If you’re at all like me, you like it when other people cook. Don’t get me wrong, I *love* cooking, but after creating 3 Real Food meals a day for my entire family, it’s nice to take a break and eat out. But does that break really have to come at the cost of delicious, Real Food? Particularly on a special day like Valentine’s Day?

Holly Hickman believes it doesn’t. In her travel-intensive career, Holly spent years accumulating research on places to dine out that source their foods well. Recently, she compiled a killer dining guide to restaurants all across the U.S. You want restaurants sourcing humanely raised meats, organic vegetables, and foods from local farmers? Holly’s guide has them.

So, to help you celebrate your Valentine’s Day with an extra-special dinner out, I’m giving away one of Holly’s Healthy Eats Here! guides.

Holly’s guide features everything from burger joints to fine-dining restaurants in cities from California to Maine. There’s no other guide like it. Plus, the guide comes with free quarterly updates!

I’ve lived in the Austin, TX area for nearly 6 years and have been active in the local food community here for all that time. That said, Healthy Eats Here! introduced me to several new places to eat out that source real foods — restaurants I’d never noticed, but had passed on my way to various places.

My point? Holly’s guide is awesome! (And you never know just what you’re going to find out.)

So, if you’re at all like me and enjoy eating out every once in a while for a special break, OR if you’re like Holly and spend a lot of time traveling, THIS dining guide is your ticket to eating well while eating out.

How To Enter

The first step to entering the contest is to click on the link below. You’ll be taken to Holly’s website, where she’s asking for you to LEAVE A COMMENT telling her what Real Food restaurants you like. Chances are good that if it’s not in the guide now, it WILL BE in her next update! To be clear, you MUST leave a comment at Holly’s site in order to be entered in the contest.

(Note: If you can’t see the link above, it is because you have ad blocking software enabled. Please disable your ad blocker to participate in the giveaway.)

That’s good for one entry. For additional chances to win, do any of the following:

1. Blog about this giveaway and link back to this page on your blog. Comment below with the link. (1 extra entry)

2. Sign up for my email updates or RSS feed. Leave a comment below telling me that you signed up. You will also get an entry if you already subscribe — make sure to leave a comment! (1 extra entry)

3. Follow me on Twitter and tweet about the giveaway. Be sure to include the URL to this page in your tweet. Click the TweetThis button at the bottom of the post, or you can use the following tweet: “Win Healthy Eats Here! dining guide just in time for Valentine’s Day. (AND INCLUDE THE URL)” Leave a comment telling me that you followed & tweeted. (1 extra entry)

4. Email 5 friends about the giveaway, with a link to this page. Leave a comment below telling me that you did. (1 extra entry)

5. Stumble this post and leave me a comment telling me that you did. (1 extra entry)

There are a total of 6 possible entries.

Questions? Comment below.

This contest will end Thursday, February 11th at 11:59 PM PST. The winner will be chosen via random.org, and will be announced on Friday, February 12th — just in time for Valentine’s Day. The lucky winner will have 48 hours to contact me with his or her full name and email address.

Please note that Healthy Eats Here! is one of my sponsors, and as such I am being compensated for hosting this giveaway. That said, you can trust that I only accept sponsors whose products I whole-heartedly endorse and believe in.

Good luck, everybody!

(photo by Sifu Renka)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Win A GAPS Starter Kit!
2. Win A Free Hour of Nutrition And Wellness Coaching
3. Two Lucky Winners And A Special Offer

Welcome to yet another Fight Back Friday! Today we’re bringing together another collection of recipes, tips, anecdotes, and testimonies from members of the Real Food Revolution.

Who are they? Why, they’re the Food Renegades. You know who you are — lovers of SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical) food, traditional food, primal food, REAL food, the list goes on. I believe that by joining together, our influence can grow, and we can change the way America (and the industrialized world) eats!

So, let’s have some fun.

If you want to participate but aren’t sure how, please read these guidelines for how Fight Back Fridays will work.

Please be courteous and use your BEST blog carnival manners! In the very least, that means remember the two most important things you can do:

1. Share a relevant post from your blog with us using the McLinky Widget below (don’t just link to your blog’s home page).
2. In your post, be sure to link back to this post (not the Food Renegade home page) so that your readers can have access to all the information and encouragement we’ll be sharing.

Please also feel free to make use of any of the banners below by saving the image to your desktop then uploading it to your own server. (You don’t have to use them, but they’re there for you!)

If you don’t have a blog but are interested in joining the conversation, you can leave your comments below!

This week, I’m sharing TWO posts because I couldn’t pick between them. The first is on what’s wrong with organic milk. (You read right.) The second is a recipe list of Real Foods for Superbowl Sunday. I can’t wait to see what you all share!

Fight Back Friday Banners

PLEASE NOTE: The smaller banners are also available as badges/buttons for your sites over on my sidebar so that you can sport your Real Food Lovin’ Pride and inspire others to join us in the Real Food Revolution. Just copy the code and paste it into your sidebar. (Again, you don’t have to use them to participate in the carnival.)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Fight Back Friday January 22nd
2. Fight Back Friday January 29th
3. Fight Back Fridays July 31st

I try to avoid Superbowl Sunday. Maybe it’s un-American of me, but I always make it a goal to not know who’s playing who or even (if possible) when the game is. It’s not because I dislike football, but because I loathe how saturated with advertising American culture is. This single football game has more advertising dollars thrown at it than just about any other event in the entire year. So, I play a game with myself. Can I avoid all the advertising? Can I possibly make it past a Superbowl Sunday without noticing who’s playing, or even that they’re playing?

Of course, I always fail. Even if I manage to miss the 20 foot tall banner ads at my grocery store, even if I manage to avoid television or radio for the entire month of January, even if I manage to only associate with football-challenged friends, there’s still Facebook.

Today I lost my game. I discovered that this coming Sunday, February 7th is Superbowl Sunday. (I still don’t know who’s playing. The Saints maybe? Don’t tell me!) So, I decided to share some of the game-appropriate recipes that have amassed on Food Renegade over the past year.

I hope you enjoy!

• Make Ahead Frozen Meatballs — An easy appetizer paired with marinara sauce, barbecue sauce, or even cheese dip.
• Creamy Queso (Mexican Cheese Dip) Without Velveeta — Sure to be a crowd pleaser.
• Sweet Potato Fries with Chipotle Mayonnaise — Yes. I said chipotle mayonnaise.
• Mouthwatering Sweet Potato Latkes — A tasty fried finger food. Yummy.
• Fresh, Natural, Healthy Lemonade — Mildly fermented, fizzy lemonade makes a healthy alternative to sodas.

Got your own Real Food appetizers or game foods to share? Leave a comment!

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Weekly Meal Plan
2. Creamy Mexican Cheese Dip — Without Velveeta!
3. Burger Central Opens in Leander

I’d been a raw milk drinker for years. Yet I hadn’t expected to respond so negatively to the glass of Horizon organic milk my friend poured for me. After all, that’s what I’d drunk for years before making the switch to raw milk from grass-fed cows.

“Yuck. This tastes burnt!” I said.

That’s when I saw it. The milk had been ultra-high temperature pasteurized. In fact, more than 80% of the organic milk sold in the U.S. is UHT pasteurized. It’s why I don’t drink organic milk.

What is UHT Milk?

The official U.S. government definition of an ultra-pasteurized dairy product stipulates “such product shall have been thermally processed at or above 280° F for at least 2 seconds, either before or after packaging, so as to produce a product which has an extended shelf life.”

Get this. According to Wikipedia, UHT milk has a shelf life of 6 to 9 months (until opened). When the world’s foremost UHT milk processor, Parmalat, first introduced UHT milk to the U.S. market back in 1993, they hit a snag. Americans distrust milk that hasn’t been refrigerated. We like our milk cold, and UHT milk doesn’t need to be refrigerated.

So, milk producers got creative. They could extend the shelf life of their product and not advertise that they were doing it. They’d sell the milk in normal packaging, in the refrigerator aisle, and none of us would be the wiser.

Now, almost all of the organic milk and the majority of conventional milk available in U.S. supermarkets is UHT processed.

What’s wrong with UHT processing?

The introduction to a 2005 study published in the Journal of Dairy Science highlighted the current problems with UHT processing from an industry point of view:

Often, heat treatment causes milkfat globule membrane proteins and whey proteins to unfold such that buried sulfhydryl (-SH-) groups, normally masked in the native protein, are exposed to the outer surfaces (Hoffmann and van Mill, 1997). In turn, these processes produce extreme cooked flavors, often attributed to changes in the sulfhydryl and disulfide content of the protein fraction (Swaisgood et al., 1987). Conventional pasteurization methods have long been in place and with the advent of UHT technology, the sterilization of fluid milk was achieved using higher temperature treatments for shorter periods. However, shelf-stable milk has met with limited acceptability by the consumer, especially in the United States, due in part to a high cooked flavor. Several attempts to improve the quality of UHT-treated milk products proved successful to varying degrees. Previously, Swaisgood and coworkers used immobilized sulfhydryl oxidase to reduce the thiol content of UHT-heated skim milk and described an improved flavor after enzymatic oxidation to form protein disulfide bonds (Swaisgood et al., 1987). Other studies have showed that altering UHT processing parameters, such as indirect vs. direct steam injection systems, cooling rates, and long-term storage conditions have a significant impact on sensory attributes (Browning et al., 2001). Most recently, epicatechin, a flavonoid compound, was added to UHT milk prior to heating, and the results revealed partial inhibition of thermally generated cooked aroma (Colahan-Sederstrom and Peterson, 2005).

So for decades, UHT processors have known that UHT processed milks results in a “high cooked flavor,” and they’ve done all kinds of experimenting to get rid of the nasty taste and smell (even resorting to adding flavonoid compounds to the milk to try to negate the off-flavor).

Okay, so it tastes funny compared to raw milk. And maybe it smells funny too. But what makes UHT processing any worse than regular old pasteurization?

According to Lee Dexter, microbiologist and owner of White Egret Farm goat dairy in Austin, Texas, ultra-pasteurization is an extremely harmful process to inflict on the fragile components of milk. Dexter explains that milk proteins are complex, three-dimensional molecules, like tinker toys. They are broken down and digested when special enzymes fit into the parts that stick out. Rapid heat treatments like pasteurization, and especially ultra-pasteurization, actually flatten the molecules so the enzymes cannot do their work. If such proteins pass into the bloodstream (a frequent occurrence in those suffering from “leaky gut,” a condition that can be brought on by drinking processed commercial milk), the body perceives them as foreign proteins and mounts an immune response. That means a chronically overstressed immune system and much less energy available for growth and repair. (source)

Now, that’s scary. No wonder more and more people are starting to think of themselves as intolerant to casein (the protein found in milk). Not only do pasteurization and UHT processing kill off the enzymes present in milk needed to digest the casein, the casein itself is altered to the point of being indigestible!

Now consider this: you cannot make yogurt or kefir out of UHT milk, it is simply too dead to hold a culture. If a product will not support microscopic life, it is not likely to support human life. (source)

So now you know why I don’t buy organic milk at the store — even when I run out of raw milk. If you want more help deciding how to prioritize your milk purchases, check out this post on Healthy Milk: What To Buy.

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Healthy Milk: What To Buy
2. MSG Hides In Alexia Organic Fries
3. Healthy Milk Substitutes With Recipes

As with most homemade salad dressings, Hot Bacon Dressing beats just about any dressing you’d find in your grocery store salad dressing aisle. It packs more flavor, uses healthier fats, and generally makes you feel like a world class chef when all you’ve done is a few simple steps.

Needless to say, I like making Hot Bacon Dressing for my family. It’s versatile, too. Sure, we use it as a salad dressing over greens, but we also use it as a dip for vegetables. We stir Hot Bacon Dressing into our tuna or egg salads to give them a little extra kick. We even use it to top steamed veggies like spinach or broccoli.

Go ahead. Get creative. You know your mouth is watering.

Now, if you’re into the traditional German version of this tasty salad dressing, I don’t think you’ll be too disappointed. This Hot Bacon Dressing isn’t as creamy as the versions made with hot water and cornstarch, but it has more fats. And, as we all know, Fat = Flavor. I also didn’t go for the super- sweet refined sugars, instead opting for some more natural options which can be easily reduced for those wanting to eat fewer carbs. All in all, I like this Hot Bacon Dressing better than the ones your German grandmother made. Hope you do, too!

Hot Bacon Dressing

The Players

• 8-10 slices of uncured bacon
• 2 Tbs. raw honey or maple syrup (adjust according to taste)
• 1/2 C. olive oil (pure, UV-protected, and cold-pressed)
• 1/4 C. raw apple cider vinegar
• 1 egg yolk from pastured hens

The How-To

Cut bacon into 1/2 inch pieces using clean kitchen shears. Cook bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until evenly browned and crispy. Pour bacon and grease into a pint sized glass jar. Add remaining ingredients. Place the lid on the jar and shake until smooth. Makes about 1 1/2 cups. Serve the Hot Bacon Dressing warm. Enjoy!

Store leftovers in your refrigerator and gently reheat on the stove. (I find putting the jar of Hot Bacon Dressing in a warm water bath over the stove top for just a few minutes is usually sufficient.)

(photo by kightp)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Bacon And Avocado Egg Salad
2. Enzyme-rich Mayonnaise
3. Easy NT Friendly Cold Cereal/Instant Oatmeal

Welcome to yet another Fight Back Friday! Today we’re bringing together another collection of recipes, tips, anecdotes, and testimonies from members of the Real Food Revolution.

Who are they? Why, they’re the Food Renegades. You know who you are — lovers of SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical) food, traditional food, primal food, REAL food, the list goes on. I believe that by joining together, our influence can grow, and we can change the way America (and the industrialized world) eats!

So, let’s have some fun.

If you want to participate but aren’t sure how, please read these guidelines for how Fight Back Fridays will work.

Please be courteous and use your BEST blog carnival manners! In the very least, that means remember the two most important things you can do:

1. Share a relevant post from your blog with us using the McLinky Widget below (don’t just link to your blog’s home page).
2. In your post, be sure to link back to this post (not the Food Renegade home page) so that your readers can have access to all the information and encouragement we’ll be sharing.

Please also feel free to make use of any of the banners below by saving the image to your desktop then uploading it to your own server. (You don’t have to use them, but they’re there for you!)

If you don’t have a blog but are interested in joining the conversation, you can leave your comments below!

I can’t wait to see what you all share!

Fight Back Friday Banners

PLEASE NOTE: The smaller banners are also available as badges/buttons for your sites over on my sidebar so that you can sport your Real Food Lovin’ Pride and inspire others to join us in the Real Food Revolution. Just copy the code and paste it into your sidebar. (Again, you don’t have to use them to participate in the carnival.)

***This week, I’m experimenting with a new linking software due to some recent glitches with the Mr. Linky widget we’ve used in the past. This little gizmo is called MckLinky. Let’s hope it works!***

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Fight Back Friday January 22nd
2. Fight Back Friday February 5th
3. Fight Back Fridays July 10th

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last Real Food Link Love post, and I have collected some really tasty, tantalizing, practical, and exciting things to share with you!

Hope you enjoy.

First up, Michael Pollan was on Oprah yesterday. Did you miss it? Kelly The Kitchen Kop did a fabulous job taking notes on the show, click here for her recap.

Everyone loves deviled eggs, but here’s a new twist. Fat Guacamole Devils over at Mark’s Daily Apple.

Want to enjoy Hot Cocoa without the dairy or the refined sugar on these cold winter days? Kimi at The Nourishing Gourmet posted a fail proof recipe for hot cocoa made with coconut milk and a smidgen of honey. I tried it the night she posted the recipe, and it’s to die for!

Jeffrey Smith shared an encouraging story this week at The Huffington Post about helping a snack foods executive get educated about GMOs. The exec did a complete 180 when finally presented with the evidence about the dangers of GMOs. So neat to read about!

And finally, a reader shared this handy post during Fight Back Friday, but I wanted to draw your attention to it in case you missed it. Melissa at The Clothes Make The Girl dished out her kitchen secrets for how she eats a low-carb primal diet without spending hours in the kitchen cooking. Her method is perfect for busy people, or people who don’t particularly enjoy cooking, but who LOVE eating REAL FOOD!

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Winter Recipe Corner
2. Real Food Link Love
3. Real Food Link Love

If you’re a new or expectant mother, you may want to know whether or not it’s safe to drink kombucha when pregnant or nursing.  Ask enough people, and you’ll get a myriad of answers.

Here’s mine: Yes, kombucha is safe when pregnant or nursing. With qualifications.

What are those qualifications?

If you’ve been a regular kombucha drinker, keep drinking it! Kombucha has a lot of benefits for the pregnant mother:

• It increases energy levels.
• It helps bowel movements be regular.
• It detoxifies the body.
• It helps you maximize nutrient absorption because it’s probiotic.

All those are good things! Pregnant ladies often suffer from lack of energy, and this will give you an energy boost without resorting to caffeine or sugar. Pregnant women also frequently struggle with constipation during pregnancy, and this can help you be more regular. Everyone knows that pregnancy increases mucus production, and this can make battling normal colds or allergies difficult. Kombucha can help cleanse and detox your body safely so you can ward off potential illnesses. And, of course, pregnant women are creating a new little life inside them, so they need to be able to use all the nutrients from their (hopefully) nutrient dense foods.

I do have a couple of cautions for pregnant women, though.

If you’re pregnant and you’ve never drunk kombucha before, use caution. In very rare cases, kombucha can cause a reaction in first time drinkers. It’d be terrible to be one of those rare people and have that reaction while pregnant. If you still choose to try to start drinking kombucha, please do so slowly. Start off drinking as little as 4 oz. a day, then slowly build that up as you ascertain your body’s response to this potent beverage.

Is drinking kombucha safe while nursing?

If you’ve made a safe home brew, the answer again is yes, but be cautious. What is a safe brew? One that is not overly acidic (that might cause acidosis), but is also not so basic that it doesn’t ward off pathogens. Normally, I’d tell you to just go by smell and taste to determine when your brew is done. But when nursing, it’s best not to take any risks. You can use inexpensive pH testing strips to make sure you’re drinking the brew between pH levels 2.5 and 3.0.

Again, I have a couple of cautions for nursing mothers, though.

First, kombucha is a detoxing agent. If you’re well-hydrated, those toxins will come out in your pee or stool. If you’re dehydrated, they can come out through your skin, your eyes, even your breast milk. It’d be terrible to have those toxins going out of you and straight into your baby.  So, stay hydrated!

Second, kombucha increases energy. Whatever you eat or drink, you’re essentially sharing with your baby as you nurse. So while you may profit from increasing your energy levels, you need to ask whether your baby needs an energy increase or not. If the answer is no, don’t drink kombucha. Get your probiotics from kefir, sour cream, fermented foods, or supplements instead.

Third, kombucha makes you more “regular.” While this is incredibly helpful for most adults, who suffer from various kinds of digestive stagnation, it may not be helpful to your baby at all. If you drink kombucha while nursing, watch out for overly-loose stools in your baby. You don’t want to risk dehydrating your little one! Remember, with breastfed babies defining diarrhea isn’t so much about frequency of passing stools (some breastfed babies can pass 12 a day while others manage only one every two or three days!), but about how liquid or explosive they are. You’re the mom; you know what’s normal. If their stools start becoming abnormal when you drink kombucha, lay off it.

All that said, please know that I drank kombucha for years while nursing my sons and never noticed any ill effects. My babies were happy, healthy, had regular naps, etc. And by healthy, I mean healthy. My first son didn’t have his first cold until he was 14 months old, and my second son didn’t have his first cold until he was 12 months old.

Wait a minute! You can brew kombucha at home?

For those of you who want to know how, here’s a tutorial on how to brew those tasty flavored kombucha teas at home. If you’re looking to start that process, you can find reliable sources of starter supplies and kombucha “mothers” (symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast that start the culture) online at my Resources Page.

(photo by Shira Golding)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Pregnancy Cravings Make No Sense
2. Vitamin D Creates Lower Risk Pregnancies
3. Kombucha Health Benefits

Welcome to yet another Fight Back Friday! Today we’re bringing together another collection of recipes, tips, anecdotes, and testimonies from members of the Real Food Revolution.

Who are they? Why, they’re the Food Renegades. You know who you are — lovers of SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical) food, traditional food, primal food, REAL food, the list goes on. I believe that by joining together, our influence can grow, and we can change the way America (and the industrialized world) eats!

So, let’s have some fun.

If you want to participate but aren’t sure how, please read these guidelines for how Fight Back Fridays will work.

Please be courteous and use your BEST blog carnival manners! In the very least, that means remember the two most important things you can do:

1. Share a relevant post from your blog with us using the Mr. Linky Widget below (don’t just link to your blog’s home page).
2. In your post, be sure to link back to this post (not the Food Renegade home page) so that your readers can have access to all the information and encouragement we’ll be sharing.

Please also feel free to make use of any of the banners below by saving the image to your desktop then uploading it to your own server. (You don’t have to use them, but they’re there for you!)

If you don’t have a blog but are interested in joining the conversation, you can leave your comments below!

Today, I’m sharing a post full of tips for those trying to cut the carbs from their diet. Read this if you’re so addicted to your grains and starches, you wouldn’t know what to eat if you were to eliminate them from your diet.

I can’t wait to see what you all share!

Fight Back Friday Banners

PLEASE NOTE: The smaller banners are also available as badges/buttons for your sites over on my sidebar so that you can sport your Real Food Lovin’ Pride and inspire others to join us in the Real Food Revolution. Just copy the code and paste it into your sidebar. (Again, you don’t have to use them to participate in the carnival.)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Fight Back Friday January 29th
2. Fight Back Fridays May 22nd
3. Fight Back Friday February 5th

When people first try to reduce their carbs, they find it hard to give up the convenience of all those grains. What do you eat instead of sandwiches for lunch? How do you give up pasta or rice as a dinner-time staple? What do you eat instead of cereal or muffins or pancakes for breakfast? Or, they can’t imagine giving up their sweet tooth. How do you go without dessert????!!!

If any of that describes you, then this post is for you. This is the culmination of all the Real Food low-carb advice I’ve given to folks over the years — the definitive guide of handy tips to help you with your adjustment.

For the record, I’m not currently on a true low-carb diet. I eat somewhere between 100-150 grams of carbs per day. To someone still addicted to eating starches or grains at every meal, that probably does seem low-carb. Trust me, it’s not. If you want to lose weight and use up your fat stores, check out the info in yesterday’s post on how to safely enter ketosis on a diet consisting of 50-80 grams of carbs per day.

Everyone will do this a bit differently, but here are the tips the most people I’ve talked to have found the most useful when trying to get down to that fat-burning range:

Breakfast

1) Eggs are your friends. They taste great with extra fat on them (butter & bacon grease are my morning favorites), and they cook fast! Get creative:

• Eggs can be scrambled with onions, peppers, & tomatoes, but they can also be scrambled with spinach or kale.
• Omelets are fun. I make mine with leftover meats or cheese.
• Use herbs! Salt & pepper are good as far as they go, but try an omelet or a baked egg made with rosemary & basil.
• Take them “to-go” by making them portable. Bake a batch in muffin-tins. Pre-fill the tins with grated cheese, chopped veggies, and bits of bacon or other left over meats, then pour the stirred eggs on top. Bake them in the tins, let cool, remove, and PRESTO! You’ve got portable breakfasts.
• Poach them in your leftovers — stews, sauces, broths. So yummy!
• Eat the yolks raw in smoothies.  For lower-carb smoothie options, use coconut milk, kefir, or yogurt for the liquid and be sure to add in a low-sugar fruit like berries instead of something super-sweet like bananas or pineapples. Blend in avocados, nut butters, cocoa or vanilla extract.

2) Go coconut! Coconut flour is low in carbs and makes excellent waffles, pancakes, and muffins. Use low-sugar fruits like berries to make your “syrup” or sweeten up your muffins. Check out this cookbook full of coconut-flour recipes.

Lunch

1) Leftovers make life easy! It can be as simple as eating the same thing you ate for dinner the night before, or you can get creative. Keep your meats & veggies separate when you cook them for dinner, mixing them only on your dinner plates as you serve them. Then store them separately in your fridge. After a few days of doing this, you’ll have a variety of meats and cooked vegetables. Mix & match your leftovers with different sauces and it’s like eating a whole new meal.

2) Eat salads. Big ones. Pile them with whatever vegetables turn you on and top with a source of protein. That can be leftover taco meat, leftover bits of diced steak, leftover pulled chicken, leftover diced pork chops, hard boiled eggs, smoked salmon, tuna, nuts, you get the picture. Dress the salad with something REALLY fattening. I make all my own salad dressings on-the-go with whatever inspires me. Sour cream or enzyme-rich mayonnaise mixed with healthy oils make for a tasty, creamy base to which you can add various herbs or spices. Check out this Bacon, Avocado, & Egg Salad to see what I’m talking about.

Dinner

1) Replace rice with grated cauliflower! It cooks in a lot less time, has almost no carbs, and serves well to replace rice in 95% of recipes.

2) You love pasta because of the SAUCES. So keep eating all those sauces, but pour them over your meat & veggies instead of over the pasta.

3) The same thing is true for tacos, fajitas, burritos, and everything else you put in a tortilla. You love it because of what’s INSIDE it, so put the insides in a bowl and enjoy it without the extra carbs.

4) Use “pasta” that’s made from vegetables. Asian markets sell a kelp/seaweed pasta and a mushroom pasta. Or you could use spaghetti squash or stringed zucchini to get your “pasta” fix.

5) Get a good cookbook to jog your creative juices. Most low-carb cookbooks aren’t into Real Food, but The Garden of Eating cookbook is!

6) What about pizza? How can you give that up? There are quite a few recipes out there for decent cauliflower crusts, or you can do what I do: make pizza soup! All the ingredients I love in my pizza, but with extra “sauce” serving as the soup base.

Sweets

1) You’ll need to kick your sweet tooth, and it’s best to do that cold-turkey. I promise it only takes a week (two at most)! See How To Cure A Sugar Fiend.

2) If you find yourself craving sweets, eat fat! Cook those eggs in extra butter, drizzle your steamed veggies with bacon grease, stir coconut oil or full-fat raw cream into your hot tea or coffee. Eating more fat will clear your foggy-headed brain and make that carb craving disappear.

Snacks

1) Pick snack foods you actually like.

2) Make them protein-rich. Hard-boiled eggs, slices of hard cheese, a handful of nuts.

3) Explore other cultures. Asian markets have a slew of inexpensive, interesting snack-ish foods that are quite nutrient-dense — everything from dried anchovies (taste like little chips!) to kelp chips fried in palm or coconut oil.

4) Fry your own snacks! Fry cheese in coconut oil or bacon grease. WOW.  Fry veggies (I like fried onions & peppers) in coconut oil or lard until crisp.

Notes

1) Stick to eating Real Food. Don’t buy into the low-carb “alternatives” to things like pre-prackaged snack bars or Splenda.

2) Check out these tips for eating Real Food on a budget.

3) Source your foods well. Check out this series on Healthy Foods: What to Buy. It’s got the low-down on the best options for buying quality meats, eggs, cheeses, seafood, etc.

4) If raw milk is too high in carbs for your low-carb diet, check out these recipes for Healthy Milk Substitutes.

What about all you old pros at eating low-carb? What are the things you wish you had known that would have made the transition easier?

(photo by lastappetite)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Healthy Low-Carb Meal Ideas
2. Bacon And Avocado Egg Salad
3. Eggs Poached in Marinara