Actually, it all began quite innocently at the wedding of my daughter-in-law’s brother. My husband met an old friend who had obviously lost a lot of weight. How did he do it? Well, my husband came home telling me he wanted to start on a do-can diet. “You mean “can-do?,” I asked. “No,” he answered. ” Dukan–it’s the name of a French doctor who developed this diet. I already downloaded his original book and a cookbook onto Kindle……..”
And thus I was introduced to the protein-laden, carbohydrate-shunning diet on which, boruch Hash-m, my dear husband is shedding unwanted pounds, and I have been spending countless hours researching and cooking three meals a day, as compared to the one meal a day, on a good day, that I was producing in the last couple of years, since all my children have left home and I felt burnt out in the kitchen.
My daughter-in-law’s brother is a twin, and the two boys got engaged at nearly the same time, both to girls from wonderful families whom we also know. The second chasuna was exactly three weeks after the first, and by that time, we were two weeks into the diet and 6 kilo lighter, between the two of us. I made an exception for the chasuna–and also for the sheva brachos to which we were invited two days later at an upscale steak-house. As a matter of fact, I do not qualify as a real Dukanian, because I can’t bear the thought of no fruits at all for the next few months, and vegetables only one day out of two , when they seem to me so full of nutrition–I haven’t officially added whole grains back into my diet, but I may soon, because I am feeling deprived of the basic “staff of life.” But I freely admit I am losing at a snail’s pace compared to my husband. Therefore, we are going to deal with his diet and my cooking–because that is the division of labor around here. We’ll get to my husband’s once-a-week foray into the kitchen another time.
So, for all you dedicated Dukanians who may have been just as dismayed and disillusioned as I was when faced with a plethora of recipes mixing milk and meat, or meat and fish, which is also a no-no for kosher consumers, I am happy to share some of the recipes I have found, or changed, fiddled around with and basically kosherized for us.