Comfort Food

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 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.

Fried till golden using coconut flour.

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.

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. 

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 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.

These meatballs are my take on an authentic meatball recipe from New York city. These actually have a cheesy element to them that make them super yummy. BIG YUM!

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.

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!

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.

A rich and easy cream of mushroom soup.

This recipe is compliments of Dieter Rose. Rose loves cooked cabbage and this does the trick for her. You can take this to work cold and reheat in the microwave too.

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

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.

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.

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! 

Feels just like you are eating in the French countryside.

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

I have designed several chili recipes for Plan Z. This is one of those that is very straightforward and simple. It doesn’t even have a lot of ingredients.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Orzo is a wonderful, tiny pasta. This is the most requested side dish recipe I get from dinner guests–but watch your portion size. Enjoy!

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.

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.

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.

What makes this Zola lasagna is a reasonable amount of pasta. Most lasagna recipes run at least 3 or 4 layers of noodles. This one has 2. And I promise, you won’t miss the other two layers.

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

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.

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

This meatloaf makes six servings. When you serve it, remember that your crunch item is already included, so no breadstick or crackers with this meal.

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.

This is a great Zola to Go! dish, perfect for those cold days for lunch.

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.

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!

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!

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

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.

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

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

This is a yummy, satisfying soup.

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.

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.

We were really happy with the way it turned out and I think you could adjust the seasonings to your own taste if you want more garlic or more salt, etc.

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.