What are you planning for your Christmas meal?

#1

I know it’s a bit early. We haven’t even put up the christmas decorations yet. But my partner and I have been trying to decide what will go on our christmas menu this year and so far we’re thinking a pork roast, some lamb chops, as well as sausages for our picky children and both keto friendly and keto unfriendly vegetables. Oh, and a gammon joint to snack on when all the usual christmas treats are being handed out. I was also wondering if for dessert we should attempt to make a keto friendly crustless cheesecake, as the recipes look tempting. I figure I’ll be fine eating some cheese in the christmas period as my body has been fine with cream and butter.

(Allie) #2

We normally just get a big piece of beef and eat it. Simple and easy, no one else to worry about so just do our own thing. My partner isn’t keto, as far from it as you can get, but he’s more than happy to just eat meat.

#3

Hi Allie, beef can make a fab meal for sure. My partner isn’t keto either but has been very supportive of my WOE, and he does like a variety of meats as well but since starting keto I’ve fallen in love with pork. We’re going to do our own pork crackling which would make such a great christmas snack, along with the gammon joint. As although I don’t miss any of the old sugary foods it will be nice to have those keto snacks on hand. Coffee with cream is a great dessert in itself so if the cheesecake is too complicated I’ll just go with that instead.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

Sounds good. Can I come for Christmas dinner? :smiley:

Our Recipes forum has lots of good ideas in it, including plenty of desserts. I am partial to two cheesecake recipes, one of which is a pumpkin cheesecake that can be found here, and the other of which is a New-York-style cheesecake that comes from Harlan Kilstein’s recipe site. Both are very tasty. The crust is made from almond flour in both recipes and could easily be omitted if you prefer.

My mistake when I first made these recipes was to use a different sweetener from what the recipes called for. The sweetener I used was a much sweeter stevia/erythritol blend, and I didn’t know to adjust the quantity. The solution eventually proved to be to convert from the specified sweetener back to sugar, and from there to the sweetener I actually use. (The manufacturers’ Web sites give conversion tables, thank God.) So either use the brand of sweetener called for in the recipe, or be prepared to do some arithmetic, lol!

I also find that, after several years on keto, I prefer less sweetness, though it’s not a good idea to cut back too much when making the recipe for sugar-burners. :grin:

#5

Well on Christmas day the only sugar burners who’ll be there will be my partner and our two sons. But my youngest will only eat chocolate cake and my oldest is not that keen on cake. My partner does have a sweet tooth, but as my partner isn’t even that into cheesecake (his favourite is walnut cake) and there’ll be plenty of other non keto christmas treats I was wondering if a cheesecake could be made omitting the sweeteners as well. As I find cream in itself very sweet these days, for instance, when I put it in my omelet or coffee, so perhaps such a cheesecake could work. Then again it might just turn out rubbish.

#6

Sounds like a good cover for yourself and all never2late! I always keep in mind any big ol’ holiday event is not about the food anymore, must be about the other stuff…oh wait, yea it is about the food, like a big ol’ ribeye steak and shrimp! Or a monster beef roast and some bacon wrapped scallops on the side :wink:

Family will do their thing, I do mine. Hubby is full on carby so he will eat a sweet tater with whatever meat and be happy and kiddo is more ‘low carb’ type eater so she will eat whatever meat and side up with some corn maybe or who knows, green beans in garlic butter or big ol’ mess of crispy fried brussel sprouts in a tad of garlic butter, something like that.

hate to say it, our usual food mostly in our lives :slight_smile:

family is mostly gone with parents and all, neices nephews all grown into their near 30s, my brothers and hubby bro scattered too far away…so just the 3 of us to do whatever we want. The meal won’t become an ordeal by any means.

#7

Sounds lovely and relaxed :slightly_smiling_face: We like to just chill too on Christmas day and not do anything too elaborate in the cooking arena, but obviously this year it’ll be a combination of both keto and high carbs, both in the variety of starchy vegetables and the bread, cakes, biscuits, crackers etc. It’s already something I’ve got quite used to, to cook one meal for my family and to at the same time just be happy with a plate of pork chops or burgers with some steamed broccoli. Or just a plate of bacon. As I’ve gone coffee mad these days I am always making coffee and offering it to my partner though he doesn’t like any cream in it. Me I would feel much too deprived without the cream! Christmas will be no different with cooking various meals, luckily all my old carb cravings which surely would have haunted me on Christmas days seem to have vanished.

#8

Ask me on the same day :smiley:

But I fancy seafood now and I obviously will eat pork and eggs as always.
I don’t think dessert is necessary at Christmas, I make something when I fancy something. I am extremely bad at planning my food, sometimes I have my full tray (my meals almost never fits a single plate, at least not normal sized ones but my biggest would be tricky too), I make a photo… And I change my mind and eat differently.

Christmas is almost the same as any other time to me so I just eat whatever I fancy and is cheap. This latter is a tad different when I really fancy something more special since months. It’s seafood this year. The carnivores talk about it so often… I had mackerel this year and 110g shrimp (it’s very, very expensive and comes in tiny packages) but I want more. We have little variety so it probably will be 400g salmon (mostly for my SO as I only really like it raw, it would be a waste on me) and a small seafood mix, maybe 250g for us two… And whatever I can find. Squid is tasteless to me (well, the kind I ever had) but I very much like octopus…

But the real Christmas dinner (on the 24th) will happen at my SO’s Mom as usual so I will eat whatever there will be available, it’s almost always the same and quite boring (unlike normal everyday food there, it’s odd) so I surely will bring some pork roast and eggs with me.
I always make the same desserts, my SO’s Mom who considers me her daughter and the feeling is mutual has diabetes but LOVES sweet desserts. She never makes non-sugary ones and storebought stuff is quite inferior, once I tastes her paleo chocolates, they were awful… IDK why, it’s so easy to use sweetener… They probably want to keep it cheap and sell it for a ton of money but if it’s bad, wouldn’t people just stop buying it? Whatever.
So I make some of her favs as low-carb as I can (and I have skills, I do such things since more than a decade and I am very determined and somewhat creative if it is about food). She obviously will make a ton of sugary traditional baked stuff. And I do my best to avoid both? :smiley: I will fail but amounts matter as I always say :slight_smile:

#9

Of course. Just like my unsweetened marshmallow, it can totally be done. BUT you need some seriously lowered sweetness need for it. I don’t mean how sweet we find things, I still need sweetener or sugar to feel something sweet - but I don’t expect my lovely fluffy and/or creamy dessert to be sweet. Sweet is overrated :slight_smile: I ate enough sweets for a lifestyle already.
But it took a very long time to be okay with unsweetened hot cocoa, chocolate and eggy desserts. And I still don’t prefer them if you ask my tastebuds. I just more or less enjoy them but it’s not the FULL experience. I use these for training. Or emergency food when I am bored with my normal dishes.

As PaulL wrote, it’s trickier when we make the dessert for multiple persons. I am quite lucky as my family members perceive sweetness the same as me (maybe until lately? I think I went a bit lower since I tried carnivore but maybe it’s my need for sweetness, not how sweet I find things) due to we all cut out sugar (exceptional or super tiny consumption doesn’t matter and it seems huge amount of natural sugar doesn’t effect this “everything gets way sweeter” phenomenon either, at least in my family) and everyone is fine with my sweeteners. I am uncertain with people less close to me as one can never knows how feels erythritol nasty or who has a dog who dies from xylitol… I usually tell them what I used and the warning for dogs.

#10

Yup those of us that gotta do it but are comfortable with just that like ya said. I think many of us now hit that issue in our daily lives. Feed them, feed ourselves, lol

#11

what seafood ya fancy’ing S at this time? I know it is a hard buy around your area for ya? just wondering.

#12

Hi Shinita, thanks for sharing your thoughts. That is nice of you to make your SO’s mom some healthier alternatives to the desserts she likes. My SO’s mom, my future mother in law, is also very fond of sweet foods, but she doesn’t have diabetes. Nevertheless, if I had those skills you possess I would have loved to make her some healthier alternatives and dish up those to her when she comes to visit instead of the usual cakes and biscuits she has with her cup of tea. Alas, I’m a pretty rubbish cook as well as baker. And her diet is the typical high carb, low fat so I would never dream of offering her a coffee with cream. My own mom claims her body can’t cope with any fat and so her diet is infinitely more plant food based. We’re all different and who can say what’s right. Anyways, my partner and I are huge on Christmas, and our children are mad about it too. So we always aim to make it very special and memorable for our boys. It’s not just about the presents I always tell them, just as I remind myself it’s not just about the food lol. It’s a time of hope and dreams being spun towards the new year.

#13

Wow, you changed so much in so little time! Yeah, desserts with much cream may be fine for you without sweetener then, at least if you don’t want it very sweet. I have different a sweetness requirement for different dishes and some desserts just must be really sweet for me, at least it was the case some years ago, I am not so sure anymore.
I found that erythritol is bad tasting if I use it to make something super sweet. It’s fine normally but if I want a super sweet dessert, I must use xylitol (or some rare sugar I am able to buy. I have a mental block against normal sugar since ages. once I tried to buy some to practice icing gingerbread and couldn’t do it. by the way the blurred stuff was my edible artistic project and a big part of my chistmas gifts to everyone. I kind of decided last year that I stop making them - and stress about them a lot. I don’t know if xylitol can make good icing but I failed every time. I made cute things but with flowy, thicker icing. still pretty but I had wonderful complicated ideas. but I better make painted rocks :wink: I already did that last year but maybe that’s not so welcomed, I tried to make them pretty though… but I am a rock fan while not everyone is).

Cream is sweetish for me (and probably for most people), sure but that’s it. Not really sweet. But I heard about ketoers who found even raspberries sweet and it was odd as I didn’t :smiley: Until carnivore. Now they are sweet indeed.
Of course it’s possible that our items are different.
I wonder how much sugar my coconut milk contained but that thing was VERY sweet from the beginning.

#14

Whatever that is not tasteless squid or too lean fish! I am not very trusting if it’s mussels but probably there are tastier kinds… I ate them with various tasty sauces but I prefer my animals being tasty just with salt :slight_smile:
I don’t want to dream and I don’t even know seafood so much (except all the various wonderful items in Japanese restaurant, oh those were wonderful raw. but most of them are impossible to find)… I just visit the biggest hypermarket that has a really huge meat section and see what I can find. (They have octopus, I know that. Expensive but they have it, I never saw it elsewhere.)

#15

My last one I hope…

Oh I was always very bad at baking myself. I cooked easily even as a child but baking? That was beyond my abilities.
I did get a bit better but my current cakes are ridiculously easy. Oh I still can mess it but if I don’t forget about certain things, failing is hard. As long as I don’t want to make them pretty as I am very bad at that.
I like to keep them very simple too but one Christmas gift is tricky. I would never make it for ourselves but as we are bad at Christmas gifts and it’s mostly just whatever I make, I want to make something fancier - and it’s one of her old fav anyway. Multilayered chocolate-covered tiny cake pieces. All layers are very different (cake, marzipan, jelly) and the cover is always messy and not as pretty as I want… But it’s good :slight_smile:
My simplest gift is my marzipan. Sounds ridiculously easy, just mixing a few items but I still had to experience a lot to get the sweetness and softness right and they probably can’t happen together and the little balls covered in cocoa powder are too soft and loses their round shape a bit :slight_smile: But it’s still good. It’s good the target person perceives sweetness like us and xylitol feels the same for her… As it’s not even just the sweetness perception… My SO is similar to me but he feels erythritol less sweet than me. While I feel maltitol (okay we don’t use that) 20% as sweet as erythritol while normal people feels it as sweet as sugar I think?
Sweeteners complicate things, it’s good to be able to get rid of them.

I never knew anyone who ate low-carb, I can’t even imagine…
Even coffee with cream is a problem? But we need fat and one can use a little cream… Maybe such people inevitably get fat from so many things that they must avoid it if possible? Hardcore lifestyle.

(Robin) #16

No planning. In fact it is the epitome of not planning. Just us two and just our leftovers.

#17

@robintemplin— AMEN! :100: good post. So get it!

#18

Sounds nice Robin🙂 And if it was just my SO and myself we’d do that as well and not sweat it so much. But for our children, both picky eaters, we want to make food that everyone will enjoy and make a real festive christmas meal of it. So it will be a bit of everything. On boxing day my SO’s parents tend to visit and so there are always plenty of treats going around on that day. I doubt they’d be much tempted by my plate of pork crackling or bacon.

(Marianne) #19

That’s us, too. It’s just my husband and I, so no one else to consider. We will go for drinks at my brother’s and then come home and have our own dinner. For Thanksgiving, I am doing a chuck roast, no vegetables or sides, roasted in chicken broth and seasonings. That’s it other than the pan juices which I consider “gravy.” I make it for special occasions and Christmas will probably be the same meal.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #20

It would certainly be fine without the sweetening. Without the sweetener, cheesecake is cream cheese, eggs, and sour cream, with spices. I’ll bet you’d enjoy it, though everyone else will probably say “How can you eat this?” It’s really just a giant, thick custard, right?