calculating purposes, but it has proven to be quite elusive!  We made an exception for Trader Joe's very fat-tastic bratwurst coming in at 'less than 1 carb' which is not currently in the keto-calculator and which I am using for calculations here.

With the sausage sorted, we had to figure out a way to make it a meal.  Tristan was craving sauerkraut and mustard, which make a perfect accompaniment to a bratwurst and are wholly keto-approved.  Score!  If you aren't adamantly opposed to mayo with a sausage, it would be another great way to bump up your fat. (I love hot dogs with mayo.)  

To finish off the fat, pair with a creamy decaf   coffee (not pictured).

Ingredients:


Sausages:

2 Trader Joe's Hofbrau Brats
45 g sauerkraut
14 g yellow mustard (or 2 sachets nicked from a fast-food chain)

Creamy Coffee:

40 g heavy whipping cream (40%)
cup of decaf coffee

This is not strictly a recipe as such but more of a meal idea, so no real explanation needed.  Cook your sausages as you like (boil, pan fry, roast over a fire).  Just make sure they're cooked all the way through!

fat:  66.7 g, protein:  27.8 g, carb:  2.9 g

ratio:  2.2:1

Note:  Less fatty sausages (as most others, including Boars Head will be) will likely need a spoonful or two of supplemental fat to hit your desired ratio, so make sure to take into account the values for whatever sausage you use!

Fruity Flax "Loops"

Cereal is one of Tristan's big 'misses' on the ketogenic diet.  I had seen a few different keto breakfast cereal recipes floating around the internet, but each had their drawbacks.  For instance, a paltry child's handful of brightly colored fruit loops might taste nice, but they would never satisfy as a meal, nor contain enough protein for an active adult man.  Instead, I combined the best of every recipe I found, along with a couple of twists of my own.  The resulting cereal has a very 'healthy' flax taste to it, but according to Tristan, is my most ingenious creation yet!

The other upside to cereal is that it doesn't need to be kept cool, and the hours of advance preparation aside, can be put together very quickly the morning it's eaten.  Good news if you're packing up a campground!

Cereal Ingredients:

28 g european butter

2 g truvia

2 g sugar-free jello powder (strawberry banana)

10 g raw egg white

15 g vanilla soy protein powder

43 g ground flax seed

1/3 C water

'Milk':

50 g heavy cream (40%)

50g unsweetened almond milk

Melt butter and add all other remaining cereal ingredients.  The 1/3 C of water makes the batter easier to work with, but does not need to be precise, whatever works for you and your climate!

Pour batter into a plastic baggie and cut off one of the corners.  Remember, the size you cut from the corner dictates how much comes out when you are piping.  Bigger holes go faster!

If you are going for loops, pipe into loop shape.  However, if you are making a big batch like I was, you will quickly end up saying f*ck loops, you're getting blobs!  I promise that blobs taste just as good as loops, so give your hand a break if you need to!  Stick to about 1/2 inch in size.

Bake at 350 F for about 15 minutes.  Time will depend on size.  They should be crunchy and golden when ready.

Serve with the cream/almond 'milk.'

fat:  63.4 g, protein:  24 g, carb:  3 g

ratio:  2.4:1

Variations:  I chose strawberry banana jello flavor which gives it a nice banana smell when it is baking. In the end, flax is the overwhelming flavor, but if you want to try other jello flavors, go for it!  Our protein powder is all the way from a Holland and Barrett in the UK and the lowest carb option was vanilla soy, but I imagine any protein powder should work, just make sure it is low on the carbs!

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Tristan and I are currently on the road (Kansas!), and I knew I needed to prepare food-wise for our 9 state road trip.  One of my ideas was pre-made soup which would be easy to reheat in motel room microwaves or over a campfire.  If you're traveling by car, freeze it solid, keep it on ice, and you're good to go!

In the early days of the diet, Tristan insisted that soup on its own could never be filling enough, but soup is the perfect keto meal, so he never stood a chance resisting.  He's definitely changed his mind about soup now!

Ingredients:

35 g chicken (thigh)

30 g broccoli (raw)

10 g green onion

30 g european butter

50 g cream (40%)

50 g cheddar

Start out by boiling skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs in a large stock pot until fully cooked.  The leftover water will be used in the soup.

In an adequately sized soup pot, add the broccoli, green onion, butter, cream, and enough of the chicken stock you created to steam the broccoli.  With the lid on, bring the liquid to a simmer and cook until the broccoli is tender.

While the broccoli cooks, remove the chicken meat from the bone to get 35 g.  It should fall easily off the bone.

Once the broccoli has cooked, add the chicken.  Using a blender, submersible or otherwise, blend everything until smooth.  

Add grated cheddar last, melting into the soup.  Note that I used dubliner irish cheddar which has 0 carbs.

Salt to taste.

Serving size will vary based on the amount of liquid you choose to add to thin out your soup.  The chicken stock will also vary based on the ratio of chicken meat to water you use, but it will contain a small amount of protein and fat which is consequently impossible to factor into the nutritional values.

fat:  65.4 g, protein:  24.2 g, carbs:  3 g

ratio: 2.4:1

This soup is really delicious freshly made.  The texture isn't quite as smooth after being frozen, but still tastes just as good.  After canning, well that's a whole new post ...