Comfort Food

Fried till golden using coconut flour.

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.

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!

This will taste pretty darn official!

Talk about easy to make. This dish is done in a flash. If you’re like me, you’ll make a triple batch of the tomato base. You can freeze the portions.

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.

What better time to have a spicy chili than when I am in lockdown, practicing social distancing. 

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

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.

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.

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

Fennel has a distinct flavor, but when it's roasted, the flavor mellows. If you like fennel, this recipe is great, and it's very easy to make.  

This lasagna has no noodles. Standing in for the noodle layers are zucchini sliced the long way.

This dish can be made a day ahead and reheated.

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.

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

Feels just like you are eating in the French countryside.

A very quick and simple family dinner.

This dish can be made with chicken or is a perfect way to use up leftover turkey from the holidays.

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 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.

There’s something about the potential of smelling apples baking with cinnamon and nutmeg that conjures up fond memories of my mother in the kitchen.

This is a great comfort food. Make a big pot and pack it up for lunches on future days for a nice hot meal on a cold day.

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.

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 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.

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.

One of my favorite Cajun meals is chicken mamou. Mamou in Creole is basically grandma. So this is “grandma('s) chicken.”

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.

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.

There’s something about the potential of smelling apples baking with cinnamon and nutmeg that conjures up fond memories of my mother in the kitchen. She taught me as a small girl to make apple crisp so I did it often. This also makes a wonderful little breakfast the next day.

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!

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!

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

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!

Dieter Rebecca first had this warm and rustic side dish while in Ireland on a road trip in 1994. These mushrooms where in every Irish B&B Dieter Rebecca visited. She loved the recipe so much she recreated it for Plan Z! Hope you enjoy.

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.

When you need some serious cold weather comfort food, ratatouille hits the spot. This shortcut ratatouille-inspired recipe was submitted by dieter Angela. She Zolafied the original recipe and created a delicious ZReduction veggie sauté that can be made in less than half the time of a traditional ratatouille.

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.

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.

We made this during a snow storm, the taste took off the chill of the day.

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.

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.

This is elegant comfort food. It’s sort of like the American version of the French dish called Coquille St. Jacque.

This is a remake of Beef Bourguignon. Who can resist this traditional French dish? So lush-tasting. It just about melts in your mouth.

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!

Serve this at your next family event instead of potatoes and you’ll save 30% of the carbs.

Can be a vegetarian entrée or a side dish. SUPER Yummy because as the squash bakes it becomes sweet.

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.

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.