Smokey Joe Burgers – Healthy, Simple & Delish

Leave a comment
Thanks to this burger recipe, Smoked Paprika is now my favorite seasoning. It is truly amazing.

Thanks to this burger recipe, Smoked Paprika is now my favorite seasoning. It is truly amazing.

Like most households, ground beef is a quick, easy, go to protein for dinner. The problem is that burgers can get pretty dull. Thanks to a few of my low carb cookbooks, I found a few recipes to kick my bun-less burgers up a notch.

This particular recipe comes from Rozanne Gold’s Low Carb 1-2-3 and has only 4 ingredients. It takes 3 hours for the ingredients to create a great flavor, but it is worth it.

Smokey Joe Burgers
Net Carbs: 1.5g
Weight Watchers PointsPlus: 6
Servings: 6

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs. ground sirloin
  • 1 medium onion, grated (enough for 2-1/2 tbsp of onion pulp)
  • 2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp salt

Directions

  • 3 hours before serving, place the sirloin, onion pulp, smoked paprika, and salt. Using your hands, mix the thoroughly (but don’t over mix).
  • Shape the sirloin into 6 large, thick patties. Individually wrap each patty in foil and refrigerate for 3 hours (no longer than 3) to bring out the flavor.
  • After 3 hours, pre-heat the broiler. Remove the burgers from the foil and place them on a rimmed baking sheet and broil, about 6″ from the heat for 3-4 minutes on each side until they reach desired doneness. Serve immediately.

Low Carb Maple Scones With Frosting

4 Comments
Maple Pecan Drop Scone with Buttercream Cheese Frosting! This puppies are healthy and go great with coffee in the morning.

Maple Pecan Drop Scone with Buttercream Cheese Frosting! This tasty low carb baked good is healthy and goes great with your morning coffee.

This morning I instead of the normal fair for breakfast – 2 eggs, ½ a plum tomato and 1 oz. of avocado – I quipped up some low carb scones to go with a hot Cup of Joe. It was delicious. The recipe, from George Stella’s The Complete Low Carb Cookbook, takes less than 30 minutes to make. And at 2.5 net carbs per scone, it was a great way to start off this very cold, snowy morning.

Over the weekend I made a batch of Buttercream Cheese Frosting, the recipe coming from the same book. I planned to make the scones today, so I got a jump on it and made the frosting ahead of time. Since my scone recipe only makes 6 and my frosting recipe serves 12, I decided to cut the frosting recipe in half. Read More

Low Carb Bacon & Egg McMuffin

Leave a comment
Eat your heart out Mickey D's! My own low carb bacon, egg and guacamole mcmuffin.

Eat your heart out Mickey D’s! My own low carb bacon, egg and guacamole McMuffin.

This morning I tried a new recipe — the Paleo Sausage Egg Mcmuffin. I just replaced the sausage with bacon and, at the hubby’s urging, placed everything on Oopsie bread. So that added 1.2g of net carbs to my morning meal. Not a big deal as it was delicious.

My Love Of Breakfast Sandwiches
I spent many mornings pulling up to a McDonald’s drive-thru window collecting a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit or an Egg McMuffin (always with a large OJ). I was just too rushed in the mornings to make a healthy meal at home. Or so I told myself. So I got fatter and made McDonald’s richer. Smart! Read More

Healthy Almond & Flaxseed Silver Dollar Pancakes: YUM!!

Leave a comment
The Maple Silver Dollar Pancakes turned out awesome. I ended up doubling the size of my husband's pancakes. I had 4 pancakes, but mine were half the size of my hubby's.

The Maple Silver Dollar Pancakes turned out awesome. I ended up doubling the size of my husband’s pancakes. I had 4 pancakes, but mine were half the size of my hubby’s.

Yesterday morning I whipped up a batch of healthy silver dollar pancakes, a recipe I found in George Stella’s Complete Low Carb Cookbook. Not only are these tasty, but very easy to make.

The recipe calls for almond flour and milled flax seed. So your batter is brown in color, but thanks to the maple extract, you won’t need syrup.

Maple Silver Dollar Pancakes
Net Carbs: 2g
Weight Watchers Points Plus: 4 points
Serves: 4 (makes 16 pancakes) Read More

Sunday Stir-Fry With Scallops & Scallions

2 Comments
My scallop stir-fry came out wonderful. Great taste for something so easy to make.

My scallop stir-fry came out wonderful. Great taste for something so easy to make.

In my quest to eat more seafood, I found a lovely recipe in George Stella’s The Complete Low-Carb Cookbook – Scallop & Scallion Stir-Fry. I do love scallops, but never tried cooking them myself. For some reason, I thought scallops were hard to cook. Turns out, a few minutes of sautéing is all it takes.

The beauty of this recipe is its simplicity. It’s so quick and easy to make, I see myself adding it to our dinner menu each week.

I did make two changes to this recipe. First I used olive instead of vegetable oil. After reading Denise Minger’s Death By Food Pyramid (review coming soon), I’ll never touch vegetable oil again. Read More

What To Do With That Left Over Turkey? Healthy Mac ‘N Cheese!

6 Comments
A perfect, healthy lunch solution for all that left over turkey -- Mock Mac N' Cheese. It might not look pretty in the container, but it is tasty.

A perfect, healthy lunch solution for all that left over turkey — Mock Mac N’ Cheese. It might not look pretty in the container, but it is tasty.

With half a turkey breast and a leg sitting in the fridge, I started wondering how I could jazz up dinner.  I came across this George Stella recipe for Mac & Cheese (substituting cauliflower for the macaroni!) and it hit me. Add the turkey to increase the protein!

I ended up dividing the casserole up into 8 single serving size containers. A perfect Grab-&-Go lunch for my working hubby.

The dish is delicious and I didn’t miss the pasta at all…of course all of that glorious bacon helped.

For those of you not eating low-carb and want to use fewer points, try using fat-free cream and Cheddar cheeses, and less bacon (I can’t believe I wrote that!). Read More

Gobble, Gobble! Dot’s Healthy Turkey Day Menu

Leave a comment
low carb thanksgiving, weight loss,

What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? To have the smarts to plan my menu before Turkey Day arrives. A food strategy is the best way to make sure you don’t pig out! (Image via marthastewart.com)

Well Turkey Day is upon us and that means its time for another low-carb holiday menu. We’re staying put for Thanksgiving so that makes it easier for me to control the points and carb count. My goal for my weigh in after Thanksgiving is to maintain my weight. That means I need a menu that is both filling and delicious.

You can take a look at a snapshot of my menu with the carb and Weight Watcher point count. Below you’ll find either the recipes or links to the recipes for my Turkey Day menu.

Building My Menu
I’m allowing myself to eat up to 25g of net carbs. I have 29 daily Weight Watcher points. Because I plan to have wine and dessert, I’m going to tap into a handful of my weekly allowance points. But that doesn’t mean I go crazy. I’m allowing myself between 4-7 extra points. No more. I need to keep control. Just because it’s a holiday doesn’t mean food is the most important thing. Being with family is what it’s about…oh god, maybe I need to budget more points for wine! Read More

Yummy Egg Dishes Will Fill You Up

Leave a comment
Nice thing about sauteed veggies -- you can cook them ahead of time. Just reheat either in a microwave or on the stove before adding them to an omelet.

Nice thing about sautéed veggies — you can cook them ahead of time. Just reheat either in a microwave or on the stove before adding them to an omelet.

I love eggs! To me, the egg is the perfect food  and just so dang good for you.  Back in December I actually thought about shaking up my breakfast and looked for recipes that didn’t include eggs.  Ha! I soon came running back to the incredible, edible egg. Yes, it’s just that good.

Right now I’m mining Dana Carpender’s amazing 500 Low-Carb Recipes for some tasty egg dishes. This week I tried her curry scramble and the Denver Omelet.

These dishes are low carb, delicious and filling! Start your days with either of these meals, I guarantee it will keep you full until lunch time and even then, you’ll want a light lunch. Read More

Low-Carb Swiss Meatloaf Recipe

Leave a comment
I ended up serving a simple salad -- lettuce, sprouts and tomatoes -- with a double serving of this tasty Swiss loaf. Total carb count for this dinner -- 6g.

I ended up serving a simple salad — lettuce, sprouts and tomatoes — with a double serving of this tasty Swiss loaf. Total carb count for this dinner — 7g.

I picked up 4 lbs. of ground beef with every intention of grilling a bunch of burgers for the week. Instead we grilled a few burgers and I ended up using a little more than half of the beef for a low-carb meatloaf.

The recipe came from Dana Carpender’s 500 Low-Carb Recipes. I love this cookbook. The other night I started flipping through it and ended up flagging the recipes I want to try. I flagged about 60 recipes, but that’s only because I ran out of Post-Its!  Lord I’m drooling just thinking about it. I’d say this book was a smart buy on my part. Read More

Pepper Lime Salmon

4 Comments
Salmon fresh off the grill! It cooked a little faster on the thinner parts of the fillets. It was still good eatin'!

Salmon fresh off the grill! It cooked a little faster on the thinner parts of the fillets. It was still good eatin’!

I stayed true to my word and made salmon last night. My grocery story had a sale on farmed salmon and I got a couple fillets for me and the hubby. I did a small variation of a lime-marinated grilled salmon recipe I found on allrecipes.com. This recipe is awesome not only in taste but because it is low carb — only 2 net carbs per 6-oz serving of fish. Sweet! Read More