Saturday Stuff....

So, it's January 8th and the Christmas stuff is still decorating my house. Suppose I should take it down any day now. Hmmm.... maybe tomorrow. The house always looks so vanilla once it's all down.

Made myself some pretty good low carb pancakes for breakfast this morning using Carbquik Bake Mix which is a low carb baking mix substitute for "bisquik". They looked like regular pancakes, tasted pretty good but had an off aftertaste that is somewhat characteristic of the Carbquik mix. Maybe I'll use some almond flour in it next time to try to minimize that aftertaste and a little nutmeg and see how that comes out. But, overall, they did satisfy my need for a little normal pancake breakfast with butter and SF syrup on them this morning with only 2 carbs in all of it. Hopefully, my BS liked it too.

Rachel went to her friend Lea's birthday party last night. Hard to believe these girls are 17 years old. They've been friends since they were 3 years old and we moved into the Pearland neighborhood. Since our family moved to Friendswood in 2005, they haven't seen each other every day but did maintain their friendship! Lots to catch up on over there.

Now... she's taking a practice ACT test to get ready for the real test in February. Strange to have a child planning for college. It's exciting for her and me....but it's sad for me in some ways too. I'm not ready for her to be leaving us - not sure I'll be ready then either.

John's off to coach the football game - Houston Cardinals - this evening down in West Columbia. This is the semi-pro team he and his friend, Rene having been working with this year. He was just like a kid this morning, getting all his stuff ready and then asking "What time is it?" almost every 10 minutes until the time came for him to go. LOL... funny. Glad he's enjoying it.

I'm timing Rachel... typing this, surfing the internet, planning what I'm going to do for my last two weeks of freedom before going back to work. Hmmm.... what needs to be done around here??

Later!

MA

Low Carb Living.....

So... it's a low carb life for me from here on out... forever.. to help battle diabetes. I'm still a bit bitter about that right now, but am trying to learn this new way of cooking and living.

Being the over achiever that I am, I tend to very quickly learn about anything that I wish. Lately, it's been diabetes and low carb living.

I've been reading a lot about low carb eating and there is much evidence that says it's actually the way we should be eating as a general way of life. I'm not going to get preachy because gee... it's been there all the time and I sure didn't embrace it before now either. I just hadn't done too much of the research before now, so while I had an overall knowledge that yea, I shouldn't eat all that bad processed food, restaurant foods, fast foods, it's a little different when you actually do some of the research.

So.. the diet. I have accumulated some low carb cook books by Dana Carpender so far. I have Jennifer Eloff's cookbooks in my sites right now as well. I've been stalking several blogs and websites - LowCarbFriends being one of them. Tons of good information out there.

There are some really good low carb foods products available that is making life a little easier during this transition. Many of them are available only online, but some can be found at Whole Foods or Central Market, even HEB has a few.

Alternate Flours - flaxseed meal, almond flour, coconut flour, whole wheat pastry flour, etc.

Alternate Sugars - Splenda, Erythritol, Xylitol, Truvia

Low Carb Pastas - Angel Hair, Spaghetti, Elbow noodles, etc.

Sunday - I made some kick butt wings that everyone in the family LOVED! They were gone very quickly.

Monday - I made a quiche lorraine and a great spinach salad with a wonderful balsamic vinegar dressing. Net Carbs: 15 because I used a regular flour pie crust which had 11 carbs per slice. Next time, I will either do it crustless or try a LC pie crust recipe. Rachel and I loved it the most. Stephen wasn't a huge fan because I snuck some spinach in there. John liked it but probably not quite filling enough for him.

Tuesday - I experimented with a couple One Minute Muffins which were really so impressing and allowed me to have a "bread" for breakfast this morning that was only 2 carbs. One was a flax seed based bread that I toasted and put two fried eggs over to eat. Wow... was good. The other was almond flour based bread that I toasted and just put butter on it. Yummy and sweet. I tried both versions just to be able to compare the differences.

Tonight - I made beef stroganoff with low carb pasta and some really good parmesan spaghetti squash. Net carbs: 16

My goal is to try a good deal of low carb recipes to find ones that please my family and fit in my world for the most part. I'm also happy to add on some carby items for the rest of them when needed. I just want to make sure I can get comfortable with the cooking, have the ingredients I need on hand and have a few go to recipes so that I'm not tempted to eat something I shouldn't on days/evenings when no one feels like cooking! I also will, hopefully, get John in on the cooking part of it. He's sooooo good about cooking and I really love that!! But... we just have to make it low carb at this point.

Not sure yet what is on tap for tomorrow... I'm still on medical leave from the surgery in December, so I have all day (by myself!) to figure it out! I think I may try to make some low carb bread and crackers. We'll see!!

MA