Cream cheese pancakes - I agree, good, but messy and hard to get picture perfect. Or maybe I just need more practice. Edit: I wanted to add these make really good "noodles" for lasagna. They hold up great! Chicken enchiladas, too.

Black bean brownies - DISGUSTING

Lettuce wrapped burgers - too messy and they drip. Just put it in a leaf and use a fork or better yet, have a side salad and a naked cheeseburger (and a fork)

Almond flour crust - excellent. Crispy and holds together great. You don't need to sweeten it. Just use melted butter and press it into place. Don't overbake! I've used it for pies and cheesecakes. Hmmm, I should try a chicken pot pie. Lightning just hit my brain.

PB cookies (the egg, PB, Splenda recipe) - great, even if they are dry. Even better, add almond extract. I literally have these in the oven right now! They are pretty good with Carb Smart vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two, if you can budget the carbs. I always mean to try making and freezing premade sandwiches, but I always forget.

Cauliflower "potatoes" anything - YUCK. I get that ppl like them. I've tried many times cause I really wanted to like them. Maybe I like potatoes too much? All I taste is that cabbagey flavor.

Almond crusted fried chicken (dipped in egg and crushed almonds) - soooo good! I would have this every day if it wasn't so much work

I love zoodles! Where I live, we have "Cincinnati Chili", which is a thin chili that doesn't taste like any other chili you've ever had. You either love it or hate it. It's served on top of hot dogs, (cheese coneys), or spaghetti (3, 4 or 5 ways they are called) and topped with a good mound of cheddar cheese. I hadn't had a 3 way in almost a year and decided to try it with zoodles... It's a win! They just seem to take on the flavor of whatever you put on it.
I like the cream cheese pancakes but found them to be a mess and hard to cook until I tried them on a pancake maker that my daughter got. It's called Baby Cakes. It makes them the perfect size each time and prevents them from spreading out too thin and the maker flips over so you don't have to try and flip the pancake. It made it incredibly easy and they looked exactly like regular pancakes.
I haven't made any other substitute foods. I don't think it would serve me well to try and fit those kinds of foods in.

What was wrong with the cauliflower pizza crust? I had planned on making that tomorrow night. Not enough crisp to it?

I think that many of these are a matter of personal taste. We live zoodles in my house and we love cauliflower crust pizza. I am sure that we love the cauli one better than the fathead one or various almond of flax meal pizzas.

I use the tea towel method to squeeze out the water. It is possible to get a crispier crust that is not soggy. I also add seasonings like oregano to the crust and make sure I put enough cheese right in the crust.

With cauliflower so expensive right now, I won't be making it anytime soon though!

Ah ok, we were going to give it a shot, as I used to make my own dough anyway (a yeast dough with 5 million carbs no doubt). The recipe I found said to really drain it out well, and since I make cheeses and yogurt I have all the stuff to do that with.

AshleyC1023 wrote: »

What was wrong with the cauliflower pizza crust? I had planned on making that tomorrow night. Not enough crisp to it?

Mine was floppy. And eggy.

Makes sense, since you can sweat zucchini with salt like you can tomatoes, onions, etc. I make tomatoes, onion, and pickle "relish" for subs and sweat it with salt then add olive oil. I put that in with hard salami and cheese and don't need any other veggies.

What are Zoodles?
I LOVE mashed cauilflower! I made sheppherds pie and my hubby and kids had no clue it wasn't potatoes. I really whip them good and add cheese butter and heavy cream....delicious! And the pizza crust is good but it is a lot of work! I might try the zucchini one.
I love making cheese "crackers" on parchment paper until crisp inth a microwave. Dipped salsa and sour cream....yum!

macchiatto wrote: »

@JessicaLCHF what black bean brownie recipe did you try? ChocolateCoveredKatie's is REALLY good. I haven't made anything from her blog since I started keto though. It's all relatively healthy but not sure how keto-friendly most of her recipes are.

I love zoodles, and mashed cauliflower.
I really need to try cream cheese pancakes and the cheese "crackers."

Sorry, no clue. It was a year ago prolly.

@esaucier17, noodles are zucchini made into noodles with a potato peeler, or a kitchen gadget that's made for the purpose, and use in place of noodles. I've never tried them.

natalialikescookies wrote: »

I must be the odd one out, I think zoodles are ok but not great.
But I looooove spaghetti squash!
Cauli rice - amazing!
Shirataki noodles - most disgusting food I've ever tried
Ricotta pancakes- yummy

Spaghetti squash is awesome. I forgot about that, as I don't consider it a sub.
Shirataki noodles are ok.... the tofu ones are fine, but the yam ones are kinda stinky. I don't eat them much.

Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »

Spaghetti squash is awesome. I forgot about that, as I don't consider it a sub.
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Yes, you are so right ! I don't consider these foods to be substitutions at all ! They are so much part of my family's regular meal repertoire and we love them so much that we don't feel that we are missing out on anything by not eating wheat products, or potatoes or other starchy, sugary foods. ( Those starchy foods are recognized as sugar (carbs) in the body, so I have a tendency to label them all as sugary....grains, fruit, starchy plants.)

The thought of eating those foods that I used to eat, like wheat products of any kind, turns me off so much that the foods I now eat, like spaghetti squash, cauliflower, cabbage, zucchini, etc are much more desirable to me. They are delicious, and do not upset my tummy like the other foods now do.

Or I skip the vegetable or nut based "substitution" vehicle completely and just eat the main event meal without the side.

I have made a keto-substitute gnocchi that is just as good if not better than the real thing. It uses mozzarella cheese (preferably the pre-grated quite dry kind - this usually has a bit of flour in it, but not too much to make it unusable carb wise, though obviously this is not good for gluten free folk), garlic powder and egg yolk. http://theprimitivepalate.com/2015/01/25/keto-garlic-gnocchi/ You do NOT need to boil them, just fry them in the pan and they come out quite light and fluffy and lovely.

Now I can't make it as my husband is on FODMAP so the garlic powder is out and I can't find a definitive source on whether mozzarella is ok on FODMAP (

JessicaLCHF wrote: »

_Terrapin_ wrote: »

Have you tried cauliflower tots?

I haven't. I am gonna try tho spaghetti squash hash browns soon tho.

Hmmm, do you have a way to 'hash' or cut the squash? For folks up thread talking about soggy cauli recipes like pizza crust I had to experiment with the tots and moisture. Cualiflower holds quite a bit of water so when you are prepping your crust for cauliflower pizza is there a point where you can tamp or remove some of the water being retained by the plant? For the cauliflower tots I found tamping them worked a little and one recipe called for placing the mixture in a cake tin and cover with saran wrap to let sit or 'set-up' for about 2 hours in a freezer. This allows the mix to be easier to cut into tot sized bites. They bind the cheese together better since the water molecules are now tighter after being in the freezer. IDK they turn out better from a consistency view.

I've enjoyed spiralizing squash, zucchini, and cucumber in salad, but I didn't really enjoy cooked zoodles, as spaghetti. I did, however, use my ribbon cut blade to make zucchini pasta for lasagna, and it worked beautifully. I just made a regular lasagna for everyone else, and a small zoodle lasagna for my husband and me. It was a wonderful substitute, in my opinion.