These are 2 pretty simple recipes that you can modify as you please. You probably won’t have the exact ingredients that I use, so look at the proportions and mix up your own version, adjusting the nutritional information accordingly. We don’t like mayo, so I use English Double Devon Cream. You can certainly substitute mayo and adjust the nutritional information.

Both of these recipes also do a pretty good job of hiding extra fat. You could mix in a few extra grams of coconut oil or butter to boost the ratio in your meal. Nora likes to eat both of these with a spoon!

1 serving (35 g) of Tuna Salad. Whole recipe makes 6 servings. Nutritional Analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Tuna Salad
126 g Sea Star Canned Tuna (from Newport, OR)
54 g English Double Devon Cream
16 g Greek Gods Traditional Plain Greek Yogurt
15 g extra virgin olive oil

Mix all ingredients well, weigh and serve!

The Tuna Salad recipe is for a batch of 6 servings, with the nutritional information given for a 35 g serving (6 servings per batch). But in our meal calculator we list it by the gram with breakdowns per gram, so we can use any amount of tuna salad that works with the meal.

The ratio of this tuna salad is 2.1:1. The meal will need some extra fat to balance out to higher ratios, but this ratio beats a lot of other protein options like sliced turkey or cheddar cheese. It’s a nice thing to mix as a batch and have on hand for a few days worth of lunches.

Nutrition information for 1 serving (1 batch) of Olive Tapanade. Nutritional analysis from www.caloriecount.com

Olive Tapenade
5 g extra virgin olive oil
10 g Peloponnese Pitted Kalamata Olives
10 g Napoleon Chopped Green Olives
10 g raw macadamia nuts, ground well

Chop the kalamata olives into small pieces. Combine all ingredients and mix well. Serve!

It is easy to mix up a several servings of Olive Tapenade at a time  (if you want to make 5 servings, just take all of the amounts times 5). If you put them in 1 container, then weigh out 35 g of the mixture per serving. Or as long as you have all of the ingredients out, you could mix up several batches in different containers and they are all ready to serve.

I use Peloponnese Kalamata Olives because they are a 4.5:1 ratio, the best that we can find on the shelf. One mom at the Charlie Foundation Symposium related the story of noticing a woman studiously comparing nutritional labels at the grocery store. She started a conversion and found out that the woman was starting her child on a rigorous to diet to treat epilepsy. So there you go, if you see a glassy-eyed mom studying labels at the grocery store, start up a conversation! The Napolean Chopped Green Olives come in a can and are a 3:1 ratio. With the added olive oil and macadamia nuts, the recipe is a 7.9:1 ratio! Pair it with lower-ratio ingredients for a meal.

The Keto Cookbook inspired me to make Olive Tapanade (big surprise!) There is also a flax cracker recipe that accompanies the original recipe which is good, but it’s very time intensive to make. I realized that I could use Flackers instead and made up my own version of the Olive Tapanade. Although I pair it with Flackers, Nora usually eats her Olive Tapanade with a spoon! Scrape the bowl clean with a rubber spatula–it’s good to the last gram.

After adding this to the list of Nora’s Top 15 foods, I realized I may be over compensating a bit. Does anyone else get a homemade chocolate chip ice cream pop almost every day?

But her devotion to this snack is an indication of just how good it is. I tasted the un-frozen vanilla ice cream mixture when I was making it last time, and it is even better than commercial vanilla ice cream in my opinion; more creamy and less sweet. Add in the Green & Black’s 85% Dark Chocolate, and it’s decadent.

You might wonder how Nora gets to eat something like fancy chocolate. The answer lies in the nature of a good chocolate bar: it’s cocoa, sugar and cocoa butter (fat) plus a bit of other ingredients for texture. The darker the chocolate, the more cocoa and less sugar is added into the chocolate bar. The darker and fancier the better! And the cocoa powder in the bar actually has a bit of fiber! Nora’s 4 g of 85% dark chocolate has 1.1 g of net carbs. To compare, 4 g of Green & Black’s Milk Chocolate has 2.3 g carbs, twice as much. Granted, one square of chocolate is about 4 g, and 1 of those per day delivers just over 10% of Nora’s carbs for the day. But what a nice way to have your carbs, no? If it were me, I’d pick the square of chocolate too.

The fancy chocolate also comes in a vanilla ice cream package, enough to boost the ratio to almost 4:1 per ice cream pop.

Happy ice cream eaters! Anders get some of the standard ice cream recipe which I put into the ice cream machine to freeze. With sugar, it works like a charm. I create the chocolate chips by melting about 8 squares of chocolate, then drizzling it into the top of the ice cream machine while it is still churning and almost frozen. Mmmmm.

Making this kind of rich custard-style ice cream is a time intensive process, so I will walk through the steps. I simultaneously make 1 quart of Nora’s ice cream and 1 quart of the regular sweetened ice cream for the rest of us (be prepared by buying an extra 2 pints of heavy cream and an extra dozen eggs). But Nora’s quart lasts a whole lot longer. I can get 18 pops out of Nora’s recipe. That’s almost 3 weeks worth of ice cream if she eats it almost every day. I can usually space it out over about 1 month, although there is complaining on non-ice-cream-days.

This is the Vanilla Bean Ice Cream recipe, adapted from David Lebovitz. When I add 4 g of Green & Black’s 85% Dark Chocolate, the nutritional information becomes 1.89 g carbs, 1.68 g. protein, 14.01 g fat, 0.4 g fiber. You can adjust the final numbers by choosing a more or less chocolate or a different addition for flavor.

Vanilla Bean Keto Ice Cream. Nutritional analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Vanilla Bean Keto Ice Cream
250 ml (1 cup) whole milk
500 ml (2 cups) Organic Valley heavy cream
102 g (6 large) egg yolks
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean
Pinch of salt
No-carb sweetener as desired (I use a bit of Nora’s Cytra-K)

Plenty of Nora recipes call for egg whites, but you can also freeze them in ice cube trays and use them when you need them. They freeze very well.

Gently warm the milk, 250 ml (1 cup) of the cream and salt in a medium saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the warm milk and add the bean as well. Cover, remove from the heat, and let steep at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Measure the egg yolks. One benefit of doing 2 batches at the same time is that any extra yolk from the keto batch can be added to the conventional batch. You will be left with a lot of whites, so have a plan (see picture).

In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour a bit of the warm milk and cream mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Pour a bit of the warm cream mixture in with the egg yolks and combine, then dump back into the pan to cook.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture reaches 170 degrees and thickens to coat the spatula. I use an instant-read thermometer to be sure that it reaches a safe temperature, because this is the only time you will cook the egg yolks before they will be consumed. This step takes at least 5-10 minutes, so be sure that your children are occupied. It would be a pity to burn this glorious mixture. When I make 2 separate batches, I do not cook them simultaneously. One at a time. Ice cream is too important to rush.

Strain the mixture to capture the vanilla bean shell and any egg white solids that hitched a ride in with the yolks. It won’t hurt to leave them in, but you might find the funky texture occasionally if you don’t strain it out.

Meanwhile, put the remaining 250 ml (1 cup) cream into a large bowl with a fine mesh strainer on top. After reaching 170 degrees, pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream in the bowl (see picture). Add the vanilla extract and any desired sweetener, and stir until cool over an ice bath or put into the refrigerator immediately to cool and stir periodically while cooling. Chill thoroughly.

At this point, I just put the keto version of the ice cream into the freezer and stir throughout the day. Because it doesn’t have any sugar, it still has a higher freezing point so it will immediately ice and collect on the sides of the ice cream machine. It just doesn’t work. Even if you were to stir constantly, it would freeze solid and never get that scoopable ice cream texture, so why bother? I just try to break up the ice crystals periodically as they are forming by stirring periodically and keeping the vanilla beans suspended throughout the mixture for flavor.

When the ice cream is semi-frozen you can weigh it out then create the chocolate chips in each serving. This can be a few hours after you’ve initially frozen it, or you can take it out of the freezer anytime and let it soften until you can get some out of the container. I do 4 pops at a time, so it gets frozen and softened several times before the final pops of the batch are eaten. It does not seem to effect the quality of the ice cream.

First, weigh out 44 g of the ice cream (according to my calculations–you could re-calculate for your purposes).

Next, weigh out 4 g of Green & Black’s 85% Dark Chocolate (or other according to your calculations) in a small silicone pinch bowl. The bowl must be completely dry, or else the chocolate will seize when heated. Microwave for 20-30 seconds and it will be completely melted. Be careful, because the bowl may be hot when you remove it from the microwave.

Drizzle the chocolate over the bowl of cold ice cream. It will solidify again when it hits the cold ice cream. Then you can mix it up, breaking the chocolate apart more and making chips!

You could certainly serve it just like this. Nora likes to see the chocolate on the top. But to make several servings at a time it’s nice to make them into ice cream pops. The pops also avoid the too-solid vs. too-liquid states of keto ice cream. It just doesn’t get that nice in-between-liquid-and-solid state of conventional ice cream with sugar (I discussed this issue in a previous post, so we find ways to work with the properties that we’ve got (which is frozen solid) instead of working against it.

After you have drizzled the melted chocolate on the cold ice cream, mix to incorporate, breaking the chocolate further into the “chips” familiar from commercial ice cream. Finally, you have a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream. Re-freeze for a bit and serve with a spoon (if you freeze it solid again you will have to let it soften before serving). Or scrape it into ice cream pop molds to serve later. These are Tovolo molds, made to look like an ice cream cone! They hold up to about 52 g of ice cream, in my experience, and work well with the 48 g of ice cream here. I make up 4 at a time, weighing and mixing them one after the other, so that they are ready to take out of the freezer on demand. And they are in demand!

Nora’s portion of Eggplant Parmesan. Note that this is in an individual size ramekin, approx. 3 oz.

Ok, gluten-free is true. Family-friendly depends on who you ask. Anders would beg to differ. But you can also make this basic recipe for the whole family alongside your weighed keto-portion from the same ingredients. And I loved it.

When Nora tried it, she said “yummy.” But Ted had to spoon it up for her as the meal went on. Doing gymnastics on her patio chair was far more interesting than her meal. It wasn’t a “make this again please!” but it didn’t bomb either.

Yesterday afternoon we worked in the garden. We harvested our one pioneering Hokkaido squash (Margie, I think you are right that it is not a Hubbard, and Cora can confirm), about a pint of Good Mother Stallard heirloom beans that the kids shelled with me, and Nora enthusiastically brought in a few Little Fingers Eggplant and a green pepper.

Nora really wanted to eat one of those beautiful little eggplants. And we had to wonder how these plants are related to eggs. Turns out that early Europeans grew a white ornamental variety that looked just like goose eggs. Hence the name. But now we grow these beautiful deep purple eggplants and adore the color eggplant.

When Nora wants to try a new vegetable, I am on it. So while the kids watched Word Girl and Wild Kratts (thank goodness for late afternoon PBS programming), I made eggplant parmesan. The foundational recipe came from here: Baked Eggplant Parmesan. But I substituted flaxseed meal for the bread crumbs and flour for all of us and made a much smaller batch overall. For the whole family, you can follow the example of Nora’s recipe and just do the same procedure without weighing. I used 1 egg total: beat it with a bit of water, measured out Nora’s 8 grams, then used up the rest on the 2 regular eggplants for the rest of the family. You could also add ground pork sausage or beef if you want it meaty, but that would have been too much protein in this meal for Nora.

As always, calculate your own recipes with your own KetoCalculator. This is a guide for proportions that worked with this recipe, but if you are using different brands of cheese or making other variations, but sure of what you are feeding to your keto kid.

Nutrition information for 1 serving of Eggplant Parmesan. Analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Eggplant Parmesan
10 g olive oil
35 g eggplant
8 g egg, beaten with a bit of water
6 g of Parmesan Cheese, grated
3 g Bob’s Red Mill flaxseed meal
25 g Muir Glen Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes
10 g Whole Milk Mozzarella
optional: fresh or dried oregano (not included in calculations here, but I added them to the dish for the rest of the family)

 Measure the olive oil into a smallish oven-safe dish, big enough to hold your eggplant slices in a single layer. Preheat the oven to 400, placing the dish with the oil into the oven while it is preheating and you are preparing the eggplant slices.

The measured ingredients for Nora’s Eggplant Parmesan. One Little Finger Eggplant from our garden was 35 g. Next, 8 g of scrambled raw egg. Then 3 g of flaxseed meal mixed with 6 g of shredded parmesan. All must get into the recipe.

Slice the eggplant into 1/4 inch rounds. If you are using a full-sized eggplant, you could cut it into smaller bite-sized pieces which will eliminate the need to cut it at the table.

Measure the beaten egg on to a small shallow dish. Measure the flaxseed meal and parmesan on to another small shallow dish and mix them well. You could also add some salt or dried herbs to the mix if you like.

Nora’s eggplant slices ready for baking. Note that I scraped the remaining egg, flax and cheese onto the eggplant slices to incorporate all of the measured ingredients into the recipe.

Coat each slice of eggplant with the egg. Then dredge each in the flax-parmesan mixture. My fingers got coated with the mixture as well, so make sure that you have a rubber spatula on hand to scrape as much back into the mix as possible. You’ve measured these ingredients and accounted for them, so they might as well get into the kid.

When you have all of the eggplant coated, take the pre-heated oil and dish out of the oven and lay the eggplant slices in a single layer. They will start to fry if you’ve let it heat up enough, so it won’t get soggy with oil. After you have them all in the pan, scrape any remaining egg over the slices, then scrape any remaining flax and parmesan over them. You want to get it all in there and it will bake together nicely. I had very little of the egg and coating leftover to scrape back in, so the proportions were just about right.

Put the pan back in the oven and cook at 400 for 5 to 7 minutes. Turn the slices over and return to the oven for another 5-7 minutes to cook the other side.

The finished eggplant slices. The family portion on the left, from regular-sized eggplants from the farmers’ market. Nora’s portion on the right, from the finger-eggplants out of our garden.

When the keto-portion of eggplant went into the oven, I made the eggplant slices for the family dish with the leftover egg and mixed up more flax-parmesan mix. They went into the oven in stages of 7-10 minutes in 2 pie pans because they were larger pieces of eggplant. The timing is not too critical, as long as the eggplant gets cooked on each side and is in the oven long enough to cook through and soften.

While eggplant is in the oven, weigh the tomatoes and mozzarella. When the keto-eggplant portion is done cooking, scoop some of the oil out of the pan with your rubber spatula and put it into a small ramekin or other ovenproof dish. Put 1/2 of the tomatoes on the bottom of the dish. Scape everything out of the eggplant baking dish into the ramekin, making sure to get all of the oil out. Top with the remaining tomatoes and mozzarella. Return to the oven for another 5-10 minutes to heat through and melt the mozzarella.

Same procedure to finish the family portion. Use the rest of the can of tomatoes or any sauce you wish, topping with meat if desired and cheese.

There are a lot of steps here and is not a quick meal, but it’s also not technically difficult to pull off and makes a meal for everyone. It would be worth keeping in your back pocket for a special occasion or weekend if you like Italian and want a special meal. It would also be easy to make a few portions at a time to be reheated another night.

The keto-version is very similar to the original version and was not overly oily, making it great for all of us (although I eyeball the oil for the family portion). That said, it is only about a 1.75:1 ratio, so you will have to supplement with other fat. Nora had some kalamata olives on the side, which are 4.5:1 on their own, which helped the ratio for her entire meal. Her bedtime snack is always a cream-steamer with coconut oil and a few raspberries to end the day right.

I plan to be posting fewer recipes as our quarter at Oregon State gets busier. Actually, I should be working on a paper right now instead of blogging…

Ted and I lived in Pohang, South Korea, for 4 months at the end of 1999. It feels like a century ago. It was our first time visiting a non-English speaking country; the first time we traveled with passports. We were truly foreigners in a foreign land. It was both a wonderful experience and wonderful to come home again.

Ted was there for a study abroad trip at the end of his undergraduate degree and I came along for the ride. We were married so the university graciously housed us in the graduate student apartments. While he worked, I was introduced to some Korean housewives, Soon-ja, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Kim, who wanted to improve their English. I was invited to their apartments for meals, and in exchange for English practice I asked them to teach me to cook typical Korean meals.

I still make pulgogi (also translated “bulgogi”), marinaded strips of beef, according to the recipe from my Korean friends. I admit that I am reluctant to share this recipe because it is my very own. It’s the special wonderful thing that I know how to make from my own experience. We don’t have it frequently, but when I make it for home-cooked meals I do the same as the Koreans: make a big batch at once and freeze it into smaller servings. I like to make it in the fall because Asian pears are fresh and available, then we have a special meal ready to eat occasionally throughout the winter.

Pulgogi is the Korean dish most accessible to Americans. Strips of steak are familiar, and the marinade of soy sauce, sesame, garlic, ginger and pear is slightly sweet-salty and delightful. When we travelled around the country, restaurant owners would come out of their shops to yell “pulgogi!” at us as we walked by, hoping to lure us in for lunch.

Pulgogi is normally eaten with rice and a sauce, either ssamjang (4 seasons sauce, a mix of soy and chili paste found at an Asian grocery) or gochujang (hot chili pepper paste). When you put the sweet-salty beef with the chili pepper flavor it completes the taste of Korea. You can also take a little pulgogi, a little rice and sauce and fold it up into a fresh lettuce leaf. Of course, you must also eat kimchi at every meal. We just found a great kimchi, Seoul Kimchi, made in Beaverton, OR, that tops anything we’ve had from a grocery store since moving here.

Pugogi Zoodles

The keto version uses the marinaded pulgogi and pairs it with zucchini noodles, threads of red pepper and carrot. I took my best guess at the amount of marinade that might be held in the beef, which I estimated by calculating in some soy sauce when doing the nutritional analysis. When in doubt, I try to consciously overestimate the carb content and underestimate the fat content so that I err on the side of exceeding the ratio.

I made Nora’s portion with butter because she is still 4 years old and is reluctant to try new things with strong flavors. If you have an adventurous eater, I would use sesame oil for more flavor. I also kept this meal very small because I was afraid she would not want to eat it on the first try, and I was right. She eventually ate it without much of a fuss, so I hope this will be a happily accepted meal after a few more tries.

A note on the zoodles: In the last zoodle post, I partially dried several 40 g servings and froze them for later. Here, I pulled one of those servings out and found the zoodles shriveled and sad. They were fine to eat, but lacked the texture and volume of fresher zoodles, as you can see in the picture above. My next try will be to blanch them before freezing instead of drying them, but I think that will just be the reality of freezing them. They won’t ever be as big and crunchy as fresh. 그게 인생 인걸.

Nutrition information for Pulgogi Zoodles assuming 1 tsp soy sauce and 1/4 tsp sesame oil from marinade. Analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Pulgogi Zoodles
20 g Marinaded Pulgogi (see below)
40 g zucchini, shredded
12 g carrot, in thin strips
10 g red pepper, in thin strips
6 g Butter

Remove over 20 g of beef strips from the pulgogi marinade and rinse to remove bits of garlic, etc. Melt butter in a small frying pan and cook the beef on medium-high heat until done. Measure out the correct amount of cooked beef and return that to the pan. Toss in the veggies and stir fry briefly to coat with butter.

Remove from the pan and serve.This is only a 0.80 ratio, so the meal needs some heavy fat supplementation to get to Nora’s 3.5:1. It could hold a little more fat as well, so maybe add a bit more butter or oil when you put in the vegetables. I may try that next, so adjust the nutritional information based on your formulation.

And now, my pulgogi recipe. I make it with Korean soy sauce, but it can also be made with gluten-free soy sauce if required and it’s still great. Korean soy sauce is a little different and less salty than Japanese tamari, so you might want to back off on the soy sauce if you are using a tamari so it doesn’t taste too salty. I’m naming it “chipsaram,” the Korean word for “housewife,” as I learned it. When asked what I was doing in Korea, I was instructed to answer that I was a “chipsaram,” and I learned the recipe from the other “chipsaram.”

Chipsaram Pulgogi
1 to 2 lb beef strips (1 x 0.5 x 0.25, I use top sirloin, but any steak or roast will also work)

Marinade:
1 C Korean soy sauce (less if using tamari, gluten-free or otherwise)
1/4 C sesame oil
1 T sesame seeds
1 tsp black pepper
up to 1 C shredded Asian pear (see below)
1/4 – 1/2 C crushed garlic
1-2 inches ginger root, shredded (see below)

To stir fry but don’t marinade:
1 white onion, cut into wedges
several carrots, julienned
bunch green onions, cut into 2 inch lengths
bunch of spinach, washed and coarsely chopped or ripped

For the Asian pear, it is best to buy fresh pears in season. You can buy Asian pear juice at at an Asian market, but it also contains high fructose corn syrup. Quarter the pear(s) and take out the core. Shred it against a cheese grater pressing your fingers against the skin. The skin is just thick enough to protect your fingers, and when you are finished you will have a perfectly clean pear skin leftover. The juice and pulp are fine enough to put directly into the marinade.

Peel the ginger and use the cheese grater for the ginger also. You will be left with a fibrous clump, which will yield a bit more juice for the marinade if you squeeze it out. I found that the cheese grater is much easier than trying to put pieces of ginger through the  garlic press. You need Herculean strength to push the juice out of it, and when it goes it pops!

Mix together all of the marinade ingredients and add the beef. The Korean ladies will put on plastic gloves and squish the beef around in the marinade, which I also do if I’m not in a hurry. Marinade at least overnight. Freeze any that you don’t intend to eat immediately for an easy meal another time.

To cook, heat a skillet on medium-high. Remove the beef from the marinade when you put it into the hot skillet. Do not add the marinade. You want it to cook quickly and fry the edges of the beef. If you put in too much liquid, it just boils the beef and gets too watery. Stir constantly to cook off the water quickly while frying.

When the beef is almost done, throw the veggies into the pan if there is room. If not, remove the beef and add the veggies, stirring frequently. Add the spinach last so as not to overcook.

The last time I made it, I threw in more zoodles for the rest of the family also. The recipe contains the traditional veggie accompaniments, but there are no hard rules (or don’t tell).

Serve with rice, lettuce leaves, ssamjang, gochujang, kimchi, and soju (Korean rice vodka, which we don’t have often enough).

Sweating the 40 g servings of zoodles to be frozen.

A variation on the Midwest’s favorite Italian dish! Still on the zoodle kick.

Today we picked the prize zucchini from our garden. It was the size of Nora’s arm! No kidding! I’m so sorry we didn’t take a picture. Nora helped run the food processor and the zoodles filled up the whole bowl. As I type, I am “sweating” 5 servings of 40 g each in the oven (see Against All Grain blog). I have 15 servings total, which I will then freeze for later meals. I also had zoodles for my dinner again tonight and will save some from the prize zucchini for the rest of the family. Our local paper just ran some good looking zucchini recipes, so the zuke fest continues!

This is a pretty simple meal, although I sometimes have difficulty making a smooth cheese sauce. I whisk and whisk but the cheese clumped up again. The problem might have been adding the cool wet zoodles to the warm sauce, causing the cheese to seize up. In any case, Nora didn’t mind some cheesy chunks in her sauce, so I’m not going to worry about. Just warning you. I will try my best again next time.

I served this with some leftover chicken thigh to round out the protein in the meal and a little carrot for a bit more carbs. Lovely meal.

Nutrition information for 1 recipe of Zoodle Alfredo. Nutrition analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Zoodle Alfredo
40 g zucchini shredded into “zoodles”
10 g Butter
2 T Heavy Whipping Cream
10 g Romano, shredded
15 g Whole Milk Mozzarella, shredded

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add the cream and whisk until hot. Add the shredded cheeses, whisking constantly until smooth.

I added the zoodles directly to the cheese sauce, but maybe microwave them briefly to warm them up first if you don’t want the cheese to seize into clumps.

Scrape everything out of the pan while still warm. Let cool slightly and serve.

Note that 40 g of zucchini has 0.4 g of fiber, which is not recorded on the nutrition label.

As always, use this as a guide to proportions and recalculate your child’s meal for the brand of cheese and other specific ingredients that you use.

Zucchnini + Noodles = Zoodles

Nora's plate of Zoodles with Puttanesca sauce. Remember that it is a saucer, not a full sized plate!

The first of my zoodle recipes tonight. This is another gluten-free recipe that works for everyone. Tonight I also enjoyed zoodles with a bottled marinara sauce from Gathering Together Farm, but I was jealous of Nora’s version. Next time I’m having the Puttanesca sauce too, although for myself I will increase the tomatoes and add some garlic and oregano.

Zucchini is a surprisingly satisfying substitute for noodles. If you don’t cook them long, they can range from a bit crunchy to al dente to soft. They don’t have a strong flavor, so they take a strong sauce with ease. I have been experimenting with a recipe for zoodles with Thai peanut sauce and I will also make one with alfredo sauce, so stay tuned.

I use my food processor to shred the zucchini into noodle-like strands. It’s fast and easy, although I don’t get the long curly continuous noodles described on the Against All Grain blog. Those are beautiful, but I’m not buying another kitchen gadget.

If your zucchini is freshly shredded, it contains a lot of water. If you put it into the pan fresh, it will release that water into the sauce. If you prefer the sauce thicker, then use the oven drying method found at the Against All Grain blog before putting the zucchini into the sauce. I did not use the oven drying technique that they recommend. Instead, I measured 40 g portions into a few small, loosely-covered bowls when I shredded a large batch and stored it in the fridge. After a few days, it seemed to have dried out some. That’s the lazy way. Works for me.

The puttanesca sauce is simple and easy to put together. I happened to have all of this in our fridge, so it was a spur of the moment dinner decision. I decided to make this a puttanesca sauce rather than a marinara sauce to take advantage of the flavor and high fat content in olives. Of course, you can substitute or add as per your taste and requirements.

Keto families: calculate according to your ingredients. As always, this is a guideline for proportions and ingredients that work together. This is only a 1.75:1 ratio, so add some heavy cream or oil on the side to make it a meal. It’s also quite a bit of food but not so many calories because the zucchini has a lot of water and fiber. Nora also had 6 g of Flacker, 4 g of butter, and 12 g of parmesan with her meal to increase her fat and protein, along with her heavy cream.

Zoodles with Puttanesca Sauce, one serving. Analysis from www.caloriecount.com

Zoodles with Puttanesca Sauce
40 g zucchini, shredded into “zoodles”
35 g Muir Glen Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes
8 g Peloponnese Kalamata Olives, chopped
8 g Napoleon Chopped Green Olives
20 g Ground Pork, browned
7 g olive oil

Shred zucchini as above.

Measure and combine remaining ingredients in a bowl. Scrape out into a small saucepan or frying pan over medium heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes. When sauce comes together, add the zoodles and simmer for a few minutes, or longer if you prefer them softer.

Scrape out the pan onto the plate, garnish with cheese if desired and enjoy.

“This is delicious mama. Will you make it again?” ~Nora

Ah, the sweetest words that any keto-mama, or any parental-cook for that matter, can hear. Maybe she was just really hungry, maybe it’s just that kids like pizza, but I have to agree that this is a tasty recipe. I made a big version for the family too (see below)–use up that zucchini and its gluten-free!

Nora loves pizza, so it’s great to have good keto-versions for her. She adores the Bake-and-Freeze Keto Pizzas from the Keto Cookbook (get the book if you don’t have it yet! and see their great blog at ketocook.com) but they are very labor intensive and not for the rest of the family. They are great to make in batches so that you can pull a quick meal out of the freezer to reheat when you don’t feel like cooking; for example, when you just want to order pizza for the rest of the family! I like that this form of pizza gets more veggies into her diet.

It’s nice to make a keto-version of a family recipe because you can make them at the same time. Everyone is eating almost the same thing so it’s a family meal. It’s also very labor intensive to make some of Nora’s meals, so if you make the same thing for the family it lightens the load. Shredding zucchini to get a mere 40 g of it for Nora’s meal would be silly, or Nora would be eating zucchini recipes for a week, or it would go to waste. Save time, money, and food by feeding everyone with the same ingredients.

I remembered this recipe from a weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) newsletter that we got when we were members of BC Gardens CSA in Minneapolis. I had to search through my old recipe stashes to find it. It is a naturally low-carb recipe, but my keto version is only a 2:1 ratio. For Nora, it’s almost enough calories for a full meal, plus a little more fat on the side to prop up the ratio for her. It struggled to hold the oil, so I might cut the oil in half next time and deliver it separately.

To shred the zucchini, I used my food processor. There are other methods beautifully photographed and described at the Against All Grains blog. I am going to keep working on zucchini noodle recipes and post more soon, along with more pictures of my process and what works best for me.

Nutrition information for 1 Zucchini Pizza. Analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Keto-Zucchini Pizza
40 grams shredded zucchini
24 g whole milk mozzarella
14 g olive oil
14 g egg, beaten
6 g ground pork
20 g Muir Glen fire roasted diced tomatoes

Preheat oven to 400.

Shred zucchini, measure 40 g, and sprinkle with salt in small bowl. Let stand 10 minutes or more; squeeze dry with paper towels. Wipe out bowl and return zucchini to bowl (it works ok to omit this step if you don’t have time). Stir in  the egg and 1/2 of the mozzarella. Press mixture evenly into pan in a crust shape. I used a little individual-sized pizza pan. Bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes or until set.

Finished zucchini pizza "crust"

Brown ground pork in skillet. Take out 6 g of the cooked pork and mix into 20 g tomato sauce. Spoon over baked zucchini crust. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and other toppings (calculate in for your purposes). Bake at 400 for 10-15 minutes or until bubbly.

The oil will pool around the crust as it cooks. Maybe if you are using a pan with higher edges it will stay in the crust. When it is completely cooked, I carefully move it to a plate, scrape the remaining oil from the pan on to the pizza, the refrigerate for a short time before cutting and serving. Nora eats it like a pizza, with her hands. When she is finished, we again use a rubber spatula to scrape any remaining oil from the plate and feed it to her, usually with leftover scraps from the plate. She’s a good sport about it.

Finished Zucchini Pizza

Everyone can enjoy the non-keto version of this recipe! Gluten-free, low-carb, cheesily delicious. It’s more like a casserole in this form and reminds me of Midwestern hot dish. Pile on the sauce as thick as you like and eat it with a fork. Our family cleaned up an entire pie pan of it tonight too.

Zucchini Pizza Casserole
2 cups shredded zucchini
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 egg, beaten
1/4 lb. ground pork or beef (or omit)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 to 1 cup tomato sauce
1 clove garlic
fresh oregano, to taste
Other toppings as you like

Preheat oven to 400. Grease pie pan with olive oil.

Shred zucchini and sprinkle with salt in small bowl. Let stand 10 minutes or more; squeeze dry with paper towels. Wipe out bowl and return zucchini to bowl (it works ok to omit this step if you are in a hurry). Stir in the egg (keto families: just use the remaining egg after you measure the 14 g for the keto version) and 1/2 of the mozzarella. Press mixture evenly into pan in a crust shape. Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until set.

Brown ground pork and onion in skillet. Mix into tomato sauce. Add crushed garlic and oregano. Spoon over baked zucchini crust. Sprinkle with rest of cheese and other toppings. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until bubbly.

Cool, cut and enjoy.