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Last nights dinner was delicious, so I thought I would share! We were in the mood for some pork, so I pulled a tenderloin from the freezer. Once it was thawed, I used my blackened spice mix (found in a previous blog) and rubbed it all over the meat really well. Then into a glass baking dish it went, and into the oven at 350F for about an hour and a half until it reached 160F in the center of the meat.

We had some carrots and broccoli, so I steamed them, making this a really tasty meal! I use a bamboo steamer on the stove top, saving the water to go into soup. The seasoning made the pork taste so good! It was very moist and tender, easily cut with a fork. Such an easy meal to make, and the house smelled so good while it was cooking!

Broccoli salad is one of our favorite ways to eat broccoli. This salad has had a place on our family get-together table for many years, and everyone just loves it! One of the beautiful things about it, is that you can alter this recipe in many ways to come up with tons of favorite salads. Making homemade mayonnaise can help cut the fat and calories down some and make this an even healthier dish!

Here is the recipe for the way I usually make it:

Broccoli Salad

Ingredients:

2 heads of broccoli washed and cut into bite size pieces, stems too!

Half of a red onion, diced into small pieces.

1 package of bacon – we have noticed that many brands of bacon come in packages not quite a pound. That’s ok, just use whatever brand you like, in an amount close to a pound.

1 cup of mayonaise

1/4 cup of Apriva (sucralose sweetener)

1 T of vinegar – I use plain old white vinegar, but you can use any type you like.

Directions:

Mix the mayonaise, Apriva and vinegar together and pour it over the broccoli. Stir to get the dressing over all of the broccoli. Chill for a few hours, and then add the bacon and onions, and then chill for another hour or two before eating. This allows the flavors to combine some. If you are going to make the salad a day or more before serving, don’t add the bacon and onions until the day you will eat it. The bacon will get soggy and the onions will overpower the other flavors if you let it sit too long together. If you are eager to eat it, the salad can be all mixed together at once and eaten right away, it just wont have the flavors together like it would if it sits a bit.

Many people like to add raisins or grape halves and also nuts to this salad. Since the fruit adds sugar, we usually leave them out. If I have sunflower seeds on hand, then I like to add them, but the salad is good without them.

Cheesecake has been a favorite dessert of mine since I had my first taste as a child. I immediately loved it! We don’t have it as often as I would like since it has quite a bit of fat from the cheese, but it is good to have from time to time! Be sure to let your ingredients warm to room temperature or you will get lumps of cheese. Still tasty, but weird texture when that happens. I like to make cheesecakes without the crust, as this just adds unnecessary carbs.

Ingredients needed:

2 1/2 pounds of cream cheese (this is five 8 ounce packages)

2 cups Apriva or other granular sucralose sweetener for baking (apriva is NOT a sugar mix like Splenda baking mix)

5 whole eggs plus 2 egg yolks

1/4 cup of all purpose flour

1/2 cup half and half (half milk and half cream – about 12% butterfat)

First thing you need to do is get your 10 inch springform pan ready! Wrap the bottom with foil so the water from the water bath wont leak in, and spray the inside with cooking spray. Get a large pan that the springform pan can fit inside, and fill it partway with hot water. I use a big roasting pan.

To make the cake, start by mixing the cream cheese with the sweetener, and then mix in the eggs and flour. Once this is mixed together well, add in the half and half. We don’t want a lot of air, so fold it gently until it is all incorporated.

Thats all there is too it! Pour it into the prepared springform pan, and then put the springform into the roasting pan. The cheesecake will need to bake while sitting in the hot water. The foil we put on the pan will keep the water out.

Bake for 10 minutes at 475 degrees F, and then lower the temperature to 200 and continue to bake for an hour. Turn the oven off but let the cake remain in the oven for a few more hours and then refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

To top with a delicious fruit sauce, get a handful of frozen berries and put them into a sauce pan with some water and Apriva. I use about a dozen berries with 1/2-1/3 cup of water and about a cup of sweetener. You may want to adjust to make it sweeter or less sweet. Boil this on the stove until it cooks down to the consistency that you want. There is a bit of natural sugar in the berries, but berries are good for us, and a serving is very small, like 2 berries. Enjoy!

Today’s post is going to be a bit of a rant, and a little educational as well. I like to read discussion forums and blogs, on a wide variety of subjects. Of course, one topic that I read most often is diabetes. There are some good forums that cover a lot of the concerns of a diabetic.  I have found that many people that post on these forums are extremely more active in controlling their diabetes than the general public. It has been a great way to learn the basics, but I like to research further than just discussion forums and blogs. I have ran into some contradictions.

One contradiction concerns grains and legumes (beans). There are a lot of people that feel these should be totally avoided, as they have more carbs than some people feel they should have from any one food. Some people eat less carbs in a day than one serving of oatmeal will give you. Others use the excuse that if something is whole grain they can eat as much as they like. The right choice though, is a healthy compromise. I do not believe that we should avoid grains and legumes, but also, I do not believe that we should eat as much as we like of anything. Balance, balance, balance! We MUST have a balance of food groups in order to be our best. There is a lot of nutrition to be gained by eating grains and legumes.

There are ways to help our bodies process the carbs found in grains and legumes. If you eat these with fats the digestion will be slowed down, helping to avoid bothersome blood glucose spikes. Put some heavy cream on your oatmeal! Eat some cheese with your legumes or grains. Peanut butter on whole wheat bread should be just fine for the average diabetic. Also, oatmeal doesn’t have to be sweet. Make it savory and add some bacon, onions and broccoli. Experiment and find combinations of foods that you like  and that are also tolerated by your diabetes. The way to know is to test before you eat, and then test again at 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 and 4 hours after eating. It won’t take long to figure out how your body reacts to various foods. Remember to talk to your doctor if you have questions about your diet specifically, but please…don’t avoid any of the food groups! A piece of cheese (fat!) will help slow down the digestion of fruit as well! Many fruits are more than one serving though, so be sure to check out the types you like before you eat them. We share fruit here, and pears are one of our favorites. Half a pear along with some cheese and raw veggies make a nice and filling snack!

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but many of us skip it anyway. I’m not sure why, because you can make a healthy and delicious meal in practically no time!I love my oatmeal, but it tends to raise my blood sugar too high in the mornings, so I save it for a later lunch or a snack even, just needs to be later in the day.

We typically have the same breakfast, with just a couple variations. We have eggs, meat and toast. Usually the eggs are boiled, but sometimes scrambled (with cheese and sometimes veggies) or fried, 2 eggs each. I feel that boiled eggs are probably best for us, so we have them most mornings. Our meat is usually bacon, but sometimes ham or sausage. I hate getting popped by bacon as it cooks, so we like to buy the kind that comes in a box and is already pre-cooked. The bread used for the toast is the whole wheat/double fiber bread mentioned in an earlier blog post. It may not be the healthiest meal, but it isn’t terrible either, and it tastes great!

We usually wait an hour or so after waking up to have breakfast. This is because I just am not hungry for awhile, plus I like to have my coffee BEFORE I have food, rather than with my food. Yes, I am strange. LOL Half an hour before we eat, I go put the eggs on. The best way to make boiled eggs is to add the eggs to cold water, put on the stove and bring to a boil. Let the water boiled for about 4-5 minutes, then place the lid on the pan and turn the burner off. The eggs need to sit covered for about 20 minutes.

While waiting for the water to boil, I get the bacon on a plate and ready to be nuked, and I put toast in the toaster, but don’t toast it yet. There is usually time to unload the dishwasher from yesterdays dishes, feed the cats, and dance around the kitchen for a minute or two as well. I go back to my coffee and morning news once the eggs are covered to finish their cooking. After the eggs are finished, I dump out the hot water and fill the pan with cold. I crack the shells on each egg and let them sit in the cold water for a few seconds. This is a good time to start the microwave and get the bread toasting, and then peel the eggs. I am just finishing up with the eggs when the toast pops up and the microwave beeps. Perfect timing!

The actual work time here is less than 5 minutes. When I scramble the eggs instead, it literally takes less than 10 minutes to have a meal that will satisfy for a few hours at least. Easy peasy!  If you don’t care for eggs, make up a batch of bran muffins and grab a muffin on your way out the door!

If you habitually skip this most important meal, do yourself a favor and commit to start having breakfast! And remember too…your breakfast doesn’t have to be made with typical breakfast foods. Eat whatever foods your diet allows for that you want. We love breakfast foods though, so we are happy to have it every day.

Breakfast…it gets your day off to a good start!

I have been trying to get more fiber into our diet, and I came up with a muffin recipe that turned out really well! They are whole wheat, pumpkin, bran muffins. There are so many variations that could be made from this recipe, and I invite you to get creative and let me know what you come up with! Here is the recipe that I used:

Ingredients:

3 C Wheat bran

2 C milk

1 C pumpkin puree, canned or your own. I cooked and froze a couple of pumpkins when they were free after Halloween

2 eggs

1t Vanilla extract

1 1/2 C Apriva (sucralose sweetener…could use Splenda)

1 C all pupose flour

1 C whole wheat flour

1 1/2 t baking soda

1 1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 C dried mixed berries or nuts (optional, as this does add more carbs)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375F. Spray muffin cups or use paper muffin liners. Mix the wheat bran and the milk together and let stand for 10 minutes while you mix the other ingredients in a different bowl.

In a large bowl, mix together the pumpkin, eggs, Apriva (or Splenda) and the vanilla extract. Add in the bran mixture and stir until combined.

In another bowl, sift together the all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir into bran mixture until just blended. Fold in the fruit or nuts and then scoop into muffin cups.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the tops spring back when touched lightly.

This recipe makes 24 muffins. Each muffin has 81 calories, 1 gram of fat, 16 grams of carbs, 3 grams of fiber and 3 grams of protein. These numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Tonight for dinner we had avocado lime chicken, and man was it good! I cooked some boneless, skinless chicken breasts in a bit of olive oil, and added in a good splash of key lime juice, some sea salt and some fresh ground black pepper. I served it on a bed of barely steamed spinach leaves and a dollop of guacamole with steamed broccoli on the side.  We all really enjoyed this, and look forward to having it again. It is fun coming up with new ways to eat the foods we typically buy!

Common sense should tell us that we need to have sugar only in moderation. This includes ALL types of sugar. One of the worst is high fructose corn syrup. You may have seen commercials telling you that it is ok to eat, just as safe and natural as sugar, since it is made from corn. This might be true, IF we could have it only in moderation. This is nearly impossible to do unless you only eat whole foods, or unprocessed foods that you cook at home yourself. Many processed foods have high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient. This is because it is a cheap way to make it taste better. The better it tastes, the more we buy. Companies want us to buy lots of their products, and we do. We get addicted to the sugar high, and we want more. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to limit ourselves to only one serving of sweets. Don’t forget to add soda into that, as many of us drink serving after serving of the stuff every day. A typical sized bottle of soda is more than only one serving. Many are 2 1/2. Check the label on the type you drink and see how many servings there are! Too much sugar is very bad for us, we know it, and yet we continue to overindulge anyway.

We have dramatically changed our diet in order to get our diabetes in control, but it hasn’t stopped the cravings for sweetness. I use a lot of zero calorie sweetener, way more than I should I am sure. I use it in my coffee, my daily oatmeal, it is in the sugar free jello and puddings that we eat. I like to bake as well, and use it for this too.  I believe that it is fine and safe, IN MODERATION. Cutting this down to an acceptable amount is going to be a real challenge. One I compare to quitting smoking. I smoked cigarettes for about 25 years, and have been cigarette free since December 3, 2007. I am very proud of that fact! However, this sweet addiction is proving to be just as strong, maybe even stronger, than the cigarettes.

I have taken a step away from soda. I still drink Diet Rite Zero Cola, a couple of glasses per week, but I have found something that I can drink, something that I have now come to like more than cola. As a former Pepsi addict, this is a huge step for me! I have tried over and over and over to give up soda, but I keep finding myself with a glass or can in my hand. I just don’t like to drink water, and I haven’t found anything that I like as much as cola. Until recently. There is actually a product out there that is better for me than soda, and that I LIKE! It does have sweetener in it, but overall it is much better for me than soda, and I will continue to try to work myself down to plain old water. In the mean time though, I am enjoying some flavored powder that you add to water. It is called In An Instant Fitness, and is a Kroger product. We love the strawberry/kiwi flavor. It has no calories or carbs. You pour a couple of small containers of powder mix into a gallon pitcher of water and you get a light strawberry/kiwi flavor. It is not as sweet or strong as koolaid type drinks, and since you mix it with water yourself, you can choose how strong or weak you make it. I plan to keep adding a bit more water each time and eventually I hope to like drinking plain water. To make it even better, there are some nutrients added as well!

I came up with something that was super tasty last night for supper and I thought I would share it here! I had some garbanzo beans soaking and wanted to use them in the dish. First I cut up half a pound of bacon into bite sized pieces and cooked them in a large frying pan. Once they were nearly cooked I added in a couple cups of garbanzo beans and fried them in the bacon fat until they were slightly browned. To this I added about 1/3 of a cabbage, sliced up thin. I sprinkled on some sea salt and garlic powder and covered to cook the cabbage. Once the cabbage was cooked to the amount that we like I splashed some soy sauce in and let the cabbage brown slightly. This supper was delish, and we will be having it many more times, I am sure! I think next time I might try tossing in some bean sprouts and just at the end throw in a handful of grape tomatoes. Yum! Give it a try and let me know how you like it!

I have always enjoyed yogurt from time to time, but many brands are loaded with calories and sugar. Since becoming diabetic I have paid more attention to the label rather than the flavor. It is insane how much sugar and calories are in some of the yogurts! I have fallen in love with Kroger brand Carb Master Vanilla Yogurt and I eat it every day. Some days I have more than one. The flavor is really great, and it is nice and creamy. It makes a good dessert and has low calories, fat and low carbohydrates as well! From the label of a 6 ounce container, there are 80 calories, 1.5 grams of fat, 4 total carbs and 1 gram of fiber. I highly recommend trying it!