Tag: bacon

It needs more bacon

On By Linda M AuLeave a comment


1_E6u3EJSv97Yo8i7HRZK5tg

I’m still learning how to adapt some of my favorite dishes into a low-carb or keto version. But I don’t think the words “cooking” and “creative” should be allowed in the same sentence. I hate cooking. I hate learning new things about cooking. I’ve been an adult for 37 years, and I’m still not used to the fact that I’m expected to concoct meals for the people in my family every single day. So, adding the criteria that my meals need to be low carb has been vexing, to say the least.

Tonight, for instance, I tried to adapt a favorite easy meal from when my kids were younger. We called it cheeseburger pie. The Bisquick box always called it something like Impossible Cheeseburger Pie, though I immediately changed a few aspects of the recipe. (Otherwise, the word “impossible” would describe my efforts to get them to eat it.) So, the sliced tomatoes on top were replaced with a thin coating of spaghetti sauce.

But that regular Bisquick baking mix had to go. Way too many carbs in that stuff for a diabetic. Last month I purchased a box of Carbquik through Amazon and successfully made pancakes with it. It uses a strange version of a wheat-based flour, so it’s not strictly keto, but it’s lower carb because it’s so high fiber.

Anyway, the Carbquik has an odd aroma to it. You wouldn’t think a baking mix would smell like anything, but this stuff does. The closest I can think of is that it smells like a box of Bisquick that you forgot about for a year in the back of the pantry. Old. Expired. Stale. It smells more like the box it comes in. (It’s not expired, by the way. I checked.)

For some reason, I forged ahead and made those pancakes when the box first arrived. And perhaps I was so desperate for pancakes that I enjoyed them anyway. Perhaps it was the sugar-free syrup I slathered all over those pancakes. And the butter. And the blueberries I tossed into the batter at the last minute. Whatever. I enjoyed the pancakes. A lot.

Tonight’s cheeseburger pie, though? Not so much. Of course, the recipe also calls for milk, and I had to substitute coconut milk for regular milk. So maybe that was the culprit, though I sniffed the coconut milk and found it had no odor at all. But, did it affect the flavor of the pie? Unsure. And I’m not in a hurry to find out by making this dish again soon.

But when I do, I’ll be sure to throw in some crumbled bacon. After all, a bacon cheeseburger is a real thing, so a bacon cheeseburger pie should also be a thing.

This, by the way, is why I shop at the Archie McPhee website every year for holiday gift giving. They have an entire page full of bacon-related gifts. Who doesn’t want bacon-flavored dental floss?

bacon_floss_2_2000x

Because everything is better with bacon. And, the more bacon, the better. I just wish I’d thought of adding bacon to that cheeseburger pie a few hours ago. Lesson learned: always add bacon.

Keep calm and keto on!

On By Linda M AuLeave a comment
eggs with meat in cooking pan
Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a fad diet! It’s … KETOGENICS ‘R US!

Okay, seriously, folks. I started this crazy ketogenic diet right after the holidays last year, not knowing it was going to become a politically charged craze about three nanoseconds after I peed on my first ketone strip. Honestly, I hate following crazes, as anyone who knew me in junior high can confirm (yes, me, with my K-Mart wardrobe and bright yellow Sears five-speed bike). I didn’t own a pair of Chuck Taylors till I found a pair in a thrift store in the 1980s. I still don’t own a Mac. So what do I know or care about a fad diet craze, of all things?

Not much, but enough to lower my A1C nearly a full point in five months.

It started last autumn when a good friend was in town. I hadn’t seen her in a while, and she looked fabulous. Focused, fit, and, well, healthy. Huh. I had to have me some of that, so I asked her what she’d been doing. Turns out she herself had been on this diet for the past six months or so and had lost 40 pounds. And her mind was sharp and clear, and she was clearly ON somethin’. Yeah, I had to have me some of dat.

She wisely cautioned me to read-read-read first and to NOT try to jump in right before the two biggest eating holidays of the year (Thanksgiving and Christmas, followed by New Year’s). And so I read. And read some more. And felt overwhelmed.

Macros. Wait, don’t you use those in Microsoft Word?

Ketones. Wait wait, I was pregnant four times. Aren’t those bad?

High fat. Wait wait wait … I’m already high fat. That’s precisely my problem. Isn’t it?

Intermittent fasting. Wait … HOLD ON. Not eating at ALL? For hours? On purpose? What is wrong with you people? Plus, diabetics can’t get away with that!

Aforementioned friend also added that it might be better to ease into it. I’d already been on a low-carb bandwagon for years since being diagnosed diabetic in 2010 (with more than my share of slip-ups), so getting back on THAT way of eating was second nature to me. I kept reading as I moved lower and lower carb. Then, in January, I bought the little test strips and dove in.

Within a month I’d lost 22 pounds and felt amazing. I’m 57 years old and often groaned and creaked as I climbed out of our massive waterbed every morning. (I’m also 5’2″ and just barely reach the floor when I try to climb up over the side of that thing.) But now I found myself zipping out of bed easily, no cranky noises. My joints felt great. I never even thought about them anymore. I could get up and down the two flights of stairs to do laundry without getting nearly as winded as I once did. I was sleeping like a log.

And my IBS-D symptoms (which I’d battled for more than two years) were gone.

I admit it took some head games to get used to adding bacon to my usual scrambled eggs for breakfast. I admit it took more head games to delay breakfast (although I never ate breakfast before my T2 diagnosis because I’m a night owl and mornings are evil). So many things about this diet seemed counterproductive for a diabetic (pretty much everything but the lower carb bit).

But the numbers didn’t lie. The weight loss. The lower fasting blood sugar numbers (which went from a consistent 150+ range down to as low as 87!). Then the A1C after five months of fairly consistent ketogenic eating and fasting.

I’m currently climbing back onto this fad/craze/bandwagon from a summer of too many road trips, meetings, and times away from the house. Too much carbage! But as I slowly crawl my way back, I find once again that everything about my body feels better when I lower those low-nutrient carbs and substitute them with higher fat.

And now, I’m outta here, to go treat myself to some coffee with heavy whipping cream and stevia. Gotta keep that heart pumping!

Your Type 2 partner in crime,

Linda

—–

NOTE: I’m not offering medical advice, but you can’t ramp up the fat without drastically lowering those carbs. If you don’t do both, you’re a walking heart attack. Do your homework, stay away from the fad/craze part of this whole thing, and make sure you’re getting regular check-ups. 

It’s too early for carbs

On By Linda M AuLeave a comment

Scrambled eggs and bacon

One thing I learned early on in my diabetic journey is that I still can’t tolerate carbs for breakfast. And by “tolerate,” I mean my blood sugar can’t tolerate carbs for breakfast. I, personally, love carbs for breakfast. The perfect, non-diabetic me could eat pancakes, French toast, and granola cereal all day long and tolerate it just fine. (And just typing that makes me want to go make French toast. It’s a good thing I don’t keep bread in the house anymore.)

When I wake up (or, more realistically, when I wake up, hop outta bed, do my morning ablutions, fiddle around on Facebook, and check my email inbox for anything that’s not spam or an e-newsletter I keep forgetting to unsubscribe from), I scramble up some eggs (two or three) and cook ’em in some melted butter. If I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll make a few strips of bacon in the microwave with this cool little ridged pan made specifically to make a few strips of bacon in the microwave.

And there’s always the coffee, which I now drink with a packet of stevia and some heavy whipping cream. If I’m feeling daring, I’ll add a splash of some sugar-free coffee syrup. These days it’s been a raspberry flavor, but I see a bottle of salted caramel in the cupboard calling my name.

This is pretty much how I’ve started every day at home for nearly nine years. Does it get old? Nope. But then again, I love scrambled eggs and I’ve got the whole meal down to a science. I’m not a big fan of strict routines, but the breakfast thing has turned into a smooth routine every day I’m here. Of course, when I eat this meal varies from day to day, depending on how stupidly late I stayed up the night before … but the meal itself is a no-brainer. And the more I can go on auto-pilot with this whole diabetic planning thing, the better off I am.

Besides, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

Every so often I try a few more carbs at breakfast. And every so often, I’m reminded of why I still can’t do that. Curses, foiled again! Those blasted blood sugar numbers!

Apparently many diabetics have seen similar trends. Carbs are not kind to us in the morning, but as the day wears on, our bodies relax a little and can tolerate a few carbs at lunch, and even a few more by dinner. Of course, it’s all relative, and “a few” really does mean a few. Like, very few. Let’s not kid ourselves on that: upping that carb count is always risky. If you’re gobbling down carbs at levels best left to a normal person, you’d better make sure it’s your birthday or some other festive occasion and not just, say, Tuesday.

Pretend you’re back in school. Get yourself a notebook. Take notes. Write down numbers. Take lots of tests. (The school analogies just keep coming, folks.) Heck, in this day and age, start a spreadsheet like I did. (Sure, I had to ask my engineer-husband how to USE a spreadsheet, but I swallowed my pride—which is very low carb—and asked him how.)

I found that, with a lot of testing and tracking, I could see patterns. Not completely scientific patterns, of course. Managing diabetes is more of an art than a science sometimes. But there were trends. There were foods that I had to stay away from. And foods I could tolerate better than I anticipated. And ways to trick my body into not raising that BG number too much. (I’ll get to those tricks at some later date.)

And to this day I continue to learn. The body changes. The body ages. (Ugh, how the body ages!) And how the body is affected by specific foods also morphs. I’m in this for the long haul, so I still need to test in order to keep that information flow going.

And it looks like there are a lot of scrambled eggs in my future … at least for breakfast. And I’m okay with that.

Egging you on …
Linda