Week 9 - Low Carb Bootcamp - only 2 weeks to go ...

[BIWI]

Morning all.

[[Here's the Spreadsheet as always
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18CKhdQ3FlGz_8H53AA2Pqm4xmvGLHO6vBrkNWCkSO48/edit#gid=788946144 ]]

I hope everyone had a good week, and that any Mother's Day treats haven't messed things up too much

So we enter our final two weeks. Still time to shift a couple of those pesky pounds - especially if you keep focused and stay strict. And a reminder, channelling my inner Shag, WATER, WATER, WATER!

Drama today, sat on the sofa and suddenly thought “I didn’t turn the washing machine on did I?” No, that sound was water gushing out of the soffit board... So I’ve had the water turned off since 2pm, I feel like it’s a reasonable excuse for missing my drinking target! Having finally found a plumber and arranged for him to come tomorrow, an hour later he texted “I’m friendly and reliable and will definitely turn up” - I wasn’t worried that he wouldn’t until he said that...

That aside, I spent today bemoaning Tesco chicken. We normally buy from a local butcher, but was lazy this weekend and added meat to the Tesco order. I put a dish of chicken thighs in the oven, once cooked they were less than half the size and swimming in water. Butcher ones don’t do that!

I used to make a really good Waitrose chocolate cake which used almond flour, may have to dig it out and try with sweetener for Easter. I’ll share it if it’s successful!

Good food day for me today. Lunch was a gorgeous crab meat salad. Mixed the crab up with fennel, lemon, chilli and Mayo and served with raw spinach, mushroom and a bit of avocado.

Tea was air fryer duck leg with pinkpink's leek and fennel gratin. I must have put too much stock in as mine was far to runny but still tasty and I'll tinker with the quantities next time.

Things are looking up for me as I've been trying to sell my house for months and finally got an offer this afternoon

Has anyone tried substituting ground almonds for almond flour? Can't get the flour at my local Tesco. Thinking about making a chocolate cake for my DS at Easter as he's given up chocolate for lent. My birthday is over Easter weekend too so if I make a low carb one I will have a small piece

It’s definately sitting heavy in my stomach. I want to throw it out if i’m honest but begrudge the waste of three eggs and a block of butter

I mostly use ground almonds. I've bought some fine almond flour but have only used it in one thing. I can't even remember what that was - might have been a flat bread.

The SLC buns have the smell @RagzReturnsRebooted and obviously you can layer them in butter. I realised when I was craving one earlier that actually it was mostly the butter.
Well done on not going off piste

@ouchmyfeet
www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/low-carb-chocolate-cake
I’ve recommended it before ( and I’ll make it again , because it’s delicious )
No almond flour just simple ingredients , you’ll read it and think it won’t work , but it does
Just don’t cut yourself a big slice ( have a slither , with a ton of whipped double cream on it )

Congratulations on the house offer @ouchmyfeet !

Food today:
B - SLC roll with butter and 3 teas with whole milk
L - halloumi, avocado, cherry tomatoes,
a few orange peppers and salad with EVOO abs Sherry vinegar
S - 2 cups of tea with milk
D - duck breast and cauliflower with 2 sq extra dark choc and 1 cup of tea with whole milk. This was my first bad meal at Cook - the duck breast in sauce wasn't nearly as nice as some of the other stuff there. I know I've had too many milky teas today. I'm trying to train myself to drink it black but I don't really like it...

Hi all.

Thank you so much for the recommendations for electrolytes. They came on Sunday and I haven’t had a headache since! Absolutely godsend!

@Dailyhandtowelwash that restaurant looks wonderful - I'd be there every day for a week! Have had some brilliant holidays in various Channel Islands and a return visit is high on our list.

@Oneborneverydecade I notice you wrote about having the occasional 'treat'. I wonder if our language (our society's language, not yours) around this is wrong somehow. It's a treat to have a spa day (well this in mumsnet so it's got to be mentioned ); it's a treat to have an extra half hour in bed with a cup of tea and a good book; it's a treat to buy yourself (or someone else) flowers, expensive soaps, a handbag; it's a treat to spend uninterrupted time with a great friend... Do we feel guilty about any of those? No. We enjoy them appreciate them, move on.

But we (and I think the food (junk) marketing industry) have somehow elevated certain foods / food groups to have 'treat' status, which I think increases their allure, increases our desire for them, sees them as a reward.

"reward yourself with a biscuit, go on, you deserve it" is the kind of message we are being fed.

Actually a potato is just a potato. It's not a treat (however it's cooked) it's just an energy source.

I think that the association of food (and of course alcohol) with treats and reward which is so implicit in our advertising culture is part of the reason why so many people struggle...

@MrsOmelette Mushrooms and celery... and which other veg?

Food today:
Brunch: coffee with cream; fried eggs, mushrooms, and a (disappointing) bit of black pudding
D - beef chilli (tomatoes, peppers, shallots) with avocado, sour cream, broccoli, fried courgette 'rice'

Fingers crossed on the house sale @ouchmyfeet
We had sunshine today !
Had a really nice veggie dinner tonight
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/baked-cauliflower-pizzaiola
I used a tin of cherry tomatoes ( between 3 of us ) and obviously no breadcrumbs , they had Mac n cheese , I had green salad with mine

Thanks @Doilooklikeatourist I'll give that one a try.

@Mimosa1 have you tried green tea? It's much nicer than black, I prefer it to milky tea now

@venusandmars hahaha well done I wondered if anyone would notice the veg. I am planning loads of mushroom and celery but no others as need to go shopping. Joy of having a vegetarian teen who likes to cook is that my veg can get unexpectedly depleted! I’d like to get a second freezer this year ☺️.

Another one who's been enjoying the 'performance cooking' thread

My dh can cook, he lived on his own for enough years and managed fine, and our first 'proper' date was a meal at his house (mulligatawny soup - from a can; chicken with orange and tomato sauce, broccoli, carrots, potatoes - all home made; fruit salad and cream sex ) but because I love food and cooking I have almost completely taken over in the kitchen. I've left all the laundry and ironing to him. WIN!!!

However, dh has lost some of his cookery skills. Essential ones like reading the recipe through to the end before you start... So recently dh was cooking dinner, and I was staying well out of the way (so I don't tell him he's using the wrong chopping board, or interfere in how he's cutting his onions...). The smells were delicious, it was nearing dinner time (actually way over, like 8.30pm), I ventured into the kitchen - to be greeted by dh with his head in his hands as he read the next line of the recipe: now cook in the oven for 2.5hrs

Omelette instead

@Mimosa1 have you tried unsweetened soya milk?? From what I can find quickly It's very low carb compared to whole milk and I think tastes fine - better than black anyway

I've just bought some aubergine seeds so that I can have home grown aubergines

Just need to wait for my two trays of tomato seedlings that are on the heated propagator to get large enough that I can pot them on (the 2nd pairs of leaves have just started emerging, so soon ) and then can use the seed trays to start the aubergines (as well as some chillis).

Ooohh @prettybird I asked DH if we could grow aubergines as I was successful with courgettes a few year ago and I'm crap at gardening (read lazy and forget to water stuff) but he said they need a tropical climate?

@venusansmars yes absolutely re the treat foods and we start it young too, rewarding kids with junk food and sugar!

@Oneborneverydecade thank you. Apologies if I sounded smug, I'm just quite surprised at how 'in the zone' I've been!

prettybird I have aubergine on my list too, but I’m running out of seed sowing room, think I’ll just buy a couple of plants. I’m quite jealous of your heated propagator, I think one will be on my Christmas list this year!

RagzReturnsRebooted you can grow them in a greenhouse, I think if you’re in a particularly mild bit of the UK you can grow them outside. You can buy grafted plants (an aubergine plant stuck on the roots of something else) which are a bit hardier.

I read a bit of the nasty thread before it was deleted so I don’t think I saw the worst of it but I did go off to think about my protein consumption. Since last Saturday I’ve only eaten red meat twice, and poultry twice. So meat most days, which is more than I would eat when not low-carbing, but only small amounts once a day. And one day was meant to be veggie but we’d accidentally eaten all the cauliflower that was a key part of the recipe so had to raid the freezer. Only fish today.

I had such a lovely evening. Way too much booze (we drank several bottles of champagne.) Food was a mix of good and bad!

Starter; crab, avocado and smoked salmon salad
Main: sea bass, cream, saffron and mussel sauce, sprouting broccoli and asparagus. It came with a dish of Jersey Royals which were appropriately buttered and I had two halves of one, and left the rest.
Pudding: bread and butter pudding with Armagnac prunes and cappuccino sauce. I ate about 2/5ths of it before being defeated - leaving food on my plate is something I find very difficult to do mentally so I was so proud of myself that I stopped rather than forcing it down.

Overall, not great. There was no ‘good’ pudding choice but I could have said no - the booze played its part. BUT I listened to my appetite, left food in both main and pudding, and my very slim friend had the same for both of those courses and cleared her plate for both so I did feel pleased that I only ate what I really wanted.

@Mimosa1 I’ve become a big fan of unsweetened almond milk. No carbs at all.

@Justcallmecaptainobvious - I got it for Christmas 2018 but didn't really use it properly last year. Or rather, I'm better organised this year! Next step is to ask for some propagator lights 

@RagzReturnsRebooted I've got a unheated greenhouse, so will grow them on in there. From what I've read, they should be fine, but I picked an early/quick fruiting variety, so that it would have a better chance up here in Scotland. We'll see how it goes

Just popping on to say thank you to @pinkpinkeverywhere for the leek and fennel gratin idea - made it last night and it was delicious. Mine was also too liquidy so will adjust that next time, but it was a great way to use up some leeks that were on their way out and I have half left for lunch today!

I am trying to eat less meat and more veg, although have not been too bad this BC. I often have an egg based meal for lunch or green veg soup. When I’m not in bootcamp I would normally have more pulses for protein. I think ok going to concentrate on more baked veg dishes using stock and cream or butter so layered aubergine bake or celeriac gratin etc. They often feel like more of a ‘meal’ than a pile of stir fried veg or boiled veg with butter etc.

My weight loss has really stalled sadly. Barely lost 1lb in the last 5 weeks. It keeps going down then back up again. I thought I was losing slowly, but looking back at my weights it’s the same 1lb off and on again! I am on my period this week and haven’t been able to go swimming, so I’ll see what next week brings, but I will KOKO beyond the end of bootcamp and hope it will eventually come off.

Does anyone have any idea what to do with 12 egg yolks other than mayonnaise please?

Still here, still low carb. Been awol as my children have decided not to sleep and it is making me a grumpy zombie. That plus period has meant a lot of eating over the last few days and I feel shit to be honest. It's been low carb food but too much dark choc. I feel bloated and sick too. Cried in the shower and now need to pull myself together for a full day of teaching and parents evening. Sorry to be a misery guts.

Plan for today
Already eaten an almond muffin, butter and creamy coffee
L green buttery soup
D meatballs, courgetti with butter tomato sauce and cheese.

Early to bed.

Dreamqueen you could maybe make a batch of egg muffins or cheese scones and freeze them. Maybe some sort of baked cheesecake .
Answering the query earlier about almond flour upthread, I have never bothered to grind the almonds any finer. I have made the cheese scones and made 9 from the recipe -delicious.
My weight is yo-yoing too at the moment. Up and down about a 1lb. I just accept that overall I’ve lost between 10-12lb depending on the day!
I have also discovered Livlife bread in Waitrose. It’s not as low carb as the seriously low carb bread - it’s 3.4g of carb per slice and 4g of fibre. It’s only £1.55.
There is also Hilo bread which Sainsbury’s sell 5g carbs per slice. I appreciate that these are probably for limited use but I would rather have an occasional sandwich to keep me on track. I have tried SLC bread and rolls. They are good but obviously a lot more expensive.