gluten-free
Banting Big Breakfast Ideas…
I know it is difficult sometimes to think of things to eat for the Big Breakfast, so here are a few ideas you might like to try.
Bacon OR Chicken Livers OR Ox/Lamb/Calves Liver OR Pork Rashers OR Lamb Fingers OR Pickings from Bone Broth OR Steak with extra Butter. (Of course you can have any offal if you like it, brains would be good.)
Free Range Eggs OR…Well, eggs is eggs – OK, you could try ostrich or quail eggs for a change?
Avo OR Spinach, Kale, Chard (Silver beet), Beetroot leaves, Mustard Spinach, Pak Choy. Leafy things. Organic if possible. Try growing your own.
Moringa Powder to mix with your avo or greens. Or drink the capsules.
Coconut oil OR Butter, Ghee, Lard (Pork Fat) or Tallow (Beef or Lamb Fat) OR Schmaltz (Chicken Fat) OR Bacon Fat
There are many different ways to use these ingredients. Take livers for instance.
Chicken livers can simply be browned in butter or cooked with cream or sour cream if you are feeling luxurious. Ox/lamb or calves liver can be cut into strips and rolled in crushed almonds or almond powder, (or not!), and fried in coconut oil, butter or ghee. You could mix the cooked liver with scrambled eggs for a change. Chop bacon and do the same thing. Hey, you could even have left over fillet steak chopped up in the scrambled eggs!
As for the leafy things, try steaming, stir-frying, wilting, creaming, whatever, and eat them with poached eggs, fried eggs, mixed into scrambled eggs with bits of bacon, a spinach and feta filling for the omelette…get my drift?
Eggs I have mentioned. Fried, poached, scrambled, omelette, pizza type omelette with cheese under the grill, bacon and eggs baked in muffin tins, quiche type muffins filled with all the good stuff for breakfast on the run. If you’re not in a hurry and you have time to bake in the morning, pour melted butter over them for that extra rich flavour. Remember you can always add herbs to the quiche muffins. Oregano is particularly good.
I hope this helps spark some creativity in the kitchen. After all, if you think about it, breakfast is our main meal, so it should be the one that deserves the creative touch.
It makes me happy to cook and to develop recipes for everyone to enjoy, especially for the awesome Facebook group of which I am a part. Visit there and see what a great bunch of people they are, led by the indomitable Charles Lubbe and his very helpful team from The Big Breakfast Banting Debate.
Go Big Breakfast!
Omelette Roulade filled with Swiss Chard and Mushrooms
Breakfast Egg and Bacon Pizza in a Pan
Bacon, Eggs, Tomato, Cheese and Avo
Slow Cooked Ostrich Neck & Avocado
Crispy Bacon, Fried Eggs & Red Swiss Chard with Garlic
Pickings from the Venison and Beef Bone Broth
Green Eggs with Buttered Fillet Medallions & Heirloom Purple Tomatoes
Fried Eggs, Pork Rashers with Tabasco-laced Avocado
Creamy Chicken Livers with Fried Egg
Green Eggs, Bacon and Courgette Fritters
We’re Cooking with the Revolution!…
(The Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes, Sally-Ann Creed, Jonno Proudfoot and David Grier)
Day 3 Fat Furnace Fortnight…
The day started with a bowl of pickings from the beef and venison bone broth.
After that my next meal was an Omelette filled with Bacon and Mushrooms and about 6 cups of black rooibos tea! It was at a restaurant but I did not inquire as to what oil they were using, but it was a filling meal. The bread remained in its cloth covered basket and I resisted the temptation of coffee. It is getting easier now. I must admit that I was sorely tempted to have coffee with cream but my commitment held strong.
I was not that hungry as night arrived, so this is what I made:
Crispy Skins from Chicken Thighs and Heirloom Baby Tomatoes
I do love them skins! The rest of the chicken is packed away in the fridge waiting for tomorrow. A chicken salad sounds good, yes?
Late night (I stayed up way too late as usual) called for a snack and so I had venison salami slices. Just enough and not too much. Now my eyes are rapidly closing and I must away into the arms of Morpheus.
A Beautiful Banting Day …
And from Scotland…
Sister’s day was a little different to mine!
Banting day 3 from Scotland
I fear that I am on rebellion 101!! I don’t like green tea, I miss my Ceylon tea with low fat milk.
I don’t like my bacon done in the microwave and I cannot use my kitchen.
I am so indoctrinated into eating low fat high fibre that I find fat off-putting.
I, believe or not, am laughing through all of this because I have a sense of humour and I realise that I have probably chosen the worst week in my life to start Banting….a member of the household is very ill, I have no kitchen as the AGA is in but the cupboards and shelves and plumbed goods are only going in today and they will be finished tomorrow (I hope).
My microwave is in the laundry/scullery which has been called the galley kitchen, but I am too fat to slide past my lovely svelte partner in the galley!!
The knives and forks are in the passage, the butter and meat etc is in the fridge in the kitchen on the other side of the house….so actually it is very much a case of laugh while you can. If I can survive this I can survive Banting! And all this without a glass of wine…the only whining I am doing is at the top of the page!!
The up side is I already feel lighter and smaller, and of course I am peeing like a well hydrated horse!!
Breakfast this morning was bacon cooked in the microwave (don’t you hate the idea of all those little nuclear molecules dancing around creating some kind of fission to cook your food???)
Egg with organic coconut oil. Organic! What’s the point if you are going to nuke it anyway…please see lightness and laughter, no criticism in this!
Spinach added, served with loads of cracked black pepper.
2 eggs, 3 rashers of bacon and a handful of spinach.
The breakfast was very tasty, and I am sure that I will only have a late lunch or supper now.
I got a note later to say that my sis had lamb and broccoli soup tonight. I think that’s pretty cool, and I am proud of her for hanging in there in the middle of what must be pretty nightmarish!
Tuna salad was my supper and it was more than adequate. I dressed it with some olive oil and verjuice and sprinkled a little Tabasco over it. Yumness.
Marching on with The Revolution!…
(The Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes, Sally-Ann Creed, Jonno Proudfoot and David Grier)
The Banting Journey continues…
How am I feeling today? Strange, slow, thoughtful. It is day 2 (day 1 was not FFF legal) of the Fat Furnace Fortnight and I am probably going through some kind of detox, Herxheimer reaction, that sort of thing. Although I have been Banting for quite some time now – this is nearly the end of my 4th month – I did go through a time of putting on a couple of kilos over the holiday season but it came back down fairly quickly which makes me realise it was more than likely water weight.
It is coffee and dairy that I think helped the weight stall. This is the 2nd day without coffee and I am choosing to drink rooibos tea since it has no caffeine. Green tea may well be good for me but I don’t want to indulge in any caffeine during this fortnight. I want to see how my body reacts, so I am being uber good! I am having a teaspoon of coconut oil in my tea and it tastes just fine! It is certainly a good way to take in the requisite two teaspoons a day … and it is cheap lip-gloss!
Breakfast:
Three Egg Omelette with Mashed Avocado and Moringa Powder with Bacon Bits
A Forkful of Goodness
A good breakfast with good fats really helps keep the munchies away!
Until the next post, keep on Banting!…
Banting with a Sister Across the Seas…
It is amazing what accountability does to one’s whole demeanour. My sister needed some encouragement to go the Banting way and I was so happy, I jumped at the chance to mentor and accompany her. I say mentor only in that I have been doing it for 4 months and have lost 14 kilos and am so in the groove now, it feels solid, and it is a treat to help anyone to achieve something at which we are both working. This is not unlike going to gym with a buddy. You can talk the same language about muscle building and toning, groan and moan when you are taking strain, appeal for help when you need a lift, and generally be there for each other. Here we talk nutrition, weight correction and general health.
Sis and I have both had weight issues most of our grown-up lives. We both suffer from the apple shape, insulin resistance marker tum and are both very keen cooks. This has led to many calories over the necessary and the proof is in the size of our clothes. Too big! In the past we have talked about doing a project together which involved writing, and what better project than this. With this we can reach and teach others as well, those who are walking the same journey to Oh-So-Sassy!
I have been on go-slow for a fortnight now. Not stalled, but the weight loss is crawling along. I decided to start at the beginning again in order to make sure my system is truly changed and is a roaring fat-burning furnace! So I am joining my sister with that goal in mind for both of us. She will now have the delight of all that water weight loss in these next two weeks. Hopefully I will drive those ketones on and out and stoke my furnace once again.
The first two weeks are what I call Austerity Fortnight. A bit like Atkins induction when I did that some years ago, except no dairy, no nuts and lots of fat. Nothing but eggs, fish, poultry, red meats, venison…anything under the protein column on the Green List in The Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes et al, and vegetables from that same list. That’s it. And of course fats. Coconut oil, butter, ghee, lard (pork fat) and tallow (beef and mutton fat). Drinks include water water and water, herb teas, preferably green tea or rooibos/redbush with a slice of lemon and/or mint, and ginger tea which I make with slices of fresh ginger steeped in boiling water which I keep in a flask and drink as needed. Another drink I keep on my desk from which I frequently sip, is filtered water with apple cider vinegar. The benefits of ACV are too numerous to mention here, so I will save that for another post. Just believe me when I say it is good for you!
The Sisters Day 1:
Lamb Fingers with Kale and Egg Scramble spiced with Turmeric, Black Pepper and Cayenne
This was my meal number 1 in the mountains of Limpopo Province and Sis had eggs and bacon and a grilled tomato in Scotland. We will both be making bone broth tonight, mine in my slow cooker and hers on her new AGA! Bone broth is my chosen top-up food or snack mid-afternoon if I get the slightest bit peckish. I decided that bone broth was the easiest way to keep my fat intake up without having to even think! So instead of a cup of coffee or tea, bone broth is it. And water, or have I said that already? 
We leave 6 to 8 hours between eating because we eat breakfast to satiety. This I learned from my mentor, Charles Lubbe from The Big Breakfast Banting Debate on Facebook. Eat until you are FULL! And he means really full. By the way, if you ever want a really good Facebook Banting Group you cannot go wrong with Charles’s The Big Breakfast Banting Debate. He has all sorts of good information at his finger tips and the support is awesome.
Tonight’s meal for me will be a handful of spicy beef meatballs, salad dressed with olive oil and lemon, with a gorgeous mix of broccoli, cauliflower and courgette, while Sis will be eating pork with crispy crackling and buttered spinach for her supper in the Northern Hemisphere.
This in from Scotland:
What a fabulous idea. Ever since I moved to Scotland I have felt quite far from my sister, and now we have the same goal! What a pleasure, and the fact that I have been on a different diet and not really lost a thing, and that M has lost 14kg’s means it works. Sure I am in trepidation, my basic lifestyle has been vegetarian most of my life, but I do enjoy meat. I have been eating low fat EVERYTHING and was surprised to see what a challenge it is to find full fat milk/cheese/yoghurt in the shops.
So now for my comments very quickly! I am not properly prepared for the austere 2 weeks, the only thing that is working in my kitchen is the new AGA, the worktops have not been installed and I have bought loads of cheese! I have also not been able to get into the kitchen to put the pork roast into the AGA! There are workmen sanding the bamboo work tops so I cannot do anything. I might land up having cucumber and boiled eggs for supper tonight. I have learned my first lesson in Banting, BE Prepared!
I did walk to the butcher and buy some lamb bones for a broth which I will put in the oven when the workmen have left. The broth is a basic one, a few sticks of celery, a carrot, 6 black peppercorns, an onion and a clove of garlic.
My tea of choice will be green or ginger tea, I am not really keen on herb teas, but will aim to try some new ones soon.
I love it! Here’s to our journey to Slim and Healthy…
Rocking with The Real Meal Revolution!!!
Banting and Spike Day…
As I wrote recently, I use my slow cooker to cook my favourite Bone Broth. To some it sounds revolting and some think marrow bones are disgusting, but do I care? NO! Cos bone broth is probably one of the best foods you can eat. If you read Charles Lubbe’s writings on his group The Big Breakfast Banting Debate, he says bone broth has loads of glutamine and can help to reduce gout, so one more good reason to have bone broth!
Another good reason to make bone broth is that when you cool it, the fat rises to the top and you can scoop it off and use it for cooking. There’s a good budget beating tip. What a saving. No need to buy bottles of processed oils. Leave some fat in the bone broth, it’s good food. Just think of how cheaply we can eat if we eat clean food. If we downsize our portions of protein to around a gram per kilo of body weight, and if you are lucky enough to grow your own green vegetables as I do, this Banting way of life can be a very affordable way to live. Of course, if you start baking and buying expensive nut flours it will cost you plenty. I have a bag of coconut flour and I use it only once every week or two for pancakes or flapjacks with homemade berry jam made with xylitol.
That’s what I had on my Spike Day. This is a concept encouraged by Charles Lubbe who hosts the Big Banting Breakfast Debate Facebook page. It is not unlike the Reward Meal concept in the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet. The difference is in the timing of the Reward Meal which is eaten within one hour, and on the other side, Spike Day is eat whatever you please, followed by a semi-fast day, very low carb. I see that as a Fat Fast day.
I thought I might abuse Spike Day, you know, ice-cream, chocolate, red wine…that sort of thing. Good sense and some Banting wisdom kicked in, fortunately. I found myself making coconut flour flapjacks and fresh raspberry jam made with xylitol, served with thick cream. One block of 85% cocoa chocolate made its way to my mouth in the early evening and dinner was creamed broccoli soup with venison and beef mince to keep up the protein and keep the insulin calm.
I don’t normally snack too much in the afternoon, well not since I have been eating a sizeable breakfast, making sure that I eat to satiety, (thank you Charles for that lesson) but on Spike Day I eased up on the rules and had a whole avo for breakfast and nothing else. Later I had Greek yogurt with about 9 frozen strawberries. Later still I had 3 tablespoons of yogurt and about 3 teaspoons of my fresh low carb raspberry jam. Two helpings of the soup filled me up but it was Spike Day after all, so I made those flapjacks and had three, followed by a filter coffee. I choose foods from the Green and Orange lists for Spike Day as I am too nervous to eat from the Red list in case I get carried away! (The lists are from The Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes et al.)
The binge I had over New Year resulted in a weight gain of two kilos, but 12 days later I am down those two kilos and feeling good. Back on the road to healthy and gorgeous!
Banting keeps on ROCKING!!!
PS My cholesterol is coming down. Was 8.8 before Christmas and was 6.6 this morning
Banting success…
14 kilos gone today. It is a milestone for me and I am going to celebrate by doing 15 minutes of weights so that I can have a higher carb meal afterwards! I am going to make some flapjacks with coconut flour and make a quick jam from raspberries and xylitol. I promise to post the photos on my blog later and on my Banting Babes and Boys Facebook page and also on Instagram.
I have to confess that I am not always a purist Banter. For instance, my breakfast this morning is 3 free range eggs (good) with 2 Woolies pork sausages (not pure and 6 grams a sausage and I am NOT going to do it again as it has GMO – OMG! I am going to learn how to make my own pork sausages with my organic herbs and organic pork from Wegraakbosch Dairy here as they have organic everything! I also eat from the orange list on days when I feel it is needed. This morning I had 3 litchis which is 5 carbs. So that means my carbs are standing at 14 right now. I put everything into the nutrition tracker on my SparkPeople page and it tots up everything. Calories 356 for breakfast. I go between 1200 to 1800 calories on most days. I found that when I was doing the Fat Fast to shift a stubborn stall, even with all the fat I did not exceed 1100 calories. Interesting, eh? One just doesn’t get hungry with fat.
There are no photos of me to post yet because I still have a lot to lose and quite frankly, although my hubby and friends can see the progress, it is not that noticeable for me yet, except for the fact that I can lean over in the bath to take the plug out, whereas that was a trifle difficult 3 months ago! I am aiming to have a lap one day, for children and cats
There has been some talk lately about people ditching the scales but I beg to differ. When I read The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, Dr Heller recommends getting a digital scale and noting how one’s weight goes up and down on different days. He suggests writing it down every day to note how the body reacts to different foods and also to different times of the month. I have been doing just that and sometimes my weight has gone up or down by at least a kilo in one day. At the end of the week you take the average. Of late my average has been between .4 and .6 kg in a week. That’s good enough for me. Also, on days when I see it has gone up a bit, I work harder the next day to stay within my strictest limits and eat more fat, less protein and nil carbs.
This is a journey of discipline and determination. One cannot relax even for a nano second. I had a sip of hubby’s orange juice the other day and that was it. Even though there was more it did not tempt me again. I remember reading a book some years ago on natural remedies for arthritis and the good doctor suggested we look at forbidden foods and imagined worms crawling out of them! Yuk! It works though
There is the idea that you don’t need to count calories, but I think differently again and I certainly count them. It has taught me a lot about foods in general. I also use Carb Cycling as a tool when I am stalled and eat my higher carb meal within an hour as the good doctors Heller suggested in The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet. I have over 20 low carb diet books that I have been studying in order to get the best out of my own personal diet. The Real Meal Revolution (about Banting) is my best book. I use other suggestions from different books to tweak my diet when needed. I see them all as tools to create an optimum lifestyle for myself.
The wonderful thing is that my hubby loves the meals I cook. They are so simple and he loves his protein. We do a main big protein and fat meal first one of the day and find that we nibble on nuts (not so many for me) and biltong (which I weigh out religiously) as a snack mid afternoon and by the evening we are fine with a salad and a little protein. He, lucky chap, has lost 9 kilos in about 7 weeks without trying!
Have a great Banting weekend everyone…
Partying with Banting…
It has been an awesome few days and especially yesterday as it was my 65th birthday…and I feel so young! My daughter and son-in-law were here and will be until after Christmas. This is just wonderful because they had not been to the new house and we are all enjoying it so much.
12 people gathered for lunch at a long table on the stoep and pretty much stayed there until 6 pm. What a wonderful bunch of people that I am privileged to call my friends. It was such a happy time.
Food wise, friends brought plates of finger food and I made a butternut soup and Banting cocktail meatballs. One friend had ordered a Banting platter from our local restaurant, The Red Plate, who have a Banting menu as well. Such a treat. Interestingly, as is my usual bent these days, I was not really hungry so had some veggie sticks with an avocado and cream cheese dip and then some meaty snacks like meatballs and chicken wings. The soup was from the orange list so I and my Banting friends ate a very small bowl of that, no bread and filled up on the low carb veggies and meat treats.
As a rule, I drink about two creamy coffees per day, herb teas and green tea occasionally, and about one cup of Earl Grey tea with full cream milk per day. Water is my go to drink of choice. It is filtered and then stored in dark green wine bottles ready to be consumed at will. Lovely stuff! I also keep black filtered coffee in a wine bottle in the fridge just in case it is a hot day and I want an iced coffee.
My party drink is pink sparkling water, which is sparkling mineral water and Angostura Bitters. It looks pretty in a wine glass and then people leave me alone without pressing me to have a drink. I felt so well when I woke up this morning that I have no desire to start drinking again, even when my hubby opened the champagne I briskly said no thank you!
So, the upshot of it all is that I survived a great birthday lunch party without cheating once!
So easy with the Revolution…
The Cost of Banting…
Today, as I loaded my trolley with food to last until New Year, it struck me that it would be seriously difficult to do the Banting diet on the cheap, but a good lady doctor from White River managed to do it and I applaud her. She also ate like a bird in order to do that. Unfortunately for me, I want the luxury foods so that the Banting diet never gets boring. It is so easy for non-banters to make a sandwich if they want a quick snack. For us Banters, bread means buying expensive flours like coconut, almond and flax seed in order to make our Banting Bread. Coconut oil is not cheap either. Mind you, I did find coconut oil at Checkers today and it was nearly R 40 cheaper than at Dischem.
I know that I am not eating nearly as much as I used to when I ate carbs, but take chocolate for instance. Lindt 85% dark chocolate is a rare treat these days and I make it last a l-o-n-g time. One or two squares every couple of days. I shan’t be baking with it any time soon! Cheese is a good example as well. Once upon a time I would fill up on cheese and crackers, or cheese and fruit. Now I fill up on cheese alone, and I make sure I have an assortment so that I have a choice. How fortunate I am that I can buy Camembert and Brie, Gorgonzola and Parmigiano! But not everyone is so lucky…
OK, so what now? This thought might just lead to an experiment to see how one can lessen the cost of this lifestyle. The cost of good health should not have to bankrupt anyone. I am thinking about a whole slew of people who really don’t earn a great salary and who are unhealthy enough that they seriously need to change their eating habits. So, for the next while I shall be keeping careful note of everything that I eat and totting up the costs, and looking to find alternatives. Please join me if you would like to, and any suggestions from my readers will be most welcome so do send your tips and suggestions in via the comment box below. This could be fascinating…and helpful too.
Rock on all you Banters!…
Fat Fast day 3…
It is astounding how un-hungry I am. I have had 725 calories today so far and I am definitely handling this much more easily than I had imagined. This coconut oil is a winner, better than any appetite suppressing pill or potion.
First meal of the day – Half an Avocado with Toasted Sunflower Seeds.
In between my snack was black coffee with a teaspoon of coconut oil in it. Good for ketosis.
The bone broth is a filling drink and enjoyable too, especially with the marrow, meats and soft tissue that comes off the soup bones. This was my second meal of the day.
Somewhere I read that lemon juice or apple cider vinegar was a great addition to the stock pot because it helps to leach out the minerals from the bones. I have been doing that for about a year now and I am certainly feeling healthy.
Snack in between – a little biltong and some more broth.
Third meal of the day is yet to come and will be the brown meat and skin off a roast chicken. Heaven on a stick! You have to admit, being able to eat chicken skin is the best!
There is still a l-o-n-g road ahead as my weight has ballooned in the last 24 years since I got married. First it was a motor bike accident and 10 kgs, then a hysterectomy and 12 kgs, then it was giving up smoking and another 12 kgs, and finally a car crash and a back operation and 23 KILOS!!! I was truly metabolically resistant by then, and somewhat desperate!
Enter the Real Meal Revolution. Thank goodness. Suddenly all my years of trying low carb started to make sense in this one book. And believe me, I have many books on low carb dieting. Now they are all coming in useful as I decided to make a serious study of the general low carb high fat moderate protein angle. I have gleaned many a good and helpful hint during this time of research and I feel that I have finally found a way to put my own spin on this way of life. The books I favour other than TRMR are GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) which is based on the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet), Nourishing Traditions, and Eat Fat Lose Fat, both by Sally Fallon, Curb the Carb by Amanda Cross, and Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Low Carb Diet. The latter is so that I can help some of my vegetarian friends.
We all have likes and dislikes and we need to make up our own diets under the LCHF/Banting banner, and that is just what I have been doing. Slowly but very surely it is all falling into place. I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to be 13 kilos lighter. How do I feel after 10 weeks? Great! My poor aching knee is now feeling a whole lot better and I have enough energy to walk the dogs. It really feels good. The best thing? Not feeling any cravings – except for some biltong!
Success feel AWESOME!!!…