A recipe creator, food photographer and writer, Lisa Marcaurele has been creating low-carb recipes for more than a decade and sharing them on her popular blog, LowCarbYum.com. Her focus is creating low-carb meals with everyday ingredients. “I created Low Carb Yum to show others that following an eating plan low in carbs doesn’t have to be complicated, restrictive or boring. You can still enjoy many of the foods you love. It’s all about using the right ingredients to get similar tastes and textures,” she says. In her latest book, Low Carb Yum Simple Keto Meals for Beginner (Mariner, 2021), Marcaurele offers more than 125 keto-friendly recipes that are perfectly portioned—and easy to double up—to help reduce food waste.
Lisa Marcaurele’s Low-Carb Granola Bars
Shopping Tips for Small-Batch Cooking:
Produce: Frozen fruits and vegetables are better to buy in bulk than fresh, as you can just take out the amount you need. Smaller amounts of fresh produce can be purchased when sold by the pound. There are also prechopped vegetables sold in smaller quantities.
Meat: Custom-packaged meats can be bought from the meat counter so you can get the exact amount you need. There’s no need to buy 1 pound of chicken if the recipe calls for only ½ pound, unless you plan to vacuum-seal and freeze the other half. I also like to buy certain things like fish and shrimp frozen so I can just grab what I need and thaw it quickly under water.
Concentrated Bone Broth: When in powdered form, bone broth stays fresh much longer after it’s opened than when canned and opened. It’s great for making just the amount you need.
