Hey Girl Glad you made it over here!!!!

Meat is ok - pure proteins are all ok - beware deli meats, sausage etc (same as atkins here) - Pasta - well the 5 min. is maybe a bit too el dente maybe depending on the shape of pasta, I know he specifies spaghetti is best but on further reading it turns out that also the type of wheat is very important - he says it must be durham semolina - well I don't know about Europe, but here all dried pasta seems to be made from that. Fresh is another story- and the extrusion well I can see how the shape comes in there. I used to not time my pasta and it was always slightly el dente, the last time I timed it and 5 min. was waaaay to "el dente"(to the tooth) - more like "el break a dente" So I let it go about 7 minutes - just don't let it get to soft - also you can (if you can find it use whole wheat pasta or mix it) I checked and found some whole wheat pasta that was also using the durham semolina wheat. One note, so far I have only found menus using tomatoe or vegetable sauce with pasta - no meat sauce (I guess it might be because he is expecting the fat content of the meat sauce to be high - but he is unclear on that)

Check your journal I left you info.