16 November 2016

Zero Carb Holiday Food and Menu Ideas

Menus

By Dana
Holidays are right around the corner and notorious for throwing people off their diets. With proper planning there is no reason you can’t stay on your Zero Carb diet throughout the holiday season.

Holiday dinners typically involve a main dish of meat so that part is easy, but what about side dishes, appetizers and desserts?! If you are hosting a holiday party you can easily make ZC dishes with a few low carb sides for guests and they wouldn’t miss the high carb stuff. If you are attending a holiday party be sure to stuff yourself with as much meat as you can eat before you go to the party. That should prevent you from wanting to snack on high carb foods. You can always bring a Zero Carb appetizer to snack on so you don’t feel left out.

APPETIZERS:

Our Zero Carb Health Pinterest page is full of fun recipes that are Zero Carb or easily converted to Zero Carb by eliminating the veggie or carby ingredients. One of my Go To appetizers is a plate of bacon. How can you go wrong with that? It’s always a hit. 🙂

Other appetizer favorites:

Deviled Eggs

Meat and Cheese Platter

Meat Rollups

SIDE DISHES:

Again, our pinterest page has lots of ideas.

Stuffing, what about stuffing?! Here is a recipe I came up with for Zero Carb stuffing:

2 lb Ground Pork

1lb Ground Chicken (not turkey)

Chopped up cooked turkey giblets

2 eggs

1/4 Tsp Rosemary

1/4 tsp oregano

1/4 Tsp Sage

1/8 Tsp Ginger

1/4 Tsp Marjoram

1/4 Tsp Thyme

1/4 Tsp Pepper

1/2 Tsp Sea Salt

Mix all ingredients together. You can either cook this stove top method in a pan, to get a crumbly stuffing, or you can put it into a baking dish and bake at 350 for an hour.

Gravy:

Gravy can be tricky. I found a great post HERE on various methods of making a low/zero carb gravy. You can choose what method is best for you.

I recently found this method for a basic thick creamy gravy or sauce:

1/4 cup butter

4oz cream cheese

1/4 cup of cream

1/4 cup of favorite broth

Melt butter and cubed up cream cheese and whisk until smooth. Whisk in cream and broth. Add more broth if you want it thinner.

This is a basic sauce, you can add any seasonings to add more flavor or to complement the meat you are putting it on.

For example; saute a teaspoon of rosemary in the butter prior to adding the cream cheese for a rosemary cream sauce.

I add a tablespoon of dijon mustard to this sauce for Chicken Croquette gravy.

One of my favorite side dishes is Seafood Salad, it’s always a hit.