More Low Carb Recipes And Rome

Happy Friday everyone! Hope your last day of the work week has been a good one. I had off from work today so the kiddos and I went into the gym. I´m so proud of us, two days this week...which compared to the last weeks is really a big thing. I do ten minutes of warm up on the stationary bike then I do strengthening exercises with various weight machines and free weights and finally some sit ups which I really felt today after Wednesdays sit ups. My stomach is in shock...poor thing....little does she know that I have good things in store for her...even though I´m beating her up physically I am making up for it with some yummy low carb dinners such as...

Hunter Soup

(The direct translation from the Norwegian cookbook- I´d probably call it Mushroom Soup)

A side not here: Sarah made this soup because I was working yesterday...was wonderful to come home to find dinner already made...my children spoil me...

Sarah served this with cheese chips which is basically cheese that bakes in the oven until it melts and then you take it out and it gets crispy and chewy and you can eat it instead of bread to soup. YUM! Didn´t miss my bread at all with this...

We bought a mix of various types of mushrooms, so there is no rule as to which mushrooms you have to buy. We bought about 400 grams of mixed mushrooms which were on sale at the local grocery store for 10 Norwegian Kroner...a bargain in Norway!! You´ll also need the following:

1 onion

2 vegetable broth cubes

8 deciliters of water

3 deciliters of whole cream

butter to fry the mushrooms and onions in.

In a pan on top of the oven you melt your butter and add your mushrooms and onions and stir them around until they are have a nice color. Add salt and pepper to taste. Take out a few mushrooms for decoration and then add water, broth cubes, and cream and let the soup simmer for about 15 minutes. Sarah used our hand blender and pureed the mushrooms in the soup then added the mushrooms she had set aside earlier when she served the soup.

For the cheese chips, cut cheese in half centimeter thick slices and lay them on baking paper on a cookie sheet. When they start bubbling in the oven, take them out...voila...Hunter Soup!

For lunch today after our workout I decided to make an omelette with lots of veggies some fuet sausage from Spain and some blue cheese.

I love the colors of the veggies in this...I used red pepper, red onion, a little garlic, asparagus, and cheery (well I mean Cherry but I misspelled and thought it fit) tomatoes..

After I have added the egg, I added some rocket salad and the fuet sausage and blue cheese.

Voila....low carb friendly lunch and great after a good workout!

After this scrumptious lunch I took Isabella and Bently for a walk which I tried to do briskly, I also took a few chances to try and jog...so I guess you could call it an interval type training. I was certainly breathing hard as were my walking partners..especially Isabella...my little Italian isn´t a big fan of jogging unless it´s on the trail of a deer or something...

Speaking of Italy. I think we have finally decided on the location for our vacation this fall. Rome Italy!!

We have found a wonderful apartment in the heart of Rome, very reasonably priced and the reviews on the place (22 of them) were very positive. Many who were repeat visitors and the owner of the apartment is apparently very helpful. Always nice to have a native help you around if you don´t want to get caught in every tourist trap a city can spring on ya! Hopefully we will get confirmation soon as to whether we can get the apartment. Keep your fingers crossed! Many of you have visited Rome so please feel free to write your tips and advice for a great trip in the comments....where do you recommend eating? What do we HAVE to see? Is there anything outside of Rome worth visiting for a day?

Finally I am going to leave you all with our dinner tonight...this post is bulging with recipes but I think it´s important to share this low carb adventure with you all. I have been searching the internet for information on eating low carb and there is a wealth of information out there so I´m just adding my two cents to the pot...hope you don´t mind!! Now mind you, we are not hard core low carb...but trying to eat 80-90% low carbs and hoping the last 10-20% won´t be so bad if we are being good the rest of the time and working out. I´ll let you know how it works out..we´ve only been doing this about a week but I feel very positive about it and haven´t missed anything really.

OK, for dinner tonight we had Spicy Chicken Filets with Peanut Butter and Coconut...sounds good eh? It was! Ok, here is what I did:

5 chicken filets sliced into bite size pieces..fry this up in a little coconut oil and butter (I was going to just use the coconut oil but the recipe called for butter and I wasn´t sure if it would effect the taste, so I used a little of both!) Coconut oil is suppose to be one of the healthier oils for you to use! I thought it would make my food all taste like coconut but it doesn´t..haven´t tasted any coconut after taste!

Once your chicken is browned, add about 1-2tsp of Sambal Oelek . The recipe called for 1tsp but I threw in one more because it didn´t look like very much. Then you will add about 1tsp salt, and the juice from half a lime. (I used an entire lime...again, I felt like since I was increasing some other things I needed more lime and I´m glad I added it) The recipe calls for 2tbsp of peanut butter..but I added 3. Then you will add 2 deciliters of coconut milk and 2 deciliters of whole cream. Let all of this simmer for about five minutes. I served it with a fresh salad and some cauliflower and this was wonderful. Just enough kick from the Sambal Oelek...even my kids enjoyed this one and they are very picky when it comes to spicy!

If you are trying a low carb diet, I highly recommend all of these recipes. I loved each one of them. My kids thought the soup had a tad too much pepper in it...but I thought it was great...the salt and pepper in the soup is by taste..so you can spice it up or down as you like. Same with the Sambal Oelek. So be adventurous my friends and try one of these yummy meals and let me know what you think!! Oh and don´t forget to share your best Rome tips with me ok? Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Until next time my friends....