I just completed my first wheat-free holiday menu. Everyone seemed quite pleased with the food. There was quite a bit of it and a great variety. Most everything was also low-carb. I wanted to be able to eat what I was making. So with the exception of the baked potatoes, I was able to enjoy everything in small amounts.
Here's what I made:
Appetizers:
Cucumbers, carrots, celery sticks Simply Kraft onion dip (the only one I could find without added wheat)
Rolled prosciutto and mozzarella slices
Corn tortilla chips for dipping
Salsa
Bubbling hot buffalo chicken dip
Dinner:
Ham Turkey breast
Mashed cauliflower
Leaf lettuce, spinach, and cherry tomato salad
Pineapple
Baked potatoes (with toppings to choose - butter, sour cream, chives, scallions, bleu cheese crumbles, cheddar, bacon)
Dessert:
Mini cheesecakes with almond crust
So I'm happy to report that no one starved. Happy Easter and Passover to you!
Not our first gluten-free holiday meal, since I've had full-blown Celiac for about 20 years now. Most of the carbs were in the fruits/dessert, of course! Ham, green beans, and mixed salad (lettuce, cherry tomatoes, mango, olives, homegrown fresh herbs). Good bread was served for others than myself. Nice red wine. Dessert was fruit salad and good chocolate candy or Russel Stover marshmallow eggs for those who didn't need low carbs, or those who went low... Hope you're still having a good weekend with good leftovers.
It all sounds yummy, Trudy. I kept all the wheat away because I wanted to show my family that they really could survive without it. Oh, I forgot to mention that my cheesecakes were also sugar-free. I used Truvia instead of sugar and almond flour instead of graham crackers for the crust.
I've also been eating very low carb for the past two months.
Second try a this comment -- Your meal looked really delicious, appetizers and all. Following up on what you said, none of us felt at all starved either! I haven't tried cooking or baking with Truvia, but I like it in my tea and coffee. Almond flour is great. In the summer I'm active enough to use a few more carbs, and particularly like Udi's Wholegrain gluten-free bread, or make a bread machine loaf of Pamela's bread. Pamela's bread mix is mainly almond flour. I just read your blog and realized that perhaps you're not eating grains. When I just have to have a wrap other than lettuce, I make buckwheat injera; buckwheat is not a grain. I have learned to be very careful about portions, and don't have the "craving for carbs" problem that some folks do using my low/moderation carb diet. You are very ambitious to be working on your Type II by diet alone!
Thanks, Trudy. I've heard good things about Udi's. I am in search of it because I would like to remove wheat from my son's diets also and that seems to be a good transition. I would have to use it most sparingly at 17 carbs a slice. I generally have less carbs than that in an entire day. Once I eliminated wheat in particular, I stopped craving carbs. And I was a carbaholic. I also have a recipe for flaxseed wraps that you make in the microwave that I'm going to try. But even almond flour and flaxseed and other alternatives (rice starch, tapioca starch, potato starch, etc.) seem to wreak havoc on my blood sugar numbers. So I'm avoiding them for the most part. I did manage to get through the holiday weekend without trashing my numbers. :-)
