Paleo Bread (including garlic and pumpkin spice)

Much different than the Bread Not For Sandwiches, you can probably use this for sandwiches. Keep in mind that it's pretty protein heavy.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of coconut flour
1-1/4 cups almond flour
1/4 cup ground chia seeds (or flax seeds)
5 eggs
1/2 cup of water
1/4 teaspoon of salt
4  tablespoons of melted coconut oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

Blend dry ingredients in one bowl; wet ingredients in another; combine and mix really well.pour into a 7.5" x 3.5" greased (you can just spray with Pam) loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Let cool and then slice.

To make garlic bread, add a tablespoon of granulated garlic. To make pumpkin bread, add a tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice (depending on your taste, you may want a little more/a little less). For the latter, it was pretty bland on our first go around with this; some artificial sweetener is needed, and maybe some cardamom).

Spaghetti

When we saw black bean spaghetti noodles at Costco (also available from Amazon and maybe some local grocery stores), we had to try to try it. The nutrition label does list some sugar, but we felt this was negligible. You will need to boil the noodles just like normal pasta (just follow the instructions on the packaging). It is not like true regular spaghetti (it does not seem to have the exact same texture and doesn't adhere to the sauce like wheat noodles), but it is better than spaghetti squash noodles or kelp noodles, and has the added benefit of lots of fiber. Plus, you get to eat something very close to spaghetti. For the sauce:

Ingredients:

One large onion, thinly sliced)
Three to four cloves of garlic, minced
Two portobella mushrooms (or comparable package), diced
1 to 1.5 pounds of ground turkey
Tablespoon of Italian seasoning (or oregano)
.5 tablespoon of salt
14 to 16 oz. can of marinara sauce (we used Trader Joe's because it had no sugar added)
14 to 16 oz. can of crushed tomatoes

Directions:

We used a big skillet. Saute the onions and garlic to caramelize. Add the turkey to brown. Add the sauce, seasonings, and shrooms. Let simmer for a while.

Put the noodles in bowl and put the sauce over it and serve.

Slow Carb Three Dollar Meal

You can eat really cheap on a slow-carb diet. Here is a prime example. I'm putting the prices paid along with the servings (aside from the greens, you should get four servings of everything else).

Ingredients:

• Rotisserie chicken from Costco ($5.00/4 = $1.25); cut into quarters
• Onion ($1.00/4 = $0.25) - sliced thinly
• Portobello Mushroom ($1.00/4 = $0.25) - diced
• Can of black beans ($1.00/4 = $0.25) (there's a theme here)
• Two garlic cloves (minced) 
• Tablespoon of coconut oil
• Greens, walnuts (for "croutons" and texture), maybe some oil and vinegar (these last three ingredients are pretty nominal, so I'll put them at a high cost of $1.00 total for one serving) 

I think the math works to $3.00 for a complete meal.

Directions:

It's also pretty easy. Put the greens in a bowl, add walnuts, oil and/or vinegar if you like.

Cut the Chicken into quarters (one quarter = one serving; in my case, I like the dark meat, Beth likes the white meat).

In coconut oil, saute the onions and garlic until caramelized. Add black beans and mushrooms, stir, and cover for five to ten minutes.

That's it! A complete and healthy meal for about three bucks!

Pizza!

I may have cracked the slow carb pizza conundrum. There are a good number of cauliflower pizza dough recipes out there, but most seem to incorporate cheese. This has no cheese. I treated my wife to this for lunch when she got back from a business trip - because we weren't sure how well it would keep, we ate the entire pizza. The ingredients and directions are what I will do next time; this was first time, so I believe I've figured out some needed improvements. The recipe will probably work without one, but it will probably be better if you have a pizza stone.

Ingredients:

For the dough

Bag (16 oz) frozen cauliflower, defrosted
One can of Great Northern beans
Two eggs
Half cup of coconut flour
Two tablespoons chia seeds
Two tablespoons Italian seasoning
One teaspoon black pepper
One teaspoon salt
One tablespoon of melted coconut oil

For the toppings

Turkey pepperoni
One-half thinly-sliced onion
Two garlic cloves, minced
Half-jar of marinara sauce (we use Trader Joe's because there is no added sugar)
Handful of spinach leaves
Handful of sliced olives (this is a real guestimate, obviously; the spinach and olives I got from the grocery store salad bar because I knew I didn't want to add too much)
One portobello mushroom, diced

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees. Run the cauliflower and beans in the food processor to get it with a paste-like (or rather, dough-like may be appropriate here) consistency. Put this in a big bowl. Add the dough ingredients and mix everything up; it should be all dough-like. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, and spread the dough as evenly as possible in the cookie sheet. Put in the oven for 15 minutes.

While this is going on, caramelize the onions and garlic in a pan.

Leave the oven on, but take the dough out of the oven after 15 minutes. Spread the marinara sauce on the dough. Add the spinach (with my hands, I shredded these a bit so the leaves weren't that big) and olives. Uniformly spread the pepperoni, onions, garlic, and mushroom (the wife recommending adding sausage next time).

Put back in the oven for 15 minutes (may need to be a bit longer to get the dough crisp), using the parchment to lift the pizza directly on a pizza stone (if you have one; if not, just put the cookie sheet back in the oven). When done, let cool, then cut and serve.

Notes from my first experience making this:

Initially I was not planning on putting it on the pizza stone; however, it did not crisp up that much, and the underside of the parchment paper was pretty moist when we first pulled it out of the oven. The wife recommended placing it on the pizza stone for another 10 minutes. On my first try, I only used 1/4 cup of coconut flour; my hope is that the addition of another 1/4 cup will dry this up and crisp it some more. This first go around I only used one tablespoon of Italian seasoning; I think the dough needs two.    

Haystacks (a Slow Carb Dessert)

We found this recipe on about because we were looking for some type of sweet dessert on non-cheat days. Shredded coconut (get unsweetened if you make this recipe) is technically not allowed on the slow carb diet, but having two or three a day does not seem to have negatively impacted my diet. And yes, they look like turds (the picture on the about.com website is some other type of cookie, not the haystacks).

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup powdered (not granulated) erythritol
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
artificial sweetener to taste (about 1/2 cup sugar equivalent - zero carb preferred, such as liquid forms of sucralose)
1 cup unsweetened, shredded coconut
1 to 2 tablespoons of cinnamon (depending on how much you like cinnamon)

Directions:

Melt the coconut oil. In a large bowl, put in all the ingredients. Add the coconut oil, and mix everything together. Use a melon scoop or tablespoon to form the haystacks. The wife sets them in on top of parchment paper in a seal-able plastic container. Put them in the fridge for an hour or two before serving.

That's it! Really easy and really tasty.

Unstuffed Cabbage Rolls

Our friend Vickie Ennis shared this recipe with us from budget101. As usual, we modified it a bit.

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds of ground turkey
1 tablespoon of coconut oil
2 cans of beans (we used cannelloni)
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cabbage, chopped (we were lazy and used four bags of shredded cabbage)
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1 can of tomato sauce
1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of salt

Directions:

Brown the turkey.
In a crockpot, add the diced tomato and beans, followed by the turkey. Then add all the other ingredients, with the exception of the cabbage. Let it cook for a few hours, stirring every once in a while. About an hour before serving, add the cabbage (we did this because the cabbage was shredded and we didn't want it to cook down too much) and stir this in. When done, serve in a big bowl.

This was a bit bland (leftovers were better). I added hot sauce to mine. The wife added Greek seasoning to hers, and she said that made it much better. Budget101 calls for adding rice; I would recommend the cauliflower rice to stay on a slow carb diet.

Nuclear Cauliflower Curry Slurry

This is my most amazing recipe. I first saw it on Dr. Oz when Dr. Andrew Weil was a guest. Make no mistake - I made it better. When I say amazing, there is no hyperbole.

2 to 3 cups of cashews (Weil has raw; roasted  & salted cashews are okay)
1 to 2 cups of cup water
2 to 3 tablespoons of coconut oil
1 large onion, diced (I usually get a sweet onion, such as Vidalia)
2 large heads of cauliflower (if available, get purple or orange cauliflower)
2 14-oz cans of light coconut milk
6 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon of salt
2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons of cardamom
Artificial sweetener (Weil mentions brown cane sugar, I start with ten drops of this one from Amazon)

At a minimum, you will need a stock pot, a blender, and a stem blender. We also use a food processor.

The biggest pain will be prepping the cauliflower.  Cut it up into chunks. We run it through the food processor first to get the pieces a bit more manageable. If you get the orange cauliflower, you get the benefit of beta-carotene. Purple cauliflower, flavinoids.

After your cauliflower is prepped, prep the cashews. Dump them into the blender and grind them a bit. When powdery, add a cup of water. Blend it some more until it looks like milk. Weil says to strain the cashews through a cheesecloth or mesh; I find this unnecessary.

Dice that onion.

Get all your stuff together. For all the spices, I would go ahead and mix all these together in a bowl. That way you can just dump the contents of the bowl into the pot. Okay, now we're ready to cook.

Put the coconut oil in the stockpot and turn the range on to a low to medium level. Add in the onions and caramelize them. Once the onions are done, throw in the cauliflower.

Following the cauliflower, add the coconut milk and cashew milk. Then add the spices and the "sugar."

When everything is in the pot, use that stem blender to really puree the cauliflower; this blender also helps with mixing the spices into the slurry.

I let this cook for an hour or two, applying the stem blender often.

This is where personal preference comes in - you really need to taste throughout this process, adding spices to your liking. I like it with a bit of heat, so I tend to add more cayenne pepper (wife would prefer a bit less). Cardamom is amazing, so I like a goodly amount of that. Salt, cinnamon, sweetener and curry are some other items you should keep near the pot during cooking to get it to the taste you really like.

I make this whenever cauliflower goes on sale, as in $2.50 a head (we splurged the last time at $3.00 a head). This makes a large batch and it is super healthy for you. Nuclear because it looks like it is glowing; slurry, because you can see it's kind of a liquid, but kind of not.