Table Of Content

1001 LOW-CARB RECIPES Hundreds of Delicious Recipes from Dinner to Dessert That Let You Live Your Low-Carb Lifestyle and Never Look Back Dana Carpender Bestselling author 500 Low-Carb Recipes Contents INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 Ingredients You Need to Know About CHAPTER 2 Beverages CHAPTER 3 Appetizers and Snacks CHAPTER 4 Eggs and Dairy CHAPTER 5 Breads CHAPTER 6 Salads CHAPTER 7 Soups CHAPTER 8 Sides CHAPTER 9 Fish and Seafood CHAPTER 10 Poultry CHAPTER 11 Beef CHAPTER 12 Pork and Lamb CHAPTER 13 Sauces and Seasonings CHAPTER 14 Sweets INDEX INTRODUCTION What’s the hardest thing about your low- carb diet? And what’s the most common reason that people abandon their low- carb way of eating and all the health benefits and weight loss that come with it? It’s boredom. After a few weeks of scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, a hamburger with no bun for lunch, and a steak—no baked potato—for dinner, day after day, people get fed up and quit. They just can’t face a life of food monotony. Does this sound familiar? If you’ve been getting bored with your low-carb diet, this is the book for you. You’ll find dozens of exciting ways to vary a hamburger, a steak, pork chops, chicken, and even fish. You’ll find a wide variety of side dishes and salads. You’ll find snacks and party foods that you can eat without feeling like you’re depriving yourself. You’ll even find recipes for bread—really, truly bread— not to mention muffins, waffles, and pancakes. In short, this book has recipes for all sorts of things you never dreamed you could have on a low-carb diet. Did I come up with these recipes for you? Heck, no! I came up with these recipes for me. Who am I? I’m a person who, through circumstances that surely could have happened to anyone, has spent the past several years writing about low- carbohydrate dieting. In fact, I spent so much time answering questions for the curious that I finally wrote a book, How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and Lost Forty Pounds! To supplement the book, I started an “e-zine”—an Internet newsletter—for low-carb dieters, called Lowcarbezine! So for the past few years, through the wonders of the Internet, I’ve been writing and developing recipes for a growing audience of low-carb dieters around the world. I’ve always loved to cook, and I’ve always been good at it. My friends long ago dubbed me “The God of Food.” So when low-fat, high-carb mania hit in the 1980s, I learned how to make a killer low-fat fettuccine Alfredo, curried chicken and mixed grain pilau, black beans and rice, blue corn pancakes, low- fat cheesecake—you name it. And I got fat—really fat and sick and tired. Thank heavens, in 1995 I got smart and tried going low carb, instead. Within two days my energy levels skyrocketed and my clothes were looser. It was overwhelmingly clear that this was the way my body wanted to be fed and that this was the way of eating that would make me well. I had set my foot upon a path from which there was no turning back; I was low carb for life. The only thing that nearly derailed me was a terrible sense of Kitchen Disorientation. I had to discard the vast majority of my recipes when I dropped the grains, beans, potatoes, and sugar from my diet. For the very first time in my life, I’d walk into my kitchen and have no idea what to cook—and I had always known what to cook and how to put together a menu. It really was pretty scary, and it certainly was depressing. But I set out to become as good a low- carb cook as I had been a low-fat cook. What you hold in your hands is the end result of years and years of trial and error, of learning what works and what doesn’t and of experimenting to find out which substitutes are yummy and which are just plain lame. This is not, for the most part, a gourmet cookbook, which means that the recipes you find here are recipes you’ll actually use. You’ll find a lot of fairly simple recipes and a few more complex ones for special occasions. There’s lots of family fare here—pork chops, meat loaf, burgers, and chicken. You’ll find lots of meals you can cook on the stove top in a simple skillet and plenty of salads you can make ahead and stash in the refrigerator, ready to be pulled out and served when you dash in the door at a quarter-to-dinnertime. You’ll find many one-dish meals that are protein and vegetables combined, from main dish salads to thick, hearty soups to casseroles. You’ll also find ethnic flavors from around the world right alongside comfort foods you won’t believe are low carb! Why Is There Such a Wide Range of Carb Counts in the Recipes in This Book? If carbs are your problem, then they’re going to be your problem tomorrow, next week, next year, and even when you’re old and gray. You cannot think in terms of going on a low-carb diet, losing your weight, and then going off your diet— you’ll gain back every ounce just as sure as you’re born. You’ll also go back to blood-sugar swings, energy crashes, and nagging, insatiable hunger, not to mention all the health risks of hyperinsulinemia. In short, you are in this for life. So if you are to have any hope of doing this forever, you’re going to need to enjoy your food. You’re going to need variety, flavor, color, and interest. You’re going to need festive dishes, easy dishes, and comfort foods—a whole world of things to eat. Because of this, I’ve included everything from very low-carb dishes, suitable for folks in the early, very low- carb “induction” stage of their diet, to “splurge” dishes, which would probably make most of us gain weight if we ate them every day but which still have far fewer carbs than their “normal” counterparts. There’s another reason for the range of carb counts: Carbohydrate intolerance comes in degrees, and different people can tolerate different daily carbohydrate intakes. Some of you, no doubt, need to stay in that 20-grams-a-day-or-less range, whereas many others—lucky souls—can have as much as 90 to 100 grams a day and stay slim. This cookbook is meant to serve you all. Only you can know, through trial and error, how many grams of carbs you can eat in a day and still lose weight. It is up to you to pick and choose among the recipes in this book while keeping an eye on the carbohydrate counts provided. That way, you can put together menus that will please your palate and your family while staying below that critical carb level.