Comfort Food

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.

This is an easy preparation with a homey vibe, when you want comfort food this is a sure bet.

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

This will taste pretty darn official!

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

Feels just like you are eating in the French countryside.

When you need some serious cold weather comfort food, ratatouille hits the spot. This shortcut ratatouille-inspired recipe was submitted by dieter Angela. She Zolafied the original recipe and created a delicious ZReduction veggie sauté that can be made in less than half the time of a traditional ratatouille.

I love to take the leftover turkey and transform it into something different. French comfort food. BIG YUM.

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.

One of my favorite Cajun meals is chicken mamou. Mamou in Creole is basically grandma. So this is “grandma('s) chicken.”

Chris’s cousins sent us a HUGE box of fruit as his get well wish. There are only two of us, so in order to use the fruit I have had to get creative! Oh, my, these are yummy!

Tastes very much like the traditional version but this one doesn’t include higher carbohydrate vegetables like carrots and potatoes. Still quite delightful, though. Brings back memories of grandma.

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.

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.

This meal is good for breakfast, lunch or dinner. With a side salad it makes a nice brunch offering too!

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.

You’ll think you’re eating at an Italian Grandma’s house when you taste this.

Cooking does not have to be complicated. In this recipe Chef Josh shows us how to make a simple and delicious puree using butternut squash. Easy. Decadent. Delicious.

When I was a kid my father traveled a lot. When he was gone, sometimes my mom would let us just fry up some hamburger meat and add a can of Campbell’s baked beans. We called it bean hash. I loved it.

A good old American favorite with a Mexican twist.

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.

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! 

This soup can be served hot or cold.

A delightful chicken dish that tastes very French. This is super easy to make and dieters are enjoying it all over the country.

A very quick and simple family dinner.

This tastes a lot like my mom’s bean soup with the addition of tomato and zucchini.

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.

You can have your stroganoff and eat it too! Most stroganoff recipes are served over rice or a big pile of noodles. You don’t have to do that. You have other choices.

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.

Everyone loves pumpkin, right? Well, how about a tea bread that’s made with pumpkin? Sort of like banana bread. Or even make it with sweet potato puree.

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.  

Everyone has their Thanksgiving traditions; especially when it comes to food. Do you ever think about breaking tradition and making something different?

When I was young I loved going to Chi Chi’s and ordering the chimichanga. Now that I know all the carbs from the tortilla it was wrapped in are a bad idea, I decided to make a lower carb casserole version.

This is a “Whopper” of a meatloaf, designed to taste like the famous burger. I hope you enjoy.

I don’t eat potatoes very often but these are worth the splurge a few times a year. The yellow potatoes they are made from in my recipe are lower in carbohydrates than a Russet potato, so that’s a bonus, too.

We have to thank Dieter Claire for inventing this recipe. She modified the fruit parfait recipe and developed a strawberry "ice cream" recipe and this recipe with frozen mandarin oranges. She says, “it’s like an orange creamsicle.” YUM!

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

Dieter Jessica made this meal on one of her first days of ZReduction. It was so delicious she wanted to share it with everyone.

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.

You know how you can eat mac and cheese and not even use your teeth? This had the same result. BIG YUM!

This is a great comfort food. Make a big pot and pack it up for lunches on future days for a nice hot meal on a cold day.

A rich and easy cream of mushroom soup.

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. 

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.

I found this recipe online. I didn’t have to do much to make it Zola. It tastes very much like a cheeseburger. The way to make it exciting though is to make sure you pile on the toppings that you like on your burger. You can feed the whole family with this and no one will miss the bun.

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.

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

Talk about easy to make. This soup is done in a flash. If you’re like me you’ll make a triple batch. You can freeze the portions and just add shrimp bits when you go to serve it.