Supplies and suppliers

List of supplies you might want to keep on hand.

Basic stuff

• Coconut oil

Baking

• Almond flour
  • NU3 Organic almond flour
    • Lower fat content (~15%, 50% protein)
    • Finely ground, closer to wheat flour than typical “ground almonds”
    • Warning : when measuring by volume (cups, tablespoons…), dial down to 80%
• Coconut flour
  • NU3 Organic coconut flour
    • Standard stuff
  • Higher carb count than almond, but usually smaller amounts needed
• Psyllium husk powder
  • NU3 Psyllium Husk Powder
  • 85% fiber
  • Natural thickening/binding agent, turns water into jelly!
  • Used when baking w/ coconut or almond flour (which lack gluten)
  • Typically for “moist” recipes (bread, cakes …)
• Xanthan gum
  • Binding/thickening agent
  • Typically for “dry” recipes (cookies …)

Sweeteners

• Xylitol
  • NU3 Xylitol
  • Xucker (untested, cheaper)
  • Sweetness very close to actual sugar (1:1)
  • GI: ~7-10
  • Limited aftertaste
  • Toxic to dogs (and maybe cats) : store accordingly
• Erythritol
  • NU3 Erythritol
  • Lower sweetness (~80%)
  • GI: 0
  • Cool after-taste
  • Safe for pets
• Liquid stevia
  • Stevia Sweet liquid stevia
  • Only use a few drops
  • Can be used to sweeten stuff that doesnt require bulk but can be bitter when on its own
  • Can be used to “boost” sweetness when baking

You may want to blend Xylitol and Erythritol (50-50) to tone down the aftertaste from erythritol while averaging down the overall GI.

Stevia works great to tweak the sweetness level but may not be very useful on its own. YMMV.

Pasta substitute

• Shirataki / Konjac noodles
  • Extruded as
    • spaghetti
    • fettucini
    • tagliatelle
    • rice
  • Can be used as noodle substitute:
    • in soup
    • in stir-frys
    • with homemade bolognese or other kind of sauce
  • Essentially useless from the nutrition angle: water + some fiber
  • Tasteless: eat them with generous amount of sauce, or in stir-frys.
  • Texture slightly different from regular pasta
  • Buy a pack or two to test before buying bulk: some people just don’t like the lack of taste and/or texture
  • How to prepare them:
    1. Remove them from package and drain the water
    2. Thoroughly rince them w/cold water to remove any taste from the storage water
    3. Drain in a pasta strainer
    4. In a non-stick pan, heat the noodles (no fat !) to dry them out. Approx 5-8min. This helps with the texture.
    5. Add sauce or toss in your stir-fry

Before going LCHF, I would have a 2:1 pasta-to-sauce/meat ratio. These days it’s the other way around: 1 part noodle substitute to 2 or 3 parts bolognese sauce. I’m this close to eating bolognese sauce without konjac noodles anyway. :)

Bread

If you don’t feel like baking your own low carb bread:

• Ready-to-mix low-carb bread
  • Konzelmann’s L-Carnitine mix
    • Easy to bake, just add water, let it rise, put it in a baking form and bake
    • On the heavy/dense side
    • Can be toasted
    • Can be stored a few days in the fridge without drying out

Pizza dough

If you don’t feel like making your own fat head pizza:

• Ready-to-mix low carb pizza
  • Konzelmann’ pizza mix
    • Add water, mix, let it rise, spread on baking sheet.
    • You may want to bake the dough a few minutes on its own before adding the tomato sauce/toppings
    • Overall a decent susbtitute (a little high in carbs though, I would consider it only in maintenance)