Open Face Breakfast Sandwich

I like breakfast any time of day.  This is especially true if breakfast includes bacon. Before keto, I would make these ah-mazing breakfast sandwiches with english muffins, eggs, cheese, and bacon.  So when I found some low carb bread, my first thought was “I can have breakfast sandwiches again!”

Now, the bread I found (Ener-G Light Brown Rice Loaf) ended up being itty bitty (my iPhone is bigger) and a little bit dry, but I crisped it up in some butter and it got the job done.  I’m not gonna complain about bread with 6 net carbs per slice.  Once that bread is topped with mayo, cheese, guacamole, bacon, and an over medium egg, I will definitely be too busy eating to complain.

Recipe:

Servings: 1

What you need:

• 1 slice Low carb bread (I used Ener-G Light Brown Rice Loaf)
• 2 strips bacon
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp guacamole
• 1/2 Tbsp mayo (optional)
• 1 slice cheese
• 1/2 Tbsp butter

What you do:

1. Cook the bacon using whatever method you want.
2. Butter the slice of bread and fry in a small pan.  Once both sides begin to brown, put mayo on one side and top with the cheese.  Cover the pan so the cheese melts.  When the cheese is melted, remove the bread from the pan.
3. In the same pan, add some of the bacon drippings or some more butter and fry the egg.
4. Top the bread with the guacamole, the bacon and the egg.
5. Eat it!

This can get kinda messy. I used a fork and knife because I’m a lady (just kidding, I had class and didn’t want to get stuff on my clothes and have to change).

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Bulletproof Chai

Not a coffee drinker? I understand. While today I’m quite a coffee enthusiast, there was a time when I too would avoid it. So how do you reap the benefits of bulletproof coffee… minus the coffee? Short of eating straight butter and oil, the answer is this bulletproof chai which once blended becomes creamy and frothy like a latte! I fully expected this drink not to work, but surprisingly, it was great!

Here’s what’s you need:

• 2-4 bags chai tea
• 1 Tbs butter
• 1 Tbs coconut oil
• 1 Tbs heavy cream (optional)
• 1-2 packets truvia (also optional)
• Dash of cinnamon (also also optional)

Here’s what you do:

1. We need to brew a very strong cup of chai tea – there are many ways to do this, but the easiest is to heat a cup of water and add 2-4 tea bags (depending on how strong you like it), and let it steep for 3-4 minutes.
2. Do not leave the tea bags in the tea.
3. In a blender, put the butter, coconut oil, whipping cream, cinnamon, and truvia.
4. Pour the strong chai over the items in the blender.
5. Blend on high for 8 seconds, let the mixture settle, then you may choose to blend a little more.
6. Pour into a mug and enjoy!

Buffalo Onion Dip

If I could give you all a sample of this buffalo onion dip, I would.  It is so good.  I want to share it with everyone and eat it all at the same time.  I just can’t even describe the kind of revelation that your mouth experiences when eating this.  It’s a savory blend of everything good in your fridge with a little kick from the buffalo sauce.  This buffalo dip is basically heaven in a oven safe dish.

Buffalo Onion Dip – Serves 2 as meal or 4 as snack

Here’s what you need:

• 1/2 large white onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 6 oz cream cheese
• 1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/4 – 1/2p cup buffalo sauce (add more for more spice)
• pinch of salt to taste

Here’s how you do it:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Heat oil in a nonstick pan over medium low heat.  Once hot, add the onions to begin caramelizing.  I sauté the onions until they are starting to brown, then reduce the heat to low and stir only once every 15 minutes until the onions are caramelized.
3. Once the onions are nearly done, add the butter and garlic and cook a few minutes longer.
4. Add the cream cheese to the pan.  It will soften and eventually you’ll be able to mix in the onions and garlic.
5. When the cream cheese and onions are fully mixed and the cream cheese is nice and ooey gooey, transfer to a small oven safe baking dish.  (The oval dish in the photos is about 9″x5″).
6. Mix in the all but about 1/4 cup of the cheese and the salt.
7. Add some of the buffalo sauce and mix.  Add more until it tastes amazing to you.
8. Smooth out the dip and top with the remaining cheese.
9. Place in oven for 10 minutes.  Then turn on the broiler and broil for a few minutes until the cheese begins to brown.
10. Serve with celery for an awesome keto snack or meal.

*another variation of this recipe includes preparing the onions in an oven safe frying pan, adding the cream cheese, buffalo sauce, and salt at the same time, removing from heat and adding the cheddar cheese, then putting the entire pan in the oven.

Low Carb Pasta

Yeah, you read that.  Low carb pasta.  Pasta you can have on Keto.  You’re probably all like “Whoa, Keto is no carbs and pasta is all carbs.  This is clearly a trick.”  That’s what Amy and I thought when we first stumbled upon this mung bean fettuccine from Explore Asian.  There’s only 6 net carbs in a serving in this pasta!  Obviously, we needed to try it out.  Could a low carb pasta actually be good?

On the way back to cook the pasta, Amy was coming up with alternative dinner plans as she was convinced that this pasta was going to be nasty.  Fortunately it was actually really good!  It was slightly chewy and the pasta was pretty broken when we opened the package, but those were our only complaints.  Other than that, it was fantastic!  This is an amazing high protein low carb alternative to pasta.

We found this pasta at Fresh Martket, but I imagine it’d be available in other health food stores such as Whole Foods or Sprouts.  I also found it on Amazon if you can’t find it in your area.

For the dish, we cooked the pasta according to the package directions and added a jarred sauce that also had very few carbs. A homemade cream sauce will add no carbs here if made correctly! Super easy and Keto friendly.  This is a great way to get rid of those pasta cravings since this is one of the best healthy pasta alternatives I’ve ever had.  I even prefer it to whole wheat pasta.  I’d give it 4/5 stars.  It’d get that 5th star if the pasta wasn’t so broken.

What you need:

• Water to boil pasta
• 1 package Mung Bean Fettuccine
• 2 cups Low carb tomato sauce

What to do:

1. Prepare the mung bean fettuccine according to the package directions.
2. After draining and rinsing, add the noodles back to the pot.
3. Add the sauce and stir.
4. Chow down.

Coconut Chocolate Fat Bombs

Imagine: It’s 5PM and you’re hungry for something pretty big. You look at your meals for the day and realize you’ve eaten most of your carbs AND protein for the day! Oh no! What can you eat to satisfy your hunger without going over your daily carb and protein allowance? The answer is: a fat bomb.

Fat bombs are a very high fat, low carb, low protein snack that can keep you going without knocking you out of ketosis. So while the word “fat bomb” can be a little concerning, fat bombs are in fact very good for a Keto dieter. These bad boys contain about 4g net carbs and a whopping 23 grams of fat per serving. They are about 230 calories each. You can adjust these as you plese by including more or less coconut oil and more or less almond butter and chocolate.

What you need:

Filling

• 3 C unsweetened shredded coconut (I used 1/2 a package)
• 8 oz Raw Coconut Butter
• 5 tbs coconut oil
• 5 tbs Almond Butter (optional)
• 4-5 packets truvia

Topping

• 3 oz very dark chocolate (80% cacao or higher)
• 5 tbs Heavy Whipping cream
• 2-3 packets truvia (optional)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract.

What to do:

1. Grease a 9 x 9 pan (or whatever you’d like to set the fat bombs in).
2. In a saucepan, heat up the coconut butter, coconut oil, coconut, and almond butter until texture is melted and smooth.
3. Pour melted mixture into 9 x 9 dish and refrigerate. Wait for this to set before adding the topping.
4. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate.
5. Add the heavy cream, vanilla, and truvia to the chocolate and stir until mixture is smooth and consistent.
6. Once coconut mixture is set, pour chocolate over the filling and spread to top.
7. Top with coconut and wait for the entire dish to set completely.
8. Cut into 12 bars or servings and store in the refrigerator.

Bulletproof Coffee

If you’ve been doing your research on Keto, you may have heard of something called Bulletproof Coffee (BPC). While it seems everyone loves this stuff, it is seldom explained fully. It took me a good day or two on the message boards to realize BPC was the abbreviation for it. So why should you be excited about Bulletproof Coffee? I’ll tell you!

Bulletproof Coffee is a drink that combines coffee, butter, and coconut or MCT oil (super high fat oil), and often heavy cream. Sounds pretty nasty when you put it like that but stay with me. The mixture is blended (this is the most important part) and becomes creamy and frothy like a latte! Not only is this drink delicious, it is loaded with enough fat that it is all some people need for breakfast (lol not me). It also helps wake you up in the morning, and can help with one of the not-so-fun Keto side effects: constipation. On top of all that, it has zero carbs and is quick and easy to make!

Here’s what you need:

• 1 cup of hot, fresh coffee (different sites will try to sell you special coffee, I say just make sure you buy fair trade)
• 1 TBS butter (I prefer Kerrygold grass fed salted)
• 1 TBS Coconut oil (you can use MCT oil but it will be far less, about 1 tsp. I prefer coconut oil)
• 1 TBS Heavy Cream (optional)

Here’s how you do it:

1. Brew your cup of coffee as you normally would. French press, drip, whatever you like.
2. Put the butter, coconut oil, and heavy cream in the blender.
3. Pour the hot coffee into the blender. You’ll see as the oils start to melt that oil is sitting on the top. Don’t worry, this goes away.
4. Blend on high for 10 second or so or until you see a frothy foam forming on top.
5. Pour into a mug and enjoy!

 

Fresh Sugar-Free Lemonade

Well…I started keto.  Amy came out from Atlanta and visited for the weekend, so it was awesome having her around to guide me.  Once she got
to Birmingham, we set out grocery shopping.  We found a bunch of things like pasta and bread that had low net carbs that we are going to try.  One thing Amy missed was drinking stuff other than water, so we decided to make some keto-friendly lemonade.

This stuff was awesome and really easy to make.  You just juice lemons, add Truvia (or your sugar substitute of choice), and add as much water as you want until it tastes good to you.  Once you have your lemonade, you can add some iced tea to make an arnold palmer or some vodka to make it a party!

Ingredients

12 small lemons

7 packets Truvia (about 5-1/4 tsp Truvia or 4 2/3 Tbsp sugar)

1 quart water

Instructions

Juice all the lemons.  Filter out the seeds and pulp and pour into a large container.  Add the Truvia.  Add water until it tastes right to you.  We used about 1 quart.  Add more sugar substitute or lemon juice until it tastes killer.  Refrigerate or serve immediately over ice.  Enjoy!

Advice for New Keto-ers

Starting keto is a unique experience. Especially if you jump right into like I did. On the first day of Shark Week. Which also happened to be the day I got some bad news about my job. And whatever you do, don’t feel so guilty about not feeling amazing that you go to the gym and do a high intensity workout. Needless to say, day 1 of keto was a day I would love to forget. As prepared as I thought I was, I unknowingly had come down with a case of what is called “keto flu”. People who are new to keto, especially those who jump right into it, are prone to feeling sort of headachey, dizzy, irritable, shaky, nauseous, and generally fluish when they are first starting out. This is due to many things, including your body’s withdrawal from sugar, low potassium, sodium, and magnesium levels, as well as the body’s natural shock as it adjusts to this change.

I felt like I was in a fog, and I was incredibly irritable and emotional (great day to get bad news, huh?). I got on the internet and did some research and realized I was probably deficient in Potassium and Sodium. I went to the drug store near my apartment and picked up some Potassium supplements, but they didn’t carry anything that I thought would help with my sodium. When I got home I took the potassium and I talked with my roommate about how to get sodium. Our suite-mate had recently started a crash diet where every morning she took a shot of water mixed with pink salt. I figured I’d give that a try. Afterwards my mom called me and this was the conversation:

“Hey mom, I was calling to get ideas about how to get more sodium but I think I figured it out.”

“Did you drink chicken broth?”

“No that would have been… clever.”

“So what did you do?”

“I took a shot of really salty water!”

“Oh……. were you constipated?”

“No, why?”

“Salt water is a very powerful laxative. My mom used to give it to our host students when they would be constipated from travel.”

“I really wish you would have called me back 5 minutes sooner. MOM I GOTTA GO BYE”

Needless to say, the rest of the night was as bad as the beginning of the day. I’m very lucky my roommates thought it was hilarious (we have 4 girls sharing one bathroom, so I had to tell them what was going on). The point of this story is to give you a nice laugh at my misfortune but also to give you the following ESSENTIAL tips to anyone starting keto:

1. It’s ok to gradually start for a few days. You don’t have to be perfect right away.
2. Before you start, buy a potassium and magnesium supplement (go easy on the magnesium though, it has a similar effect to the salt water in large quantities) and buy a big carton of chicken broth (don’t buy low sodium).
3. Drink a lot of water – your kidneys are hard at work dumping all your water weight (yay!), which makes it easy to become dehydrated (not yay).
4. If you don’t feel very good, it’s ok to miss the gym for a day or two. It’s important to focus on how you feel, not how you look.
5. It’s ok if you don’t start out feeling awesome. It will get better in a week or two. If you can get through the start, the rest is easier.

Just get your Potassium, K? 😉