Comfort Food

Amatriciana is an Italian dish. Simple and traditional. I am calling this American Amatriciana because the Italian version is made with guanciale or pancetta. I make mine with good ole’ American bacon. This is one of my husband’s favorite dishes. I hope you love it too.

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

When you get into the second portion of ZReboot you can start to experiment with a little more carbohydrates. Try this at week 4 – 6 of ZReboot and see how you do.

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

A rich and easy cream of mushroom soup.

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.

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 dish is easy to put together. The spouse or the kids can help chop and it comes together fast. You can be doing other things while your dinner bakes in the oven. Makes great leftovers, too.

I came up with this recipe at the end of summer. I took what I call an “inspiration” recipe and Zolified it so we can enjoy it. It’s really tasty. 

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! 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!

This is a simple chili. It’s a takeoff from an old Betty Crocker recipe. Can’t get much simpler than that!

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

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.

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.

I remember my first introduction to scallops like it was yesterday. As I took my first bite and swooned I knew these were to become a new favorite.

For a change of pace you can try a unique meatloaf. This one comes with an optional extra sauce in case you want to really ramp up the flavor.

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

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.

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.

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 is a great crock pot recipe. Super simple but really tasty.

Fried till golden using coconut flour.

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.

It’s all the rage in the big city. Have a runny egg on top of your burger. Well, you can do that in ZReduction too! I just ate mine and I’m stuffed!

My husband loves shrimp and grits. His mother was from Arkansas and they ate grits often. Trouble is grits are very high carb. Traditional grits are made from cornmeal. I took an inspiration recipe and came up with my own version of shrimp and grits. There is just enough corn in here to help you get the corn flavor without the cornmeal. And there’s enough cheese in here that even though you’ll be using almond meal (aka almond flour) for your grits base, you won’t taste the almond.

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

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.

You could call this the “adult version” of Sloppy Joes.  It does have some ZIP to it. Don’t be intimidated by the length of the ingredients list. The recipe is worth it. And you probably have most of these ingredients in your pantry.

Tomato basil soup is very easy to make. It comes together in a flash. The addition of cooked chicken elevates it to a one bowl meal.

This is a yummy, satisfying soup.

This soup can be served hot or cold.

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.

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!

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.

This recipe is for all the vegetarians out there. Thank you dieter Nancy for this photo. For you non-vegetarians this makes a great side dish to go along with a grilled meat. We had this last night with grilled Andouille sausage and had a lovely meal.

Feels just like you are eating in the French countryside.

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 award-winning chili recipe won best Verde Chili by the International Chili Society in 2018. "Texas Chuck," the creator of this awesome recipe, made this chili using Mild Bills Spices (in case you're trying to get his authentic flavor).

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.

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.

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.

My husband loves these so much he asks for them probably 4 times a week and has even begun making them himself! They taste every bit as good as regular onion rings without the breading.

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.

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

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!

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.

Celebrity Chef Jernard Wells knows soul food. While a lot of his food is quite decadent, he also loves greens, and shared his wonderful southern greens recipe in a local interview. What's great about it is it can easily be modified to fit ZReboot. His original recipe calls for sugar, but by replacing the sugar with your favorite sugar substitute, you can still enjoy this delicious recipe.