No Pasta! – What To Do When Going Low-Carb

“What do you eat when you don’t eat pasta, potatoes or rice?”

That’s probably the most common question I get when I talk to someone who eats a “normal” diet. They are mostly referring to what you have with the fish, meat, poultry or other source of protein on your plate. It seems to be the biggest challenge for most of us when trying to low carb. What do I have instead? How can I survive without the pasta, bread, potatoes/tubers, rice, quinoa and cous-cous that I usually eat? Won’t my food become super boring?

No worries, here are a couple of ideas for you, to start with!

Cauliflower mash instead of potato mash. You do it pretty much the same way as you would a potato mash.
Boil the cauliflowers until soft, pour out most of the water. Mash them with an immersion blender, add butter, cream and seasonings to your taste. I like to fry finely cut bacon in butter and add that too the cauliflower and then mash it all together, sometimes with additional butter and some cream. It’s delicious! Once you’ve had it, you can’t stop!

Zucchini pasta instead of the normal pasta. Take zucchini, slice it thin, most easily done with a cheese slicer, and boil it for a couple of minutes. Add your favorite pasta sauce, enjoy!

Cauliflower rice instead of white rice.
Take a cauliflower head, grate it coarsely so you get pieces the size of rice. Boil it in water with a bit of salt for about 3-5 min. Pour out the water, enjoy with sauce, meat, chicken or whatever you usually have with rice.
It’s possible to do sushi with it too, but that requires a little bit more thought in how to get it sticky. Check out Awesome Åshild’s recipe: http://awesomeashild.com/2014/04/07/super-easy-low-carb-cauliflower-rice-sushi/

Forget all about the rice, pasta, potatoes and other carby stuff.
Make a giant salad with leafy greens, cucumber, bell pepper, feta cheese/other cheese you like, sunflower seeds/pumpkin seeds/nuts, olives, ham/fried bacon and pour lot’s of olive oil on top.

You can just steam cauliflower and broccoli, let grass fed butter melt on top and savor it!

Make stuffed bell peppers in the oven. Fill them with cheese of your choice, some onion and mushroom and enjoy!

Wrap asparagus in bacon and fry in grass fed butter or coconut oil. Yummy!!!

Please share your discoveries as you try out this awesome way of living!

 

Carrot Cake – Low Carb & Gluten Free

Cake:

Carrot cake in the serving.

• 1,5 dl (5 oz) almond flour
• 1,5 dl (5 oz) buck wheat flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 0,5 tsp vanilla powder
• 1,5 tsp cinnamon1 tsp cardamom
• 0,5 tsp ground, dried ginger
• 1 pinch of salt
• 3 organic, free range eggs
• 1,5 dl  (5 oz) sukrin+ (3 dl (10 oz) Sukrin Gold)
• 4 dl (1 2/3 cup) finely grated carrots
• 1,5 dl (5 fl.oz) melted, coconut oil (deodorized if you don’t like the coconut taste)

Frosting:

• 200 g (7 oz) cream cheese
• 50 g (3,5 tbsp/0.5 stick) of grass fed butter, room tempered
• 4 tsp sukrin melis (or 2 tsp of sukrin+)
• 1 ml vanilla powder (or more if you like the taste)

Cake:
Heat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
Mix all the dry ingredients and the spices together in a bowl. Whip the sukrin and eggs so they become fluffy. Fold the dry ingredients into the fluffy egg mix and then add the finely grated carrots along with the melted coconut oil. Stir until smooth.
Pour mixture into a spring-form pan with oven paper on the bottom and the sides smeared with coconut oil or butter. Let it bake for 20-25 min on the middle rack. Take it out and let it cool completely. Meanwhile it’s time to start the frosting, see below.

Frosting:
Stir the butter and the cream cheese into a creamy frosting, add sweetener and vanilla powder to your taste. Spread the frosting on top of the cooled cake and dust with cinnamon.

You can use other sweeteners of your choice, but the consistency of the batter and frosting might change with them.
I prefer having more coarsely grated carrot, because I like the feeling of the carrot in the cake. I also add a little more cardamom and cinnamon in the cake batter because I enjoy the taste of the combination with the carrots.

Serving suggestion: Cardamom coffee or a chai tea made on half and half or cream.

Note: Sukrin is a sweetener made out of erythritol (a sugar alcohol that is almost zero-caloric and doesn’t raise blood sugar or affect insulin).
Sukrin+ has Stevia (“stevia glycoside”, a sweetener from the Stevia plant) added,  which makes it double as sweet as Sukrin.

Sukrin has very similar properties as sugar when baking and cooking.