Tasty ideas with Mayo?

SoapAlchemist

SoapAlchemist

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I've started an Atkins type diet, and basically I have to stuff myself with fat!:exclamation: So in the hunt for palatable ones, I've made some basic mayonnaise. Anyone got any good ideas for how to make variations on that theme? I'd be grateful for any suggestions on how to enhance the ketogenic experience.
 
Well, you slop it on food or stir it into food ... dunk pointless veg in, like celery or asparagus :D

I've got a tonne of ideas for low-carb and ketogenic dishes, but it'd be helpful to know what else you'll be eating ... what veggies, is dairy included in the protocol, that sort of thing ...

First rule if you're adding fat, push up to the best of fats, the most calorifically intense: goose fat and coconut oil for the win! Thereafter, olive and avocado oil, but not for cooking.
 
Yep, dairy is o.k. but mainly cream and cheese. As for veggies, at the moment I'm trying to stick to 20g carbs a day, so other than massive bunches of spinach, I'm a bit limited.
I've got some beef fat for frying (skimmed off beef bone broth), to go on with. Have you any good recipes for coconut oil stuff like cocoa/seed/nut balls? I made some but they're a bit bland, but if I hadn't lost the recipe, I know they can taste good. Using it for frying is o.k. with a curry, but it tastes too strong for most other frying purposes.
I've made this mayo with almond oil, probably not the best choice. Future ones I'll use avocado or olive. Do you have any ideas for different 'flavours' for mayo? Chillie is my next stop, but I'm finding variety hard to achieve, so all suggestions welcome.
Thanks in advance.
Do you know, I've never used goose fat other than to cook the roasties on Christmas day! Will look into it if beef fat runs out. At the moment I'm wilting spinach in butter and pouring in the scrambled eggs.......only so much of that a girl can stand.
 
It was a good few years back, but I did a really low carb thing to kickstart weight loss as part of a paleo/primal type protocol ... back then, I think paleo/primal was very much influenced by Atkins, focussed on meat and fat but the idea has softened a lot more recently. I have to say, I recall it as a bit grim so let's hope you meet your goals quickly. I remember feeling very focussed, almost to the point of absolutely ignoring everything and everyone else around what I was most immediately doing.

I'm going to give you two Godsends ...

First, Keto-Chocolate!

Two parts high quality cocoa powder to one part coconut oil. Get your coconut oil from Tesco or Sainsbury - it's in a blue label plastic tub and costs nowt. Double boiler, melt the oil and the cocoa powder together and then drop in some salted butter (some, don't worry about weights and measures). Stir it all together and pour it out onto a tray so that it is something like a centimetre thick. Into the freezer. Once frozen, crack and eat whenever you like.

Screw fat balls! :D The purpose of the bitterness is so your sweet (sugar) desire is not triggered. Once super experience is to enjoy this with neat tequila - the tequila will taste soooo sweet and the chocolate soooo good.

Second, Posset.

Simple dessert. Grab some ramekins. Pour a carton (300ml) of double cream into a milk pan and bring it to the boil, stirring all the time preferably with an egg whisk. Squeeze in something like a third of a lemon and stir, stir, stir ... pour out into the ramekins and into the fridge to set. The lemon will set the cream.

Again, simple fat dish with a good non-sweet flavour.

I'm guessing the point is weight loss?

Do have a look at paleo and primal, understand intermittent fasting or at least compressed eating windows, but most importantly perhaps is leptin reset which will do wonders for cravings - you'll reset very quickly. All that lot is easily googleable.

Good luck, most of all have fun ...

Eating can and should simply be: meat, fish, shellfish, eggs and vegetables. While in the "fat, fat and more fat" phase, simply steam veg and mix with a little fat before serving. Thereafter, ease off the additional fat. Finally, it's only any good with some activity - go for a walk; no need for the gym, running or other stressful activities, have a head-clearing, de-stressing walk.
 
Yes, weight loss was the initial motivation. I saw links all over the place about cancer and epilepsy (the latter of interest, as I have a friend with this, very uncontrolled, but a vegetarian, so difficult). So anyway, off I went into the deepish end, and literally within 24 hours I felt all sorts of totally unexpected benefits. My creaky joints feel oiled, I feel more strength in my limbs, dry itchy eyes have noticeably improved, and mood much better/more level; also more energy. It's been an eye opener; it's like I've suddenly fed my body something it's been desperately needing. The most welcome effect is the feeling that I've emerged from a brain fog that I was beginning to think was just how getting older has to be. More focused, better memory, just better thinking.
Weight loss continues to be a motivation, and I've lost a few pounds in 9 days, nothing spectacular. But yesterday is the first day I got to 20 carbs, ditto today. So onwards and downwards I hope. But I am wondering how long one can do this and not suffer from other deficiencies, due to lack of fruit and veg. Not to mention fiber.
Thanks for the recipe ideas, I'll try those. I do think in my nut/fat/seed balls, the missing ingredient was more cocoa, and cinnamon and nutmeg wouldn't have gone amiss.
 
It is concerning, if not alarming, just how sick we've become as a species and it really doesn't help when so-called experts have peddled quite dangerously wrong advice for a generation or more around saturated fats - the leap into "healthy fats" really has done us a lot of damage. Before the '60s, they were not at all widespread ... before the Neolithic, they simply did not exist, so as a species we had to have been pretty stupid to evolve to survive on, nay require, saturated fat.

While a radical and dramatic change in diet is a good start, do question what you'll do for the rest of your life ...

I am NOT going suggest everything in moderation to be a good thing because it is quite simply wrong. There are most definitely types of modern food to avoid or at least absolutely minimise.

What I WILL say is ... regressing diet to something approximating a pre-WW2 diet will go a long way to negating many of the harmful effects of a modern diet. See, we have to live in the world that we do and that means buying the food that is available. Sure, grow some, perhaps even keep chickens, raise a couple of pigs, or something, but we have to engage in the society that we are a part of. The key is to minimise harmful effects.

Several areas which were of great help to me that a worth reading more into:

Return to seasonal eating - nature keeps it real and gives your variety - see http://eattheseasons.co.uk
Inflammatory foods - how to recognise, minimise or negate the effects of - see http://inflammationfactor.com/look-up-if-ratings
YOUR perfects macronutrient ratio - I thrive on meat and fat, Mrs does a lot better with simple carbs; there may be a gender bias - see http://www.theperfecthealthdiet.com
Leptin reset - see http://jackkruse.com/easy-start-guide/
Intermittent fasting, compressed eating window and occasional macronutrient denial (Meatless Monday, etc) - see: http://www.renegadedietbook.com

... but on the whole, decent starting points for continued good health and a sort of "how to do this for the rest of your life" look into http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/ and http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/principles-of-healthy-diets-2/ ... also, there's some really fun information here: http://www.gnolls.org

For the sake of simplicity, keep the mantra: meat, fish, shellfish, eggs and vegetables in the forefront of your mind and let nature (seasonal eating) decide your plate, eating in a compressed window of 8 hours however that might work out best for you (noon to 8PM is good for me). Beyond that, engage in meaningful or stress-relieving activity (working or walking), socially engage and enjoy your life.
 
Paneer is quite a versatile dairy product plenty of fat in that.

Nishy said:
Paneer is quite a versatile dairy product plenty of fat in that.
Click to expand...
Also tuna mayo with chilli flakes
Or sweetcorn with cumin, dry massala spice, mayo, chilli rocksalt and pepper winner
 
Haha! Cheers! I got to the end of my 30s having thoroughly enjoyed myself with all the finery I simply could not afford in my 20s ... death seemed a long way off, but when you get to 40 you get a certain sense that things are creeping up on you. I did a LOT of reading, much self-experimentation around food timing, macronutrient restriction and over the course of about five years having decided to take that step and get what I eat, what I drink and what activity I undertake all in order, I came to one simple conclusion: regress.

I mentioned above, but we are highly adaptive species, but changes in the last 50 years have been so thick and fast that we've yet to learn of the impact. Something approximating a pre-WW2 diet is about right and something that has all the give and take of both (hopefully) long term health AND enjoyment. We can look around the world at all sorts of diets, trying to copy what it is that we think will give us long life, but in the end, we live where we live and the best thing all round is to eat how folks like us eat ... or did.

There are loads of diets and eating protocols, but in the end they are simply very good for taking stock and getting a baseline, then they're starting points. When folks take these protocols as dogma, that is sad. There are so many "paleo4life" kind of people out there, but in the next breath they're wolfing down "paleo cookies". Face palm. Lots of reading, lots of research, lots of experimentation and I put together what works well for me without being one of those diet bores.

What is the absolute killer today is stress.

That, I don't know how to deal with and despite good health (I simply don't get colds, coughs, sniffles, never get the "flu") I got put down by reactivated Epstein Barr last October and it proper hit me for six, still under the cloud of chronic fatigue but definitely getting sorted. The Docs are not fully clued up about why EBV reactivates spontaneously, but they do know that stress is a big factor.

I think a generous helping of notgivingashittednessaboutstuff can really help. Work to live, not live to work, don't bring it home and don't let it kill you. There's a fine line.
 
Thanks for all the useful links Paul, I'll investigate them more fully over the w/e. Tuna Mayo Nishy! Why on earth didn't I think of that?
There are some similarities in this diet to how people in Ireland ate when I was growing up. Although my grandmother in England used vegetable oil for frying, in Ireland only lard or beef dripping was used. Butter was liberally applied to anything you wanted, and no-one I knew used margarine for anything other than baking. Having said that, we did consume white bread, and every dinner had potatoes. So there the similarity ends. But there certainly wasn't the level of obesity that there is today. I do think that frying in vegetable oils is a big culprit.
 
pjgh said:
I think a generous helping of notgivingashittednessaboutstuff can really help. Work to live, not live to work, don't bring it home and don't let it kill you. There's a fine line.
Click to expand...

Never a truer word spoken, Paul.

I'm lucky that I'm in a field that I enjoy but I will never earn mega-bucks because when the clock hits 5 (within reason of course) I want to be off and enjoying my life.
 
soapalchemist said:
I do think that frying in vegetable oils is a big culprit.
Click to expand...

That, and there's strong research into both dairy and wheat.

I didn't follow much of the science when I read about it, largely because bread gives me nuclear heartburn so it was never something I ate much, but wheat changed some time in the '60s. The actual strains changed. Furthermore, bread production became much more wholescale with many bakeries actually buying in pre-mixed dough. The majority of the bread that you'd buy would have the same strains of flour, if not be from the same homogenised dough. Yes, there's sourdough and there are artisan bakers, but it's a struggle to get good bread, generally.

With dairy, it comes down to A1 and A2 type. There are two problems with A1 type milk: first, the beta-casein protein chain, generally, is the cause of bloating, flatulence and skin breakouts (read: lactose intolerance, but actually not lactose at all) and underneath, a histamine on the beta-casein protein is being linked with ADHD, diabetes, obesity, the list goes on. A1 type is basically "regular milk", like we get (now also homogenised, thanks to government enforcement by in the early '90s), but Channel Islands cows (Jersey & Guernsey breed), buffalo, goat, sheep and reindeer are all A2 type. Goat milk is readily available at many supermarkets now. Like many things, nature's magical gift of fermenting seems to negate many if not all of the negative effects, so yogurt and cheese are largely good, products with live cultures better. Fatty cream is good, too, since there's little of the casein protein in cream and the fat helps to bind it. Another fail for low-fat propaganda. By the same virtue, butter is largely sound - hey, Kerrygold?

Here's a diagram:

var-protein-chain.png


You can see that in A1 milk that position is occupied by a histamine (not good), but in A2 milk, it's a protein (fine). Otherwise, they're identical.

You can read more about that at http://www.betacasein.org - it's not just for folks with dairy intolerances, this stuff affects all humans and we're starting to pass on its issues to new generations.

Phew! That sounds preachy :D
Yeah, so drink a goat, or something, hippy!

So, I guess the big question since this is your thread Sharon - do you have an answer?

I gave you the chocolate recipe, which will fill in for "fat balls" and Nishy has hit the nail on the head in terms of how to make things interesting: spice it up!
 
My answer to the oils/fats issue is use only saturated fats for frying, and good preferably cold pressed virgin olive for eating raw. Just picked myself up a tin of ghee earlier.
I love bread, but eating it often makes me feel comatose a while later, so even when I relax this diet, I will certainly keep it to a minimum. Might even make some soda bread now and again with good flour; easiest bread in the world to make.
The milk thing, I hadn't understood about the A1/A2 thing, so thanks for highlighting that. I've switched our daily delivery to Gold Top just now. I can't for the life of me understand why the government imposed homogenisation. What is it for?
Thanks for all the great info.
 
On the mayo question
for me, mustard mayo (lotsa differnet variations there) goes well with meat/eggs/chicken salad etc
I also like sambal oelek or brandal in my mayo as a spicy alternative for the above.
 
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