This salad is what I call a JP special, a mixture of whatever it is that I have on hand.
Crunchy cold lettuce dressed in a sugar free mayonnaise (easy to make if you can’t find a sugar free version) mixed with vegetables like steamed beans, broccoli, frozen peas and / or oven roasted pumpkin, cauliflower, zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes. I can get a lot of variation in this dish.
For roasting, I have the vegetables cut into bite size and spray them with olive oil and roast them for about half an hour.
Because it’s hot and cold at the same time, the vegetables have to be added to the lettuce just before serving. Variations include adding whole garlic that’s caramelized because of the roasting.
Variations: I normally serve this salad with some kind of grilled meat. but have also mixed into the salad some cold sliced up cooked chicken and / or nuts, cold cooked prawns. Some nice chunks of fish would work too – even a can of tuna if you like that taste.
Note – I had one of my rare epic food fails making mayonnaise from olive oil – it was SERIOUSLY yucky. Apparently peanut oil is one to use. I haven’t made it again yet lol!
This is another JP special that has whatever vegies are in the fridge or garden thrown into it. You can use your favorite store bought curry paste providing it has no sugar in it, or make your own with garlic, cumin seeds, coriander seeds and if you like heat, add a little chili. Or use a curry powder.
I’m one of those “throw in a bit of this and that” cooks, but for two people, in one of my variations of this dish I’m using about a heaped teaspoon of cumin, coriander, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper seeds and some chili flakes – grinding them with the mortar and pestle.
I fry up the spices with the onions and garlic in coconut oil to release the flavor, add the meat and brown it until you can’t see any pink meat, throw in all the chopped vegetables. This is one of those dishes I’d add a teaspoon of dried seaweed for the nutrition plus it thickens the juices. Almost cover with water and put a lid on. Simmer for 1/2 an hour or so on the stove top.
Variations to get some essential fat content happening – finish off with a dollop of sour cream, ordinary cream or coconut cream.
Another variation of this dish is to make it tomato based instead of curry. I use passata, though you could just add a can of chopped up tomatoes (check the label to make sure there’s no sugar in it.) Still adding in whatever vegies you have. Finish it off with a dollop of sour cream – very tasty and works for the two weeks of reset!
Chicken and mushroom with stir fried vegetables on the side
It’s quite weird that at first I was fixated on having meals look like and served like they would have been in the past. I was raised on meat and three veg (which always included potato) and expanded that in adulthood to a lot of Indian, Asian and Italian food which was always served on a bed of rice or pasta. So to start off with, I was using some kind of vegetable/s as a “bed” to serve the rest of the dish on. My eyes and my taste buds got on board and I don’t do that any more – they’re cooked in the same pot. 🙂
Sorry I forgot to take a photo of the chicken and mushroom, but I did have a photo of the chicken cacciatore variation. 🙂
Chop and fry up an onion in butter or ghee.
Chicken thighs (thighs have more fat and thus more flavor) – cut into bite size pieces and add them to the onions and fry until you can’t see any raw chicken.
Slice the mushrooms and add them to the mix
Add chicken stock to not quite cover the meat.
This is also the kind of dish I’d add seaweed to.
Salt and pepper
Put a lid on the frying pan and simmer for 15 minutes.
Finish it off by stirring in a dollop of sour cream or cream.
Variations: Replace the mushroom with chopped up tomato and capsicum. Also finished off with cream. You can also add other vegetables like carrots, broccoli, peas, beans, zucchini into the pan or you can steam those and serve them on the side.
The classic roast
There’s two things to change about a classic roast – if there’s any stuffing – you’ll need to piff that. You don’t know what “piff” means? Just picture me flinging something out the window for the chooks to scrabble over. Otherwise it’s roast whatever you’re roasting as normal, although I’m going for high fat meat like shoulder roast of lamb for the fat content. Yes I want the fat content even though I’m losing weight – because it’s about my body burning fat instead of sugar and to it needs fat to learn how to do that.
The second thing you might need to change is the vegetables that you add to the roast. Piff! out with the potatoes and sweet potatoes too, at least for the two week reset. I roast pumpkin (you Americans who use pumpkin as a dessert don’t know what you’re missing by not using it savourily – and yeah I just made that word up), whole mushrooms, big chunks of cauliflower, tomatoes, zucchini split in half length ways, whole garlic cloves. All those veg sprayed with olive oil and in sizes that will cook within about half an hour. If you like larger pieces, then add the mushrooms, tomatoes and zucchini half an hour from the end of cooking.
Variations – sprigs of rosemary sprayed with oil and at serving pull the rosemary leaves off the stalk and sprinkle them over everything. Crunchy and delicious and good for you too. Ditto roasting fresh thyme.
You can get super fancy for the contrast between steamed and still crunchy and roasted by steaming some beans and broccoli to serve with it.
One of my new favorites – eggplant lasagne – I KNOW! Eggplant is delicious- who would have thought it?
The eggplant replaces the pasta sheets and mannn… this is verrry nice! Skip the cheese or white sauce layer because the eggplant replaces both the pasta and the bechamel sauce beautifully and top it with parmesan cheese.
My meat layer is mince meat, onion, garlic, tomato passata, maybe some fresh tomatoes as well, grated carrot and zucchini, a dash of lemon juice, salt and pepper, cooked in the normal way for a spaghetti sauce and simmered for the same half an hour that the eggplant is cooking as below.
Prepare the eggplant in a bit over 1cm thick slices (under 1/2 an inch) lay them out on a baking tray, spray them with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, a bit of thyme and rosemary and bake them in the oven for about half an hour or until browned.
Then layer like a lasagne – eggplant arranged on the bottom, then a meat sauce layer, then another eggplant layer, another meat layer, sprinkle parmesan cheese thickly on top. 20 minutes in the oven on 180 celcius until cheese is browned and everything is bubbling merrily.
AFTER the two weeks I replaced one of the eggplant layers with slices of roasted sweet potato. Simply delicious! I think I like it better than traditional lasagne.
My classic Indian curry.
I typically use a prepared spice paste for the taste of those lovely authentic Indian dishes, like Rogan Josh and Korma, Tikki Masala and Vindaloo (we like hot food) – but of course I had to make sure there was no sugar in the ingredients. I fry the spices in some kind of oil to release the full flavor and I typically do that while the onions are in the pan.
I have always added vegetables into my Indian dishes, although for the two week re-set I piffed the rice. Remember “piff”? Think flinging the rice out the window to the chickens. 🙂 My Korma for the two week re-set had chunky pieces of onion, carrot, pumpkin, mushroom and I tossed in some frozen spinach or kale from the garden. My Rogan Josh is made with either passata or lots of chopped up tomatoes and for the first two week reset, I added other vegies like onions, carrots and pumpkin and zucchini so that it was a one bowl meal. These Indian dishes are also meals that I add seaweed to, for the taste as well as the nutrition.
My preferred cut of beef for my Indian dishes is what we in Australia call gravy beef, which is normally considered not so desirable. It’s a tougher cut of meat that requires either slow cooking or pressure cooking until it’s tender – which is either 7 hours in the slow cooker on low or 28 minutes in the pressure cooker in total and it’s VERY tasty cooked like that. The vegies can go in from the beginning if I’m using the slow cooker, but with the pressure cooker I do the meat for about 22 minutes after it comes up to pressure. Then let the pressure off, add the vegies and re-pressurize for another 6 minutes. Pressure cooking is a superbly tender cooking method and also very tasty.
If I’m using lamb I prefer to cut up a shoulder roast or use forequarter lamb chops and fish the bones out afterwards. Lamb too is slow cooked or pressure cooked for the same kind of time frames as beef and add the vegies for the last 6 minutes of cooking in the same way if pressure cooking.
My preferred chicken is chicken thighs for their fat content and I cut that up into small pieces. It cooks a lot faster than beef and lamb. So I cook it in a large frying pan with a lid. Once it’s seared to seal it, then brought up to a bubbling simmer, it’s ready in 15 to 20 minutes.
San Choi Bao JP Style
I pinched this idea from the lovely Vietnamese dish, San Choi Bao. It has lots of adaptions for the first two weeks and it’s so delicious that it’s been added to our rotating menu of deliciousnesses. (Yeah I know that’s not a word either!)
The dish in the photo was a simple mince curry with onion, garlic, grated fresh ginger, curry powder, grated carrots and zucchini, salt and pepper, but I’ve also used the lettuce instead of tacos with Mexican style flavors and chopped up tomatoes, cucumber, grated carrot and shaved parmesan and arranged it like a little feast on the plate. I thought I had a photo of that, but it’s disappeared into the ether.
Can you see what I mean? That incredibly bare and restricted list of YES foods looked daunting to me to start off with, but when you look at this list of interesting and tasty meals, it’s not so daunting after all.
Read on…
Click here for Breakfast and lunch inspiration for the reset.
