IMHO the lack of variety excuse is usually just the easy way out of what people know is the right thing to do with their diet. After all, making excuses is much easier than breaking a lifelong addiction to excess sugar in all its forms.

Oops, I think I meant chayote squash (for potato substitute). whatever, no one's ever heard of it anyway.--Gail

Time isn't the only factor in teaching kids to cook... My mother had nothing BUT time, and yet I learned to cook from my Dad and Grandma. Simple fact is my mother can't boil water without botching it.

Seriously, she can manage to NOT kill a total of two or three dishes, and that's questionable. She could follow a recipe to the letter, and some quirk of fate would render the results inedible.

Now, if I had HER kitchen skills, low-carb or ANY meal would be a challenge. It's not all excuses, laziness, character flaw...

I've bought chayote squash before recently. It caught my attention because it looked like a green wrinkly butt crack on one side. I worship the spaghetti squash so I figured it a good idea to try out some more squashes though I really am not a big squash person ('cept for spaghetti squash of course!!). I was pleasantly surprised with the chayote squash's taste! It seems like it would taste really good diced up raw on salad too. I never thought about substituting it for fries but that sounds like a really yummy idea since I did think chayote keeps a slight crispiness! I think I will add it to some soups too.

It's amazing how much more vegetables I eat now compared to my days before low carb! ME eating squash? Who would have thought!!!? I appreciate and love the gifts of Earth a lot more now.

Mine is down too, but I'm not paying 3.99 a pound for anything. I buy the bulk meats at Smart and Final, then cut it up myself. I rarely pay more than 1.69. We also eat eggs - a lot! They are cheap and make wonderful quiches, omlets, and mock crepes. Chicken is usually less then .89 a pound and there is so much you can do with a chicken.

I'm jealous of your meat prices.... I live in a wee little town with a Mom-n-Pop type store. Unless I want to drive 20 miles, I'm expected to pay almost $3 a lb for hamburger. The cheapest they've ever had chicken is $1.79 a lb..

If we have to drive the hour to the "big" town, I can pay fairly normal prices. Trust me, if I have an appointment there, and if Steven's not too worn out from the trip, we stop and stock up.

We'll soon be back to having no choice but to drive the 20 miles to the next small town for groceries, since they say our little store is closing again.

I think I've stretched the limits of frozen veggies and eggs...

Okey doke!

Thanks, Gail, for the turnips advice. My only connection to turnips is my mother-in-law's stories about how that's all their family had to eat during the Depression & how they got sick of turnip soup, turnips baked, turnip cereal (just kidding). Also need to see if the wrinkled-butt squash is available here; I live in Hawaii & sometimes all the low-carb fresh veggies are not at hand (though there are many bonus local favorites).

I have no idea why cauliflower tastes sweet to me, or even why that's a bad thing, but welcome tarter (not tater) suggestions.

begone

I've seen the same kind of complaints by posters about newbies in vegetarian forums in regards to lack of variety-and in either case, low-carb or vegetarian diets are both restrictive, and so naturally they'll both have less variety. I don't see the point in denying this, and wether the people complaining about it are "addicted to carbs" or "just lazy" do not invalidate their arguements.

Personally, I refuse to use low-carb substitutes, especially artificial sweeteners in baking, though I am willing to lower sugar content and raise the fat content in order to lower the glycemic index. There is something about the chemistry in baking and pastry which makes substitutions much more difficult than regular cooking, and I just prefer not to mess with it. Low-carb meals, on the other hand, are much easier, and more feasible to the average newbie who might prefer to stay away from the horror that is the average low-carb bread. The key, I believe, is showing and giving newbies examples of how these things can be done (especially if they live a busy lifestyle and don't have much experience cooking in the first place) instead of simply accusing them of being "addicted" or "lazy".

(And I am saying this as a newbie)

I've heard that generally people mainly eat the same few basic things over and over. I think that's true--people eat things they like over and over and every once in awhile try something new and then go back to their basics, and that's not boring. In other words, most people eat a somewhat limited variety of food. So, maybe the key to being satisfied with the restrictions of lcing is to find a number of basics that are satisfying and every once in awhile try something different. I hate to be quoted because I can't remember the number, but If I was forced to guess, the number of recipes that people work with in their day to day eating is about 20. Maybe if a person started out by planning menus for one week and then later a second week, they would have the same variety as before. Then it's a matter of getting used to the difference. I have found out that if I drop some food that I really enjoyed eating every day, and don't have it for awhile, I lose the taste for it. And if I force myself to eat something for awhile because I know it's healthy, I start enjoying it more. It's a matter of discipline at first, but later feels natural. An example is replacing tea for coffee, which I have adamantly refused to do for decades. Now some days I don't want coffee and look forward to my chai green tea. I would've never thought I'd ever come to that, LOL!--Gail

I don't normally pay 3.99 a pound for my meats (expect for fish), but it was prime rib!! None of it went to waste. And it was so good! I wish they would put it back on sale.

A note on the moms teaching kids how to cook. Growing up my sister and I both cooked dinners. We rarely ate fast foods. Now, raising our families we don't feed them fast food for dinner. If we are out and about at lunchtime then we might stop at one, but not at dinnertime. I always cook dinner for my family. Every couple of weeks we might go out to a restaurant. My husband hates fast food, which use to irritate me because some night I'm too tired to cook. I've learned to keep quick things to fix. The quickest is sausage and cole slaw. It takes about five minutes to make the cole slaw and five minutes to heat up the sausage. The family loves it. And it tastes like real food because it is real food!
Working moms that want to spend more time with their kids should take advantage of making meals at night with their children along side of them in the kitchen! It just makes so much sense.

YES!!! Not only are you teaching your kids a valuable life skill, you're building a relationship with them at the same time! It's a win-win situation.



I really don't think that the main objective of this thread was to beat up on newbies. But how do you answer a post from someone that says, "Help! I'm bored with my meals! Oh...BTW, I hate veggies and won't eat them."?

I agree. My three daughters all cook. If they are working late, or other school activites, they are very comfortable cooking up their own meal rather than have left overs. That way I get to take the left overs for lunch. We recently took in a friend of my daughters who couldn't cook at all. We have all been working on teaching her to cook. At first she hated it, - it is easier to go out. Now she sees how much she is saving she is a real convert to cooking. Unfortunately, she is really into pasta at the moment so she is not helping with the cooking chores. LOL

Being a guy who does not like to cook, I also find Atkins to lack variety and to be somewhat boring. That was until I started regularly adding a Big Mac, Whopper or Subway Turkey and Ham sandwich to my diet. The Turkey and Ham sub is probably the healthiest but my absolute favorite is a Big Mac. When I use these as a MEAL REPLACEMENT they seem to be a healthy low calorie way to add variety to my otherwise bland (Meat, Egg and Veggie) Atkins diet.

Works for me and probably would for most of you also!

Bo

Ummm...you are talking about all of those sandwiches without the bun and secret sauce, right?
Just the meat and cheese in the BigMac would be 240 calories. Not bad, calories-wise for a meal, but somewhat incomplete without some veggies (and no, the pickles don't count as a veggie). But...eat a whole Big-Mac, bun and all, and you get 560 calories just from the sandwich alone, 46 grams of carb and a not-so-healthy helping of transfats at 1.5 grams (sauce, bun and grill seasoning).
http://app.mcdonalds.com/bagamcmeal...s=item&itemID=5

I think this is so true. The standard American diet is really not as widely varied or exciting as fond memory may recall.

I believe that if you took someone who complains that low carb is a restrictive or "boring" way of eating, and had them go back and honestly chart out their meals for the month BEFORE they started low-carbing, and then compare it to the foods that an average (not exceptionally creative) person eats for a month low-carbing, there would be more variety in the average low carb diet.

Before I began this WOE, my diet was pretty stupid-consistent, and I don't remember it being particularly satisfying, fulfilling or uniquely delicious. I'm trying to remember the last time I ate a donut, or a waffle, or a piece of white bread, and actually thought to myself, "wow, this is REALLY good!" It was simply rote habit and fulfilled needs other than nutrition. The tastes had become such an overkill of sugar that they really weren't enjoyable anymore. I get far more enjoyment out of a single bite of low-carb chocolate now, than I did out of a whole regular candy bar this time last year.

Also, since I began Atkins, I HAVE had some of the most amazingly delicious foods I never even knew existed - especially when eating out - because I'm eating things I never would have considered ordering before.

When my standard meal consisted of (breaded-and-deep-fried) meat, with potatos (in some form) on the side, I never realized how amazingly awesome a grilled filet of salmon with steamed broccoli could be. A nodding acquaintence with dinner salads on the way to a carb fest does not a widely-varied diet make.

I maintain stoutly that low-carbing actually opens up a whole new world of food experiences to the truly committed. It allows you to explore new horizons that most of us probably never considered investigating before - if for no other reason, then out of desperation to NOT be bored! You just have to be willing to give it a go, try new things, think a new way.

And I think that generally speaking, if someone just really doesn't like any vegetables and find meats boring, then this probably isn't the WOL for them anyways. You can't live on eggs forever.