Diabetes strikes home

I thought since my husband has learned to cook for me, read labels, and generally be highly carb conscious about what I allow to be consumed at home, that his overall sugar and starch consumption would be low enough that he would never have any health problems. Of course it seems this subject falls in the same category of "I'm just in deep denial" that I discovered I perferred to use to keep from facing lots of other unpleasant subjects.

Yes, this week we discovered that he is, indeed, diabetic. Not a whole lot diabetic; not so bad the doctor recommeded insulin diabetic, but still with high enough blood sugar to be considered diabetic. To his credit, he did tell the doctor that he wanted to try to manage it with diet and exercise and the doctor agreed to let him do it.

Well, he has had several years now that he has practiced 'stealth carb consumption'. He has been pretty good at it, too. There are several things that he considers necessary to make life worth living. I think the main one is his coffee on the weekends. He only drinks it on the weekends, and I have nothing against coffee. The problem is he HAS to have Irish Cream and Kahlua in his coffee. OK, great! He learned several years ago to make his own Irish Cream and his own Kahlua. The Kahlua is made with instant coffee, cheap vodka, and simple syrup that I convinced him to make with Splenda instead of sugar. One problem kind of solved. But the Irish cream is made with bourbon, raw egg, chocolate syrup (he will happily sub sf syrup), and here is the real problem...a can of sweetened condensed milk! HOLY COW, I'll bet no low carber even bothered to look up the carb count on sweetened condensed milk. 23g per 2 Tablespoons. Nutritional information seems like an oxymoron when you say in conjunction with a product that is made of whole milk and sugar, period! I'll try to come up with a substitute, but it isn't going to be easy. I know that Irish Cream Davinci's Syrup won't satisfy him.

Even though he knows I'm right, he still has that wishful attitude that he won't have to watch his diet forever. I've told him its a lifestyle change, not a diet, and eventually he won't think about eating fries, corn on the cob, and hamburger buns again (which, BTW, he rarely does in front of me). He argues that when he gets down to 200 pounds it won't be a problem anymore. Somehow, he has connected diabetes with weighing 250 pounds, not with having disfunctional sugar metabolism. He has 2 college degrees and isn't stupid! But he is a man, and if I nag him he'll just remain in stealth carb eating mode and not educate himself. So, my mouth is shut. My Atkins books are laying in plain sight, and I don't know what else to do. I know that he mainly eats the bad stuff when he isn't around me, and I can't be around him all the time.

The holidays are going to be rough. His mother is a wonderful cookie, cake, and pie baker. That's her special talent and she is his supplier on the holidays...I'm not making any iced sugar cookies or making fudge and Mississippi Mud Pie, but she has them sitting all over the house in literal bucketfuls. I have her partially trained to have a few things around made with Splenda so I don't sit around and bitch quite so bad about being surrounded with poison, are they trying to kill me or what? Not too long ago I actually yelled at her for buying LOW FAT some kind of crap, and pulled a regular version of it out of her refrigerator and showed her the carb count and amount of sugar was exactly 19 times higher in the low fat version. I was mortified that I yelled at my MIL, but I may have finally made some headway in keeping her from trying to feed me low fat stuff ("I got those for you, they're low fat"). Maybe I can get her convinced that flour and sugar should be eliminated from her house, too, now that her son's life depends on it. Yeah, that's it, I'll accuse her of trying to kill him instead of me for awhile.

Anyway, anybody reading this is welcome to offer suggestions. I'm doing all I can think of to convince him that Low Carb is the only way to handle this disease, and correct his HDL/Triglyceride ratio at the same time (it's bad, too, of course).

Do it yourself cheese!

Milk isn't exactly low carb, so I don't drink it. But I get almost 2 gallons of fresh milk everyday, and with the new price of milk being at or above $4 per gallon at the stores, I figure my dairy goats are getting more valuable by the minute!

I don't drink milk, but I use it to make my own cheese. That's low carb :-)

I also use it to make soap, and lotion.

Anyone interested in making homemade cheese is in for a treat. It's SO EASY.

You don't have to have a goat or cow. You could milk your sheep, or mare, or water buffalo...just kidding. You could go buy that $4/gallon milk from Wally World.

Instructions:

Carefully warm a gallon of milk to 195 degrees (for cows milk). Add 1/2 cup of vinegar or lemon juice to the hot milk. You will see curds separate from the whey (which will be kind of neon green-looking). Line a collandar or large sieve with a clean, old, well worn pillowcase, sheet, or piece of cheesecloth. Pour the curds and whey through the cloth and let drain for a while. You can hang the curds by tying the 4 corners of the cloth in a loose knot and dangle from a cabinet handle with a bowl underneath to catch whey, or from your kitchen faucet. Let drain for 3 to 12 hours depending on how dry you want your cheese.

Dump the curds into a large bowl, for a savory cheese, season with salt, and herbs such as onion powder, garlic powder, Italian herbs, dill, or pepper. For a desert cheese or fruit spread, put the curds into the food processor with a few strawberries and some Stevia, or some SF jam, or DaVinci syrup, and process until it is smooth and creamy (you might want to add some cream).

Put it into a tightly sealed container in your refrigerator and use within the next week or two. These cheeses also freeze well. The savory cheese is awesome in Italian dishes like lasagna. You can also use this type of cheese in anything you would use tofu in (it doesn't melt or get stringy).

Everyone I work with looks forward to me bringing in my fresh cheeses and dishes made with them for our snack days.

Let me know how your cheese turns out :-)

Sid

Squash Casserole Recipe

My garden is producing great big yellow summer squash as fast as it can. That means I am making small squash casseroles to freeze for later use, as fast as I can. There is no way I can eat all that squash right now. Even a little summer squash pumps up the carbs when you are on induction. But, I do make a fairly low carb squash casserole:

Ingredients:
About 4 quarts of squash in large pieces
One medium onion, cut in large pieces
4 oz cream cheese (full fat)
1 stick of butter
1 large egg, beaten
2 Tablespoons of Carbalose flour or LC bake mix
Salt and Italian herbs to taste.


Boil the squash and onion until very tender and then drain for 10 or 15 minutes in a large collandar.
Mash with a large fork or potato masher while in the collandar so it will drain some more.

Put mashed squash and onion back into your big pan and add one stick of butter and 4 ounces of cream cheese, one beaten egg, and 2 tablespoons of carbalose flour. Season with salt and Italian herbs. Mix well, then put into small casserole dishes that have been sprayed with PAM. Cover the top of the casserole with shredded cheese (I use shredded colby).

Cover the dishes with lids, or aluminum foil. Make a label (I use a post-it note) and trap it under a layer of clear wrap and wrap the casserole tightly to keep it fresh until you are ready to bake it. Freeze.

When you are ready to cook it, take it out of the freezer several hours in advance to thaw. Bake it covered at 350 degrees until it is hot, bubbly and browning on the top. The time will vary depending on just how much thawing happened prior to putting in the oven. If it was totally thawed, it should only take 30 to 45 minutes.

The whole recipe comes to 52 net carbs, I get a minimum of 10 servings at 5.2 grams each.
Enjoy,
Sid

4th of July

Menu for the 4th:
Pulled Pork barbeque (0 Carbs)
Smoked Chicken (0 Carbs)
Macaroni & Cheese (Goatmilk cheese & Dreamfields macaroni) (7 Carbs per serving)
Mock Waldorf Salad (George Stella’s recipe ) (4 Carbs per serving when made with broccoli instead of cabbage)
Home made LC Ice Cream (50 grams per complete recipe = 6 grams per cup)

This will work on induction if I drink tea sweetened with stevia, have eggs for breakfast, and leftover meat for dinner/snacks. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it? Have a Happy 4th.

Back on Induction

Well after a week back on induction I am glad to announce I lost 9 pounds. Knuckling down was hard, but not impossible. As usual, weekends were hardest because my husband wanted to eat out a few times, but I was very picky where I would go, so I could get “trustworthy” food (no sugar added to boost flavor). I have been in ketosis at a low to moderate level and decided to check something I always was a little suspicious about. Namely, does Dreamfields pasta really only have the effect of just 5 grams of carbs? Well, I watched the ketone levels closely, and a meal with Dreamfields linguini did NOT throw me out of ketosis, so I feel confident if I don’t overindulge, Dreamfields pasta is honestly safe for low carbers (me, anyway).

Supporting Local Farmers

Today, I am going to go to a local Black berry and Blue berry farm to pick blackberries. I do have wild blackberries on my farm, but this year they are about the size of baby English peas. (drat!). So, off I go to pick from someone who irrigated. That's OK, I believe in buying from local farmers. To be honest, not only should the berries be bigger (but not as sweet) but their plants are thornless, and I don't expect to have to sidestep snakes, and snakes are a big possibility in my berry patches!

Farming can be a seriously risky business. Especially, if you are trying to make a living from it. This year, especially, in my part of the country, being a small farmer may mean ending up seriously broke, not to mention hungry. We are in the middle of a bad drought here in Middle Tennessee. Luckily, Tennessee will probably never run out of water. It doesn't really matter how dry it is, or how long it has been that way, just drill a little way and you WILL hit water. Some of the larger farmers around here aren't being really affected because they have taken advantage of wells and springs to keep their crops irrigated, but most can't afford that.

To top that off, we had a hard freeze at the most inopportune time last spring. All the peach and apple trees, and the blueberry bushes were in full bloom....guess what we aren't getting this summer and fall? The strawberry crop was affected, but luckily they were already further along than the other fruits and there was a half decent crop of strawberries. Unfortunately, I ended up paying $11 a gallon for the same thing I paid $7 a gallon for until this year, but at least I hav some strawberries in my freezer for the winter. I happened to be traveling in South Alabama recently where the peach crop was stunted but not destroyed. So a few peaches made it home with me. I have eaten three in the last week and a half. The rest are in the freezer. I'm thinking lo-carb homemade peach ice cream a few times this winter....(lo-carb ice cream...a future blog post)

Being a permanent low carber means I don't eat a lot of fruit. To me it is a wonderful treat. Most of what I pick or purchase will end up in small containers in my freezer to be pulled out later in the year and used for cooking or as a desert treat. (Or thrown into a fancy drink, or as part of a low carb smoothie.)

If you are lucky enough to live in an area of the country where you have lots of fresh fruits and veggies, please support the local farmers by stopping at their farm stands, responding to offers of off farm sales in the local papers, and hitting the farmer's market weekly. Our way of life depends on you.

Sid

Experimental Food June 4 '07

You know, I really miss stuffed potatoes, and stuffed potato skins. While looking at a totally unrelated recipe for stuffed tomatoes I realized the thing about the stuffed potato things was definitely NOT the potato part, but the stuffing! Of Course! Why not mush up the innards of other veggies that aren't so starchy and put the butter, grated cheese, crumbled bacon, and sour cream and chives into them! I can see using zucchini, or yellow squash for sure. Hollowed out tomatoes would hold all those things even after baking and still be firm enough to hold plenty of all that good stuffing stuff. Dr Atkins even had a recipe just for real stuffed potato skins. It never really seemed like a good idea to let a potato into the house while I was eating low carb, but I think my potato addiction is gone enough to be able to throw away the potato innards now. Another possiblility is to make little faux potato skins from a couple of layers of filo pastry cut into wedges, then cover with the stuffing goodies and bake them. I think stuffed potato nachos made from lo-carb tortillas might be awesome, too.

If anybody has any other ideas, or tries some of these, let me know. When I get home, I might just start experimenting.