“This is delicious mama. Will you make it again?” ~Nora

Ah, the sweetest words that any keto-mama, or any parental-cook for that matter, can hear. Maybe she was just really hungry, maybe it’s just that kids like pizza, but I have to agree that this is a tasty recipe. I made a big version for the family too (see below)–use up that zucchini and its gluten-free!

Nora loves pizza, so it’s great to have good keto-versions for her. She adores the Bake-and-Freeze Keto Pizzas from the Keto Cookbook (get the book if you don’t have it yet! and see their great blog at ketocook.com) but they are very labor intensive and not for the rest of the family. They are great to make in batches so that you can pull a quick meal out of the freezer to reheat when you don’t feel like cooking; for example, when you just want to order pizza for the rest of the family! I like that this form of pizza gets more veggies into her diet.

It’s nice to make a keto-version of a family recipe because you can make them at the same time. Everyone is eating almost the same thing so it’s a family meal. It’s also very labor intensive to make some of Nora’s meals, so if you make the same thing for the family it lightens the load. Shredding zucchini to get a mere 40 g of it for Nora’s meal would be silly, or Nora would be eating zucchini recipes for a week, or it would go to waste. Save time, money, and food by feeding everyone with the same ingredients.

I remembered this recipe from a weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) newsletter that we got when we were members of BC Gardens CSA in Minneapolis. I had to search through my old recipe stashes to find it. It is a naturally low-carb recipe, but my keto version is only a 2:1 ratio. For Nora, it’s almost enough calories for a full meal, plus a little more fat on the side to prop up the ratio for her. It struggled to hold the oil, so I might cut the oil in half next time and deliver it separately.

To shred the zucchini, I used my food processor. There are other methods beautifully photographed and described at the Against All Grains blog. I am going to keep working on zucchini noodle recipes and post more soon, along with more pictures of my process and what works best for me.

Nutrition information for 1 Zucchini Pizza. Analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Keto-Zucchini Pizza
40 grams shredded zucchini
24 g whole milk mozzarella
14 g olive oil
14 g egg, beaten
6 g ground pork
20 g Muir Glen fire roasted diced tomatoes

Preheat oven to 400.

Shred zucchini, measure 40 g, and sprinkle with salt in small bowl. Let stand 10 minutes or more; squeeze dry with paper towels. Wipe out bowl and return zucchini to bowl (it works ok to omit this step if you don’t have time). Stir in  the egg and 1/2 of the mozzarella. Press mixture evenly into pan in a crust shape. I used a little individual-sized pizza pan. Bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes or until set.

Finished zucchini pizza "crust"

Brown ground pork in skillet. Take out 6 g of the cooked pork and mix into 20 g tomato sauce. Spoon over baked zucchini crust. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and other toppings (calculate in for your purposes). Bake at 400 for 10-15 minutes or until bubbly.

The oil will pool around the crust as it cooks. Maybe if you are using a pan with higher edges it will stay in the crust. When it is completely cooked, I carefully move it to a plate, scrape the remaining oil from the pan on to the pizza, the refrigerate for a short time before cutting and serving. Nora eats it like a pizza, with her hands. When she is finished, we again use a rubber spatula to scrape any remaining oil from the plate and feed it to her, usually with leftover scraps from the plate. She’s a good sport about it.

Finished Zucchini Pizza

Everyone can enjoy the non-keto version of this recipe! Gluten-free, low-carb, cheesily delicious. It’s more like a casserole in this form and reminds me of Midwestern hot dish. Pile on the sauce as thick as you like and eat it with a fork. Our family cleaned up an entire pie pan of it tonight too.

Zucchini Pizza Casserole
2 cups shredded zucchini
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 egg, beaten
1/4 lb. ground pork or beef (or omit)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 to 1 cup tomato sauce
1 clove garlic
fresh oregano, to taste
Other toppings as you like

Preheat oven to 400. Grease pie pan with olive oil.

Shred zucchini and sprinkle with salt in small bowl. Let stand 10 minutes or more; squeeze dry with paper towels. Wipe out bowl and return zucchini to bowl (it works ok to omit this step if you are in a hurry). Stir in the egg (keto families: just use the remaining egg after you measure the 14 g for the keto version) and 1/2 of the mozzarella. Press mixture evenly into pan in a crust shape. Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until set.

Brown ground pork and onion in skillet. Mix into tomato sauce. Add crushed garlic and oregano. Spoon over baked zucchini crust. Sprinkle with rest of cheese and other toppings. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until bubbly.

Cool, cut and enjoy.

Cinnamon Coconut Frozen Greek Yogurt. See the flecks of cinnamon? Mmmm.

I was the one who had a hankering for ice cream this afternoon. I came across a recipe for cardamom ice cream recently that I wanted to try, but didn’t have enough milk and heavy cream to make a batch for the non-keto family, and I have not had good luck with adapting ice cream recipes for Nora.

Good thing that we keep heavy cream and plain Greek yogurt in the house at all times! I went looking online for a cinnamon Greek Yogurt recipe that would fit the bill. Found a sugar-free one on Epicurious for Frozen Coconut Yogurt with Cinnamon.

Scapings from the side of the ice cream machine, as the keto frozen yogurt freezes solid to the sides after just a few minutes. I reincorporated this back into the rest of the ice cream and finished freeing it in the freezer, stirring occasionally.

I find that title misleading because it is not made out of coconut yogurt, it’s made with Greek yogurt and coconut milk. Sorry dairy-free friends. I adapted the recipe for Nora (below), and I adapted it for the rest of us by using sugar instead of stevia. As I mentioned in the keto ice cream post, sugar is the magic ingredient in ice cream that stops it from freezing solid. The original recipe instructs you to put the mixture in an ice cream machine, but as you will see from Nora’s recipe that probably will not work perfectly, although Nora’s had the added freezing problem of including cream. From now on, I will put Nora’s ice cream mixtures in the freezer and stir occasionally instead of using the ice cream machine. Givin’ up ice cream machine the dream.

Nutrition information for 50 g of Cinnamon Coconut Frozen Yogurt. Analysis from www.caloriecount.com

Cinnamon Coconut Greek Frozen Yogurt
113 g Greek Gods Traditional Plain Greek Yogurt
60 g Organic Valley Heavy Cream
8 g Thai Kitchen Organic Premium Coconut Milk
0.5 to 1 g ground cinnamon
2 g coconut or vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients well. Add a no-carb sweetener of your choice. Freeze in a small bowl in the freezer, stirring occasionally to scape down sides and create proper texture. Serve when frozen!

3.58:1 ratio

This is real-time blogging; we are about go outside and eat our ice cream! I know it’s good because I sampled the spatulas.

The one cherry tomato plant dominates the garden space behind stern fairy Nora.

Our little garden has been bursting with cherry tomatoes. I often just assume that some sweet fruits will be off limits for Nora. The funny thing about the diet is that almost nothing is actually off limits, but some things would have to be served in such small quantities that it would not be worth the effort or the carbs. I thought that cherry tomatoes would be one of those things, but I decided to test out a little tomato salad and found that it is an easy 4:1 ratio!

Nora had this salad 2 nights in a row. Once with her baked eggs recipe, which we had not made in some time, and another time with hot dog. I’m reminded that when feeding little kids, they often reject “new” foods the first time. She did not like her salad the first night except for picking out the olives (but managed to finish it off with parental spoon feeding), but did enjoy it the next night. Anders and I also enjoyed this salad with our meals for the last few nights.

Nutrition facts for Tomato Feta Salad. Nutrition analysis by www.caloriecount.com

Tomato-Feta Salad
20 g cherry tomatoes
10 g kalamata olives, chopped
3 g  Valbreso feta cheese
5 g olive oil

Quarter the cherry tomatoes and chop the kalamatas (we use Peloponnese whole pitta kalamatas because they have the best nutritional profile of those on our store shelves). Add the feta and olive oil and mix well. I added a few threads of fresh basil. You could also add or substitute some cucumber in the recipe, which has a great nutritional profile for the diet.

Remember to scrape out the oil that pools in the bottom. When mixed with some of the fresh tomato juice and feta bits, it’s a nice treat at the end of the meal (I drank up mine happily!)

This recipe also has 0.17 g fiber, so the net effective carbs are 1.03 g.

Also a quick update: Things are going well. Nora is still going strong. She finished 2 weeks of swimming lessons and wants more! Next week she will be going back to a gymnastics class at the Little Gym and continuing with swimming. We’ve arranged for a private lesson so that she is always right with the teacher, and it also suits Nora’s personality to have the full attention of an adult.

I’ve been working on recipes involving zucchini: as noodles and as a pizza crust base. Nora has not been thrilled with all of the experimental dishes, but I’m continuing to remind myself that kids need to try things several times before accepting a new dish. After another go at it, I will post some recipes. If anyone in the Corvallis area is inundated with zucchini, you may leave them on my front step. My zucchini plant got powdery mildew and is not producing well so far this year, and it just feels wrong to buy them. In the Midwest, finding another huge zucchini orphan on your doorstep in August was not always a gift. My upbringing still leads me to enjoy rhubarb and zucchini, but to regard them as so abundant that a person should never have to pay cash for them. They are gifts from nature, neighbors, and sometimes left on your doorstep in the dead of night when your neighbors have had enough of nature’s gifts.

Happy Birthday Papa Ted!

We celebrated Ted’s birthday last weekend. Luckily, his favorite dessert is keto-compatible–cheesecake! I am not a seasoned cheesecake baker, so I found a recipe for a self-described “perfect” cheesecake at Simply Recipes:  http://www.simplyrecipes.com/ recipes/perfect_cheesecake/

In addition to the promise of a perfect cheesecake for Ted, the ingredient list lent itself to a simple keto-version. I just scaled everything down proportionately for a 4-inch springform pan (from Michael’s), made a simple macadamia nut crust, and substituted some of Nora’s saccharine-sweetened Cytra-K for a touch of sweetness. I also omitted the sour cream topping and used plain berries. The recipe for the cheesecake alone is 4.2:1, so add berries to adjust the ratio down to your requirements. Nora gets 13 g of strawberries per 1/4 of the cheesecake to make it 3.5:1.

One full recipe of Keto-Perfect Cheesecake. Analysis by www.caloriecount.com.

Keto-Perfect Cheesecake

20 g ground macadamia nuts
10 g melted butter
100 grams Primrose cream cheese
1 g pure vanilla extract
22 g egg
20 g Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
20 g Straus Sour Cream

Wrap the springform pan in one continuous sheet of foil to keep it water tight for baking (see link to original recipe above for detailed instructions). Mix together the ground macadamia nuts and melted butter and press into bottom of pan. Bake for 10 minutes at 350º or until slightly browned.

With a hand mixer, cream together the remaining ingredients with any desired no-carb sweetener until very smooth, scraping down sides and bottom of bowl to evenly incorporate all ingredients. Turn oven down to 300º and boil a pot of water. Pour cake batter into springform pan on top of the crust and smooth the top. Place in a larger roasting pan in the oven, and fill the larger pan around the cheesecake with about 1 inch of the boiling water. This is why you protect the pan with the foil, so that the water doesn’t get into the cheesecake pan and ruin the crust. Bake for about 1 hour, or until firm. Turn oven off and open the door so that the cheesecake can cool gently, about 1 hour.

Place cheesecake in the refrigerator to chill completely, at least 2 hours. Carefully run a dull knife around the edge of the cake to loosen from the sides of the pan. Release the springform pan to serve the cake. I placed a few slices of strawberry and a raspberry to decorate the cake, just remember to factor those into your calculations. Cut the strawberry length-wise to get heart shaped pieces. Awwww. I pre-weighed each piece so that they were all 3 g of berry. I don’t trust my memory these days.

Nora ate 1/4 of the cake for a serving, with 3 g of strawberry on each 1/4. I included the nutritional information for the whole recipe above. As always, re-calculate with the exact ingredients that you use.

I made both Nora’s cheesecake and Ted’s cheesecake at the same time, side by side in the oven. That saved a lot of time. I also fully appreciated the contents of a perfect traditional cheesecake, knowing that Nora’s and Ted’s were proportionately identical, except that Ted’s included a lot more carbs. That said, it was delicious and perfect, as advertised.

Nora’s cake batter did not have the same consistency as the original. Nora’s batter was less runny, but only lacked the sugar. There is some food science going on there that I have not researched. Going into the pan and during baking, Nora’s was also thicker. I had a tiny taste from the knife and it was good, but a thicker consistency than Ted’s traditional cake. Even so, I have not heard a single complaint from Nora. She has 1/4 left awaiting her in the fridge. It’s a great keto snack!

I bought whole-milk fresh ricotta cheese on a whim because I had seen it used in low-carb and ketogenic diet recipes, but didn’t have a particular plan for it. With busy summer days it sat in the fridge, unopened, until finally I decided it was now or never. I knew Nora would eat just a small amount of ricotta at a time in a recipe, so I went looking for a way that all of us could enjoy it.

Raspberry-Pancetta Ricotta Tart

I found another great recipe from David Lebovitz: Herbed Ricotta Tart. Fabulous recipe for half of the ricotta. The adults at the table were satisfied, to say the least.

For Nora, I modified the ricotta mixture in his recipe just a bit by using all heavy cream instead of the whole milk, omitted the crust, and added some other fillings to make it Nora-friendly. Here we have Raspberry-Pancetta Ricotta Tart. The basic tart filling can be supplemented with whatever your kid will enjoy! The ratio is 2.12:1 and ~150 calories, so there is room to supplement a meal with Flacker and butter or other fat to reach the appropriate meal ratio.

Nutrition information for 1 serving of Raspberry-Pancetta Ricotta Tart. Analysis from www.caloriecount.com

Raspberry-Pancetta Ricotta Tart

50 g egg (1 large)
240 g (1 cup) Organic Valley Heavy Cream
213 g Galbani Ricotta Fresca
60 g pancetta
30 g raspberries

Combine the egg, cream and ricotta. Measure 50 g into a tart dish, or other small baking dish. Drop in pieces of raspberry. Break up the pancetta into smaller bits and drop into mixture. You want them near the top so they get a little crisp in the oven.

Bake at 400º F for 10-15 minutes, until the top is brown. It will be bubbly, so give it a few minutes to cool and solidify before serving.

You can also subtract 0.19 g of fiber for net carb calculations (is dropped from label when it gets that small).

1 recipe makes 10 servings. 10 servings is a lot, but the filling keeps in the refrigerator for about 1 week. The rest of the family can also enjoy this recipe–I did–twice!

As always, re-calcualte the recipe for yourself if you are using different brands. It’s one thing that I find very time consuming and frustrating about the diet–looking for or manually entering the nutrition information into the recipe analyzer tool that I use. But it’s absolutely necessary. These recipes and nutritional information are intended only as a guide.

Pick me a blueberry…
Under the bridge and over the dam
Looking for berries, berries for jam!
~Bruce Degen, Jamberry (1983)

Oregon’s Willamette Valley bursts with wonderful things to eat all summer long. We are so fortunate to live here. Every year, the kids and I go off on U-pick adventure, mostly for blueberries. We freeze them by the gallon for winter oatmeal toppings, muffins and pancakes. But I mostly make jam, normally at least 5 dozen 8-oz and 12-oz jars. We always have the makings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, although our consumption fell off greatly in the last year between Nora’s diet and Anders’ newfound love for hot lunch. This year we had around 2 dozen jars left by summertime, so I only made about 15 fresh jars of blueberry jam last week.

August 6, 2010. This is what a jam-making day looked like 2 years ago, pre-keto.

I feel like there is a homesteading pioneer woman (or a squirrel) inside of me, urging me to put aside enough food for winter. My family might not make it through the cool rainy days here in Oregon without my homemade jam to provide us with vitamin C and lift our spirits. It would have felt wrong to not make jam this year, so I took Anders out picking with friends for a day to gather all of the blueberries, and a few blackberries, to make our jam. Nora stayed home that day because surrounding her with blueberry bushes and not allowing her to eat them would be cruel and I did not want to closely supervise her (although she is amazing about not eating things). Anders is a super-picker and between the two of us, we can get enough blueberries for several batches of jam in a few hours of picking.

Nora stirring the berries for her jam.

Nora has been enjoying the fresh and frozen berries with meals (4 or 5 at a sitting), but I wanted I could make her some jam too. I always use a low-methyoxyl citrus pectin (brand name Pomona’s Universal Pectin, but I buy it in bulk at our co-op). It is sugar-free, preservative-free and uses calcium as the bonding agent, so recipes do NOT require sugar to gel (unlike typical pectin products). Instead of sugar, you add a bit of calcium citrate to the recipe (comes in the box or also available in bulk). Seemed like I should be able to make Nora some sugar-free jam, but I hit a roadblock. I couldn’t find any definitive nutrition information on the pectin. I saw references to it as a form of soluble fiber, but without specific numbers I did not feel comfortable factoring it into a recipe.

I went for the other jam option that I’ve heard about but never tried: gelatin-based freezer jam. It’s keto-genius! Berries are already low-carb when eaten alone, but for gelatin jam you add in a substantial amount of water and gelatin is all protein. No added carbs, and the carbs in the berries get diluted in a larger volume of food. The final product has fewer carbs-per-weight that the berries themselves, with all of the flavor and satisfaction of eating jam just like everyone else. Win-win-win!

And another big win–it’s easy and can be made in batches that store for a long time in the freezer. The only caveat is that once opened, you have to keep it refrigerated and use it fairly quickly (I would guess 1-2 weeks) because it does not have sugar to act as a preservative. Divide it into small containers–I used 8 oz jars. This goes for all low- or no-sugar jams like my usual homemade versions, so we are accustomed to using our small jars quickly. And your keto kid will like it so much, it won’t hang around long.

Nutrition information for 1 full batch (524 g) of mixed berry gelatin jam. Divide all amounts by 524 to get the per-gram breakdown and see blog post for calculations. Nutrition information from www.caloriecount.com

Mixed Berry Gelatin Jam

70 g Blueberries
70 g Strawberries
70 g Raspberries
70 g Blackberries
1 envelope Knox Unflavored Gelatine
1 cup cold water

In a large saucepan, crush berries. They will break down more as you increase the temperature. Add water and gelatin, mixing well. You can add any no-carb sweetener to taste.

Over medium heat, slowing increasing temperature, bring mixture to boiling while stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 minutes.

Finished jar, after an overnight in the fridge.

Pour into jars, allow to cool and then cover. If you leave it out at room temperature it will take a long time to gel, so don’t be discouraged if it’s very liquid for some time. Put in the refrigerator overnight and it will be the right consistency in the morning.

Can be stored in refrigerator for 1-2 weeks, or frozen.  It is not shelf-stable unless you process in a hot water bath (which I normally do for pectin jam), so keep this in the freezer for long-term storage. I would suggest stirring before using a new jar, as the fibrous skins and bits fall to the bottom.

Perfect jam consistency!

Per gram nutritional breakdown:
Total carbs: 0.058 g
Fiber:  0.021 g
Net carbs: 0.036 g
Protein: 0.02 g
Fat:  0.002 g

Per 10 gram serving:
Total carbs: 0.58 g
Fiber: 0.021 g
Net carbs: 0.37 g
Protein: 0.2 g
Fat: 0.02 g

Just compare that to berries alone: Raspberries are great at 0.056 net carbs per gram, and the jam beats them by 0.02 g net carbs. Blueberries have the most carbs, at 0.12 g net carbs per gram of blueberries, four times more carbs than the jam. I know, seems like small gains here, but cutting a bit more carbs means a bit more yummy food to eat. The ease and convenience of having the jam in the freezer or fridge meets all of my criteria for top Nora foods.

Now, to make a truly keto food: mixed berry cream cheese. I overshot the ratio here at 4.25:1, so it can be put atop a lower-ratio baked good and balance out for a perfect ratio treat. You could decrease the ratio by adding more jam or omitting the coconut oil. I’m always trying to sneak in coconut oil because Nora gets 15 g spread out throughout the day and I get tired of mixing it into other things at mealtime. This will be a regular breakfast food, containing 1 gram of coconut oil per 10 g serving.

Nutrition facts for 1 batch of mixed berry cream cheese. See blog post for per serving break down. Nutrition facts from www.caloriecount.com

Mixed Berry Cream Cheese

140 g Primrose cream cheese (adjust your nutrition facts for the brand that you use)
20 g coconut oil
50 g Mixed berry jam (above)

Mix with a hand mixer and serve!

Note that I also show the nutrition label for 1 full batch here so that you can see the fiber content. I calculate the per-gram and per-serving values with net carbs, but if I break it down into smaller servings in the recipe analyzer that I use, the fiber line gets dropped because it is so small.

Mixed berry cream cheese

Per gram nutrition information:
Total carbs:  0.025 g
Fiber:  0.005 g
Net carbs: 0.02 g
Protein:  0.052 g
Fat:  0.31 g

Per 10 g serving:
Total carbs: 0.25 g
Fiber: 0.05 g
Net carbs: 0.2 g
Protein: 0.52 g
Fat: 3.1 g

Good stuff. I love batch cooking. Nora loves jam and cream cheese.

As I have said before, efficiency is life. But that isn’t really the most important part of this food story. The most important part was finely expressed by Voltaire: “Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.”

And talk about the necessity of eating. Food is good medicine, quite literally for our keto-kids.