Hints & Tips

The Big Four to AVOID

1. Refined White Flour

2. Sugar

3. Trans Fats

4. High Fructose Corn Syrup

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Good Fats & Bad Fats

GOOD: Butter, beef and lamb tallow, lard, sesame seed oil, olive oil, peanut oil, cold (expeller) pressed nut oils (almond, macadamia, walnut, etc.), coconut oil, fish oils (e.g., cod liver oil), poultry fats (chicken, duck,
and goose), cream, ghee, flax oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, high oleic safflower or sunflower oils.

NOTE: Do not cook or heat flax or walnut oils.

BAD: Margarine, partially hydrogenated oils of any type, vegetable oil, commercial corn oil, canola oil, hemp seed oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, vegetable shortening, safflower oil, all fats and oils heated to extremely high temperatures.

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Annies Fibre Fruit - Great snack only 7 on Glycemic Index - Mixed Berry or Apricot - low GI fruit with added Fibre Sweet. FOS 

Need More Fibre? - Many low carbers find they do not get enough fibre in there diet - Annies Fibre Sweet  (FOS - Fructose Oligo Saccharide) - a natural food, not a supplement - made from chicory root - white powder, tastes like candy floss - 95% soluble fibre - 1 teaspoon equivalent to fibre in 5 weetbix - is now found in Heinz Nutura Toddler Milk Powder, Sym Bio Metchnikoff Yoghurt, Vitasoy Soy milk. Prebiotic. It feeds and stimulates the growth of the friendly bacteria in your bowel. 
 

YOU CANNOT HAVE ANY: 

-Sugar
-Flour
-Bread
-Pasta
-Rice
-Potatoes
-Corn
-Ketchup (unless sugar-free)
-Corn Starch
-Modified Food Starches

Look out for these ingredients in food labeling:

- Fructose
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Sucrose
- Maltose
- Dextrose
- Any Flour OR Starches 

Tips from Allen

• Puhoi Creamy Blue & Parmesan Dip <1g per 100g.

• Vita-wheat Crispbreads, many flavours, lowest carb is 9 grain at <3 digestible carbs each cracker, no trans fat.

• Delish Asparagus in spring water, 2.5g per 100g.

• Good taste Co Asian Soy & Sesame Vinaigrette, 1.4g per 25ml serve.

• Brunswick Seafood snacks (Herring in lemon & cracked pepper) 0.67g per 100g (source of Omega 3 and milder taste than sardines).

• Sealord flavoured Tuna from 8.7g per 100g for Tai red curry to 4.9g for lemon pepper, and 2.9g for smoked. I occasionally have half a 185g tin on my lunch salad instead of ham, or chicken.

• Emma Mushrooms sliced in sauce 3.9g per 100g.

• Wattie’s Potato bake Garlic & Rosemary 4.1g per 100g. Use as sauce for cauliflower, or vegetable bake.

• Sheer Delite no added sugar 99% fat free ice cream Chocolate & Berry Fusion flavours. Woolworth’s. Berry fusion 14.4g per 100g. Sweetened with Splenda.

• Classic Diet Cola sweetened with Splenda, Pak’n’Save, New World. Best tasting diet cola I've found. I can't taste any artificial chemical aftertaste like I can with Diet coke and Pepsi max. 0.36g per 355ml can. Cheap, aprox $6.00 per dozen at Pak’n’Save.

• Jok n Al Sauces at New World, and Bin Inn. my favourites are Mint sauce 2g per 30ml, Chilli pepper sauce 4g per 30g

• For something to serve your curry, casserole or stir-fry on, try pureeing some cooked cauliflower, mix in a tablespoon of creme fraiche or cream, an egg, and some crushed garlic, salt & pepper. It can almost pass as garlic mashed spud, but the texture isn't as smooth. One recipe I read had a leek as well, but I haven't tried this.

Like your low carb HOT???  Steve writes.....
If anyone likes hot food (I love it!), if you go to a Chinese Supermarket, the Chinese do a ‘hot chilli sauce’ for $3-4 a jar which a fellow low carber recommended and even gave me a jar to try. It’s kinda strange, it has chilli, oil and one or two other things, and kinda has the consistency of lumps of chilli in oil, but it tastes great as a marinade or even as a side sauce and has no sugar in it. 

You can buy it in 250g jars. The only English on mine is the brand "Ghi Zhou Te Chan". The jars have a red top and a label that seems to get more red the more hot the sauce is, and for some unknown reason all seem to have pictures of these Chinese guys as logos.. It would pay to ask someone before buying if they can tell you the heat and the flavour, because you can also get it with peanuts mixed in, and ‘chicken’ (actually chicken bones, yuck - you wouldn’t want to get this). I’ve tried the peanut one and it tastes great (we had it with dinner last night, a Chinese hotpot and stir fried mixed veges), and I even tried the one I was given (without peanuts) mixed with a handful of peanuts, tasted really good as a snack, 

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Real Stock Concentrates Rachelle writes....
If you don't want to make your own stock "Campbell's Real Stock Concentrate" its in a bottle with 0.3 grams per 12.5 ml which I mix with about 3/4 cup water (the chicken one anyway)

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From Tui..................
LC Spaghetti Bolognaise 
Instead of using pasta noodles shred a cabbage to look like noodles - steam it gently till it has wilted, is warm but not soggy - yum!

LC Lasagne
Lasagne replace the pasta with steamed cabbage leaves I have a friend whose son won’t eat vege. I took this dish to a pot luck dinner one night, he couldn't get enough of it.

LC Cannelloni
forget the shells - wrap the filling in lightly steamed cabbage leaves

Dipping Snack
Red Onions quartered and fan baked till they are very dark (almost burnt) and dry - Absolute heaven 
Also try slices of aubergine (eggplant)

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Fish Coatings
When I cook fish, I make my husbands with ordinary batter, and I use a mixture of soy flour and gluten flour when I do mine.  You could also try coating the fish with a mixture of ground almonds, parmesan cheese, flaxmeal (ground linseed) and some other flavourings.  I do this with chicken and it's very nice.

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Kokoda - Marinated Fish 500g fish of choice reciepe says snapper I prefer cod cut into cubes place in plastic container with lid pour lemon juice of 4 lemons I use lemon  juice in bottle 250ml leave soaking in juice for at least 12 hours in fridge make sure fish is  covered with juice stir if necessary stir the longer it soaks in lemon juice  the more tender it is. Pour off lemon juice.
Cut in cubes one small cucumber, 2 tomatoes, one onion (spring onions are nice) pour over one tin coconut cream (one serving= 1.0carb) Add salt to your taste. Serve on lettuce leaf curl.

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Sealord Deep Sea Dory Fillets
Have you tried the Cajun spice? It's great on fish. I buy the Sealord Deep Sea Dory fillets which I pan fry from frozen, in a little butter and sprinkle over the cajun spice -going to go have some for lunch now with some
mesculun salad, yum. I find cooking it from frozen you don't get the same strong fishy smell permeating everything. Robyn. - p.s chew a sprig of parsley before work :) 

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Tofu - high in protein, but low in carbs

• slice it and dip it in beaten egg with some savoury flavouring - chicken etc. and 'fry' 
  in a tefal pan.
• cube it, marinate it in a mix of soy sauce, ginger and garlic and dry fry , cool slightly 
  and eat it on salad. 
• put bits in a soup to beef up the protein. 
  The macaroni cheese just make a cheese sauce, throw it over the tofu, heat and serve.

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Cruchy Snack
Pappadoms about 4.5 g carbs with 2 grams fibre, an effective carb count of 2.5g each.  Our labels don't include the fibre, but it was the Pataks brand that was mentioned in the post I read.  When I want something to crunch, I sprinkle some chicken salt on a pappadom and nuke it in the microwave.  Yum!

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Flaxmeal is known as ground linseed here in NZ. You can either buy the seeds and grind them yourself, or buy ready-ground stuff. You can get the seeds at any supermarket, or the ground linseed at a place like Bin Inn. Supermarkets do stock the Healtheries brand of ground linseed in the baking aisle, but it is much more expensive than buying it from the bulk bins - Tara
or
I buy my ground Flaxmeal from the refrigerator section of the Health Shop, I find that it tastes heaps better. I brought some from a bin at Bin Inn and it wasn't the same and had a bitter taste - I think that keeping it in the refrigerator is the best bet.... - Sharon

Milk Steamers this is one of my favourites—they may be available in your area.
When we go the cafes my husband will order a cappuccino the caffeine is not recommended particularly at the beginning of this diet. A steamer is made from hot milk and nip of syrup (in some places you can get sugar free vanilla) and froth on top—just looks like a cappuccino! In Christchurch try Coffee Culture at Sumner or Starbucks for sugar free vanilla–  if you know any other places!

Summer Drink I have found a yoghurt way lower in carbs than any other.....made by Mainland Foods, Dunedin.....unsweetened plain.....(Naturalea) ....available in cardboard 600 gram cartons. I like to mix equal quanities of yoghurt (1/2 cup) and cold water (1/2 cup) with about 1 teaspoon of liquid sweetener and a pinch of salt.....beat with an egg beater till frothy, then pour over lots of ice in a pretty glass. Very refreshing and a nice change from water. Would be a great summer drink. The carb count was about 4.6 I think per 100 grams........the other ones I looked at were at least 10 grams of carb per 100 grams.  -   Julie 

Something Sweet  - Have you tried weight watchers jelly with whipped cream (artificially sweetened of course). Or whip up some cream with cocoa and sweetener for a mousse. Or soften some cream cheese, add a little liquid cream, lemon juice and sweetener, and chill, for a cheesecake like mix.

Pork Crackling is the skin off a piece of pork with some underlying fat (about half a centimetre thick) and it is heated in an oven after rubbing the skin with oil and salt. Put it under the grill and heat it but watch carefully so it doesn't burn. I find my little benchtop fan-forced oven the best way as heated air mak s the skin 'crackle' ( ie. 'pop' somewhat like popcorn so that it becomes light and sort of bubbly) without burning.

I get my pork crackling from the Mad Butcher and also Pak N Save for usually less than two dollars for a section about 180mm square. Once crackled and cut quickly with kitchen scissors into smaller pieces, leave it to get cold. It gets quite hard and if not crackled correctly (as in full of air bubbles and kind of frothy but hard) then it will most likely break your teeth when you bite down on it.... (wink) - should be kept in an air tight container in the fridge and makes a fabulous low-carb snack for the times you want to nibble something. You may want to brush off some of the excess salt on it, and possibly even scrape off the excess fat. In fact you will have to do
this last one if you wish to grind the crackling so it can be used as a coating on a chop, chicken, fish etc..
Nyree

Quick Lunch - at South City Mall, Christchurch - "Mediterranean Taste"

Biltong - is beef. It is rubbed in salts and spices and then hung up in a drying cupboard to dry out. There is no sugar involved. Similar to salami and beef jerky... Available from South African Butchers - for more info Click Here

Jok'n'al  - Low Carb Jams, Sauces, Toppings and Pickles made with Splenda
- made in NZ  - exported to US and sold under KETO brand. You can find full nutritional data for all products on the website.  The range is available from many Pak n Saves and New World stores (except the lower part if the NI) and will shortly be ranged in all Bin Inns, Countdowns and Foodtown's New Zealand wide.

Big Breakfast sometimes called All Day Breakfast this is really good when eating out if you have it less hash browns. I find it available at a wide range of places - nice feeling to eat out without break the diet!

Mayonnaise - Donna-Maire has found "Pams New American Mayonnaise" with 0 carbs! - available at Pak'n'Save and New World. BUT contains High Fructose Corn Syrup

Cordials - I found a Baker Hall orange & barley cordial sweetened with Splenda 

Healtheries peach and passionfruit spread has just 3.7g carb per 10g serving - great to put on nut muffins... or soy cottage cheese pancakes .... excellent for a breakfast treat.

The other products I think really good are the small tuna taster tins that either Sealord or John West put out - a good range of flavours - and they are very nice filling half an avocado for a working woman's lunch - everyone where I work is quite jealous.

Zecal - Then there was e-mail from Melbourne telling me about a new sweetener called Zecal - "1 tsp of Zecal to 4tsp Sugar or Splenda. Zero carbs, high digestive tolerance, is tooth friendly, does not promote tooth decay, is great for diabetes, does not affect blood glucose or insulin levels has a GI of zero." I am waiting to hear from the distributor about this product.

Chocolate  - From Elizabeth - Have just discovered, and in perfect time for Easter - Daryel Lee sugar free chocolate from the Health food shop in Northlands. $3.30 for a bar - regular size, of beautiful, luxury tasting choccie with >.2gm of carb!! Watch out tho' for me is very "wind producing". But what a wonderful way to get those bowels moving!! 

Sugar-Free Syrups - I have approached 2 firms in NZ re making Sugar-Free Syrups with sweetened Splenda with no luck and approached the importer of Da Vinci Syrups only to be told there is not a large enough market in NZ to import sugar-free syrups. If anyone has any suggestion I would appreciate it. 

Snacks,
This year I planted raspberry canes as raspberries are one of the better berries to eat—raspberries and cream—yes! - I freeze them and free flow for snacks or desert when they are out of season.