The Low Carb Princess

I haven’t updated in awhile – life’s been busy, but that’s a good thing!

I have a whole heap of photos that I have taken of my food and recipes as well that I need to get around to posting on the site.

Please keep checking regularly, I will update soon!

If you are wondering what we eat all week, here is a sample weekly menu.

Take note: (B) = Bruce, (A) = Angie – we don’t always eat the same thing!

 

Monday breakfast: Spinach Bread with Chicken Sausages (B), Spinach Bread with ham & Cheese (A)

Monday lunch: Leftover Basil Cream Chicken & Vegies (B), Leftover Prawns & Sweet Potatoes (A)

Monday dinner: Caramelised Onion & Pear stuffed Pork Tenderloin with balsamic blueberry pan sauce & kale sauteed in butter.

 

Tuesday breakfast: Chicken sausages & eggs (B), Spinach Bread with ham & cheese (A)

Tuesday lunch: Roast Beef & Carrots

Tuesday dinner: Shirataki Noodles (meat of choice, vegies, egg)

 

Wednesday breakfast: Chicken sausages & eggs (B), Spinach Bread with ham & cheese (A)

Wednesday lunch: Roast Beef & Vegies (B), Leftover Caramelised Onion & Pear stuffed Pork Tenderloin & Vegies (A)

Wednesday dinner: Pork Chops & Vegies (broccoli)

 

Thursday breakfast: Spinach Bread with Chicken Sausage (B), Spinach Bread with ham & Cheese (A)

Thursday lunch: Leftover Shirataki Noodles

Thursday dinner: Fish with Basil Cream Sauce & Silverbeet

 

Friday breakfast: Chicken Sausages & Eggs (B), Spinach Bread with ham & cheese (A)

Friday lunch: Roast Beef & Vegies(B), Leftover Fish with Basil Cream Sauce & Vegies (A)

Friday dinner: We like to go to Jaws or Izumi – both are Japanese food.

 

Saturday morning: Bacon, Eggs & Mushrooms cooked in fat!

Saturday lunch: If Bruce goes to work, he’ll get subway. I’ll have a smoothie at home.

Saturday dinner: Baked Rosemary Chicken Thighs & Vegies

 

Sunday morning: Bacon, Eggs & Mushrooms cooked in fat!

Sunday lunch: Meatza (B), Green Smoothie (A)

Sunday dinner: Flank Steak with Citrus Marinade & Vegies

 

Hope this helps

I haven’t updated in a while… but I’ve been rather busy.  I also went on holidays in April to Kuala Lumpur!  Visited lots of shopping centres, checked out the nightlife, ate yummy food on Jalan Alor (mind you, all unprimal food!)  Came back to Perth and then got hit with some virus and an eye infection – I think it was brought on by all the carbs I’d been eating in KL and made my immune system shut down!  Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?

I also had to send my Vitamix away to be repaired… but it is back again.  There was a loose wire on the circuit board.

I went to the gym for the first time in weeks… I bought a fitness workout by Flavia Del Monte – she has the most awesome physique.  Her workouts are pretty killer, I only did one set of each circuit, mainly to get a feel of the types of exercises she has put together.  No way can I do the single leg weighted squats… it’s pretty hard!

Anyway, I have a huge backlog of recipes and food porn, stay tuned for those

So I posted a picture of my cookie on Facebook last night and received requests for the recipe.  I thought I would do some shameless plugging for my blog, so I’m redirecting you all here to grab the recipe

(recipe adapted from Affairs of Living)

Ingredients (I’ll post the original recipe and in another colour is what I actually used):

• 1 cup smooth cashew butter (raw or roasted)
  I used approx. 4 cups of almond pulp that I had frozen from making almond milk.
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder + extra 1/8  cup
• 2 mediumish duck eggs or 2 large chicken eggs – I used 3 chicken eggs.
• 1/4 cup maple syrup, or other natural liquid sweetener like honey or brown rice syrup
  I used 2 tbspns of coconut nectar. I did this because my almond pulp had dates in it and I didn’t want the cookies to be overly sweet!
• 1/4 tsp plain stevia liquid
• 1 tsp gluten-free pure vanilla extract
  I didn’t use any as my almond pulp already had vanilla extract flavourings.
• 1 tsp baking soda + extra 1/2 tsp.
• 1/2 cup chopped cashews (raw or lightly toasted) + extra 1/4 cup.
  I used a mixture of hazelnuts and macadamias.
• 1 cup chocolate chips, carob chips, chocolate chunks, or chopped sweetened or unsweetened chocolate bars (homemade or store-bought)
  I used 1.5 cups of a mixture of belgian dark chocolate and the Lindt 85% dark chocolate.
• 1/2 tsp unrefined salt + extra 1/4 tsp.

My recipe made more than the original as I had a large amount of almond pulp needing to be used

Preheat oven to 175ºC  and line baking sheets with baking paper.

In a large bowl, mix together almond pulp (or nut butter), cocoa, eggs, maple syrup (or whatever sweetener you like), stevia, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. Add cashews and chocolate chips/chunks and stir until well combined.

Scoop by the tablespoon onto a well-greased or baking paper lined tray.  Place in pre-heated oven and bake for about 12 minutes (if baking two pans of cookies at once, rotate between racks after 6 minutes).  I baked mine for 12 minutes and they are soft.

Let cool a few minutes on the sheet before transfering to wire cooling rack; let cool completely before eating.  Store cooled cookies in a well-sealed container.

The other things on top of the cookies are homemade coconut butter and homemade nutella – made in my super awesome Vitamix!

Coconut Butter:

• 4-5 cups of unsweetened coconut chips (I bought mine from Angry Almond)
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla bean paste

Process in a food processor or high powered blender (like the Vitamix) – if you don’t use a Vitamix, the coconut  butter may turn out gritty.  Also if you store this in the fridge, it will go hard (like coconut oil does in cooler temperatures).  You should be able to leave it out in the pantry.

Nutella:

• 4 cups roasted hazelnuts, peeled (or as much as you can peel off!)
• 1/2 block of 85% Lindt chocolate
• 1/4 cup raw cacao powder
• 1/4 tsp of NuNaturals liquid stevia
• 1 tbspn coconut nectar

Process in a food processor or high powered blender (like the Vitamix).

To assemble cookie, spread some coconut butter on top of cookie and then top with nutella.  Don’t feel guilty eating this, feel good!

This is mainly sugar-free – does not contain refined sugars and is completely flourless!

These babies are flourless, but probably not sugar-free, because of the raw honey. And probably not low carb because of the banana in it.  But it is still better than the conventional muffin!

(recipe from Joyful Abode)

What’s in it?

• About a cup of nut butter (I used almond butter)
• 3 eggs
• About 1/4 cup of raw honey
• 1 very ripe banana
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
• Then when everything else is combined, about 1 teaspoon of lemon juice (I forgot this part! Still tasted good though)

I mixed everything together in the Vitamix.  Pop in the oven @ 175 degree C for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Chocolate goodness

Chocolate Cherry Soft-serve… it sounds sinful, doesn’t it?  I can tell you, it doesn’t have to be.

And here it is…

(recipe from Blend It & Mend It)

To make this, you’ll need a high-powered blender (like the Vitamix) or a food processor.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup frozen cherries (too bad they are now out of season – until next summer!)
• 1 cup frozen NOG (natural sweetener made of medjool dates soaked in coconut water – see link for more details)
• 12 raw cashews
• 2 tbspns raw cacao powder

All you do is mix it up in the blender until it’s a soft-serve consistency.  This is just the most awesomest dessert ever – and you won’t feel guilty eating it.  Yes, in my picture, you see the cacao powder in it.  Haha

Enjoy

For the meat lovers out there – this is for you!

I made this for one dinner back in February.

(recipe from Mark’s Daily Apple)

I served this with a cranberry cream sauce… butter, cranberry sauce and cream.  You don’t have to use cranberry (as it is probably un-primal like to use the store bought one, but that’s all I have access to in Perth).  Or you could do a sherry cream sauce.  Whatever floats your boat

Yes, we love snacks – we’ve grown up with them, even though we did not evolve with them.  However, in this modern day and age, most “snacks” are highly processed and full of sugar and shit.  Sorry, but it’s true!  Refined white flours, white sugars – all detrimental to our health and does not do any favours for one’s health.

Luckily, there are some primal treats that are not processed and contain whole foods.

I made the chocolate chip cookies from the primal treats link above… (okay, I made these in December last year!)

When we first went low-carb, the first thing that came to mind was – what about bread?
I have grown up eating bread and after 29 years, have given it up.  The carb count is quite high for  bread (last I checked, 1 serving of 2 slices was 45g of carbs!) and really offers no nutritional value (pfftt, fibre? Eat vegies!).  Even after eating something that is wholemeal with some protein, you still feel hungry a couple of hours later.

Anyway, back to the story, I searched the internet high and low for a bread alternative and found “Oopsie Rolls”… and they are only contain 3 ingredients (eggs, cream cheese and cream of tartar) and each serving (1 bun) is only 0.6g net carbs.

And if you fail at the “Oopsie Roll,” don’t despair – there is the “Floopsie Roll” – and it is also just as good! (sorry no pics of that at the moment )

Note: These are not vegan or dairy-free!

What is MSG?

MSG stands for Monosodium Glutamate, also known as sodium glutamate.  It is a sodium salt of glutamic acid, a naturally occurring non-essential amino acid.  It is used as a food additive and is commonly marketed as a flavour enhancer. It has the HS code 29224220 and the E number E621.

Glutamic Acid – in its unprocessed form – is a common and naturally occurring amino acid found in numerous foods like meats, milk, cheese and certain vegetables. Although they occur naturally in many foods, the flavor contributions made by glutamic acid and other amino acids were only scientifically identified early in the twentieth century. The substance was discovered and identified in the year 1866, by the German chemist Karl Heinrich Leopold Ritthausen.  In 1907, Japanese researcher Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University identified brown crystals left behind after the evaporation of a large amount of kombu broth as glutamic acid.  These crystals, when tasted, reproduced the ineffable but undeniable flavor he detected in many foods, most especially in seaweed.  Professor Ikeda termed this flavor umami.

Although once associated with foods in Chinese restaurants, MSG is now used by most fast-food chains and in many foodstuffs, in particular, processed foods.

Examples include:

• Prepared stocks often known as stock cubes or bouillon cubes
• Condiments such as barbecue sauce and salad dressings
• Canned, frozen, or dried prepared food
• Common snack foods such as flavoured jerky, flavoured potato chips (crisps) and flavoured tortilla chips
• Seasoning mixtures

It was introduced into the Western diet in 1948.  Before that, our ancestors lived their whole lives without MSG.

McDonald’s and most other fast food restaurants use MSG to help sell their foods.  MSG is very inexpensive and makes the food taste good – which in many ways is similar to sugar – both are just as bad as each other!!

MSG, like L-cysteine and Aspartame, are excitotoxins, chemical transmitters that allow brain cells to communicate.  Excitotoxins are exactly what they sound like:  Toxins like MSG that excite your brain cells to DEATH!

What are the side effects of MSG?

A commonly known side effect of MSG is the “MSG headache.”

Other negative side effects include:

• Flushing, Sweating
• Sense of facial pressure or tightness
• Numbness, tingling or burning in or around the mouth
• Rapid, fluttering heartbeats (heart palpitations)
• Chest pain, Shortness of breath
• Nausea, Weakness
• Irritable Bowel Symptoms
• Asthma
• Anxiety, Restlessness, Sleep Disturbance

Not only does MSG cause the above side effects, but MSG also has an addictive effect on the body, by making the person crave more bad foods and eating more even though they are full!  Which then leads to obesity and a whole pile of health problems.

Did you know…?

That food companies disguise MSG on packaging by using different terms?  This makes it difficult for consumers to stop eating foods that contain MSG.
It is really up to you to read food label packaging carefully.

The following are additives that contain MSG:

• Hydrolysed Vegetable Protein, Hydrolysed Protein, Hydrolysed Plant Protein, Plant Protein Extract, Textured Protein
• Sodium Caseinate, Calcium Caseinate
• Yeast Extract, Autolyzed Yeast
• Hydrolysed Oat Flour

The following additives show that there is a strong indication of MSG additives:

• Malt Extract
• Bouillon, Broth
• Natural Flavoring
• Seasoning, Spices

Solution?

Well, if you are trying to lose weight/have health problems, it is recommended that you avoid all processed foods (everything that is man-made), anything that is packaged and in boxes which contain a whole heap of ingredients that you have no idea what they are.  Most likely to have MSG in them.

When you do your food shopping, shop only around the perimeter of the store which is meat, fruit & veggies, dairy, eggs and frozen vegies.  Avoid the juices and frozen pies/icecreams. Only go in the aisles for dark chocolate (at least 70% min. cocoa), personal care, cleaning goods and things like cling wrap and baking paper.

I can tell you now it will be beneficial to your health to eat WHOLE, REAL, GOOD FOODS!!

 

Related Links:

The Effect of Monosodium Glutamate on Your Health
MSG – Monosodium Glutamate
Monosodium Glutamate News, Articles & Information