Day 141

10:00 a.m.
So far so good, but what do I know? I haven't tested BG for today yet. I guess at this point I will test supper since I tested lunch yesterday and didn't think to get the fasting or the post-breakfast check today.

I have enjoyed my Skinny Cow Ice Cream for my night-time snack, but, they are not totally without fault. Health-wise - better than regular ice cream, but probably not the best option. I will still keep an eye open for a good Diabetic friendly homemade ice cream recipe and for a store bought diabetic friendly ice cream. 

In the meantime, I can always enjoy my Strawberry Trifle I made from the recipe my daughter got from a co-worker who makes it for her own mother who has Diabetes. It is super simple and super good! Here, try it:

Sugar-Free Angel Food Cake (got mine in the bakery of my local Publix Grocery)

Sugar-Free Vanilla Pudding, instant kind (I made it with whole milk, but next time I think I will try it with Almond Milk)

Sugar-Free Strawberry Glaze (got this at Publix also, it was right there where the fresh strawberries were)

Fresh Strawberries - sliced to a decent bite size works best)

Sugar-Free Cool Whip

Break the Sugar-Free Angel Food cake into chunks

         I think my daughter broke it into about 1.5 inch chunks but I broke it into bite size.

Place the cake in the bottom of a Trifle bowl

        or, like we did, a plastic bowl that has a cover so it can be refrigerated.

Prepare Sugar-Free Pudding according to direction & pour over the cake chunks.

Mix sliced strawberries with Sugar-Free Strawberry Glaze and pour over the pudding

        the strawberry glaze is nice and thick so I had to spread it out to cover the 
        pudding. 

        I will suggest you look for the strawberry glaze because it worked really well. 

        My daughter made her own strawberry glaze with Truvia and it kinda broke down 

        and became too thin and watery.

Top with Sugar-free Cool Whip and refrigerate until ready to serve.

It is delicious! Really refreshing - not quite ice-cream, but a really good option! 

I will work on nutritional calculations later and update this post :)

Day 124

4:30 p.m.
Had someone ask how I got my BG in control so well and what I found to eat being that I am such a picky eater so I thought I would share my response:



Because I am a slow starter I had to keep breakfast quick & easy so I eat Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls - one has eggs, sausage, potatoes and cheese the other has eggs, bacon, potatoes and cheese. I have also worked on adding oatmeal, so it is the instant variety (but that has been put on hold because it started making me gag just trying to eat it.) I tried Special K cereal but I have found that pasta and cereals are two of my greatest enemies. This may not be the case for everyone since Diabetes is almost as individual as our fingerprints. What hits my BG hard may not hit the next diabteics as hard.


Salads are either: 
(1) Spinach Strawberry Salad
2-3 c. Baby Spinach leaves -I remove the stems as much as possible so that I get more leaf in my dish. Depending on how hungry I feel I go with either 2 cups or 3 cups
1 c. fresh strawberries
.25 cup pecan halves
.5 cup Manchego Cheese (shredded) 
(about) 3 Tbls. Light Raspberry Vinaigrette dressing
*and . . . when I have real bacon left-over from BLT sandwiches I will crumble it up and save it to add to this salad - usually about the equivalent of 1.5 strips of bacon per salad)


(2) Basic Iceberg Salad
2 c. shredded iceberg lettuce
3 slices of sandwich ham (chopped up small)
.5 c. shredded cheese (four cheese blend)
1 Tbls. sliced olives (black or green - whaichever is open in my fridge)
(about) 2 Tbls Light Sweet & Spicy French dressing
*and . . . if I have pineapple tidbits already open in the fridge I will throw in .33 c for more flavor.


The other meal (because some days salad is my lunch and some days salad is my supper so whichever meal my salad falls to the other meals is referred to here) will vary. Sometimes BLT sandwiches (I found Arnolds Premium Italian Bread to be good and it is a denser texture so it is more filling), sometimes grilled steak or grilled chicken with a couple of side items. Maybe: 
- Sweet Niblet Corn 
- Carrots (I cook my carrots in a skillet - I slice them in rounds and add half an onion (chopped large so I can get carrots without the onion on my plate) sprinkle with 1 tsp. Truvia and about 1 cup water - bring to a boil and reduce to med-low and cook about 30 minutes. Makes really great tasting carrots)
- Broccoli with Cheese Sauce (frozen stuff)
- Green Beans (I cook these with a Beef Bouillon cube and some Garlic flakes for better flavor) 
- sometimes I will treat myself to half a baked potato with a little Smart Choice butter and some Manchego Cheese (shredded)
- Baked Beans


The best thing to do is to track what you eat and keep tabs on which foods spike your sugar and which are BG friendly. I started tracking everything I eat for two reasons (1) easier to identify what spiked my sugar (2) to keep track of calorie and carb intake (it's too easy to forget you ate a handful of cashews if you don't note it. You can log it in a notebook or log it online - but it is a great check-double check habit to develop. 

Day 22

2:00

BG still good. Doing my best to stick to the No Sugar - Low carb lifestyle. It has been a little easier than I expected since I found a few things I like, I have been trying to eat more fresh fruits and salads, both iceberg and baby spinach. I also tried a recipe for Diabetic Eggnog that is pretty darn good! 

Here is the recipe I found for the Diabetic Eggnog (found this on the Diabetic Connect website in the recipes section:

Ingredients

5 1/2 cups skim milk ( I used 2% milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 (1 1/2 ounce) boxes sugar-free instant vanilla pudding mix
3 1/4 tablespoons Splenda sugar substitute
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Cooking Instructions

1. In a large bowl, combine vanilla and milk
2. In another bowl, combine the dry pudding mix, sweetener, and nutmeg.
3. Whisk the dry mix into the milk mixture until smooth. Refrigerate until serving.




I will also post a recipe I made Friday night that turned out to be pretty darn good. I found this one on Food.com


Crust:
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 eggs (I used 2 eggbeaters cups)
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon taco seasoning
8 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded (you will need 8 more in the topping)


Topping:
1 lb ground beef (I used 1.5 lbs)
3 teaspoons taco seasoning (I used the rest of what was left from making the crust and 1 additional packet)
1/4 cup tomato sauce
4 ounces chopped green chilies (I didn't have any green chilies so I left this out)
8 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded (you will need 8 more in the crust)


Directions (Prep Time: 25 mins - Total Time: 1 1/4 hr)
1. For the crust, beat the cream cheese and eggs until smooth.
2. Add the cream and seasoning.
3. Grease a 9"x13" baking dish; spread the cheese over the bottom.
4. Pour in the egg mixture as evenly as possible.
5. Bake at 375ºF, 25-30 minutes.
6. Let stand 5 minutes before adding the topping.
7. For the topping, brown the hamburger; drain fat.
8. Stir in the seasoning, tomato sauce and chilies.
9. Spread over the crust.
10. Top with cheese.
11. Reduce oven to 350ºF and bake another 20 minutes or so until hot and bubbly.
12. Serve with the toppings of your choice (add additional carbs accordingly)


It says it serves 8, but it was rather thin so Terry, Brett & I knocked out half the first night. I divided the leftovers in half and stacked it 2 deep in a small corning square bowl and the next night Brett & I knocked that out between us. So take the "Serves 8" as you may.

Next time I make this one I am going to bake the crust and then split it in half and stack it 2 deep in a 9X9 casserole dish. A bottom layer of crust followed by half the meat mixture and 4 oz. of shredded cheese. Then the other half of the crust topped by the remaining meat mixture & the rest of the cheese.  It will make the same amount, but it will be a smaller footprint, just a deeper dish. And since everything will be "cooked" when it is stacked it will just be a question of will the cheese in the middle get hot enough to melt. We will see. 

Day 18

9:00

BG looking good! I am trying new recipes (simple ones of course) and some so simple as to grate hard Parmesan cheese and bake it into crackers. They taste salty. They also smell funky when they are baking, but they don't smell funky when they have cooled and I eat them. This will be a "go to" when I need that salty snack. And, since I learned with baking chicken coated in Panko bread crumbs that even cooking spray does not prevent stuff from sticking to the pan, aluminum foil or wax paper, I ordered a silpat silicon baking mat and waited for it to arrive before I even attempted these cheese snacks. Wow! I love that silpat mat! Love it so much that I sat down last night and ordered me a larger version so I can bake Panko chicken in bigger batches.

I found a recipe on Diabetic Connect that I am going to try. It is called Taco bake. The crust is made using cream cheese, eggs and shredded cheddar. Other stuff too, but I don't have the recipe in front of me so I forget what else. But not flour or cornmeal - which reduces the carbs tremendously! It is definitely worth a try, even if I never make it but once.

Okay, exercise time. Hopefully I will do better today than yesterday and I will actually come back later to post more.

3:00
So, let me tell you what I learned today. I learned that Almond milk does not want to be chocolate milk. I had Terry pick me up some sugar-free chocolate syrup when he went to Wal-Mart earlier today and as soon as he got home I mixed me up a glass. I guess when it didn't want to dissolve easily into the almond milk I should have known. I just figured it had to do with the difference it the consistency of almond milk as opposed to dairy milk. I stirred long enough to get it to actually mix up. I certainly wasn't going to give up too quick. But when I had it mixed well and drank it I was really rather disappointed. Oh, it didn't taste bad. It just didn't taste good. It actually just tasted like the almond milk tastes straight from the carton. 

Well, nothing ventured - nothing gained. At least I have a bottle of sugar-free chocolate syrup and I can get some sugar-free ice cream one day and have a sugar-free sundae.