Tony Blakemore, CarbSmart Contributor

The Aussie LC Gourmet

I'd first like to tell you a bit about myself. My name is Tony Blakemore. I am 56 years of age and live in Blackburn, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia with my wife, Margaret.

In May of 1998 my wife Margaret and I wholeheartedly adopted the low carb way of life. My weight loss since then has been about 35 pounds. Margs has lost about 25 pounds. Not only have we lost the weight but in Margaret's case, at least, have maintained the weight loss. have stayed at the Being a type II diabetic, I find it more difficult to hold on to the losses. I do lapse occasionally and have to struggle to get back to the lower weight level that I have achieved through low carbing. We are both continuing to slowly edge towards our target weights.

A serendipity in my case has been a big reduction in blood sugar levels to the point where I do not need medication.

Why do I call myself the Aussie Low Carb Gourmet? Simple. We both very quickly got sick of the same old L C foods. (The situation was made more difficult by our isolation in this part of the world.) I searched the net and found many low carb recipes which helped. I also found many web sites selling low carb specialty products. Unfortunately, a lot of the low carb products are perishable and would not survive the trip down under, and the shipping costs would be outrageous.

Rather than look on the lack of variety as a problem, I viewed it as a challenge.

I started to search for more interesting foods and low and behold I found that a lot of world class gourmet foods are easily converted to low carb, many based around traditional Australian foods. We are a lucky country. We have a multitude of native wild life, free range beef and poultry, and numerous boutique vegetable producers which give us healthy, chemical-free foods. To top it off we have one of the longest coastlines in the world, so we have full of a huge variety of fish and crustaceans available to us.

Australians have a high regard for our original aboriginal inhabitants' way of eating, which is almost neander* in content, Australian chefs started to incorporate many aboriginal foods and cooking methods into their restaurant menus in the early 1980's. My interest started here and expanded to encompass gourmet recipes from around the world which could be converted to suit our low carb way of eating without losing the integrity of the original dish.

Now I know it will be difficult to find barramundi, kangaroo or emu meat for those of you outside of Australia, but I am sure that between us we will find acceptable substitutes which are easily obtainable in your part of the world that can be used to produce meals that could take pride of place on the menus of the world's greatest restaurants.

Tony Blakemore, The Aussie LC Gourmet
Please visit Tony's excellent Low Carb Recipe Web site at Carb-Lite - Culinary Arts For The Low Carb Lifestyle. Over 2,000 low carb recipes in Master Cook format

* The "neander" Tony refers to is Paleolithic eating as described in Ray Audette's book, Neanderthin. At the age of 33, Ray Audette was diagnosed with diabetes. This was devastating - he'd already been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis for over 12 years and was forced to walk with a cane. Tired of being sick all the time, and unhappy with what his doctors said couldn't be cured, he decided to school himself on these disorders. As a result of his research, he developed an interest in Paleolithic nutrition (the science of what our Stone Age ancestors ate before the development of agrarian societies). Neanderthin is available through CarbSmart at: Neanderthin.

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