Omelette of the Month

Ingredients:

Eggs

Heavy Cream

Butter

Shredded Cheddar

Fresh spinach, quickly sliced

Mushrooms, sliced and quickly chopped

Tomato, diced, small (roma)

Green Bell Pepper, finely chopped

Kosher Salt
Onion Powder
(Optional: Shredded Parmesan)

1. Melt butter in a pan just below medium heat.
2. While butter is melting, whisk eggs. With the amount of veg, 2 will make a large, satisfying omelette for one person with a smaller appetite. If I'm making a mega-omelette (for 2), I'll use 5-6.
3. Whisk just enough heavy cream into the eggs for its consistency to become more uniform. Hard to describe, but think about 1 tablespoon tops for a small omelette.
4. Whisk in a dash of onion powder and salt and pour into pan.
5. Spread the veggies on top in as uniform a distribution as possible.
6. Add a slightly ridiculous handful of shredded cheddar on top, with a little bit of parmesan if you're going to do that. (It's very good!)
7. Once the cheese is mostly melty and the eggs are cooked through to your satisfaction, attempt to fold. I'm awful at this, but maybe you aren't!
8. Cut in half and serve if you made a mega omelette, or just slide onto a plate for a single serving.

I don't actually come up with a new omelette of the month, but I've been craving this particular configuration about once a day every day for the past week+, so I suppose it counts!

Simple Green Beans

Ingredients:

Green Beans, fresh

1 tablespoon red pepper, fresh, finely chopped

1 tablespoon butter

Kosher salt

Black pepper, freshly ground

1. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.
2. When it's hot enough to just start browning, add green beans. They should be sizzling.
3. Add the red pepper on top of the green beans.
4. Sauté for about 4-5 minutes. You want the green beans to retain some of their crunchiness.
5. Sprinkle with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Alfredo Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

Butter
Heavy Cream
Parmesan
Cream Cheese
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder
Nutmeg
Salt

1. Melt butter over medium heat in a sauce pan. This is the step where you'd want to add any fresh ingredients (except herbs), such as chopped mushrooms and fresh garlic and onion (don't add garlic and onion powder if you do this.) I'm not adding them in the "official" recipe, since this is for a uniformly textured "restaurant style" alfredo sauce – obviously, the traditional alfredo isn't actually creamy at all.
2. Add a dollop of cream cheese and pour in heavy cream, removing the pan from the heat if it's gotten too hot, and stir rapidly to blend and disperse the heat. Return to heat, on a lower setting if necessary.
3. Stir in parmesan slowly, allowing it to melt. This is what's going to give your sauce body.
4. Sprinkle in garlic and onion powder, salt to taste, and a dash of nutmeg.
5. It should be thick and ready to serve, but if you have to wait, turn the heat down to the lowest setting that will keep it warm and stir every 5 minutes, until you can serve it.

I like to serve this over broccoli and chicken breasts. It's best garnished with fresh parsley and freshly ground black pepper at the table.

Extremely Basic Marinara

Ingredients:

Tomato Paste
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Garlic, chopped
Yellow onion, chopped
Water
Salt

1. Cook the onion and garlic in the olive oil on medium-low heat until the onion is well-caramelized, stirring every 5-10 minutes. (This takes me about 30-40 minutes.)
2. Sprinkle a bit of salt in, then stir in the tomato paste.
3. Add enough water to blend the tomato paste, then add the rest once you've thoroughly mixed it. (You could add all the water right away, it's just easier to get the tomato paste to blend with less water than it is when it's clumped in a big pot of it.) Your tomato paste can/tube/whatever should give you guidelines on how much to add. Remember that a lot of this is going to cook off.
4. Cover and simmer for 4-5 hours, until it stops tasting like watery tomato paste and starts tasting like delicious sauce. 

So, this is my sicilian grandmother's sauce! When I asked my mother a few years ago what my grandma's recipe was, needless to say I was really surprised. She adds a bit of sugar, but I've found that's not necessary for the keto palate, as the onions are sufficiently sweet on their own.

I've dressed it up by adding spices at the onion-cooking phase, such as thyme, but it's not necessary and really just creates a different flavor (duh). This basic sauce is really quite good on it's own.

Cooking a tomato sauce, from scratch or paste, is always an act of faith. Every time I wonder if this is the time when it's never going to stop tasting like watered down tomatoes, but it always comes together in the end. If your sauce tastes like crap, then it's just not done, yet.

Since we aren't eating pasta, we serve this over spicy italian sausage with mozzarella melted on top.

Collard Greens

Ingredients:

1 Bunch of Collards, washed and chopped
1 slice of bacon
1 plum tomato, chopped
1 chicken or vegetable bullion cube

1. Cook the bacon slice in a large, tall, lidded pot. (The kind you might use for a marinara sauce.)
2. Remove the bacon and set aside to cool. 
3. Add the tomato to the pot and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add 2-3 cups of water to the pot, the bullion cube, and the chopped collards.
5. Cover and let simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour, checking up to make sure the water hasn't all boiled off and stirring every 10 minutes or so.

Pan-Seared Brussels Sprouts with a bit of Cream

Ingredients:

Brussels Sprouts, fresh, halved
Bacon
Parmesan
Heavy Cream
Nutmeg
Kosher Salt
(Optional: Mushrooms, sliced)

1. Cook bacon (a slice or two, depending on how many sprouts you're making) in a pan over medium heat.
2. Remove bacon and set aside. Chop when cool enough to touch.
3. Add brussels sprouts to pan, sliced-part down when possible, in as uniform a layer as possible. If you are adding mushrooms, toss them in during this step, as well.
4. Allow them to cook, undisturbed, for about 5-6 minutes, or however long it takes to get them to start browning. Once they have a nice brown spot seared into them, start stirring, and add a small sprinkle of salt. 
5. Lower the heat on the burner and keep stirring for a minute or so – long enough that it's still hot, but is safe to add a splash of heavy cream to the pan. Again, you just want a splash – enough to coat the sprouts lightly, but it shouldn't be pooling anywhere.
6. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top and keep moving around the pan to blend.
7. Add the chopped bacon back into the pan.
8. Finish with a dash of nutmeg at the end of cooking.

Another Mashed Fauxtatoes Recipe, with Cauliflower

Ingredients:

Head of Cauliflower

Garlic Powder

2 tablespoons of Butter

2 oz. Cream Cheese

~1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt

Fresh Herbs, or dried

1. Rinse a whole cauliflower and roughly chop it.
2. Steam the cauliflower. (We use our rice cooker as a steamer.)
3. Put cauliflower in food processor with a bit of garlic powder or a very small amount of cooked garlic (no more than one clove), butter, cream cheese, and salt.
4. Blend in the food processor until the texture is smooth.
5. Add fresh, chopped herbs and pulse until blended. You can use dried, and the herbs depend on the flavor you want to go for. Dill, rosemary, and parsley all work really well for this. A small amount of paprika also works really well to give a more traditional flavor, but isn't necessary.