Simple Pantry Cooking

It is no secret that I am in the process of losing baby weight, and maybe even a little extra weight that I need to own up to and stop blaming on previous babies.

One of my tactics is to forgo starch at dinner.

But I still have to feed my family. They are not on a diet, nor do any of them have extra weight to lose. It is simple (more simple than easy) to skip the bread or potato side when we have a meat + starch + veggie dinner. But what about pasta dinners? What about pizza night? What about hash?

Ground beef and potato hash is a family favorite here, and as I’ve written before, it’s never quite the same twice. But every time it includes diced potatoes.

One night, I was already browning the beef and chopping the potatoes before I realized I couldn’t have potato hash for dinner.

Now what?

Low-Carb Trick: Replace Potatoes with Zucchini

As the beef finished browning, I diced up an extra half an onion and added it to a smaller skillet. Then I scooped a portion of beef off for myself from the main skillet and into the smaller skillet.

To the large, family-size skillet, I then added the diced potatoes and continued as usual. But to my small skillet, I added diced zucchini.

So, rather than starchy potatoes, I got an extra two servings (at least) of vegetables with the onion and zucchini additions, and because of the vegetable additions ate plenty in bulk so that I did not feel deprived or hungry when dinner was done. I was full enough that there was no lure for bedtime treats to stave off the hollow empty feeling left after a meager dinner.

Honestly, I did not even miss the potatoes, I got in extra servings of vegetables, and I wasn’t left hungry and sad at the end of the day.

Hash will remain a family staple.

More Easy Low-Carb Family Dinners

• Chicken Stir-fry Without Rice

So I’m working on getting the baby weight off after having baby #5 in November. It’s slow going. One of my food-related resolves is to have dinner be a starch-free and low-carb meal. But, I also have a [very hungry] family to feed, and not only do they not want to eat low-carb, I can’t afford to feed them low-carb! They all have no problem burning off the calories, while I definitely do.

So, I’ve come up with several tricks for making my own dinner starch-free and low-carb (and usually gluten-free as well, without really trying), without cooking a separate meal. In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing my solutions to making a normal family dinner low-carb, grain-free, gluten-free, and heavy on the vegetables.

Today’s dinner solution:

Stir-fry Without the Rice

One of our staple dinners is stir-fry. It’s a one-pot meal: rice, vegetables, and meat. But it’s these one-pot meals that are hardest to eat low-carb, because generally all the components are mixed up together. With a little forethought, however, I was able to have my own dinner be stir-fry with more veggies and with no rice. Here’s how:

1. The rice is already cooked separately, so keep it separate a little longer than you normally would.
2. Cook your meat as you normally would, and chop an extra veggie or two to as it cooks. I like to fill in bulk with zucchini and red bell peppers. In the meal I took pictures of for this post, I also had asparagus. Soon we will have garden snow peas to add! Go with whatever vegetables you have available to you, just add extra to make up in bulk and nutrients for the missing starch.
3. After the meat and veggies are cooked and before you add in the rice, pull off a portion for yourself, making sure to scoop plenty of veggies onto your plate. I try for at least twice as many vegetables as pieces of meat, and often more like three times.

Scooping your plate ahead of time also serves as convenient portion control. There is no seconds when all the remaining meat and vegetables are stuck with globs of rice.

To learn how to make ad-lib, easy, flexible stir-fry, as well as other flexible family dinner solutions, check out my eBook, Simplified Dinners.