Several years ago I attempted a lower-carb lifestyle during my Lenten Fast. Below are some of the recipes I tried, including stuffed peppers, roasted brussle sprouts and spaghetti squash!
Fun low-carb meal ideas!
Stuffed Peppers:
These are AMAZING! (And this is coming from someone who doesn’t even like peppers.) Most people make them with green peppers (I think?) but I chose to go with red, orange, and yellow because–as I mentioned before–I don’t like peppers. 😝 I hoped these would taste sweeter and possibly have a lighter flavor (and they did!) There are numerous recipes for this, some are for enchilada, some for Philly-cheese varieties. I kind of made up my own concoction.
I combined ground turkey with dried onions and garlic salt and then added diced tomatoes (the kind with peppers, onions, and celery mixed in). I cooked all that together, then stuffed them in the peppers that I cut in half and de-seeded. I added a little cheese on top and cooked them for about an hour. (You don’t have to cook them a full hour, it kind of depends on how tender you want your peppers to be. I like them super tender–bordering on soft–so I cook them longer.)
To finish, I added another layer of cheese and baked them a few more minutes to finish them off. (I know, this isn’t exactly paleo-friendly, with the cheese, but it is keto-friendly. Going low-carb is one thing, going low-dairy is something else entirely–a girl has to have some fun in life! 😉) Also, I actually found this dish was better the second day after the spices had time to meld together.
Bottom line, I HIGHLY recommend this one!
Spaghetti Squash:
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this. The texture is a little different (crunchier) than real pasta, it IS a veggie, after all. 😝 The taste is very mellow as it mostly takes on the flavor of whatever spices or sauces you are using. I’ve heard you can use butternut squash as well, but I haven’t been brave enough to try that one. I like butternut squash, I just worry it’ll be too strong a flavor for “pasta”. I also don’t want to ruin my love of it. 😳
This dish is pretty easy to make once you get the squash cut in half. Just baste it with olive oil, add some garlic, salt, and pepper (or whatever spices/sauces you want), and bake, face-down, for at least 30 minutes, or till desired tenderness. (You should be able to stick a fork clean through the squash, easily. I found 45 minutes seems to work fairly well.)
After baking, you shred the squash–careful, it’s hot!–with a fork. This should be VERY easy, It kind of just strings off, all the way down to the rind. Then I add some sauce and cook it up. I use red sauce, but you could try a thinner, Italian sauce, Balsamic vinegar, an alfredo sauce, or just some more spices. Play with it and find what you like best!
A word of “warning”, these smell like cheese pizza (or at least cheesy breadsticks) while you’re cooking them. Just be prepared for the cooking of this dish to cause lusting for “not-so-low-carb” foods. 😝
The recipe I used for this dish can be found here.
Roasted or Glazed Sweet Potatoes
Roasted Sweet Potatoes
This one we REALLY enjoyed. It’s a bit of a unique twist on this typical dish, as you don’t use any sweet spices. Instead, I used garlic salt and pepper (the recipe calls for garlic, salt, and pepper). 
I wasn’t sure how it would taste with the combination of the sweetness of the potato and the spice of the spices, but we REALLY liked it.
The mild, sugary flavor of the potato blends perfectly with the spicy and salty kick of the other seasonings (it reminds me of the combination of a salty pretzel dipped in sweet chocolate). Baked this way, with the peel left on, the peel crisps up and adds a surprising, candied crunch. This also adds a pleasing, sweet flavor to the dish. Mr. Trekker wasn’t too sure about this tuber, as he hasn’t liked it in the past, but he stated he’d happily eat this dish again! Here’s the recipe I used!
Glazed Sweet Potatoes
I also tried sweet potatoes with a cinnamon-sugar glaze. The glaze was DEVINE on the potatoes; however, with all the brown sugar it required I don’t think it would qualify as low-carb. 😔
Roasted Brussel Sprouts
For this dish, I used basically the same recipe as the one I used with the sweet potatoes. Mr. Trekker really liked them, I thought they were ok. I was pleasantly surprised by their mild smell and flavor (I’m not a huge cabbage fan). They had a subtly-sweet aftertaste and the tender, crunchy texture was pleasing. They were a bit “green-veggie”-tasting for me (my palate really struggles with green vegetables). I enjoyed them better mixed with another flavor and texture, such as potatoes or gravy.
Zucchini spaghetti
This one was GROSS! It was mushy and tasted too “green” (although I’ve liked zucchini in the past, prepared on the grill). I ended up eating Cheerios for dinner that night. 😝 I’m not even going to show you a picture of this mushy nastiness, just YUCK!
To be fair, I’ve heard from friends that the problem may be that I used frozen zucchini…well, I bought it at Walmart and that’s how it came! 
Apparently, if you use it fresh it keeps its texture better but, you still have to deal with all the residual, natural liquid from the vegetable. I think I’m just gonna take their word on that one.
Related posts: Yummy Low-Carb Foods; Yummy Keto-friendly recipes!; Final Thoughts on Low-Carb Lent; A Sustainable Low-carb Lifestyle
To Conclude
One takeaway I’ve had from these “foodie” experiments is that I’m glad we’ve found at least a couple of recipes that we both really enjoy (namely the sweet potatoes and the stuffed peppers). I would rate both of these dishes as “comfort food”. It’s nice to find recipes that are healthy that you also derive a lot of enjoyment from.
One slight annoyance with many of these dishes is the cooking time. Several of them take 30 minutes to 1 hour to cook. However, they’re SUPER easy to make. Many of them only have prep times of around 15 minutes (not including the baking times). The nice thing is, though they take a while to bake, you’re free to get other stuff done while that’s happening (dishes, laundry, pack the kids’ lunch for tomorrow, read a book, write a blog post, 😉 whatever!) 😃
Have you tried any of these recipes? What did you think? Tell me about it in the comments!
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