How to diet fast 1 week

It's summer, and if I needed a reminder I got a good one when I looked at the bookmarks where I save recipe links to feature here every month and realized I didn't have one single soup, stew, or chili recipe this time.  I like a good bowl of soup as well as the next person, but I couldn't be happier to say bring on the salads! But before we get to the food, I want to talk a little about these round-ups.

This post makes 74 months of writing monthly South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes Round-Ups for the blog, and times have changed.  I still love the South Beach Diet, but now a lot of people reading my blog follow other types of low-carb or grain-free eating plans.  (That was the reason I gave the blog a makeover last year, adding new tabs so recipes could be sorted by diet type.)  After asking for opinions on Facebook and giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to make the monthly round-ups more broadly focused, hopefully making them more useful for people who aren't strictly following South Beach. I'll still include recipes that are South Beach Diet Phase One of course, but I also want to spotlight interesting recipes that are Low-Carb in general, Paleo, Whole 30, and possibly others. As always, all the recipes in the round-up will be grain-free, making them Gluten-Free as well, and there will be some type of labeling system to make it easy to see which recipes are Phase One or another plan. That new format will be coming next month; hope you like it. And if you have any thoughts about this, please share them in the comments!

I often make Egg Muffins, but this recipe for Baked Mini-Frittatas with Mushrooms, Cottage Cheese, and Feta is different, something I'd eat with a fork, maybe with a dollop of light sour cream.  For the mini-frittatas I used Jumbo Muffin Cups, and the recipe has lots of mushrooms and cheese, for a baked egg dish that's a fairly dense in texture.  I love starting the week out with Meatless Monday for so many reasons, and one of them is how it encourages simple meals when you've had a weekend that was slightly indulgent, and I'd love this for a meatless breakfast, lunch of dinner.

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this recipe for Low Carb Stuffed Peppers with Turkey Italian Sausage, Ground Beef, and Mozzarella is something I love to make and freeze individually for quick meals later.  This recipe was featured in January 2012 for a Month of Daily Phase One Recipes, and it's been a big hit ever since.)

If you watch the left sidebar where it shows the most visited recipes, you might have noticed that Stuffed Green Peppers with Brown Rice, Italian Sausage, and Parmesan are almost always there as one of the most-visited recipes.  Who knew stuffed peppers were so popular?  That recipe contains rice, but I also love this version of Phase One Stuffed Peppers and I recently made it again with Jake to update the photos.  We each enjoyed one, and then I had leftovers with my brother Mark, who also thought they were great.  This recipe makes six peppers, and this is the type of thing I'd make ahead and keep in the freezer to take for lunch when I was teaching school, so even if you're only cooking for one or two people I recommend making the whole recipe and freezing some. 

It's time for the monthly Round-Up of South Beach Diet Phase One Recipes that I've posted during the previous month or spotted on other food blogs.  You can tell it's Fall by scrolling through these recipes; I spotted lots more soups and not many salads, and cauliflower seems to be Veggie of the Month for October.  I doubt many people start a diet in November, so I hope it doesn't seem cruel to draw attention to Phase One when everyone's thinking about Thanksgiving Recipes.  But in January when you're looking for food that's a bit lighter and lower in carbs, you might enjoy looking back through my Low-Glycemic Recipe Round-Ups like this one! (And for those who try to stick to a low-glycemic eating plan even during the holidays, more power to you!  I do my best, but it's hard this time of year.)