Grilled Chicken and Artichokes

Here’s another easy-peasy one.

Chicken breasts, artichoke, and herb & garlic  marinade.

Put the chicken and marinade in a plastic baggie.  Then clean the artichoke, cut in half, and boil for about 40 minutes or until tender.

Then toss the chicken and artichokes into the grill pan (or onto a grill if you have one).  Cook until chicken is done.

Very very good.  And blood sugar was only 83!

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Pancakes! Flapjacks! Hotcakes! Griddlecakes! Whatever you call ’em, I love ’em!

Time to try out another breakfast recipe.  This is another on that is simply a blood sugar experiment, not a cooking one.  Simple ingredients.

Whole wheat pancake mix and sugar free syrup.  I just followed the box directions to mix up the pancakes and tossed them in the frying pan.

Not to brag, but I’m the best pancake maker ever.  lol

They’re always very well shaped and I’m great at flipping them.  Except for the first pancake, that one always come out a bit … Cajun.

But the rest of them get better.

Add a little margarine and syrup.  They have that slightly gritty taste that whole wheat pancakes always have, but they were still good.

But my blood sugar afterward was 128.  Not so good.  😦  Lesson learned.

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Black Bean Burgers

This one is not a quick and easy one.  Lots of ingredients, lots of steps.

And that’s not even really all the ingredients.  But it’s easy to share what I did, because I used an actual recipe!  This doesn’t happen too often, as you may have noticed.  Black Bean Veggie Burgers from AllRecipes.com.  The only changes I made were dry beans instead of canned and oats instead of bread crumbs.

So I soaked the black beans, using the quick soak method and then boiled/simmered them for about 40 minutes until they were tender.  Tossed them in a bowl and then used my potato masher to mash them up.

Into the food processor went the onion, green pepper, and garlic.

Chop everything up teeny tiny, then follow the recipe, mixing everything together.  Then form them into patties.  (Because of the earlier adventures in guacamole making, my hand was still bandaged.  So to form the patties without messing up my hand more, I put a plastic sandwich baggie over my hand.  It worked surprisingly well!)

So the recipe makes four burger sized patties and one small one.  Pop those in the oven at 375 for 20 minutes, flipping halfway through.

While those were baking, I made a quick salad of spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, and goat cheese.  And of course my sugar free salad dressing.

Burgers are done!  They were slightly brittle, but not too much.

Assembled the burgers using whole wheat sandwich thins instead of buns, and reduced sugar ketchup and pickles, plus mustard and cheese.

It was very delicious!  Good substitute for regular burgers, even if it’s a bit of work to get there.

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Spaghetti and Meatballs

This was more of an experiment to see what it did to my blood sugar than anything else. The hardest part of this low sugar thing is the lack of pasta.  I love pasta.  I used to eat it about five times a week.  So this wasn’t to see if I could make a meal I’d like.  I know I love spaghetti and I know I love meatballs, I just needed to see if I could make a few small changes and make it better.

For the meatballs I threw a pound of ground turkey, half an onion, two eggs, and a bit of parmesan cheese into the stand mixer, along with a bit of garlic salt and cayanne pepper.  Mixed it up a bit and then added about half a cup of whole oats. Mixed for about a minute until it was completely mixed.  (If it’s too runny to form into balls add a bit more of the oats.) Then I formed it into meatballs.

They’re a bit larger than I usually make them, and oddly shaped, because last night’s hand injury left me doing this one handed. Then into a 350 F oven for about 40 minutes.

Then I boiled up some whole grain pasta and warmed the premade spaghetti sauce.  The sauce had one gram of sugar per serving, it was the lowest I could find.  Soon I’ll make my own batch up.

When the meatballs were done I simply mixed it all up together and sprinkled a bit of parmesan cheese on top.

Delicious!  Just the pasta I’d been wanting.  So the blood sugar verdict? 116.  Not perfect, but good enough for an occasional thing.  Yums.

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Spinach Quesadillas for Cinco de Mayo!

Ok, so I planned the quesadillas before I realized it was Cinco de Mayo.  But still.

Today’s ingredients:  Whole wheat tortillas, reduced fat mozzarella cheese, onions, spinach, low sugar salsa, dried black beans, avocado, and tomato.  Before leaving for work, I put the black bean in a bowl of water to soak.  So when I got home they were ready, just needed to be rinsed and placed on the stove (in water) to boil.

Then I started on the quesadillas.  Very easy.  Lay out the tortillas and on one half put cheese, onions and a bit of spinach.  I also sprinkled some cumin on for some extra flavor.

Then just fold them in half and pop them into a 400 F oven! For 13-15 minutes.

Now for a quick quick guacamole for the side.

Right after this picture, there was an extended break in the cooking process.  I attempted to remove the avocado pit by my usual method of sticking the knife point into the pit and twisting.  It pops right out.  However, this didn’t quite work this time, as instead of going into the pit, the knife skidded and went into my hand.  Ow.  Lucky for you all, I didn’t take any pictures of this.  Lucky for me, I didn’t bleed on any of the food!  But my new advice for you is to just dig the pit out with a spoon.

So bandaged and back to work, I pulled the quesadillas out of the oven.  Mmmm, delicious.

Finished up the guacamole, instead of making it complicated I just mashed up the avocado and added a bit of garlic.  I was going to chop a tomato and add that, but I really just wanted to eat and nurse my sore hand for a while. The black beans had been simmering away this whole time, so I added a bit of salt and cumin and then spooned them out onto the plate.  Added a bit of salsa on both the beans and the quesadillas.

This is the lowest sugar salsa I could find in my store.  It’s not no sugar but < 1 gram per serving.

The end result was absolutely delicious.  And my blood sugar two hours after dinner was 108.

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Low Sugar Eating at the Ballpark?

Since the only people who read this blog right now are people who know me, you’re all well aware that I am a huge baseball fan.  Yesterday my team returned home and presented me with a new dilemma.  How to I eat low sugar at the ballpark?  All my standard fares are loaded with carbs: burgers and fries, fried chicken and fries, half-smokes and fries, and nachos.  Of course I could just always bring my own food with me, but I was certain there was a way to make ballpark food work for me.

So I got to the park early, prepared to head to all my favorite stands and ask for their nutrition information, analyze them, and figure out how this would work.  But then I took the easy way out.  I saw the stand “The Healthy Plate,” with their turkey wraps displayed front and center.  This was surely the stand for me!  So I asked for their nutrition information.  The guy running the stand didn’t have it with him.  “Well what sauce is in the wraps?”  He assured me it was mustard and just mustard.  “Nothing with sugar?”  “Oh no, not at all!”  Sounded good to me.  Serve it up!

One bite in I knew that the sauce was definitely NOT just mustard.  😦  And it definitely had sugar.  But I’d already paid eight bucks for it, so it was going to be my dinner anyway.  Two hours after dinner (well, two hours and three minutes, had to wait for the inning to end!) my blood sugar was 140.  One meal in the fail column, this was not low sugar.  But I’m still determined to find what ballpark food will work.  Updates to come.

At least my team won!

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Breakfast and Lunch – It’s a New Day All Over Again

While this blog is a bit about the search for variety, I do have a lot of repetitive eating habits.  I’ve eaten the same food for breakfast six days a week for months now.  And since my blood sugar has always tested well after eating it, the doctor has told me there is no reason to change.  It is now my most carb heavy, sugar full meal of the day.  But the body does need some glucose to function and by eating my daily allowance in the morning I allow my metabolism and brain to wake up properly.

So every morning I eat half a grapefruit, a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter, a cup of greek yogurt, and a stick of mozzarella string cheese. (And two large cups of coffee, with no sugar.  Sometimes more.)  I have made one small change though and switched to a low sugar peanut butter.

Made by Fifty 50 Foods, which makes many many low and no sugar products.  Two hours after this daily breakfast my blood sugar is typically in the range of 83-87.

For lunches I get just a bit more variety.  I tend to eat the same thing all week long, but I do change that every week.  So the lunch for this week is salad.  Or what I like to call “Epic Salad.”  That means a salad that would have pretty much everything in a standard salad bar on it.  I did cut out a few things, the carrots, the beets.  But I still ended up with a pretty epic salad.

Started with spinach and then cut up some purple cabbage and tossed them together.

Chopped tomatoes, onions, olives, broccoli, and a hard boiled egg.

Tossed all those in the bowl with some alfalfa sprouts and some pre-cooked, unseasoned chicken strips.  Then just add the sugar free salad dressing!

To save time I chopped up all the vegetables that I would need for the week, so that each morning I can just grab them out of the Ziploc baggies and toss them in the bowl.  Very time saving and very portable!  And those are my repetitive food choices, at least for this week!

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Mini Spinach Frittatas

Sunday morning breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the entire week.  Growing up it was the one meal my busy mom had time to make fabulous.  Eggs, hash browns, cinnamon buns, biscuits and gravy, pancakes, french toast, and lots of fresh fruit.  (Not all at the same meal, of course.)  And then it became the one meal that I had all the time in the world to devote myself to.  Breakfast food is some of my favorite in the world.  So of course, one of the first things I needed to figure out was how to make a low sugar breakfast.

And this is actually not a breakfast that took much time, only about ten minutes to mix it up.

Ingredients

Eggs (or Egg Beaters)

Yogurt

Parmesan cheese

Green onions

Spinach

Start by cracking six eggs into a bowl and then beating.

Add two dollops of yogurt, a bit of parmesan cheese, a couple of chopped green onions, and two handfuls of spinach, torn up into small pieces.  In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not one for exact measurements.  Here’s a representation of what I mean by a handful, a “closed” handful, not a wide open hand.

Sprinkle on a little bit of garlic salt and mix all the ingredients together.  Then, pour the mixture into a greased muffin pan.

Sprinkle on just a tad more parmesan cheese and then bake at 350 F for about 25 minutes, or until the top develops a slight crust.

The turkey sausage I got was precooked, so I just popped it in the microwave when the frittatas were almost done.

It did take a bit of finagling to get the frittatas out of the pan. And I’ll admit, I’m on of those people that likes ketchup on my eggs.  But I hadn’t yet bought any low sugar ketchup, so I used some of my balsamic vinaigrette on it.  It worked pretty well.  No final picture of it on the plate, I ate it too fast. 🙂  Blood sugar two hours after this meal was 97.

I also did some more shopping today and found a whole bunch of low and no sugar products.  Even a whole no sugar section in my grocery store I had never taken notice of before!

I mostly focused on finding the products I could in the regular aisles of the store, and was successful for just about everything.  It just took a lot of label reading and careful checking.  I spent about an hour and half at the store, slowly checking every aisle for the items on my list.  I was glad to see that almost everything I liked had a no sugar version, even sweet pickles!  But my favorite find of the day was probably this…

Delicious!  It’s not no sugar, but no sugar added, so it’s better than regular ice cream for a small indulgence.

This shopping trip did cost me a bit more than usual, since I’m one who typically buys solely generic products and generic brands don’t tend to make no sugar versions.  But I also had a meal plan for this week, instead of just buying willy nilly. And I figure I won’t need to replace all my condiments every week.  🙂

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Artichoke Heart & Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken

Today we start at the grocery store, where I found one (and only one) company that makes a line of sugar free salad dressings.  This is wonderful news.  I love salad dressing. (I’m sure there are other sugar free dressings in the world, just not in my local store.)

Maple Grove Farms of Vermont, I now love you.  Their website says they also have a dijon flavor that wasn’t in my local grocery store.  I may have to buy this online.  And a sugar free maple (flavored) syrup.  And if the syrup is anything like their salad dressing, it will taste wonderful.

Now, on to checking labels.  I’m sure everyone else out there already knew the importance of checking labels before you buy things, but this was not something I’d ever worried about before.  I’d find the item I want, pick up the cheapest brand, and be on my way.  It worked for me.  Well, you know, kind of.  But now I’ve checked more labels in the past few days than I have in my entire life.

The can on the left has 8 grams of sugar in it.  The jar on the right has none.  The can was found in the canned foods section, where one would normally look for this type of thing.  The jar was in the international foods aisle and was actually slightly cheaper.  Without reading the labels I probably would have bought the canned one.  In fact I almost did, because I assumed that because the others were marinated that they would contain more sugar than the non-marinated ones.  I was wrong.  I can admit this.  On occasion.  Don’t get too used to it.

So home with our ingredients. The amounts aren’t particularly important, adjust them to make the size meal you want.  What I used will feed two.

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts – I got thin cut ones, but regular ones would be fine as well.

1 jar artichoke hearts

Goat cheese – feta would work as well.  Mozzarella probably would too.

Green onions

The artichoke hearts were quartered already, but I wanted them a bit smaller.  Since I’m too lazy to try to cut them regularly, I pulled out my handy dandy Slap Chop!

I chopped up about half the artichoke hearts and tossed them in a bowl.  Next I cut up a couple of the green onions.

I tossed them in the bowl with the artichoke hearts and added a handful or so of the goat cheese.

Mixed these together and then used this to stuff the chicken.  Since I was using thin cut chicken, I laid the chicken out, put the mixture on top and then rolled two of the sides together, securing them with a toothpick.  If you’re using regular chicken breasts, cut one side open and stuff the mixture inside.  Then, place your chicken in a baking dish.

Aren’t you glad I included that up close shot of raw chicken to show you what it should look like?  Doesn’t that raw chicken look delicious?  Bleh.  Anyway, I had the oven preheated to 350 F, so I covered the chicken with foil and put it in for 35 minutes.

While that was baking, I started on my salad.  I drained the liquid from the rest of the artichoke hearts and put them in my salad bowl.  Then I chopped some tomatoes, into fairly large pieces.

I also took half a can of black olives and cut them in half and chopped a few more green onions.  I mixed the tomatoes, onions, olives, and more goat cheese with my artichoke hearts.  Then I dressed them with my wonderful new bottle of …

Maple Grove Farms of Vermont Sugar Free Italian Balsamic Dressing!!!  Yum.  I mixed all this together into a wonderful summer salad.  (What do you mean it’s not summer?  It sure was outside my house today!)

It may not look fabulous, but it most definitely was.

Finally the chicken was done!  (I pulled it out at 34 minutes cause I was hungry.  It did it no harm.)

The verdict?

WONDERFUL.  SO WONDERFUL IT REQUIRED ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.  THAT’S PRETTY WONDERFUL.  The cheese in the chicken melted to create a magnificent creaminess, with just the right amout of flavor from the artichokes and onions.  The chicken itself was wonderfully moist.  The salad was light and fresh tasting, with just the right amounts of saltiness and sweetness.  This meal is going right into my regular rotation of meals.  That salad I could probably eat every day.  (And I might have to in a few months when I have a garden full of tomatoes!)  You should all try this for yourself, I guarantee you’ll love it.  Just take the toothpicks out of the chicken before you eat it.

And two hours after dinner my sugar was 97.  I don’t know how long the doctor will have me monitoring my sugar, for now it’s just a week.  But whenever he has me checking, I’ll let you know how the meal in question affects it.

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Garbanzo Bean “Scallops”

I was at lunch this week with my coworkers and several of them got scallops.  I don’t eat seafood, but scallops always look good enough to make me wish I did.  (I’ve tried them though, bleh.)  So I thought I’d try to make a bean patty that mimicked a scallop.

(Please excuse the camera phone quality, I didn’t charge my camera batteries yesterday morning, as I was not expecting to decide to start a food blog.)

Ingredients:

1 large can of garbanzo beans (7g sugar in entire can)

1/2 large onion

1/4 cup bread crumbs (1g sugar) – I used Italian flavored because that’s what I had, but plain would probably be better

2 packets Sazon Goya seasoning (no sugar) – I like my food very very flavorful, if you like less use just one packet or a packet and a half

Drain the garbanzo beans and then put them in the food processor or blender and run until they are a paste.  Add the onion (chopped into a few pieces to help it blend faster) and the seasoning.  Run until well blended.  Add the bread crumbs and mix well.  Form the mixture into small patties.  If the mixture is too soft to shape, add a bit more of the bread crumbs.

Place the patties into a hot frying pan, either non-stick or coated in cooking spray.  Cook until they are a golden brown and flip them over.

After both sides cooked they were still a bit…floppy.  So I thought I’d bake them a little bit.

I laid them in the baking dish and baked them at 375 F for about 15 minutes.

As a side for the “scallops” I turned to the thing I’d been craving for days: fettuccine alfredo.  But of course the fettuccine was something I am no longer supposed to have.  So instead, I went for green bean alfredo!

This was the simple part of the dish. I wasn’t up to make my own alfredo sauce tonight, so got a jarred sauce that had no sugar.  I was surprised to see that many of them did!  Warmed the sauce on the stove and poured it over frozen french cut green beans that I had cooked in the microwave.  Sprinkled a bit of Parmesan cheese on top.

Finally the “scallops” came out of the oven.  Dinner is ready!

Did I mention this was dinner for one?  Oh well, good thing I like leftovers!

So, the final verdict?

The green beans are definitely in the library of quick and easy, low sugar side dishes.  The scallops need some tweaking though.  The flavor was wonderful.  I loved them.  But the texture was off, even after the baking.  It was a mush patty with a slight crust on the outside.  This one will require some more experimentation before I call it ready.  They definitely taste good enough to overlook the texture though.  Overall I’d give it a B+.

My sugar reading two hours after dinner was 114.  And, perhaps more importantly, I was full.

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