Snacking

What can you eat as a snack on a low carb diet? As long as you're prepared it's quite simple to organise a wide variety of tasty snack foods. Here are some of my favourites:

• Nuts - almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts. These can be home roasted and a little salt added. Do not include peanuts as they are actually part of the legume (peas, beans) family so are not low carb

• Dark chocolate - a little good quality dark chocolate with at least 80% cocoa. The high cocoa content means there is less sugar. Aldi do a lovely 85% one. It's called MoserRoth and looks like a large bar of chocolate but is actually 5 individually wrapped bars. I find these very handy as they stop me eating too much of it!

• Fresh strawberries and cream - I do say not to eat too much fruit but strawberries have one of the lowest amounts of sugar

• Fresh figs and parma ham - figs are very high in fibre and contain as little sugar as strawberries 

• Parmesan crisps - bake finely grated piles of parmesan on a greasproof paper lined tray in the oven (at 180°C) for 5 or 6 minutes

• Carrot sticks and cream cheese

• Carrot sticks and almond butter

• Olives

• Cheese and gherkins

• Mixed seeds - dry fry a mixture of pumpkin and sunflower seeds in a little soy sauce with chilli flakes

Sometimes if we're peckish in the evening, Ronan creates a platter of goodies!

Who needs a recipe?

You don't always need a recipe to create delicious healthy low carb lunches and dinners. You can grill any type of meat or fish and serve it with a pile of tasty vegetables or salad. If you miss your potatoes, replace them with cauliflower purée. A fillet steak served with garlic butter (always make your own - just add crushed or sliced garlic to softened butter - to avoid hidden additives) and a salad is gorgeous and perfect for when you need fast food. Or what about salmon darnes, oven baked with lemon in tinfoil parcels.

We eat a lot of salads in our house, particularly during the Summer. Not just as an accompaniment to meat or fish but as a complete dish in their own right. Sometimes we cook a ham and serve it sliced with mixed leaves, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, nuts and seeds. Or for lunch I might have lettuce with pears, stilton and walnuts. If you're particularly hungry, have a Niçoise salad because it contains tuna, egg and olives.

We tend to have a roast dinner on a Sunday. We serve it with roasted vegetables, mashed turnip or carrots. You can't have normal gravy as it is made with flour but you can make an alternative sauce using sour cream and stock, heated gently together. Another favourite of ours is to spatchcock a chicken, marinate it in Frank's sauce and then roast it. We serve it with homemade coleslaw.

Steak and salad

Spatchcock roast chicken with homemade coleslaw