Comfort Food

This dish is Italian comfort food. I curl up on sofa with a bowl of this and watch a movie. You can go totally low-carb with this one and make it without the pasta. Tastes just as good. This also makes a great casserole addition to a pot luck party.

This stew will contain your meat and vegetable portion, serve with salad greens for a complete meal.

Just like the one your mom made, only healthier. Everyone loves the green bean casserole. Here I'll show you one one that doesn't take much longer to make and it’s real food, not processed!

This recipe makes a yummy vegetarian lunch or side dish to go with a protein. I also put it in Zola to GO! because it can travel to a buffet.

In addition to being crunchy, satisfying and delicious, pumpkin seeds are a nutritious snack. You can buy shelled pumpkin seeds in the grocery store (also know as pepitas), but when pumpkin season rolls around, you can buy a fresh pumpkin, scrape out the seeds, and toast the whole seeds yourself. YUM! 

As the weather gets colder and the nights get longer this makes a wonderful soup. Or if you get a cold while on Plan Z this might be just the ticket!

A traditional Italian meal made the Plan Z way. My husband declared this one of his favorite meals of the year.

Lobster thermidor is a classic dish. It’s decadent because of the cost of the lobster but it also has one of the dreamiest sauces you can possibly imagine.

If we had a gourmet comfort food category this recipe would be the first one. Its easy to make, very satisfying, and tastes delicious. A great meal for a rainy day.

Dieter Claire invented this recipe by modifying the fruit parfait recipe and adding extra frozen strawberries. She says, "it's as close to ice cream as you can get." We agree.

This dish tastes very much like Shrimp Scampi that you might order in an Italian restaurant. The addition of cheese takes it over the top in terms of BIG YUM.

Fennel has a distinct flavor, but when it's roasted, the flavor mellows. If you like fennel, this recipe is great, and it's very easy to make.  

I’m Irish, so beef stew was a staple in our family. Trouble is there are so many carbs in most beef stew recipes. So with this recipe I have adjusted it to keep the carbs lower and introduce some other veggies that are lower carb to the mix.

Serve this at your next family event instead of potatoes and you’ll save 30% of the carbs.

Can be a vegetarian entrée or a side dish. SUPER Yummy because as the squash bakes it becomes sweet.

Talk about comfort food. This is the pure definition. Thankfully fat doesn’t make you fat so you can eat this at parties and not feel the guilt.

There’s something about the potential of smelling apples baking with cinnamon and nutmeg that conjures up fond memories of my mother in the kitchen. She taught me as a small girl to make apple crisp so I did it often. This also makes a wonderful little breakfast the next day.

With this recipe, I’ve included about 25% of the pasta that would be in most similar recipes. That’s a big secret. Just cut it back. You won’t miss it. This casserole focuses on the veggies, the protein and the sauce.

This dish comes together in a flash. If you are doing beef enchiladas, I recommend red sauce. If you are doing chicken, I recommend you go wild and use a green sauce.

Pasta doesn’t have to be banned from ZLife. You just need to limit it and monitor how you use it. If you keep in mind that a FULL portion is a half cup cooked you’re on the right track. And just eat it on a special occasion.

At first you’d think chimichangas would be high carb. The good news is they have low carb tortillas at the grocery store that taste the same as the traditional. Look for the low carb versions.

This is a meaty chili with some veggies tossed in for crunch factor. Makes a satisfying lunch.

I love this soup. You can make this with leftover turkey and have a colorful way to use your extras.

Serve in soup bowls with a protein of choice. In Z2 this is your veggie portion. You can have plain salad greens on the side if you need more. It’s very filling though.

This is a yummy, satisfying soup.

This will taste pretty darn official!

This is not the usual, thick, gloppy chowder since you are on ZReduction, but it will pass as a fancy, flavorful meal.

This tastes amazingly like gooey apple pie! This is delightful. Just like Grandma used to make.

Made this tonight and was very happy with it – it would count as your vegetable and your meat although you could definitely add a green salad. I found it to be very filling.

This casserole tastes just like a zippy chicken enchilada without the major carbohydrate intake.

This is a classic Italian dish. The one you order at Olive Garden will have WAY more pasta than this dish will have. That’s okay. The shrimp are the real star of this dish. Plus, you’ll be better off without all that starch. 

This is a wonderfully moist meatloaf. It has a kick from the Cajun spices but not all that much and you can adjust according to taste. This transports well to work.

This dish can be made a day ahead and reheated.

This is fast to make and is a wonderful comfort food addition to your recipes.

This is a throw it together FAST meal for any weeknight. It is not a spicy dish but you can if you wish, add hot sauce at the table for a little extra zing.

What better time to have a spicy chili than when I am in lockdown, practicing social distancing. 

A no sugar variation of my caramelized pears recipe. Still very yummy!

Pierre Franey was a cooking hero of mine. He was the original “60 Minute Gourmet.” I adapted this recipe from one of his and turned it into a wonderful diet meal.

What’s the difference between chili and taco soup? Broth, of course. There is more broth in taco soup is more so it’s thinner than chili. The internet tells me that chili is technically considered a stew. Go figure.

We made this during a snow storm, the taste took off the chill of the day.

This dish comes together in a flash! You can also make it with steak or even seafood. When I get a hankering for pasta, I crave Chicken Alfredo. This one did it for me!

The inside of this pie bake tastes just like Midwest comfort food. You won't even notice the potatoes are missing. It has just enough carrots to remind you how sweet they are. Same for the peas. The onion, celery and the mushrooms give it the depth of flavor you'll remember from childhood. The topping isn't your average pie crust. This one is low carb. So it's not like a biscuit either. I'm still trying to perfect low carb biscuits, so this is sort of a cross-breed.

Two things I love about living mid-South: fried green tomatoes, and tomato pie.

Fried till golden using coconut flour.

For all you cabbage lovers out there, this recipe is a ZReduction take on a German classic. While you can whip this dish up in about 30 minutes, red cabbage tastes sweeter the longer you cook it -- so if you are on ZReduction and like your cabbage a little sweeter, cook it low and slow until the flavors mellow and meld to your liking.

When you buy corned beef, there is a little packet of corned beef spices that accompanies the brisket. The secret is to use that and ADD your own corned beef spices to the mix -- after you toast them.

Feels just like you are eating in the French countryside.

When you are in the ZReduction portion of Plan Z you will not be eating the skin of the chicken or any of the dark meat. Breast meat only.

This soup can be served hot or cold.

I adapted this dish from one I saw in a recipe site. I had to change it quite a bit to “Zola-fy” it but it was just so decadent and creamy I had to share.

This is a famous chili that probably should not even be called a chili. It was invented by two brothers who emigrated from Europe in the 1920’s. Of course, they lived in Cincinnati. When finished this will look sort of like chili but it’s served on spaghetti. There are no beans and it’s not spicy. It’s flavorful for sure, but not “hot.” Don’t let the list of ingredients throw you off.