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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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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