keto

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Dinners This Week

Still, we must eat.

Dinners for the Week of September 21- 27

  • Slow Cooker Beef Barbacoa with Guacamole – I am back to requiring one slow-cooker meal each week, because Carla and I have a twice-monthly commitment that puts us back home at dinnertime. I realize “twice-monthly” does not work out to “each week” but I want to build up my repertoire of acceptable slow-cooker meals. Plus, the slow cooker is awesome. I think my husband will turn this beef into tacos. I will make a giant, sad heap of it on my own plate, and top it with as much guacamole as I can.
  • Lemon Cod with Roasted Asparagus – Ugh. I wanted fresh cod, so I went up to the fish counter (standing in line behind a gentleman who CLEARLY had not read the many posted signs asking customers to please stand six feet back from the fish counter; at least his mask was fully on his face unlike MANY OTHER CUSTOMERS) and asked for a pound or a little over of the fresh cod. (Last time I ordered fish, I got about a quarter pound less than I wanted, hence the specificity you didn’t ask nor care about.) It was a pound and a third, which is a little more than a little over, in my opinion. And the cod fillets were very uneven: one side was very thick and the other side was very thin. Which makes it impossible to cook them evenly. So I asked if he had any pieces that were thicker and he lectured me on how I had to take the whole fillet, he simply could not cut off the thin part and just give me the thick part, which wasn’t exactly what I asked for but okay. I get it. I’m not trying to game the fish system, bro. Then, perhaps noticing the panic in my eyes, he told me a fishy secret: they have the same! cod! in the freezer section! But JUST the thick parts! I knew he was trying to help me get exactly what I want, which is very kind, so I went with him to the freezer case and oohed and aaahed over the cod bundles he handed me. But the cod they had frozen was… cod from the fish counter, frozen, and wrapped in plastic. So, literally the same cod. Just… frozen after it had been sitting out for hours trying to catch the eye of some oblivious shopper. I know from experience that the cod takes on a bitter flavor once frozen. I know this because, well, I’ve noticed it, but also because my husband hates it. He is already not super in love with the menus I’m planning lately because HE has declined to join me in a second keto journey IS IT BECAUSE IT IS HORRIBLE AND I ASK MYSELF DAILY WHY I AM SUBJECTING MYSELF TO IT HMMM I WONDER so I didn’t really want to increase the chances he will hate a food he already doesn’t love. But the fish monger was Right There! Gleefully holding out a problem-solving cod package for me to take and then possibly applaud him, I don’t know. And I couldn’t very well reject his fishy offer and go back to the counter and go through the whole cod rigamarole again, could I? Yes, I could have, indeed, people change their minds. But I felt Very Flustered and, you know, indebted to his cod solution skills, so I took the cod he so reverently held out to me. Then, when he’d returned to the fish counter, I put it back and grabbed my second choice, a package of vacuum sealed cod. Then I fled. This is TOO MUCH information about a single cod-related interaction. I also picked up a package of macaroni and cheese for my husband because I am a Very Good Wife.
  • Parmesan Crusted Pork Chops with Broccoli – This recipe is for chicken, not pork, but my husband is still kind of squicky about chicken. I also bought a parsnip that I can roast for my husband, to bulk up the meal a bit. Has Carla ever eaten a parsnip? Maybe this is a good chance for her to try one.
  • Steak Kebabs with Chimmichurri  – Instead of threading the skewers with tomatoes (per the recipe), which I hate, I will use green and red bell peppers. I will roast a yam for my husband and another for Carla because she (mostly) likes or at least eats small portions of yams!
  • Saucy Pork (with Noodles) – This is based on a recipe from The Lazy Genius Collective, which I try to break down into a more specific recipe here. I will use powdered erythritol instead of sugar in the sauce, which made no difference in the mini-taste test I did, sprinkling some of the erythritol in soy sauce. We roasted, finely chopped, and froze a pork tenderloin a few weeks ago, which will make up the bulk of the meal. I will add thinly sliced snow peas and red bell pepper to the pork and eat that. My husband will eat everything with ramen noodles.
  • Bang Bang Shrimp with Slaw – I am assuming my husband can turn these into tacos if he’s into that. There is way more mayonnaise in this meal than I am comfortable with, but we must lie in the bed we make for ourselves. Even if it is smothered in mayonnaise.
  • Out
  • We are also making whole-milk yogurt. Carla has a list of things she wants to make, and this was one of them. It sounds fairly simple, even though the Instant Pot makes me nervous.

That’s it, dinner-wise. Are you eating anything super exciting this week? Or super NOT exciting? I’d love to hear that, too.

I hope you are doing all right, Internet. Take heart. Eat something delicious. Keep going.

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Keto Update (Sorry) Plus Dinners This Week

I promised I wouldn’t talk about it a lot, and yet here I am, talking about it immediately after I made that promise. Well. Feel free to skip straight to the meals below if you want. Or to skip reading altogether and come back in three months when I will be DONE with this.

It has been one week and two days and I can officially say that I hate the Keto plan. It is miserable. I am miserable. I feel constantly nauseated – a low-level nausea that has persisted since I finally made it past the absolutely dreadful “Keto Flu,” which I would say lasted until Friday and consisted of constant nausea, terrible headache, full-body aches, and brain fog. I hate eating and cooking, which makes me deeply sad because I love eating and cooking. I am irritable and snappy, particularly just in advance of meal times. I am constantly on my phone – looking for recipes, trying to figure out what I can eat and how much, logging my stupid water intake. My brain is absolute mush – I cannot remember ANYTHING, I am clumsy, I am flaky. I am peeing ALL THE TIME because a) you are supposed to drink a lot of water, so I am, and b) because I am constantly thirsty. My jeans are not fitting any better. My joints hurt. I have no extra energy. I get restless legs in the evenings, which – for me – can only be treated with sleep. But then my sleep is fitful or interrupted (I woke up at 3:00 for NO REASON the other morning and then couldn’t fall asleep for ninety minutes). Which, of course, could be related to Current Events (evergreen statement), but I am fine with blaming everything bad on Keto. It is torture. Purely voluntary, I can literally quit at any time, torture.

HOWEVER. I have already shed 6% of my body weight. In one week. I would love, in my WILDEST DREAMS, to lose 20% of my body weight. But I would be happy with 15%. And it seems like I am on my way to achieving that goal if I can just hang in there. A friend, yesterday, told me my face looks thinner. (Before you try to beat him up, please understand that he KNOWS I am doing Keto and prefaced his comment by saying, “I really don’t know if I should say this, because I have a policy of never commenting on people’s bodies, but I know you are putting in a lot of work…” And I said, “Go ahead, say it.”) Anyway, I would prefer that my thighs looked thinner (not that I want anyone to comment on my thighs, literally ever), but face is good, I guess. Well. Good, but not my favorite compliment.

(By the way, if it were just me, I would not mention that I am doing Keto to anyone in real life. It makes me super uncomfortable to give people a reason to look at me, and evaluate my size and shape.) (SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE.)

If the pace of weight-loss continues, then I will count this awful, awful, horribleness a great success. But I reserve the right to stop AT ANY MOMENT because it truly is awful. My poor husband hates it, if possible, even more than I do. And he wants to quit So Badly. I keep wheedling him to power! through!, because I am DEEPLY HOPEFUL that there is some kind of Keto inflection point that we just need to cross… and then it will be fine.

Maybe this is like when you start a new exercise regimen. And it hurts and you hate every minute and you dread dragging yourself out of bed to do the exercise. But then you start seeing results, and it becomes worth it. The pain feels like a challenge. You start to look forward to exercising. Or, at least, it becomes more automatic rather than something you have to gear yourself up for. This is what I hope Keto is like. The novelty wore off and now we’re in the thick of it and we just have to keep our heads down and move forward because RESULTS.

To drag this topic out even further: it is also really hard to talk about Keto around my daughter. I try to be open about what we are doing and, instead of talking about desired weight loss, focus on how we are using this method to recalibrate our eating habits. We’d been eating too much of the foods that you need to eat in moderation, and so we are trying to reset the way we think about portion sizes and food. I am also trying to explain to her that we are adults, and fully grown. She, on the other hand, is a child. And her brain and body are still growing and changing and so she needs a wide variety of ALL foods, even those that we are avoiding. Also, I am trying to keep a close watch on my language: instead of saying, “oh, I can’t eat that brownie,” I will say, “I am not going to eat that brownie” or “I am choosing not to eat that brownie right now.” To make it clear that it’s not TABOO or BAD, just not something I am choosing to eat right now. This is more important when it comes to things like mango and blueberries, which are HEALTHFUL, GOOD FOODS. And yet they are foods that my Keto app tells me get an F. (Bacon gets an A.)

Okay, this is way more than I wanted to type about this hellbeast of a diet. Now, it is time to post about dinners. Which I really don’t want to think about, let alone eat. Anyway, here’s my sad, defeated, TOTALLY VOLUNTARY meal plan for the week:

Dinners for the Week of March 2-March 10

  • Peri-Peri Chicken with Roasted Zucchini

Note: Peeps, this is simply a chicken breast marinated in peri-peri sauce. (Which is delicious, if you haven’t tried it.) And then some cut-up zucchini tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper. I am craving nothing but vegetables, and I could not resist the siren song of the zucchini at the grocery store this weekend. They are carb-heavy – two small zucchini eat up 20% of my daily carbs – but I DON’T CARE. I need vegetables. (By the way, if it’s not clear, two small zucchini is not my desired amount of zucchini. I want to eat two LARGE zucchini. But this – my stereotypical-American perspective on what constitutes an appropriate portion size – is part of the problem I am hoping to address with Keto. Maybe two small zucchini is, in fact, a more appropriate amount.)

 

  • Taco Salad

Note: I can’t even get it up for taco salad. It just sounds like a lot of chewing.

 

Note: This sounds like fat overload. I wonder if I can squeeze in some sort of salad on the side?

 

  • Leftovers

 

Note: There is absolutely no way this will taste like regular BBQ sauce.

 

Note: If there’s no good looking halibut, I might use cod or sea bass instead. 

 

[Edited to add: OMG I forgot about planning something for dinner Sunday. I am telling you, my brain no longer functions.]

Note: Hell, maybe we will throw this diet out the window and go gorge ourselves on chips and beans at our favorite Mexican place.

 

Tell me about all the delicious meals you are eating this week. Especially if there are vegetables involved.

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Dinners This Week

After a VERY frustrating month and a half of trying to lose any, any at all, of the weight I gained from eating my feelings all autumn (and, simultaneously, a month and a half of reminding myself that weight has nothing to do with my self-worth and that maybe I am just This Size and should embrace it and worrying that I am setting a bad example for Carla by “dieting” and churning with ALL of the Fraughtness that comes with wanting to be a certain size in our society today and facing a truly insurmountable resistance to buying myself new jeans), I have persuaded my husband to try the Keto plan with me. This is literally Day Three, so please understand that I may give it up any second now and never speak of it again. (I mean, no carbs I can sort-of live with… but NO SAUCES? No BEANS? And the limit on Healthful Vegetables – like, I typically have to restrict myself to two cups of LETTUCE!!!!! to stay within my carb allotment – has me in a panic.) (I understand that I am CHOOSING this, by the way.) (I don’t really plan to speak of keto/diet stuff, that often, but it may shift the tenor of my weekly dinner plan posts and/or the tenor of my general complaining, so I am warning you about it now.)

Anyway, meal planning is newly challenging because I am trying to emphasize fat and protein over carbohydrates. Here’s what’s on the menu this week:

Dinners for the Week of February 24-March 1 (WHAT. HOW IS IT MARCH ALREADY SLOW DOWN TIME OMG)

Note: There were some absolutely beautiful tuna steaks on sale at Costco this weekend, so I snapped them up. We will not be eating the sautéed red pepper portion of this meal; instead I will be sautéing some green beans. This is because I already have the green beans and I don’t want to waste them, not because of some red-pepper-related bias.

Note: I fully realize that the Internet has been swooning over this recipe for eons. I have read about it with suspicion for many years and NOW is finally the time to try it out.

 

 

Note: I haven’t figured out what I will pair with this yet. Maybe some avocado?

 

  • Leftovers of some sort or possibly eggs

 

  • OUT

Note: My birthday is this week, so we will be going out to celebrate. I am already feeling grouchy about not being able to eat all the things I want to eat — solely because of completely voluntary and self-imposed restrictions! — but I think we have found a restaurant that serves some nice fish options. And the whole point of doing Keto is to reset my eating habits, so a little limitation on the all-out scarf-fest I would otherwise be doing on my birthday is probably not a bad thing.

 

What’s on your menu this week?