Cooking Made Simple

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!

A great way to mix things up from the usual is with herbs and spices added to your foods. I love to rub seasonings into meat before cooking it. Here is a recipe that will work with most types of meat, poultry or seafood. Give it a try! If you don’t like something, change it out for a different spice. We like a mild heat and some may wish to adjust the amount of peppers.

Seasoning rub

1 tablespoon paprika
4 teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper, or to taste
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin