Healthy Recipes When There Are A Lot Of Restrictions

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝I need to cook for a family event and the combined dietary restrictions are: vegetarian, no lactose, no gluten, no nuts, including peanuts and coconuts, no discernible carbs, including lentils and chickpeas, no garlic or onions, no cabbage, no soup, and it can’t be remotely spicy. The nut allergy is of course absolute and we are vegetarian, the other things may be slightly negotiable but I’d like a stress-free dinner. Ideas?❞

That is indeed quite restrictive! But a challenge is (almost) always fun.

To answer generally first: one approach is to do buffet-style dining, with many small dishes. While nuts will still need to be absent, because of the nature of nut allergies, the rest can just be skipped on a per-person basis.

But, let’s see what we can do with a one-dish-fits-all approach!

The biggest challenge seems to be getting protein and flavor. Protein options are more limited without meat, lactose, or legumes, and flavor requires some attention without being able to rely on spices.

To give a sample à la carte menu… With these things in mind, we’ve selected three of our recipes from the recipes section of our site, that will require only minor modifications:

1) Invigorating Sabzi Khordan: skip the walnuts and either partition or omit the scallions, and ensure the cheese is lactose-free (most supermarkets stock lactose-free cheeses, nowadays).

With regard to the flatbreads, you can either skip, or use our gluten-free Healthy Homemade Flatbreads recipe, though it does use chickpea flour and quinoa flour, so the “no discernible carbs” person(s) might still want to skip them. If it’s not an issue on the carbs front, then you might also consider, in lieu of one of the more traditional cheeses, using our High-Protein Paneer recipe which, being vegan, is naturally lactose-free. Also, which is not traditional but would work fine, you might want to add cold hard-boiled halved eggs, since the next course will be light on protein:

2) Speedy Easy Ratatouille: skip the red chili and garlic; that’s all for this one!

3) Black Forest Chia Pudding: the glycemic index of this should hopefully be sufficient to placate the “no discernible carbs” person(s), but if it’s not, we probably don’t have a keto-friendlier dessert than this. And obviously, when it comes to the garnish of “a few almonds, and/or berries, and/or cherries and/or cacao nibs”, don’t choose the almonds.

Want to know more?

For any who might be curious:

Gluten: What’s The Truth? ← this also discusses the differences between an allergy/intolerance/sensitivity—it’s more than just a matter of severity!

Take care!