I have happy news on the Brach’s Marshmallow Easter Hunt Eggs story: thanks to you, I am in possession of two bags. Cara, Jaida, Bess, and Rachel all mentioned Walgreens, and I had CHECKED Walgreens, but this morning my friend Morgan and I went to the OTHER Walgreens and THERE THEY WERE! I bought two bags when normally I would only buy one, because my Quest Mode had been activated, which means it was all I could do not to buy every bag on the shelf. Buying two seemed to be the absolute minimum I could do—like, what if I lost a bag on the way home? what if one bag was stale? what if this was all a dream? I also bought a bag of Brach’s Jelly Bean Nougats, which look likely to involve a similar magical combination of revolting and compelling.

(image from Brachs.com)
This Sunday/Monday I am taking two days off of my diet to eat Easter candy (also pizza) (also bread dipped in soup) (also brownies), and I am counting the hours until Sunday. I am going to have a Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg with my morning coffee, bet on it. But this reminds me that in the comments section on the Keto grocery list post there were a non-zero number of people asking for keto meal ideas, so let’s do that here, keeping in mind that I don’t enjoy cooking and I don’t mind eating the same things over and over, so this menu might not be very helpful to someone looking for Keto Recipes. My menu is kind of like Taco Bell’s menu: the same handful of ingredients combined in a bunch of different shapes.
Meals:
• Scrambled/fried eggs with a side of fried cubed ham. (Note: all scrambled/fried eggs in this list are cooked in butter.)
• Scrambled eggs with cut-up breakfast sausages and mozzarella cheese.
• Two fried eggs, put inside half of a Joseph’s reduced-carbohydrate pita (lightly toasted and then buttered on the inside), sometimes with bacon in there too.
• Half of a Joseph’s reduced-carbohydrate pita filled with a whole bunch of deli meat (like 4-5 slices crammed in there), plus a slice of cheese, plus mustard and mayonnaise and salt and pepper, plus either dill pickles slices or else a spoonful of Splenda-sweetened sweet relish, plus Romaine lettuce.
• Half of a Joseph’s reduced-carbohydrate pita filled with a whole bunch of tuna salad.
• A taco made with a low-carb wrap/tortilla, ground meat, cheese, salsa, Tostitos Queso Blanco dip, and a little iceberg lettuce or a nice leaf of Romaine.
• Taco eggs: scrambled eggs to which I add a scoop of the seasoned ground meat everyone else is having in their tacos, a big spoonful of Tostitos Queso Blanco dip, several cut-up black olives, a heap of cheddar (shredded or sliced thin), and salsa; stir it around until it’s all melty and bubbly. If the tomatoes are worth eating, I put some (approximately the equivalent of two cut-up cherry tomatoes) on top. I also like to add chopped-up cooked broccoli to the stirring/melting stage, but I didn’t put it in the list because I’m not sure many other people would like that. I like that it gives the whole dish more substance and texture, but when I said that to Paul he shuddered.
• Taco salad: same stuff as taco eggs (though sans broccoli), but over raw spinach leaves instead of mixed into scrambled eggs.
• Cheeseburger salad: bowl of spinach plus cheeseburger chopped up (or hamburger chopped up, plus shredded cheddar), some extra cheddar cheese, some mustard/mayo mixed together like salad dressing, chopped-up dill pickle, a little cut-up tomato, sometimes some bacon, some sunflower seeds too sometimes.
• Salmon, plus broccoli heavily covered with parmesan cheese. It is so lucky to like salmon in a time when it is considered a Food of Righteousness on almost any diet.
• Leftover salmon added to scrambled eggs along with broccoli and parmesan cheese.
• Leftover salmon on a pile of raw spinach; add shredded cheese and/or parmesan and/or sunflower seeds and/or bacon and/or a few olives and/or a little tomato, plus Caesar or blue cheese dressing.
• Scrambled eggs with broccoli, chicken (I like Perdue Short Cuts for easiness and also flavor), and a spoonful of Tostitos Queso Blanco, maybe a couple slices of mozzarella cheese melted on top.
• Snack lunch/dinner: hard-boiled egg(s) or deviled eggs, rolled up deli ham/turkey, jalapeno cheese stick, colby jack cheese stick, olives, almonds, dill pickle spear.
• Tuna salad eaten with celery sticks. Sounds kind of sad/icky, but I love it and would eat it even if not on a diet. The key is not skimping on the mayo or the salt.
• Rotisserie chicken, eaten hunched over like a predator.
• Hot dogs, cut in circles and dipped in mustard, plus colby jack cheese stick(s).
• Pizza omelet: omelet with a spoonful of pizza sauce, layer of pepperoni, layer of cheddar, layer of mozzarella, a few cut-up black olives.
• Pizza made with a Joseph’s reduced-carbohydrate pita as the crust.
• Jalapeno poppers. Like, I have a whole meal of just those, when the rest of the family is eating pizza; and on the nights I CAN have pizza, I kind of miss my jalapeno poppers.
• Spinach salad with cut-up fried kielbasa and banana peppers.
• Omelet with broccoli and cheese, side of cubed fried ham.
• Omelet with deli ham and cheese, side of broccoli.
• Scrambled eggs with broccoli, cheddar cheese, spoonful of Tostitos Queso Blanco dip, Sriracha sauce.
• Scrambled eggs with Hillshire Farms little beef smokies and creamy mustard (mustard, mayonnaise, and a little bit of horseradish sauce).
• Steak. Like, just a piece of steak. Side of broccoli. I like to dip bites of steak in a mix of mustard/mayo/horseradish/Sriracha, and dip the broccoli in Caesar dressing.
• Piece of chicken or a pork chop, with side dishes of broccoli and bacon, plus mustard/mayo/horseradish/Sriracha for dipping the chicken/pork-chop and Caesar dressing for dipping the broccoli.
• Scrambled eggs with leftover steak/chicken/pork-chop cut up really small.
Snacks:
• Smoked almonds
• Salted almonds
• Toasted pecans
• Mixed nuts
• Spoonful of peanut butter
• 1/4 c. whole-milk plain Greek yogurt with half a dozen blackberries and raspberries
• Cheese stick
• Slice of deli ham/turkey
• Cucumber spears dipped in blue cheese dressing
• Hard-boiled egg
• Coffee with cream and unsweetened baking cocoa and artificial sweetener (use whisk to combine cream/cocoa), or that same thing cold, or that same thing put in a blender with ice
• 2/3rds cup of a Premier Protein shake, fill the rest of the glass with ice and leftover coffee
You see what I mean? It’s, like, ten different foods, just combined in different ways. But two days from now, I will be eating NOUGAT combined with JELLY BEANS.