Southern Keto

by Natasha Newton

  I dedicate this book to my beloved Southern grandmas, Ida Mae and Isabell—not only because they were great Southern cooks, but also because they lived a life of kindness and grace and in service to others. They both embodied what it means to be a Proverbs 31 woman. I hope to carry on their legacy of light and love.

  First Published in 2019 by Victory Belt Publishing Inc.

  Copyright © 2019 Natasha Newton

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-628603-13-2

  The author is not licensed a practitioner, physician, or medical professional and offers no medical diagnoses, treatments, suggestions, or counseling. The information presented herein has not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Full medical clearance from a licensed physician should be obtained before beginning or modifying any diet, exercise, or lifestyle program, and physicians should be informed of all nutritional changes.

  The author/owner claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein.

  Front and back cover photos and Fruit Pizza photo by Hayley Mason and Bill Staley

  Cover design by Justin-Aaron Velasco

  Interior design by Yordan Terziev and Boryana Yordanova

  Printed in Canada

  TC 0118

  Contents

  Southern Heritage

  My Story

  Getting Started with Keto

  Eating and Cooking Keto

  Practical Keto Tips

  Sample Menus

  Recipes That Are Good for Doubling

  RECIPES

  Breakfast & Breads

  Appetizers & Snacks

  Soups & Salads

  Main Dishes

  Side Dishes

  Desserts

  Drinks

  Condiments

  In Appreciation

  Testimonials

  Measurement and Cooking Conversion Tables

  Resources

  Recipe Quick Reference

  Recipe Index

  Southern Heritage

  Hey y’all! Come on in, take your shoes off, and stay awhile! Can I get you anything to eat or drink? Yes, this is the way most conversations began when a guest entered my childhood home. Southern hospitality is still alive and well. We are proud to carry on the traditions of our grandmothers. My fondest memories of growing up Southern involve the love and effort that Southerners put into their food. These memories are ingrained in my heart and my soul forever.

  I grew up in south-central Kentucky, and I’ve lived in Tennessee for the past twenty years. Depending on which part of the South you are from, the cuisine is likely to vary. Traditional Southern foods are known to be breaded and deep-fried, most likely in bacon drippings or lard like our grandmas used. Lots of fresh garden-grown vegetables can always be found. In addition to beef and pork, wild game meat such as venison, squirrel, rabbit, and turkey are plentiful. If you are lucky enough to live in the Southern coastal regions, you also have access to fresh fish, crab, oysters, and shrimp. Food and drink are central to our Southern roots. The rich homemade desserts, cakes, and candies are out of this world! And of course, we can’t forget the Southern drink of choice, sweet tea!

  Growing up, I remember every family gathering revolved around the fabulous food our mommas and grandmas would prepare. It was made with love, and lots of it! Where I’m from, when someone has a baby, we take the family a meal. If someone is ill or has had surgery, we take the family a meal. If someone loses a loved one, we take food to the family during their time of mourning. It’s an act of love that we take very seriously. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

  You’ve probably heard the phrase “Southern hospitality” many times. If you visit us, we want you to feel right at home, and we’re going to feed you! That’s how I was raised. I get it from my Grandma Ida Mae. Anytime we would go to her house, she would feed us. Even if you didn’t think you were hungry, you would want to find something to eat at Grandma’s house. Later, after I got married and my husband and I would visit, she would say to me, “Fix your husband something to eat.” He always got a kick out of that! Being of an older generation, she also expected me to wait on my husband.

  When I eat foods like the ones she used to prepare, I am instantly transported back in time. Life was simpler then. It was all about the love of family and friends gathered together for the holidays, special occasions, and church potlucks. In my experience, that’s why comfort food is called just that. No matter what area or culture we grow up in, we associate food with comfort and our memories of time spent with loved ones. It is very important to me to keep those traditions alive no matter which way of eating we choose.

  In this book, I’m sharing mostly iconic dishes from my childhood. I’ve worked to convert Southern comfort foods like Grandma used to make to fit a low-carb, ketogenic lifestyle. The recipes in this book are not going to taste exactly like your grandmother’s food. Let’s face it, no one can compete with that! But we can get pretty darn close. If Ida Mae were still alive, I’m not sure she would agree with the culinary changes I’ve made to these traditional Southern dishes, but I do believe she would be proud! Throughout my childhood, she worried a lot about my weight and health. I know it would make her happy to see me so much stronger and healthier.

  Grandma would start preparing holiday meals weeks in advance. She put so much love into the food she made for our family. I, too, love cooking holiday meals; there’s something special about planning and preparing meals that I know my family will love. I have successfully prepared ketogenic meals for birthdays, Thanksgiving, and even Christmas! I truly believe it is possible to stay on track and not feel deprived on such occasions. And avoiding those feelings of guilt that come from overindulging in foods that aren’t good for you is great.

  When I got married, I didn’t know how to cook much besides spaghetti. I know you’re thinking, Wait a minute, didn’t your grandma teach you how to cook? I was definitely influenced by watching Ida Mae cook for years, but I didn’t take the time to learn for myself until I was older. I taught myself to cook by following recipes in old church fundraiser cookbooks and in Southern Living magazine, which I received monthly. I was fortunate to live up the road from my grandparents and watched my grandma cook so many times. I believe that’s why cooking comes naturally to me. Of course, I was drawn to Southern comfort food and lots of carbs! Once I became comfortable and confident in my ketogenic cooking skills, I became interested in remaking all the comfort foods that my family loves low-carb. I’ve found that many of my old family recipes can be converted to keto recipes.

  There’s a learning curve to ketogenic cooking and baking, but once you get the basics down, you’ll find yourself wanting to “keto-fy” everything. With this cookbook, I hope to help you think outside the box when it comes to keeping ketogenic food interesting, no matter the type of cuisine you choose. Making it fun is how I have been able to sustain this lifestyle long term!

  My Story

  Mine is a complicated and somewhat messy story. I wish I had a definitive testimonial for you that went like this: I was obese and lost all this weight using this one method, and that’s the one thing that worked for me. Then I could inspire you to do the same. Instead, I will tell you my story, starting with childhood obesity and how it affected me in my adult years. I do hope it inspires you. I want you to know th
at despite failing what seemed like hundreds of times, I finally found what works for me. I encourage you to never give up. Never stop searching for what works for you. You can have success and live the life you desire. I truly believe that if I can do it, anyone can!

  Struggling with my weight growing up

  From a very young age, I didn’t really feel like I fit in with other kids. I had a wonderful loving family, and they didn’t treat me any differently, but around grade-school age, I became very self-aware of my body image. In the 1980s, there weren’t many clothing options for a child who was even slightly overweight. My mom bought me mostly dresses because that’s all she could find to fit my shape, aside from boys’ husky-size jeans. I remember being a Girl Scout and so wanting to dress like the other scouts. They all matched in their uniforms with pants, while mine was of course a Girl Scout dress, but we were happy that there was a dress option! That was only the beginning of my desire to fit in and be what I considered normal.

  I was placed on my first real diet at the age of nine. It was a medically supervised diet at a local doctor’s office and involved a weekly group meeting with all adults. We would weigh in, and then each person around the table had to say whether he or she had lost or gained weight and how much. We were required to keep a weekly food journal, and it was calorie based. I was allowed no more than 1,200 calories and 20 grams of fat per day. I don’t remember losing any weight on that program. I was only nine; my heart wasn’t in it! I just wanted to be like other nine-year-olds, who only had to think about playing and other fun things. I want to make it clear that I do not blame my parents for putting me in this program! They were just concerned parents doing the best they could for their overweight child. Being a parent myself has helped me understand that even more. They were worried about my health, and I’m thankful they tried. No one else in our family was overweight, so they didn’t know how to deal with it.

  I’ve struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. I always had an unhealthy obsession with food. My mom wouldn’t keep much junk food at home because she worried that I would eat it all. As soon as I left her sight and got to family and friends’ houses, I would eat whatever I could get my hands on—especially sugary cereals that weren’t available at my house. Sometimes to the point of making myself sick. It was the 1980s, and the fat-free diet fad was in full force! I remember eating lots of rice cakes and thinking how flavorless they were. Mom, an avid walker, would try to get me to exercise with her. She would take long walks and ask me to join her. Again, my heart wasn’t in it. I would reluctantly go along but would take as many breaks as possible, always letting her walk ahead.

  These early struggles set the stage for my lifelong battle with low self-esteem and food addiction. I didn’t know it was food addiction. I didn’t know I was addicted to sugar and carbs. After all, fat was the enemy, not sugar! I remember genuinely wanting to lose weight and be what I considered normal. I tried every diet imaginable, but I never followed through. The first time I lost a significant amount of weight, I was eighteen years old, and I took the prescription weight-loss pill known as fen-phen (now believed to have contributed to many deaths and illnesses). Like the many other diets I’d tried over the years, the results didn’t last. I lost a lot of weight and gained it all back. My love for sugar and carbs always won out. I thought I didn’t have willpower. No matter how much weight-loss success I had, I would always gain the weight back—and then some! This led to severe depression and self-loathing, not to mention the effects it had on my body, health, and relationships.

  Growing up, I had good friends, and thankfully I don’t remember being bullied because of my weight. In general, it was more a feeling of not belonging. My self-esteem was very low, and it held me back from participating in the extracurricular activities that other kids my age were doing. I also let it hold me back academically. I didn’t try very hard, and I had no belief in myself. The teen years are hard enough without battling obesity!

  I met my husband when I was twenty. When we met, I was on the lower end of my weight range after one of my many diets. We fell in love immediately and have been together ever since. He has stuck with me through all the ups and downs of my weight and health struggles. He has never once judged me or made me feel any less loved. I’m so thankful for him and his unconditional support throughout the years. No matter how much he loved me, though, I still didn’t love myself, and at times that lack of self-esteem strained our relationship.

  My highest known weight was 309 pounds. I was likely bigger, but at some point I stopped weighing myself. I was in denial that I had let my weight get so far out of control. One day I was reading my medical record and saw that the doctor had described me as “morbidly obese.” Those words stung. I kept staring at them and reading them over and over. I thought to myself, I’m twenty-five years old and I could die because of my weight. You’d think that would have been the turning point, but it wasn’t. I continued with yo-yo dieting, but my unhealthy obsession with food always won out. I kept searching for the next big thing—a new diet or pill that would magically fix me.

  I was working in home health and a patient asked me, “When is your baby due?” Humiliation washed over me. My baby was two years old at the time! The same thing happened when I was out shopping another day. I’ve since learned never to ask someone when her baby is due. Just don’t.

  I was deeply depressed, which led to more eating and more weight gain. I was so embarrassed and avoided any and all social situations I could. One day at church, I sat down in a chair that had arms. I had sat in that chair many times before, and this time I was barely able to squeeze into it. I knew I was reaching the point of no return, and I felt like a ticking time bomb. I went on another diet and started walking. Over the next few months, I lost 50 pounds. Then I found out that I was pregnant with my second child, and I vowed to be healthier during that pregnancy. I went off the diet I’d been following, but I didn’t gain too much weight.

  After my son was born and I was cleared by my doctor, I began an exercise routine. I lost a lot more weight, but I wasn’t eating healthfully, and I wasn’t enjoying the food I was eating. In fact, I didn’t eat much at all. My hair started to fall out because I was eating so poorly. At one point, my total weight loss reached around 150 pounds. I was the smallest I had ever been. The joy that came from that accomplishment was short-lived, though. In the next year, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. (I’ll talk more about that in a bit.) The next few years were a blur of flare-ups and hospitalizations. I felt so alone and like every aspect of my life was spiraling out of control. It is thought to be common for people who have Crohn’s disease to become underweight, but that wasn’t the case for me; I managed to gain back all but about 50 of the pounds I had lost. As they say, old habits die hard, and once again I was finding solace in food.

  Over the next several years, my struggles with food addiction and weight continued. Sometimes I felt hopeless, and food was my only comfort. It’s really hard to think about it now, and even harder to openly share it with so many people. Even though I struggled with my health and weight, I was blessed with a wonderful life. I had a devoted husband and beautiful children, and here I was basing my self-worth on a number on a scale. I have so many regrets, and that is one of them. I do wish I had loved myself more throughout the process, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

  By the age of thirty-nine, I thought I was destined to struggle with my weight forever. After giving up what seemed like hundreds of times, I decided to try something different. I was seeing things online about low-carb and keto. I knew about low-carb and had probably tried it for a day or two before, but it seemed boring and unsustainable to me. I kept seeing it pop up here and there, though, and I thought, Why not? I’ve tried everything else, why not try this, too? What really piqued my curiosity wasn’t so much the weight loss; I had seen plenty of before-and-after pictures with every diet. I myself had lost huge amounts of weight on various other diets. What attracted
me to keto was that people were talking about not being hungry and how eating fat kept them satisfied. After a lifetime of counting calories and fat, this blew my mind. Could it be true? Could I really eat fat, lose weight, and not be hungry while doing it? It went against everything I knew at that point.

  I dove into research and read everything I could find online. I researched A LOT! When I decide to do something, I want to know all the details. When I felt like I had learned enough to get started, I was excited to try it. I quickly became obsessed with sugar and carbs. I was very strict in the beginning; I didn’t even allow myself keto treats. I wasn’t hungry and lost 20 pounds pretty fast. In my mind, this was just a diet. With that mindset, old tendencies set in, and I had my first binge. I thought, Well, that’s it. This is me; this is what I do. I sabotage every good thing that happens to me. I felt sorry for myself for a while. I made excuses and thought, Well, maybe the keto diet isn’t for me, either.

  It took a few weeks, but I had this nagging feeling that I was missing out on something big. I had learned too much about keto to just forget everything. I decided to try again. This time I went in with a different mindset. My usual all-or-nothing approach wasn’t going to get me very far; I was finally realizing that it only increases my tendency to binge. This time, I would allow myself more grace. I had to start viewing it as a lifestyle change. This was not easy for me, and I fell off the wagon a few more times, but then something clicked, and I found myself not wanting to go back to my old ways. Every part of me was being renewed. It wasn’t just the weight I was losing. My mind felt clearer than ever before. This is where the “keto is life” philosophy comes in. One day I was feeling so positive about the changes I was experiencing from the inside out that I thought to myself, Keto is life! It wasn’t just a fad diet to me; I had tried all those. This one was life-changing. My life was changing. For the first time, I felt like I was in control.