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Interior and Designer: Diana Haas
Art Producer: Janice Ackerman
Editor: Myryah Irby
Production Manager: Martin Worthington
Production Editor: Melissa Edeburn
Photography: 2020 Annie Martin. Food styled by Chris Chapman.
: 2020 Kim Thomas Photography.
ISBN: Print 978-1-64611-219-7 | eBook 978-1-64611-220-3
R0
To everyone brave enough to take on personal health challenges and wake up every morning ready to overcome them
CONTENTS
GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH in Germantown, Tennessee, we both loved spending time in the kitchen making food for ourselves and our families. The first dishes we learned to cookchocolate chip cookies, mashed potatoes, marble Bundt cake, and smoked tofu sandwicheswere heavy on carbs.
Carbs are easy to love. But now that were both past the age of 40, we notice that a few tweaks to our usual diet are sometimes in order for us to feel our best every day.
These days, at our home in Memphis, Tennessee, we cook a variety of delicious vegetarian meals. Justin has followed a vegetarian, and occasionally a vegan, diet since he was 12 years old, and it can be healthy and nourishing when its done right. Amy eats vegetarian meals most of the time, but she is, in her words, not strict and is more flexitarian than anything.
Frankly, simple carbohydrates like French fries and white bread are readily available, filling, and often pretty satisfying. Were not vilifying carbs as evil. They are necessary in a balanced diet. However, even reliably healthy vegetarian meals like beans and rice can be carbohydrate heavy.
When we need a boost of energy, feel like its time to drop a few pounds, or just crave a reset back to a mindful way of eating, we always return to fresh, whole foods like mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini, and cauliflower.
Weve found its easy to eat a lower-carb diet with just a few creative swaps. Often, we begin with simple changes, such as making sandwiches open faced, trying cauliflower pizza crusts, substituting roasted zucchini noodles for pasta, or using nut flours in desserts. Once we start to feel lighter and more energetic, making changes becomes invigorating, not limiting.
Its our mission to make healthy, low-carb vegetarian dishes taste wonderful, so were thrilled to be able to share our creations and discoveries with you in this cookbook. Our low-carb recipes focus on fruits and vegetables, not overly processed foods. We avoid using all-purpose flour, and we limit the addition of sugars.
The bottom line is we want to help make it easy for you to put healthy, delicious, lower-carb vegetarian food on the table. In addition, we hope these satisfying meals help you lose weight and provide you with a noticeable boost of energy each day.
Its important to understand that this is a low-carb, not a no-carb, book. Like everything in life, balance is key. Absolute deprivation should never be the focus of a healthy diet. Instead, aim for a lower overall carb count each day. Cravings will hit from time to time, and sometimes you should feel free to have pasta at lunch or enjoy a doughnut from the best bakery in town. Your other choices that day can be low carb, thereby maintaining the goal of less than 100 grams of (mostly complex) carbohydrates a day.
We are happy to invite you along with us on our quest to make low-carb vegetarian cooking easy and delicious!
To learn more about a carb-conscious vegetarian diet, we consulted with Erin Dragutsky and Kristi Edwards, registered dietitians/nutritionists at 901 Nutrition, and with Carolyn Nichols, a nutrition education coordinator at Church Health Center in Memphis, Tennessee.
THE VEGETARIAN DIET CAN SEEM baffling to nonvegetarians. How do we get through life? Do we limit ourselves to plates of coleslaw at cookouts? Do we order a side salad at restaurants and then devour everything in the bread basket? Do we secretly graze on grass in the backyard?
We vegetarians actually have so much to celebrate! Theres no need to feel bad for us. Prepared properly, the vegetarian diet is nutritious, satisfying, and abundantly flavorful. An array of low-carb vegetables and robust vegetarian proteins can keep you feeling satisfied even without some of the usual vegetarian favorites like pasta, rice, and bread. In addition, we think its important to include protein in many of the vegetarian meals we eat. Some high-quality vegetarian protein sources include seeds, nuts, beans, eggs, edamame, and Greek yogurt.
