One thing the ‘new diet’ has meant for Joanne and I is lots of cooking things ahead of time. The past few Sundays we have ended up spending hours in the kitchen preparing food for later in the week. Among the things we cooked today:

  • Frittatas – breakfast for the next few days. We find it a lot more convenient to not have to cook egg scrambles – and deal with the clean up – every morning.
  • Grain free breakfast bars – my adaptation of a recipe from one of my allergy-free cookbooks. Not necessarily low-carb or sugar free (my latest batch uses honey and dairy-free chocolate chips) but a good snack for me – particularly while I continue to adjust to the new diet.
  • “High Protein” Granola – another recipe from the allergy-free cookbook. This is just oats and quinoa flakes, sweetened with pure grade A maple syrup. I used to include almonds and sunflower seeds, and my last batch included a generous amount of peanut butter, but I seem to be allergic to all those things.
  • Oven roasted veggies – something new I’m trying this week. I want to do a better job of regularly replacing carbs, like the two things above, with veggies, and just generally eating more veggies. This will hopefully become a regular part of a meal, or a snack, to increase my daily consumption of vegetables. I roasted zuchini, yellow squash, red onion, green pepper, and mushroom with EVOO, sea salt, rosemary, and oregano.
  • Salmon and roasted asperagus – dinner, with leftovers for lunch during the week.

All together we spent over three hours in the kitchen, but given the time we’ll save later in the week, and the easy access this will provide to reasonably healthy meals/snacks through the week, I think it was worth it.

If anyone has suggestions about other healthy snacks or meals that can be made ahead of time and easily reheated (or just eaten!) later, let me know!