The holidays are traditionally a difficult time to stay on any diet. Last year I was a bit concerned about being able to do keto over christmas because of all the carbs and desserts and traditional holidays foods I would be missing out on. But I am keto for life, so the only real solution is to make my own new traditions. Pumpkin pie is an amazing traditional dessert that is so easy to "keto".

This pie was the by-product of me trying to recreate old favourites in a low carb way. It's more of a cheesecake but the flavours go together brilliantly, and all my non-keto family absolutely loved it. It freezes well and my parents were eating this for weeks after the holidays.

The fresh pumpkin I buy is 4.7g NET carbs per 100g, so the macros I have for this are based on that. I would highly recommend you work out your own because I've seen a lot of variation in the listed carbs in pumpkin.

I love Chinese food. But unfortunately there's not a lot of restaurant-made Chinese food options that are keto friendly. So I make do with Chinese food flavours. These dumplings are relatively quick to make and go well with almost any sides. I usually serve them with some soy sauce drizzled over the top. 

Meal ideas: 

• Pork dumplings with fried bok choy and cucumber salad
• Pork dumplings with cauliflower egg fried "rice"
• Use the mince filling as meatballs. Fried and served on a bed of sautéed cabbage 
• Fried shirataki noodles with dumplings
• Keto crack and dumplings 

This is one of my favourite (and easiest) ways to do chicken for dinner. I came up with this while I was on holiday visiting family, I needed something that wouldn’t take too long to cook and would feed keto and non-keto people. Roast chicken is a staple in my house - it's a very flexible dish. I use this a lot with just Waide and I eating at home, but it's also really simple to upgrade for a dinner with friends/family.

Until recently I had never used short rib, so I started experimenting with different cooking methods; this is a recipe I developed using my magic spice. It tastes really nice in a stew, but this is my favourite way to use it. This is a very low effort dish to make, using just the meat with a few extra ingredients in the pot, then into the oven for a few hours. Short Rib works great served with cauliflower rice, fried cabbage, or veggie side of your choice.

Most spice mixes that you buy contain starch fillers or brown sugar (including, unfortunately, curry powders - but that's for another spice experiment). Braais (BBQ) are a big deal in South Africa and "Braai spice" is totally a thing every South African has in their spice rack. Except when it's full of carbs. So I created my own variation of a meat spice - a combination of paprika, garlic, beef stock and other spices that I love. This stuff is great as a meat rub, in stews or on roast chicken. There are a million different ways to use it.