Budget Low Carb Cooking

Oven roasting tomatoes and garlic delivers a flavor packed fresh marinara sauce that doesn't require a can opener.

Basic vinaigrette dressing adds a vinegary, garlicy goodness to a simple side salad. Works with any cuisine!

This is a hearty low carb homemade marinara and meat sauce that works great as its own one pot supper or as an element in lasagna or chicken parmigiana.

This ground meat mixture forms the basis for many dishes and can be cooked in bulk and packaged in 1/2 cup or 1 cup units for easy transformation on the fly.

Often, the key to successful weight loss doesn’t begin with our bellies or end with our brains. For many, the battle of the bulge actually begins and ends with our budget. How do you cook budget-friendly low carb meals on a shoestring? Let's stretch those budgets and see just how much we can squeeze out of every penny. In her new column, Budget Low Carb Cooking, Susie T. Gibbs gives us affordable options for your low carb lifestyle.

I am excited to announce the addition of Susie T. Gibbs, aka Fluffy Chix, as a columnist. She'll be writing about her own life as a low carber and cancer survivor, her trials and triumphs, and also about food, all from a perspective as fresh and sassy as her native Texas.

This is such a simple sauce and so elegant. It works over chicken, turkey, game hens, and seafood of all kinds, especially shrimp and lobster - when they are on sale! It's also delicious over veggies! The nuttiness of the sauce is intensified when you broil it for a couple of minutes.

Make this stock right after Thanksgiving dinner! Simply throw the turkey carcass and any leftover wings, necks, giblets, and legs into the pot with the veggies and spices, then let it simmer, covered, for hours! The longer the better. The apple cider vinegar helps leach the vitamins and minerals out of the bones.