1 meaty ham bone roughly 2lbs (leave out for vegetarian)
3 cups peeled diced potatoes
3 cups diced celery (if you are out of celery but have celery seed that’s fine but 1 cup = 1tsp seed)
2 cups diced carrot
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp pepper
8 cups water or ham stock
Instructions:
You may want to clean the peas. If you want to speed up the cook time soak the peas overnight in water.
Chop veggies. Add ham bone with water into slow cooker and set for 4 hrs on high or 8 hrs on low. Add veggies to slow cooker. Add seasoning to slow cooker and stir. Occasionally stir soup. Ready when the peas no longer hold their structure. Pull bone from soup and make sure meat from bone is in bite sized pieces.
Nutrition estimated
1 bowl has roughly 234 calories, 50g carbs, 1g fat, 18.4 protein
This estimate does not include ham content as I was having a hard time finding ham bone w meat info.
Sliced almonds (roughly 10 for nutritional values)
2 Tbsp poppyseed dressing
Rinse spinach if needed and add to plate. Rinse and slice strawberries. Add to plate, add sliced almonds to plate. Add feta to plate. Add poppyseed dressed to plate. Eat
Gluten-free, low carb w modifications, dairy free w modifications
Ingredients:
1lbs left over pulled pork
1 1/2 cups of chopped onion
2tsp salt
2 tsp ground coriander
4 tsp ground cumin
6 Tbsp chili powder
4 cloves minced garlic
1 1/2 ounce chocolate (leave out for dairy free)
2 cans (28 ounces each) Tomato Sauce
1 can (15.5 ounces) kidney beans rinsed
4 cups beef broth
2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp red pepper
4 bay leaves
Instructions:
Thaw leftover pulled pork. I know many of you are screaming left over pulled pork? Just cook so much you can’t finish it and freeze some.
Chop onion, mince garlic, & chop up chocolate.
Rinse kidney beans.
Put everything in a largish slow cooker
Cook on low for 4 hrs.
Take out bat leaves before serving.
For low carb leave out kidney beans and use a very dark chocolate. Tomato is a bit high in carbs so it may still be to high carb for some diets. Decide for yourself.
Nutrition: (I put all the ingredients to a nutrition app so your mileage may very)
Taco bars can fit so many diets by how you dress them. Skip the shell and make it a salad, skip the cheese and sour cream and it’s dairy free, go corn shell instead of flour and it’s gluten-free. This makes a great party food.
Note: these are American tacos not Mexican tacos. They both have their own merits and share some ingredients. I recognize that these bare little to no resemblance to the street tacos many of us love.
6 golden potatoes roughly 3” sized (leave out for low carb)
12 ish baby carrots
1/2 small white onion
Spices: 1 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp salt
Instructions:
Cut up stew beef into bite sized pieces. (Ours store cuts them into biggish pieces to large for stew/soup)
Brown beef in a skillet. It’ll add a smidge of flavor to the beef and keep it from looking grey when boiled in the broth. (You can skip browning it and it won’t change things a lot).
Dice potatoes into bite sized pieces of roughly equal size. Don’t measure them or anything. If you want this to be lo wish carb leave out the potato.
Dice baby carrots into bite size Pieces of roughly equal size. You could use regular sized carrots but will have to peel them.
Dice onion into bite size pieces of roughly equal size.
Adjust spices based on what you like. Keep in mind some broth/stock has salt and adjust accordingly.
Put everything into a slow cooker and set on high for 4 hrs or low for 6-8 hrs. If you’re home stir it sometimes but you don’t need to. (The benefit of a slow cooker is you set it and walk away).
Rough Nutritional info: (6 servings)
Calories 296, fat 9.6g, carbs 30.9g, protein 22g, iron 10.1%
Modified for low carb: calories 186, fat 9.4g, carbs 4.9g, protein 19g, iron 10.1%
Green onion, tortillas chips, sour cream, and/or bacon bits for garnish
Instructions:
Do all the prep of dicing veggies and cutting up bacon.
I used a Dutch oven but feel free to do it in a large pot or slow cooker. If you use a large pot keep a close eye on it so nothing burns to the edges. (Milk does that)
Cook bacon, when it’s brown, toss the onion in. Cook onion until it’s translucent. Add in carrot & celery and coat it w the bacon grease.
(If you are doing the veg option skip the bacon, melt the butter in the pan, add the onions, cook until translucent, and add in celery + carrots. )
Add in the stock/broth and deglaze the bottom of the pan. This is just making sure you stir in the brown stuff from the bacon that is sticking to the bottom. It gets the tasty bacon in it.
Add milk, heavy cream, salt, & pepper. Know that at this point everything is cooked so it’s fine to taste. But you really wanna heat the milk and cream for awhile. It changes the flavor. Plus, this one is a hot soup.
Add in corn. Frozen, canned, fresh off the cob. Use whatever you have. If you use canned i’d drain them and rinse. We get several dozen ears of corn once a yr and process it so we can have close to fresh corn all yr. it’s a tiring day and I don’t expect everyone to do it but I like having it.
About 15-30 min before you pull the soup off the stove add in potatoes to get hot. If you use fresh potatoes I’d add them right after the corn but I like canned potatoes cause lazy. Canned ones are almost done being cooked cause of the canning process.
Thank you to natashaskitchen.com thechunkychef.com foodandwine.com simplyrecipes.com whose recipes I read to put together what I liked and avoid what I didn’t.
Boil or poached chicken is the best chicken to use because you don’t want any tough bits. Frying or baking can leave you w tough edges. Do not go overboard w the shredding of chicken. You don’t want it to be paste. Do all the chopping. Mix it all up. I get a lot of people do not chop the cashews but these will be disproportionately bigger than everything else. I like to double (or more) the grapes but to many grapes and it’s no longer low carb. Keep your audience in mind. Eat the next day. All chicken salads require some time to sit. You can’t just make a chicken salad and then put it in your mouth. You will be unhappy.
Rough Nutrition:
Makes 4 servings, 1 1/4 cups per servings, 404 calories, 35g fat, 17g protein, 7g carbs, 1g dietary fiber.
