Olives are a wonderful source of health unsaturated fatty acids and are the base of this yummy spread that takes me right back to my favorite Mediterranean restaurant 🇬🇷
The sun dried tomatoes, capers and macadamia nuts help create a creamy texture and umami flavor which is enhanced by buttery extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette🙃
This can be enjoyed with your favorite keto cracker swap, or with your favorite meat or seafood dish! We love this with roasted branzino, leg of lamb steak, or even on my signature egg cake🍳
To make you need:
A food processor, we have a small simple one but fancier machines like Vitamix also have smaller blending compartments that work well
100 g Olives of your choice, we love kalamata olives 🫒
1 tablespoon Capers 🌱
2 tablespoons Sun dried Tomatoes in olive oil, make sure they don’t contain any preservatives or that they are in an unhealthy oil 🍅
A handful of Macadamia nuts, or other nuts/seeds of your choice, you can experiment here, I’m sure walnuts, pumpkin seeds or pine nuts would be tasty🥜
A splash Balsamic vinegar, ours is from Brightland 🧉
2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil 🫒
Salt and pepper to taste 🧂
To make:
Start by placing the olives, capers, dried tomatoes and nuts into the little blender and blend until you have a paste. The texture is up to you.
Next, add in the oil and the vinegar and continue to blend until you have a creamy texture. Add salt if you need to.
Electrolytes are critical for proper hydration and cell function! You can drink as much water as you want, but if you’re lacking electrolytes to pull the water into the cell, you will be dehydrated on a cellular level.
Our brains generate bio electrical signals that rely on electrolytes to function. Together, the electrolyte cells in the brain can generate up to 600 volt! When we are dehydrated, our brains cannot function properly! Now if that isn’t a reason to stay salty 😜
Especially when on a low carb, high fat diet, like the one my family follows, your body needs more electrolytes, especially sodium to perform optimally 💪🏻
While we have been told to restrict our salt intake because it has the potential to raise blood pressure, the opposite it actually true. According to Robb Wolf:
At the most basic level, when you restrict salt, your body is like: “Ah crap, I need to hold onto what little sodium I have!” It’s a smart mechanism to save sodium, but it has consequences.
Sodium-retention is governed by a system of hormones called the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system. I’ll talk more about this system later but, for now, understand that when sodium levels drop, this trio of hormones tells the kidneys to stop peeing out sodium. These hormones also serve to increase blood pressure.
Of course, like with everything, salt quality matters, as seen in the graphic below. Commercially refined salt (sodium chloride) which is found is almost all processed foods and in the shakers at most restaurants is not a healthy choice and our bodies can’t do much with it.
Healthier alternatives include Himalayan pink salt or sea salt which also contain trace minerals needed for other body functions. Additionally, these have not been processed in a factory which leaves them as close to intact as nature intended them to be 😉
We prefer sea salt over Himalayan pink salt, since there is a risk that the Himalayan salt is contaminated with heavy metals due to pollution. Brands that I like include Celtic Sea Salt and also Maldon flaked sea salt for cooking and sprinkling 🧂
In addition to being incredibly healthy for cell functioning, you can use salt to enhance the flavor of your foods. Salting steak a few minutes prior to cooking can bring out its yummy flavor 😍
Another tip is to salt multiple times during the cooking process rather than once at the beginning of the end, which again optimized flavor 😋
Electrolytes
Electrolytes are minerals that carry a charge when dissolved in a liquid, such as blood or the fluid in our cells.
It’s the kidneys job to regulate the amount of electrolytes in body fluids and to maintain an equilibrium by excreting any imbalance through the urine.
Sodium in particular plays an important role in the body- it helps maintain normal fluid levels in the fluid compartments. The body sends sodium in/out of fluid compartments depending on where fluid is needed (this is called a concentration gradient, the bodies natural tendency is always to restore equilibrium).
Cell walls also use the concept of “concentration gradient” to generate electrical impulses via electrolytes to shuttle small molecules across the cell wall (sodium – potassium pumps)! This gives our mitochondria the inputs it needs to generate ATP.
Our mitochondria then use electrolytes like magnesium and potassium in the electron transport chain to generate ATP. The better hydrated we are, the more effective we can create fuel for our bodies!
Our muscles need them in order to contract: electrolytes are ion regulators that facilitate molecular action in muscles, in other words, without electrolytes, we cannot move.
Supplementing with Electrolytes
It’s also a good idea to supplement with a properly balanced electrolyte blend, this is even more important when you’re eating a lower carb diet and especially in the transition period when you feel you’re experiencing the keto flu (it could be an electrolyte imbalance)
While it’s a complex equation, electrolyte deficiency in folks adhering to a low-carb diet is in a large part driven by two key factors.
First, when you make the switch to a low-carb diet, you are probably eliminating processed foods from your diet, which contain high amounts of sodium. Second, low-carb diets are diuretic in nature, meaning the kidneys excrete electrolytes at a higher rate. This is normal and not something to be worried about, but it is important to replace these electrolytes.
All is not lost though: by properly supplementing your electrolytes, the keto flu can be dramatically reduced, if not avoided altogether.
-LMNT
I make an effort to hydrate 1-3 times a day with an electrolyte supplement called LMNT. The company has formulated their packets to contain the perfect balance of sodium, potassium and magnesium so that my cells and mitochondria can function optimally.
Since the supply chain is a bit impacted by the winter weather, we haven’t been able to get our favorite wild caught salmon from Vital Choice, so we’ve used the opportunity to experiment with other nutrient dense seafood! My entire seafood guide is here!
This time, we chose to tackle wild caught vermillion red snapper, which we got from Primal Pastures, caught off of the California coast. Although it was not one of the best fish we have eaten (it’s Not very flavorful), we made the best of it and decided to fry it in an egg bath (a dish I have enjoyed many times at the local pub in my hometown), which essentially created an adult fish stick which we enjoyed with ample Chosen Foods Keto MCT oil mayonnaise and a side of spinach and mashed romanesco 😍
I had accidentally recreated a staple meal of my childhood which consisted of Igloo Fishsticks, Igloo Creamed Spinach, boiled potato and Thommy Mayonnaise (my Germans will know 😂)
Can you see the streaks of red?
To make enough for 3 you need 👩🏻🍳:
Any white fish, we chose red snapper but I think cod or halibut would work better 🐠
Brussels Sprouts (also called Rose Cabbage in German 🌹) are a member of the brassica family and contain important detoxification compounds including sulfuraphanes, antioxidants, and folate! They are also full of fiber which feed your gut flora and help you eliminate toxins!
Although ALA isn’t the best way to get your omega 3 fatty acids (you need DHA and EPA from meat and fish), brussels sprouts contain one of the highest amounts of ALA (which still needs to be converted) of any plant food!
We usually just steam the sprouts and enjoy them with flaked sea salt and grass fed butter, but this time I decided to give them a twist and introduced them to my airfryer 😎
They come out crispy and can either be drizzled with butter or Mayo, or dipped into guacamole 😍
To make these delicious bites, you need:
As many brussels sprouts as you like, the bigger the better
Sea salt, we like flaked sea salt from Maldon Salt 🧂
Seasoning of your choice, we went for pepper and nutmeg 🌶
Ghee such as that from Pure Indian Foods 🧈
Preparing these is a 2 step process:
First, clean/trim the brussels sprouts and boil them until they are a bit squishy but do not fall apart, this is usually a 4-6 minute boil.
Next, remove the brussels sprouts from the pot and smash them with a fork, so that they form flat discs.
Then coat them in ghee and sprinkle them with sea salt/pepper and air-fry them at about 375° until they become crispy. This is about 5-7 minutes!
On cold days like today, I love to indulge in “God’s butter” aka bone marrow 😍
When roasted in the oven or on the stove, the marrow in the bones becomes soft and juicy and melts in the mouth. I like to eat it on vegetables or with grain free bread 🍞 and a bit of flaked sea salt 🧂
Yesterday, I decided to make a venison Osso buco so I had cross cut shanks full of delicious bone marrow. After roasting the shanks for a few hours in my cast iron pan, the meat fell off the bone and I was able to scoop out the marrow 😍
Incorporating bone marrow into the diet is a great way to eat nose to tail, and get a lot of fat soluble nutrients and vitamins as well as brain healthy fats. In fact, the development of our large brain is contributed to our consumption of bone marrow (they regularly find fossils of animals that have their skulls and bones cracked open, probably because our ancestors were after the nourishing fuel in the bones) 🙌🏻
It’s also critical for the health of our own bone marrow and the stem cells that are there (our immune system and birth place of red blood cells)! It’s often said that like supports like 💪🏻
Bison shank with a marrow bone
Bone marrow can be enjoyed cooked or raw, and you can buy canoed marrow bones for easy roasting in the oven. Since I eat a lot of meats that have marrow bones (like shanks), I usually scoop out the marrow before I cook the meat, and roast it on its own. Yesterday, I braised bison shanks, and scooped out the marrow to roast.
Roasting is easy:
Preheat the oven to about 350°F and season the bone marrow. I like flaked sea salt, but you can also add herbs and other spices.
Roast the bone marrow until it starts to bubble and brown, and then you can either drizzle it over a food of your choice, or you can make a bone marrow butter. I am working on a recipe for that, but you basically whip up the bone marrow with spices of your choice, or you can infuse regular grass fed butter with it!
Cold weather calls for nourishing dishes like these braised bison shanks 😍
When served with a pasta swap, some veggies and slathered with ghee or the bone marrow that cooks out of the bone, they feel like a warm hug 🥰
The key to yummy shanks is time and high quality meat. I got my shanks from Force or Nature, but Northstar Bison makes yummy shanks as well! You can use my referral link to save on your order.
It’s important that shanks are braised, because they contain a lot of collagen that needs to be rendered. Searing only will result in tough meat, so you really want to take the time to cook them low and slow so that they fall off of the bone 🤩
You can choose to braise them in any liquid you like, water or broth work well. I also like to throw in some bay leaf for additional flavor🤤
My favorite part of the cut is the precious bone marrow inside the bone, and to make sure that I can enjoy every morsel of it, I remove it from the bone before I cook it, and simply roast it in the oven to drizzle over my veggies 😍
You can of course leave it in the bone, which will enhance the flavor of the meat, and you’ll still get the majority of it if you decide to drizzle the braising liquid over the meat or consume the broth!
Although this freezes well, I prefer to make only one shank at a time, which normally makes about two portions for me. One shank is typically 12-14 ounces and is very rich, so you don’t need a lot to fill up.
To make gather up 👩🏻🍳:
Grass fed Bison shanks (as many as you need) 🦬
Ghee for searing, I love cultured ghee from Pure Indian Foods 🧈
Sea Salt such as that from Celtic Sea Salt 🧂
Pepper- we use Thrive Market black pepper
Dried Bayleaf (I like Burlap and Barrel) 🌱
Begin by:
Pat the shanks dry and heat up ghee in a pot
Next, sear the meat until crispy brown on all sides, and season with salt and pepper.
Now, I like to remove the meat from the pot and scoop out the marrow to enjoy later on. I do this after searing because then it’s easier to remove. You can also leave the marrow in the bone.
. You can also leave the marrow in the bone.
Raw bone marrow
Now, add in bay leaf or any other herb of your choice for flavor, and pour on water. Bring the water to a boil, and then turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 3 hours, or until the meat falls off of the bone!
When the meat is ready, you can shred it off of the bone and enjoy it with your favorite veggies and a pasta swap such as Shirataki Noodles drizzled in ghee and marrow or you can use it in a grain free tortilla with some guacamole (as shredded bison meat) or soup 🍲🌮
It’s falling off of the boneSuper tender
You can also strain the braising liquid and and add in some veggies like carrot and green onion and create a nourishing bone broth! I did this and put it in the fridge, and woke up to a bone broth jelly, which confirms how nourishing and rich the broth is 🙌🏻
I decided to roast the bone marrow in the oven with some sea salt at 300° for about 10 minutes.
Since I was a little girl, I have been obsessed with sesame. I actually recall going to the fridge and taking out the container of sesame seeds and eating them with a spoon as a snack 😂
I especially loved it when I went to a Japanese steakhouse and it was sprinkled on vegetables, in the sauces or on the meat🍱
Being a fan of Greek and Middle Eastern food, I enjoyed a lot of sesame used in dips like baba gaboush and hummus 🍆
Like many German children, I was also given little sesame and honey granola bars from Aldi (my Germans know what I mean 🙌🏻) that I munched on on warm summer days at the park ☀️
Although I cannot enjoy foods like Japanese teriyaki, hummus or honey sesame bars anymore, there is still a chock full of ways I integrate my beloved sesame into my diet 😍
I have used it as a crust for seared ahi-tuna 🍣 and have slathered spoons of my favorite tahini on veggies and egg pancakes 😍
Eggs, veggies and pesto tahini are a go-to breakfast 😍
Tahini is a paste of ground of sesame seeds that’s used as a base in a lot of Mediterranean cooking- think hummus, eggplant dip, bell pepper dip etc.
We are working on a whole line of fat fueled sesame based dips and baked goods, so stay tuned 😎
Nutrition
Sesame seeds are highly nutritious and packed full of heart healthy fats that help create a healthy cholesterol profile 🙌🏻
For example, it’s full of plant based Omega fatty acids, and makes a great addition to seafood and grass fed meat/dairy to get your daily dose of omegas!
Sesamin and sesamolin are 2 antioxidants found in sesame seeds that help fight free radicals and are highly anti inflammatory 💪🏻
Additionally, they’re packed with bio-available forms of minerals such as calcium and zinc and fat soluble vitamins A and E!
The copper, zinc and b vitamins like B1 and folate found in the seeds also aid in healthy blood production, just make sure to get a good supply of (animal based) heme iron which your body also needs to make blood 🩸
I have to admit that I was a bit intimidated, because I read that duck needs to be served rare to medium rare (maximum) in order to taste good, so I was scared I would get the timing wrong, and I did overcook it a little bit, but it was tasty nonetheless 🤩
It’s made very quickly, I would say between 7-10 minutes cooking time depending on the thickness. Since duck breast is very fatty, you will not require extra cooking fat, but if you feel like you want to use some, I would go for ghee!
We decided to keep seasoning minimal, in order to enjoy the flavor of the meat, we just used salt and pepper.
To make the duck you need:
One duck breast per person (5-6 ounces), ours is from US Wellness Meats 🦆
Flaked sea salt 🧂
Pepper
Begin by:
It’s important to pat the meat fry to ensure a crispy skin. Then trim the meat and score the skin in a diamond pattern. This makes it easier to render the layer of fat beneath the skin, so that you’re essentially cooking the meat in its own fat and ensuring a crispy skin 🙌🏻
Then salt the meat from all sides and place it into an oven safe pan, skin side down.
The fat will begin to pour out, after 5 minutes or so, flip the breast over, season with pepper, and other seasoning if you want (my mom used an umami blend) and transfer into the oven for 3-5 minutes.
Remove from the oven, let it rest for a few moments and then enjoy it with yummy veggies and butter 😊
We decided to serve it with buttery mashed cauliflower, green beans, and some sautéed carrots and zucchini 🥕
Although it’s a bit over cooked, it was still very tender.
You can get yours at a 10$ discount if you use my referral link!
In the past, I always ordered tenderloin steak but I’ve learned to love other cuts and this steak did not disappoint. We had both beef and elk steaks and prepared them two different ways!
The upper one is the beef and the lower one is the elk! Both have a fat/grizzle cap that needs to be removed after cooking. If you remove it before, the meat dried out because it’s very lean. Ours turned out super juicy 😋
Classic preparation for the elk steak:
Since game meats like elk have a rich taste on their own, I decided to only enhance the flavor with salt and ghee. Sometimes I like to use cacao powder as well (believe it or not, it doesn’t taste like chocolate but amplifies the meatiness) 🙌🏻
I heated up cultured ghee in a pan, salted the steak liberally and fried it about 4 minutes on each side until medium rare. I continuously basted it with ghee and finished it off with grass-fed butter and flaked sea salt 😋
Garlicky preparation for the beef steak:
We love garlic butter on steak so I thought I might as well add some garlic and herb seasoning while I am preparing it 🧄
This time, I used grass-fed tallow from Fatworks and heated that up in a pan. Like the elk, I salted both sides and seared the steak for about 5 minutes (until crispy brown) on each side! Then I added the garlic and herb seasoning and basted it with a bit of garlic butter 😋
Beef needs a bit longer than elk, since game meats tend to dry out quickly! Keep that in mind if you’re planning on making them at the same time!
Both tasted fantastic and we enjoyed them with mashed cauliflower and lots of grass-fed butter 😋
This is a quickly made side that is one of my dads favorites! It’s full of sulfuric compounds which are super important for detoxification (thanks to all the alliums), and also a good source of prebiotic and soluble fiber!
The snap peas give it a fresh crunch, and make this a great side for almost any protein. My dad loves it with grilled fish such as Trout or King Salmon, roasted chicken, or a yummy steak 😋
Our fat of choice for this sauté is Lewis Road Creamery Herb butter but any butter, ghee, or cooking fat will work!
To make 1-2 servings you need 👩🏻🍳:
2-3 large stocks of green onion 🧅
1-2 garlic cloves (not the whole thing) 🧄
About 20 sugar snap pea pods 🌿
Salt, pepper and oregano (we love Burlap and Barrel) 🧂
Garlic and herb seasoning blend 🌱
Butter for frying 🧈
To prepare:
Begin by heating up enough butter to cover the bottom of the pan, and start to chop the green onion and garlic
You don’t need to chop it super finely as it will fall apart in the pan
Next, add the chopped alliums to the hot butter and fry for a few minutes until they brown. Add salt, pepper, oregano and the garlic/herb spice mix! Let the whole thing simmer for a bit
After you’re happy with the consistency of the onion and garlic, add in the sugar snap peas and cook for a few more minutes depending on how crunchy you’d like the peas!
