Jan '20 - Low Carb Bootcamp - The finish line!

[StuntNun]

We've reached the end of the Low Carb Bootcamp so how did you do overall? Add your weigh-in to the Spreadsheet and let us know your plans. Would you like to keep losing weight over the coming week and months? Are you thinking about giving weight maintenance a go? Have you considered introducing intermittent fasting? This thread will continue until the next Bootcamp starts so there will be plenty of support for you.

#foodiewankeralert

@shagmeriggins I'm with you on the meat ragu and the depth of flavour. Doesn't matter whether it's for Bolognese, moussaka, shepherd's pie, meatballs, it has to be reduced and have those umami sweet, sour, salty, savoury things going on (sweetness here coming from a small amount of peppers or tomatoes or sweet tasting herbs/spices like cinnamon, basil, fennel, aniseed). And any anything beefy is always better after 24 hours in the fridge. It's as if the meat fibres relax, take up the juice and flavour and do their own things with it before giving it back to you the following day...

I love being on these threads because it combines so many important things for me - a chance to talk about weight and health, a place where there is community support and shared angst and laughter, and most importantly for me - a place where I can indulge my love of food.

In my previous life my 'chubbiness' was indulged by my otherwise tiny naturally-skinny family (dh, sils, pils, dsis, nieces nephews, dc...) and by wiry athletic friends, because I was the great cook. The warm 'cuddly' one in the kitchen.

I think that now my food is even better should have #nomodesty alert before that I'm not afraid to season it well (because the salt was not the root cause of my high blood pressure). I add cream. I thicken sauces with butter so they are rich, smooth delicious...

Recently one friend (who has a difficult relationship with food and weight) asked me if I 'purged' after a dinner like that. She couldn't understand that I could eat cheese or cream or butter and not put on loads of weight. I felt so sad I eat this food because I love it and my body seems to thrive on it. I've faced my own challenges over the recent weeks (and who knows where all of this is taking us) but I absolutely know that I can easily forgo pasta, bread, cake to live a life where I don't have to think about making myself sick after a meal that included a self-indulgent mix of eggs and cream.

Wishing everyone well, sharing my quite ordinary food for the day:
B - boiled egg
L - salami salad
D - salmon, broccoli, buttered courgettes

and also acknowledging that I willingly joined in with the family zoom-room pizza night earlier this week (hence the left over salami). I might be a foodiewanker, I might be a long-term convert to this woe, but I'm also human, and if connecting with my dgc means eating a pizza, I'll go for it

@ShagMeRiggins - excellent cooking indeed! I am in full agreement about treatment of beefmince. No-one misses the pasta when it is prepared like that.

@venusandmars - I know what you mean about longing to be able to explain how good this is and how well it works... and being faced with complete lack of understanding. There is so much snake-oil out there - and so many false weight-loss promises that it is sometimes impossible to share HFLC with other people.

(There is a Welsh poem somewhere - about finding an amazing dragon in the woodshed and then not being able to tell anyone because if they didn't find it themselves, they just wouldn't be able to believe in it. )

Days like today make me want
To drink ALL the water. Hope it’s as sunny where you are Bootcampers and that you find. Way to safely enjoy the sunshine.

Ps—I’ve really enjoyed the last several posts. What an interesting group you all are. KOKO

Managed to get 2 of the 6lbs off!

Interesting video here about the role that electrolytes play

Full of admiration for cooks. I can follow a recipe with the best of them and do try something new now and then, but presumably have bugger all palate since I can't really tell the difference between fabulous, and revolting.

Which reminds me; crustless quiche. I try this occasionally, but have never managed to get the texture I wanted. I've finally cracked this by using more milk than strictly allowed, and using an egg custard recipe rather than a quiche one. But every time I add veg I end up with a watery puddle at the bottom, no matter how much I cool and dry the pre-cooked veg first.

What am I doing wrong?

What veg are you using Athelstane? If it's anything like spinach or leeks, they are really watery anyway, so less liquid in your custard would, presumably, be the solution?

Have you tried making the shallot and gruyere tart that's on the recipe thread? (With bacon in it if you're not a veggie!). That doesn't have any veg in it (apart from the shallots) and sets really nicely.

Here's the recipe:

Bacon, Shallot and Gruyere Tart

serves 6

225g ground almonds
55g butter, diced
1/2 teaspoon salt

for the filling:

25g butter and a splash of oil (this stops the butter burning)
100g smoked lardons (or diced smoked streaky bacon)
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (or use a garlic crusher)
150g shallots, thinly sliced (this will be 3-4 echalion shallots)
2 eggs
dried oregano
100g Gruyere cheese, grated
2 egg yolks
300ml double cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/GM4

To make the pastry, mix the almonds, butter and salt until it forms a dough. This is easiest done in a food processor. Keep processing it until it starts to come together into a ball.

Press the dough with your hand/fingers into a 20cm flan tin or dish. Push the pastry up the sides of the tin as well. There is quite a lot of filling, so it's important to get the pastry as far up the sides as you can.

Prick the base of the flan all over and bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until set and golden brown. (It's better if it's cooked longer, as it hardens up a little more - just keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't burn)

While the dough is cooking, saute the shallots,garlic and lardons/bacon in the butter and oil, till soft. Season with salt and pepper and about a teaspoon of dried oregano. Leave to cool.

Next, whisk the eggs and yolks, and then gradually add whisk in the cream. Add black pepper and whisk again.

Tip the shallots and bacon into the flan case and add the cheese, then pour over the egg and cream mixture. (It's a good idea to put the flan tin onto a baking tray, as it is likely to be very full, and this makes it easier to get into the oven without spilling anything)

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown and just set. Serve warm or cold.

27.35g carbs for the whole lot. If you serve 6 people, this will be 4.6g per person.

Actually, I've amended the recipe a bit since I wrote/posted that one, and now add one of the egg whites into the almond mixture.

Oh, I made that really watery veg mistake very early on, BIWI .

This latest one was a small amount of chopped red pepper, and a larger amount of blitzed broccoli. After I ate a portion of it, I poured the water off, and you'd never guess looking at the bottom of it now.

Will try the cheese/shallot one, thank you - with added extra bacon.

What I really want to be able to make is one of those old M&S salmon, tomato, and broccoli ones , but it's not looking promising.

Back when it was called 'flan'.

Would baking the broccoli first (and cooking the salmon) help @AthelstaneTheUnready ?
In the original recipes, the bacon and the shallots are already cooked when they go into the custard.

We always used to float sliced tomato on the top of 'flans' and they baked during the cooking process.

I'm stuck in a total meal rut. Roasted/grilled meat with buttered cabbage and jacket potato for everyone else?

Does anyone have a favourite LC recipe they can hit me with? No cream or cheese please

What ingredients have you got to hand, @BrassicaBabe?

pretty well stocked up @BIWI. Meat (married to a farmer. So have meat of just about any variety) cabbage, onions, tinned toms. Think there's a celariac somewhere. Swede too.

Love the cream recipes. But they stall me massively!

Thanks to whoever suggested Delia's alpine eggs recipe. A big bowl of cheesy eggy deliciousness.

As a child I used to hate flan. I doubt it had cheese in it, if it had bacon then the fat would be rubbery making me gag, and it was usually served cold so the egg was pale, under-seasoned and rubbery... The pastry bottom was probably soggy too. We've come a long way since then with our gruyere and lardons, not to mention the blind-baked almond crust

I'm trying to get back on my own wee even keel this week. Dh and I are having a walk together before 'work'. I'm doing the Joe Wicks PE thing along with my dgc (although obviously in different places). They post photos of their exuberant and energetic involvement, I post photo of myself lying on the floor - a broken woman! At the end of each working day I'm having a short 20 minute chat with a friend, as if we were on the bus home together, and then at 6pm I'm joining an alternating class of either meditation or yoga.

'Work' is an odd term. I'm a small business owner. All work for the next 5 months has been cancelled. A small amount will regenerate but time scales are impossible to predict. So I've decided to close my company down and then do any residual work as a sole trader. I've been doing this for 17 years, so it feels a bit poignant.

Plus dh is working from home, being busy and noisy and important (to be fair the work he's involved in is important at the moment, but I don't relish it being in my normal quiet peaceful space). Plus as I've mentioned before he has filled a cupboard with snacks!

Part of my routine is getting back into the proper mode of planning my food and dealing with the 4 lbs I've put on in 2 weeks

So B - nothing, fasting
L - tuna mayonnaise salad
D - a sort of spanakopita without the pastry, so essentially spinach, egg, feta, pine nuts, served with red cabbage slaw. Followed by rhubarb and cream

So - I’ve done a fast day today, just to move things along if possible. I also feel a bit off so thought I might as well take advantage of the lack of appetite.

I think I mentioned the alpine eggs; aren’t they great comfort food? Hardly any washing up either!

I also make her four mustard stroganoff over cauli rice as well.

Other less dairy-ish suggestions:
I like turkey burgers with shallots bound with an egg, smattering of perinaise and wrapped in green lettuce and cucumber too.
Heck pork sausages with cauli or celeriac mash.
Fillet steak with mushrooms fried til crisp and amazing in butter

oh! alpine eggs! Will definitely try those. My mother was also not grabbed by cooking, so everything we ate came either from Saint Delia or one of those 1970s farmhouse cookbooks that was wider than it was tall. I remember being very impressed that made it easier to prop up/stay open flat.

No suggestions Brassica, sorry, as I do the same as you. Been on an egg kick for a few days for precisely that reason. Could you branch out into fish? Salmon and greens in a sort of lemony butter sauce?

I find homemade soups very easy right now. Chicken & vegetables (low carb, of course, and feel free to use vegetable shavings for stock, plus my secret weapon of Marigold vegetable stock, and I’ve never checked the carb content but don’t care as I make a cat for at least 12 portions).

Also Thai soup recipes, especially the ones with coconut and too terribly mouth burningly hot.

Also shallot soup (instead of onion) with gruyere or cheese of choice on top.

Also tomato soup, though I realise some of these don’t scream low carb.

I suppose I find soup comforting and there are some good recipes that not only work with this WoE but also use throwaway food and are very comforting.

I am absolutely loving the chat and sending HUGE congrats for all of you persevering and those continuing to lose.

Saw a new low number on the scale today but won’t confirm just yet. #cautious

Planning to serve Alpine Eggs to MrShagMe later this week.

For those in the know, we’re doing fine. Plus he’s working his balls off. And most importantly, I’m doing fine.

Had a google if alpine eggs. They def look worth a go. One recipe included spinach.

I think I follow Shag and that's fab news x

Also just at the point when I've got too much time in my hands and need Internet rubbish to read 99% of MN goes batshit crazy. Or is it just me?!