After some recent discussion about treats for Christmas, maybe it would be good to share our M-plan, low carb favourites.
I’ll start with…
Epoisses. Possibly the smelliest cheese known to man. I have to keep my supply in the cold frame in the garden. But it’s wonderful. Melting. Just ready to dip some strong leaves (romaine, cos) or celery sticks into its putrid heart. Dee-lish. Try it!
I’d love to hear about your new favourite treats.
Happy Christmas xx

Pancita I love cheese but have to say your cheese sounds like one step too far for me! I have just made some broccoli and Stilton soup but the Stilton, although very mature, wasn’t really sharp enough so I had to add double the normal amount. Nonetheless it has made a really ‘creamy’ almost decadent soup for just 170 calories and 8g carbs per portion. So that’s my lunch sorted and definitely a ‘treat’.

Hi Verano,
I too love broccoli and cauliflower soups with a good stilton. Where would we be without cheese!
xx

Yes Pancita life without cheeese would be truly miserable. The soup turned out so rich and creamy from the amount of cheese I used it’s just not really to my taste! At least my OH likes it!

I really do love soup though so have just taken some squash soup out of the freezer for lunch tomorrow! Hopefully soup lunches will set me back on a downward slide!

I love cheese also – especially stilton. I love the broccoli soup with cheddar as well.

My absolutely favourite treat is some 85 or 90% chocolate spread with meridian almond butter and sprinkled with sea salt (because meridian nut butters don’t contain salt and salt definitely does intensify the taste). So lovely – a real taste sensation – and you don’t need much of it either.

One of mine for our seafood Christmas is will be finger lime caviar atop and smoked salmon and cream cheese eggs roll! And of course lovely, lovely oysters.

To treat or not to treat that is the question??

There have been a series of posts on the ‘treat’ question on these boards and I think, in part, some of the angst is due to our interpretation of a ‘treat’. In the UK a treat is …… an item out of the ordinary that gives pleasure but the North American definition is …. a sweet(candy), a biscuit(cookie) or other sweet item, which has completely different connotations. So reading Krysia’s post I started to think that all of our ‘treats’ are really indulgences, when we let ourselves have something enjoyable but sometimes maybe a little too much of it, but still BSD friendly!

I love 90% chocolate and now have a square with my coffee instead of the digestives I used to eat and that feels ‘indulgent’. Flick your seafood Christmas, apart from the oysters for me, sounds super and a BSD friendly ‘indulgence’. Krysia I have never tried a nut butter on chocolate but that really does sound ‘indulgent’!

After reading all the ‘treat’ posts yesterday last night I had a ‘treat’ of a piece of brown sourdough bread toasted. I thought it would be a ‘treat’ but actually it was, as suggested in the name, just a lump of ‘dough’ which I couldn’t swallow. In fact not a ‘treat’ at all. No, my idea of something special now is definitely BSD friendly but something I maybe don’t eat too often.

Verano, that is such a happy place to be.

Flick it just takes time. After so long without simple carbs I now find milk chocolate ‘cloying’ , orange juice too sweet, bread ( which I have only tasted twice in the last 17 months) too ‘doughy to name but a few foods. Your taste buds change eventually, and it makes going back to simple carbs very, very hard. Maybe one of the real ways to achieve long term success with this way of eating. is to stay away from simple carbs as much as possible until your taste buds change and by then you no longer see cakes, bread, potatoes etc. as ‘exciting’. When that day arrives I think you have made the change a ‘lifetime’ one.

Yes, Verano, “treat” will mean different things to different people. Imagine giving a “trick or treat”er some nut butter, smelly cheese or half a lobster!!
There are myriad wonderful things on this plan, and the expensive ones are my treats, hot smoked salmon for example, or baby vegetables. And of course the smelly cheeses that I have to eat in the garden.
I am going to try the chocolate and nut cuter tonight!

Oh dear! Krysia I tried peanut butter on a square of chocolate and now I’m just hooked on peanut butter again!!!!

Just trying damage limitation at the moment but will report back tomorrow!

I think I would starve to death if I had to live on what other people consider treats! My husband’s mother was English, so all that side of the family love Christmas pudding, mince pies and trifle. Yuck! Then on here we have suggestions like stinky cheese, oysters and caviar!

Give me rare roast beef with broccoli (ok, and one piece of potato) followed by 70% dark choc (don’t yet have a taste for darker) and I’m happy.

Verano – I am so sorry. Nut butters are so unbelievably moreish – which is what makes them the ultimate indulgent BSD treat for me. I have been looking forward for months to having some nut butter for Christmas – and know that when I open the jar it won’t last that long.

I think you will find that once the jar is eaten – you will have no problem resisting the urge to buy another jar – at least until next Christmas.

LOBSTER!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Natalie I’m with you with trifle and even mince pies now but I still have to have just a taste of Christmas pudding. I have put in my dessert ‘order’ of strawberries and cream with just a tablespoon of pudding. It will be really interesting to see if my taste buds have changed so much since last year that I really don’t like that now as well. BTW Lindt make an 85% which is very good and a transition to 90%. I don’t like 100% either it’s just too bitter.

Krysia fortunately the jar was almost empty and I did manage to stop! Never again! I do have to say though that it really is indulgent!

I’m not a great lover of lobster but I do like smoked salmon and scrambled eggs for breakfast. Maybe not a real ‘treat’ for many these days but still lovely.

Green and black have a lovely creamy tasting 85% and it is on offer at Tesco at £1.50 a bar at the moment. Another Christmas treat for me is roasted or hickory smoked nuts. Tesco finest are really nice. I do have to save them for a special treat because they are just too ‘moreish’ even though they are BSD friendly.

I also love smoked salmon and have bought some for Christmas as another special treat.

My old special treat – which I had every day pre-BSD – was a large cappuccino sprinkled with a mountain of real milk chocolate flakes. I promised myself in April 2016 that I would only stop having it after breakfast for 8 weeks – but I realized quite quickly that it was actually only the sugar hit that I liked so much and that my Nespresso coffee was much tastier with just a dash of cream.

Many thanks KrysiaD for your post; I LOVE espresso (I lived in Naples, Italy for many years, and they make some of the best coffee in the world – ask any Neapolitan and they’ll tell you you can’t get a decent coffee north of Rome!). I have a Nespresso machine, and use the strongest Ristretto…but had to give it up in August when my gall bladder flared up badly (and I had discovered that when it does, espresso really irritates it). The pain went on for about a month, and although I’ve gradually introduced other fats back into my diet, I’ve not had an espresso, partly because I always had it with a spoonful of sugar….and on the BSD, and diagnosed Type 2 (even if now, that’s in remission) that’s a no-no, and I haven’t been able to face it without the sugar…but the other thing I love is espresso with a spoonful of thick cream sitting on top, so you sort of drink it through the cream! Don’t know why I hadn’t thought about it…so thanks KrysiaD for your post – I’m off to buy a small carton of thick cream!

Glad you like the suggestion of a jigsaw Marie. We did it first about three years ago, when my daughter was due home from London, where she was working. She was going through a bit of a bad patch, and much as I love her, she’s not always easy to live with, and hours confined to the house over Christmas we thought spelled disaster, until my sister hit on the idea of a jigsaw. Daughter pooh-poohed the idea at first, so we said no problem, she didn’t have to do it if she didn’t want. We set up the board, and started with the edge bits….and after about half an hour, daughter wandered in, and started to join in. It’s perfect – everyone is occupied, so there’s no need to talk if you don’t want to, but it becomes easier to talk because you don’t have to do the “one-to-one” thing that you might if you were all sitting looking at each other. It’s relaxing, fun, and resulted in a harmonious Christmas, which had looked like being anything but! We put it all away after New Year, so we don’t get bored with them during the year, and look forward to the next Christmas. Thoroughly recommended!

All the talk of nut butters makes my mouth water…but I’m not sure my gall bladder would thank me for trying them. The problem is that once triggered, the pain takes days to go, and involves cutting ALL fats for days (last time, weeks, on end)….so I don’t want to risk anything just before Christmas. However, I AM going to buy 80% chocolate to grate over my berries and full fat yogurt!

Hoping everyone has a great BSD Christmas!
Liz

Eliza – hello from another coffee freak!! Just love it, the darker the better, but I always take mine black – my not so secret indulgence is a couple of double espressos every morning. My son worked in Naples for a couple of years and we visited 3 or 4 times a year😊 but he moved back to the UK about 10 years ago and we haven’t been back since.😭 Such glorious coastline, and it’s wonderful area to visit during the festive season.

I love jigsaw puzzles too – they are very addictive and, as you say, even people who dismiss them as childish, soon just cannot resist joining in – even if it’s only slotting one piece in when passing. Before you know it, they too become obsessed! Never thought about setting one up at Christmas though, so thank you for the idea – that will be my Christmas Treat.

I have never even tried a nut butter, but by the sounds of things, they are pretty addictive too, so it’s not a taste I am rushing to acquire!

Eliza52 I also love dark chocolate grated over yoghurt and berries. In a cocktail glass it looks and tastes like a very fancy dessert. I think I’d better go and make another batch of yoghurt!

Eliza – I do hope you enjoyed your espresso with cream and that your gall bladder stays ok. I love the very strong Ristretto also

I hadn’t thought of grating my 85% chocolate over my yoghurt and berries – so thank you for that suggestion. A really lovely idea and definitely a treat for Christmas and other times.

I like a sprinkling of cinnamon on yoghurt and berries as well, another thing that makes it more like a truly luxurious dessert than anything else. My biggest ‘treat’ though is a very occasional, small whisky, the best I can afford. Today’s treat was a glass of One of a kind from the scotch malt whisky society (motto: to leave no nose upturned) that I must have been drinking already for about three years. Glorious taste, 61.1% alcohol, hence the small glass, and I still have more than three quarters of the bottle left. As Verano said, a treat is something out of the ordinary, that gives an extreme amount of pleasure. This bottle could last another 9 years at this rate 😀

Mixnmatch – am looking forward to trying the cinnamon on my yoghurt.

Tonight I thought it was really amusing. My cupboards are full of luxury biscuits, cakes, baklava, puddings and chocolate (not the BSD friendly sort) all ready for my family coming up. But the only food that was calling my name this evening was the Meridian crunchy almond butter and some Macadamia nuts. I did succumb to 5 nuts and half a teaspoon of almond butter – and that was all I wanted. It was absolutely delicious.

Pre-BSD I would have made a sizable dent in the Christmas stuff. Husband goes out on a Friday and more times than not I would end up having a carb fest while he was out. It was never enjoyable – but I just couldn’t stop. The more I ate – the more I wanted. How different things are now.

I have never thought of grating dark chocolate over yogurt and berries either. Served in a cocktail glass it will be truly indulgent. Maybe even with a sprinkle of cinnamon as well! I think I might forgo the tablespoon of Xmas pudding altogether and just have this as a dessert instead!

I tried the Green & Blacks 85% but I don’t like it as much as the Lindt, but it’s thicker than the Lindt and probably will grate more easily. So I have a use for it or could have it with a hot expresso with cream! That sounds almost decadent!

Interesting thread.