Category Archives: Recipes!

It’s not that simple

May 14, 2019 – 10:11 am

I watched the beginning of a show on my local public television station last weekend. Staged as kind of a talk show, it was really about the people in the show trying to make themselves look smart and caring by telling us how bad sugar is.

That was really all I saw, and all I heard. Sugar is bad… that was the message.

The problem with that statement, or that sentiment anyway, is that sugar, by itself, is not bad. Sure, Americans eat too much sugar. It’s not the healthiest thing in the world. But it’s also not the source of everything wrong with our society.

And saying that sugar is bad has the added effect of making some people feel bad for eating any sugar at all. It’s a by-product, if you will, of demonizing an ingredient for the sake of trying to make yourself look smart.

But people aren’t bad for eating sugar. Heck, people aren’t bad for eating too much sugar. Let’s stop demonizing people too, okay? Things just aren’t that simple.

Eating well, eating healthy, is something all of us would like to do. We’re not trying to go out and eat crap every day. Some of us eat healthy and still gain weight. I’ve been told that most of my weight gain over the years can be attributed to the fact that insulin analogs, while good for people who need them to live, cannot be completely metabolized. So I’ve kept some of it behind in the form of fat. Yay.

My point, however, is that all of us have reasons for why we do, or don’t, have perfect bodies. And it rarely has anything to do with sugar.

Stress. Lack of access to good ingredients. Knowledge of how to create a healthy meal. We had a bad day at work. These reasons and others are all why we may not eat well on a given day, a given week, or a given year. What do any of those things have to do with sugar, or with the kind of people we are?

It’s just not as easy as blaming an ingredient or blaming a person. Instead of finding something or someone to blame, maybe we should be searching for innovative solutions so that ingredients are improved, and choices in eating them, and the people eating them, are more informed and less infused with guilt.

That’s something that I think we can all be proud of and happy to live with.

By StephenS | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Have Some Fun

April 18, 2019 – 10:11 am

I came home from work the other night, walked the dog (like you do)… then, I went into the kitchen to see what I could do about dinner.

I should mention that I was finishing up a bad infusion site, and my blood sugar was over 200 mg/dL most of the day. In fact, I had skipped lunch because I couldn’t bring my number down and I didn’t want to go even higher. I was hungry. First, I performed the site change, and then I opened up the fridge.

I needed something that would fill me up, but not affect my blood sugar too much while I got the BGs sorted out.

I had part of a steak leftover from a couple of days earlier. And a brand new head of iceberg lettuce. I usually prefer romaine, or spinach, or just about anything other than iceberg, but there it was.

And suddenly, I thought: maybe I could try to make a wedge salad like the ones that became so popular about ten years ago. To be honest, whenever I think of a wedge salad, I think “easy salad”… how hard can a salad be if you don’t even chop the lettuce? Well, it really is that easy. Finally, I’m right about something.

I added green onion, a little shredded broccoli/carrot mixture, chopped walnut, and tomato. On top of that, the leftover steak and some feta cheese. A little crushed black pepper and greek salad dressing, and I was ready to go.

It was delicious.

Hey look, making a wedge salad is about as easy as it gets in the kitchen. The point isn’t that I did some chefy thing. The point is that I had fun doing it.

I took a ridiculously boring idea (salad) and enjoyed the idea of crafting something that I hadn’t tried before. It was easy, but it wasn’t boring.

That’s the point of cooking for me: use what you have, make it as well as you can, and enjoy the process. You’ll usually come up with something that’s good for you, is lower in calories, and is pleasant to your CGM trend line.

Do something in the kitchen you’ve never done. Have some fun. I guarantee you will love the process.

By StephenS | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Recipe! Stuffed Peppers

February 28, 2019 – 11:10 am

I posted something about this over the weekend when I made it, but I thought it would be good to tell you a little more here.

For the first time, I made stuffed peppers. It’s indicative of the fact that I eat a lot of things these days that I never would have eaten years ago. I also like trying to cook things I’ve never cooked before. For evidence of this, I refer you to the Recipes! section of this blog.

This is really more of a hodge-podge of things that were leftovers as opposed to any specific recipe. To keep the carb count lower, I substituted corn for the traditional rice. Made it a little watery, but the taste was grand. For the record, here’s what went into my stuffed peppers:

1/2 pound ground turkey
Leftover frozen corn (this is farm-fresh corn we purchased last summer and froze for later)
2 large green onions
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Oregano
Fresh sage

We took all this and mixed it in a bowl, then divided it in half and stuffed two bell peppers with the mixture.

Over the top, we poured a tomato-based sauce– this was made about a week earlier, from fresh and frozen vegetables, and helped along by a little chicken stock, a lot of basil, and some tomato paste.

Right before they went into the oven, they looked like this in my now indispensable iron skillet:

I cooked them for about 30 minutes at 375 degrees fahrenheit (190 degrees celsius). After 30 minutes, I took them out and added freshly-grated cheddar/gruyere cheese (from Trader Joe’s) to the top. Then they went back in for almost another 15 minutes.

When they were finished, they looked like this:

I can tell you with certainty that they tasted as good as they look.

I’ve made a lot of these recipes over the years, often in a kitchen much smaller and more sparse than the one I work in today. The thing I want to encourage you to do is:

1) Experiment on your own… find new recipes by just fooling around with flavors you like, and then try something new and see if you like that too. And…

2) Share your discoveries. Some of my favorite recipes are from ideas I got from someone else.

I hope you get a chance to experiment in the kitchen and discover something fun and different. Until then… enjoy the stuffed peppers!

By StephenS | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

Sometimes, you just need a little boost.

January 22, 2019 – 10:11 am

So, I had a low the other day. One of those lows that happen from working around the house and eating too little to keep up with the basal on your insulin pump.

I wasn’t terribly low. About 70 mg/dL. I didn’t need to eat all the carbs in the house. I just needed a little boost.

Fortunately, I had a little time, or I wouldn’t have taken the time to do this, though it didn’t take too long anyway.

This is a small dish with some frozen blueberries, a little of my favorite cherry/cranberry juice to help melt and plump up the blueberries a bit. And just a little Graeter’s cinnamon ice cream.

Once everything began to melt, the taste got even better.

Sometimes, you don’t need a gallon of juice or an entire bag of candy to bring you back up again. This brought me up to around 115 mg/dL within half an hour. I was good to go until dinner.

Quite the pick me up on a busy afternoon.

By StephenS | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

8 Things: Fall Recipes

September 20, 2018 – 11:10 am

Autumn begins on Saturday here in North America. That means lots of leaves falling from the trees, Halloween costumes and decorations in nearly every store, and recipes to warm our hearts as the days grow colder.

With that last part in mind, here are 8 Fall recipes I’m looking forward to enjoying in the coming months. Click on the links for the recipes:

1. Cincinnati Chili— it’s the main dish at our Halloween party every year, and a staple in my household, wherever my household has been, for over 50 years. This is one where the vegetarian version is just about as good as the meaty version, its unique blend of spices making your house smell great and making your neighbors’ mouths water.

2. Maple Roasted Acorn Squash— I am most definitely not a squash lover, either in sport or in vegetable form. But this recipe, which I took out of Diabetes Forecast magazine, changed my mind about squash entirely. If you replace the maple syrup with a touch of honey, it’s just as good or better.

3. Potato Leek Soup— here’s a super easy recipe for quick potato leek soup, taken from Jacque Pepin’s Fast Food My Way. A quick lunch or dinner option, it really hits the spot. Bolus appropriately. Note: recipe starts at around the 4:15 mark in the video.

4. Crab Dip— crab is something that I never enjoyed in my life before moving to this part of the world 24 years ago. It’s also something we don’t get a lot of here, because it’s pretty expensive. But once or twice a year, usually around the holidays, I’ll get out my crab dip recipe and give it a go. It’s worth having to bolus for the Italian bread that goes so well with it. Note: I like the second recipe on this page (Crab Dip Delight) best.

5. Flatbread Pizza— okay, flatbread pizza isn’t exclusively a Fall recipe, but it’s a great dinner because a) It’s cheap; b) It’s versatile; and c) It’s delicious with LaRosa’s pizza sauce. My favorite features green onion, mushroom, and bacon, topped with smoked mozzarella. What’s not to like?

6. Roasted Turkey Thighs— confession: I really don’t like turkey that much. But this recipe was a winner from the word Go, and if there’s a dish that says Autumn more than any other, this might be it.

7. Kicked-Up Ramen— Throw that stupid “flavor pouch” away… you don’t need it. Instead, use a little of this and a little of that to satisfy your own individual palate, and you’ll keep coming back to this recipe.

8. Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Ice Cream— okay, this isn’t a recipe, and to be honest, it’s not something I’d enjoy year round. But a couple times during the Fall, I’ll pick up a quart of TJ’s pumpkin ice cream, which really tastes more ginger-and-nutmeg-snappy than anything else. Regardless of what the label says and what it tastes like, it’s still a nice dessert, when I have dessert this time of year.
 
 
Those are 8 culinary dishes I like to enjoy as the leaves fall in Autumn. What are yours?

By StephenS | Tagged , , | Comments (2)
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