I feel like the entire month of September has been a long string of elaborate meals, but I only documented one of them for the blog.
You see, Michael has been trying to do a low-carb diet again, and I simply just cannot survive on that. So, each meal has been a balancing act of something he can eat, and something I can eat. This is trickier than it sounds: in the past few weeks alone, I learned that peas have carbs, and so do tomatoes. That old rule of ‘meat and vegetables’ is actually not accurate. There are almost as many carbs in a cup of peas as there are in a sweet potato!
But, there are not too many carbs in asparagus, which just happens to be my favorite veggie of all (except creamstyle corn, of course). So, we raided our freezer and found some salmon that we’d forgotten about, and a bag of shrimp, and decided to make a meal out of it, in two different ways.
Another carb-friendly vegetable is the pepper. Michael chopped up some red and green peppers to dress up the salmon, and mixed in some whole peppercorns for a little extra flavor.
The salmon was pretty basic – some (fake) butter, a little of salt and garlic.
Then, since butter and garlic are always okay in a low-carb dish, Michael prepared a scampi for the shrimp. Here he is, adding in the wine.
And since I needed some carbs to keep me going, we made a serving of Dreamfields pasta.
And all the while, I chilled a bottle of one of our Niagara-on-the-Lake wines.
Here’s the finished spread (I just re-made our standard, quick lemony/garlic asparagus recipe).
And here is my plate, the carb version. So yummy!
And Michael’s plate, the low-carb version. There were less than ten carbs in this meal, believe it or not! It turned out to be a pretty balanced meal, for an Atkins-friendly dish!
Coming up for our elaborate meal of October… pumpkin-something. Suggestions, anyone??
I figure that whatever we make, one little red dog will be happy with it. 🙂