Some low carb lunch and dinner ideas please?

[meetmeinarizona]

Recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and going to go low carb as recommended. I tend to end up just eating egg or chicken or tuna salad for lunch and then some sort of chicken in a sauce and veg. I end up getting bored pretty fast.

Has anyone got any low carb lunch and dinner ideas? Fairly easy as I'm not the best cook.

Thanks!

@ExtraordinaryQuince Very few of my soup recipes have either of those as a base.
Try roasting a butternut squash (cut it in half, scrape out seeds, brush with oil, roast until soft.
Meanwhile fry up a soffrita (very finely diced celery sticks, onions and carrots - 2 of each) until soft, add garlic, a small amount of grated ginger, chilli flakes.
Scoop out the soft butternut into the mix, add 2pts veg stock and puree. Add freshly squeezed lemon juice, a splash of single cream and finely chopped parsley when you serve it.

Or green soup. Fry 2 leeks and 2 sticks of celery, both finely chopped, in olive oil until translucent. Add 2 pints of veggie stock diced courgettes, edamame beans or baby broad beans, petit pois, shredded spinach (frozen leaf spinach is fine) chopped green beans - bring to the boil then spoon a dollop of freshly made pesto on top to stir in when you serve it.

For fresh pesto, blend a bag or pot of washed fresh basil (stalks included) with some fresh garlic, toasted pine nuts and/or cashews, grated parmesan or grana padano or mature cheddar, some olive oil or water and fresh lemon zest and juice.

@ExtraordinaryQuince sweet low carb is not too hard to do. It's just a case of getting your head around swapping ingredients.

We have enjoyed macaroons, I have a good recipe for low carb condensed milk.

Biscotti with Brazil nuts.

Sweet muffins with homemade low carb jam and clotted cream

Chocolate truffles

Chocolate muffins

Chocolate mousse

Tesco do a decent 85% cocoa solid chocolate bar for £1 that's perfect for cooking.

I cook chopped onion, chorizo, peppers and tomatoes with eggs baked on top.

Or crispy bacon, tomato and mayo wrapped up in a whole cos lettuce leaf.

Ready made cauliflower cheese.

Those chorizo and cheese roll ups with olives, pepper strips, carrot sticks etc

Mozzarella, avacado and tomato with fresh basil leaves and some olive oil and balsamic vinigar

Any meat with veg - I know it sounds boring but it really isn't. You could have (finances allowing)

Lovely steak in a cream and peppercorn sauce with roast veg
Salmon with hollandaise sauce with peas and carrots
Duck a l'orange (go easy on the orange sauce) with veg
The crispy aromatic duck from the Chinese, made into a salad without the pancakes and with only a tiny bit of sauce
A roast dinner with meat, gravy, meat stuffing (ie mostly high %meat sausagemeat) pigs in blankets, roast veg, cabbage, peas
Prawn salad with Marie rose dressing (tom ketchup and mayo mixed together)
Pork chop with a cream, cider and mustard sauce with (guess what) veg

Other nice things that I liked when low carbing:

• Frying pan pizza - put a thin layer of passata/ dolmio on the base of the frying pan, layer slices of mozzarella on top. Put pepperoni and veg bits on top of that. (Ie assembling a pizza with no base.) Cook on the hob for a bit, then stick under the grill til bubbling and pizza like. (Tip - if you let it cool for 10 mins after cooking, it will slide onto the plate like pizza. If you don't let it cool, you will have a delicious cheesy tomatoey stringy mess.)

• 2 egg omelette with lots of sliced red onion in it, topped with generous amounts of mature cheddar browned under the grill

Half avocado with King prawns in Marie Rose dressing, or Colemans tartare sauce

Goats cheese (cold, broken up) and chicken salad with full fat Pizza Express dressing over it (Pizza Express sell this exact dish for £10)

Grilled chevre blanc goats cheese on a bed of rocket, with chopped up cherry tomatoes and half a teaspoon of jarred onion chutney

Sliced buffalo mozzarella, with slices of tomato (and avocado if you fancy) and a few basil leaves, drizzled with olive oil. A little green pesto on this is also nice.

One last one - I see you like mushrooms, and as you know fat is fine if you're doing low carb.

So - fry up a little garlic in butter, add mushrooms. Fry until they are to your liking. Either have the garlic mushrooms as they are, with plenty of black pepper - or add cream and have creamy garlic mushrooms.

Nimble bread is only 8 carbs per slice so if you count this into your daily allowance you can have a big pile of creamy garlic mushrooms on toast.

Am making myself hungry now so going to stop posting!

I like the pairing suggestions here:

healthinpics.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-handy-chart-for-perfect-salad-pairing.html

Somewhere there's an amazing chart for salad combinations but I can't find it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/low_carb_bootcamp

^^

3 threads at the top of this page with low carb recipes. Fill yer boots!

@JovialNickname I love all your ideas and my mouth is watering! All sound so tasty, thank you

I would like to point that you need to be careful not to exceed 0.8gr of protein/kg of weight if you want to regulate your diabetes and improve insulin sensitivity.
Many interpret low carb as high protein but in the case of diabetes, you really need to be mindful of protein as well if you want to solve your diabetes
Many of the recipes listed might be low carb but high fat and high protein and given that the cause of your diabetes is the fatty liver which turns into a fatty pancreas unable to generate the insulin you need, you can of course, eat less carb to have less glucose in blood but fixing the liver and pancreas should be your goal at the same time.

Focus on fresh food, eat a lot of fresh vegetables to improve your metabolic health. Low carb on its own doesn't mean healthy or not, in the same way that "carb" can be good and can be bad as the picture shows.

Thank you to everyone answering my soup and sweet things question.

@ExtraordinaryQuince

Great ideas on here. Also marking place. Does anyone have soup recipes without a potato or flour base?

Also, sweet ideas?

Chicken and sweetcorn soup.

Half an onion and a few cloves of garlic, 4 chicken drumsticks, in a but of olive oil.

Cook over a high heat until the chicken changes colour.
Add salt and any other spices you desire ( I add turmeric and a bit of chilli powder) then add a small can of sweetcorn and some chopped veggies of your choice (I recommend carrots or leek).
Add plenty of water and boil until the veggies have softened.
Remove the drumsticks once it's cooked and shred the chicken into tiny pieces and mix back in.

You can also blend the mixture for fussy children and they won't even realise they are having veggies.

@JovialNickname

Other nice things that I liked when low carbing:

• Frying pan pizza - put a thin layer of passata/ dolmio on the base of the frying pan, layer slices of mozzarella on top. Put pepperoni and veg bits on top of that. (Ie assembling a pizza with no base.) Cook on the hob for a bit, then stick under the grill til bubbling and pizza like. (Tip - if you let it cool for 10 mins after cooking, it will slide onto the plate like pizza. If you don't let it cool, you will have a delicious cheesy tomatoey stringy mess.)

• 2 egg omelette with lots of sliced red onion in it, topped with generous amounts of mature cheddar browned under the grill

Half avocado with King prawns in Marie Rose dressing, or Colemans tartare sauce

Goats cheese (cold, broken up) and chicken salad with full fat Pizza Express dressing over it (Pizza Express sell this exact dish for £10)

Grilled chevre blanc goats cheese on a bed of rocket, with chopped up cherry tomatoes and half a teaspoon of jarred onion chutney

Sliced buffalo mozzarella, with slices of tomato (and avocado if you fancy) and a few basil leaves, drizzled with olive oil. A little green pesto on this is also nice.

I really want you to come make these for me.

@meetmeinarizona as a pre diabetic who has had now had normal hba1c's for 12 years I'd stick too low carb veg and fruit initially. Things like sweetcorn and peas put my blood sugar up really high in the beginning.

Get yourself a cheap blood sugar monitor check your blood sugar before you eat then two hours after your first mouthful to see what does put your blood sugar up.

Beef stroganoff with courgette ribbons instead of pasta. Make it yourself with sour cream, don't use a starchy packet mix.

When I do steak and chips for the family, I have the meat, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes and a pile of rocket with olive oil and just miss out the chips.

Chicken breast or cod loin wrapped in bacon and baked. Serve with green beans with garlic or stir fried cabbage.