Comments for You

Day 15 Prompt: Comment! Pick someone else’s blog post and write a comment to them. Write that comment as your post for today and link back to them to let them know you were inspired.

As usual, I am behind on my HAWMC posts, but still trying to catch up :) For today's prompt, I chose to comment on a post written by fellow HAWMC diabetes blogger. Sweetly Voiced, written by type 1 advocate Melissa Lee, is a blog I've been following regularly since joining the diabetes blogging world.

After reading Melissa's post It's Cuplicated this morning, I knew this was the post I wanted to comment on for today's (actually yesterday's) prompt...

My comment:
"I love this post because I can so relate to it. Be it type 2, gestational diabetes, pre-diabetes, whatever, each comes with its own set of challenges, and each person's blood glucose level reacts a little bit differently to food, insulin, and exercise. But we ALL react. Just because someone is not dependent on multiple daily insulin injections, does not mean they are any less susceptible to the blood sugar spike after eating the granola bar or ice cream sundae or whatever other high carb, high glycemic index food they are ingesting.

And while advice or feedback from a non-doctor, or non-type 1 may be well intended, until someone has "walked a mile" in type 1 shoes, so to speak, I don't think they really get it. I don't think they CAN get it, no matter how good their intentions."

Thai Butternut Squash and Carrot Soup

The second in my new Saturday recipe highlight reel, is a Thai Butternut Squash and Carrot Soup. After snowshoeing with my husband and daughter Saturday afternoon, I came home craving comfort food - something warm, filling, and perhaps with a hint of sweetness. After a very brief search, I discovered this recipe at Fast Paleo, an online Paleo recipe sharing site. The soup did not disappoint, and not only is it totally Paleo, it's easy and quick to make, and absolutely packed with nutrients.

Ingredients
1 small butternut squash
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1-2 tsp fresh ginger, minced
3 carrots, chopped
1 tbsp coconut oil
1-2 tbsp red curry paste
1 cup canned coconut milk
2 cups low sodium chicken broth

Procedure
Preheat the oven to 375. Slice the butternut squash in half, scoop out seeds and place face down in a baking dish. Cook until tender, approximately 35-45 minutes. Meanwhile, heat 1 tbsp coconut oil in a frying pan over medium heat, add onion, garlic, ginger and carrot, cook until tender. Stir in red curry paste. Set aside.
Once squash is done, scoop out 2 cups flesh, place in a blender. Add chicken broth, coconut milk and mixture from the frying pan (I had to do this in 2 parts to fit it all in my blender). Blend until smooth. Return to pot and heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste. Top soup with garnish of your choice, such as toasted crushed pecans, coconut, or cilantro. Makes 8 cups. 

Nutritional Information (per serving)
Calories 107.7, Fat 7.4g (Saturated fat 6.2g), Cholesterol 0.0mg, Sodium 215.8mg, Potassium 323.9mg, Carbohydrates 9.7g, Fiber 2.2g, Protein 1.8g.

Chocolate Banana Paleo Protein Bars

I've decided that each Saturday I am going to post a couple of my favorite Paleo recipes made during the previous week. This week I made 2 amazing things, the first of which is Chocolate Banana Protein Bars.

Since going Paleo, I don't miss bread at all (shocking, as i really thought I would), and I rarely crave sweets, but with all of the running I'm doing, what I crave is fuel. As the mileage gets longer, my desire for a protein bar gets stronger. Not to mention, protein bars are a great snack post-run because they're easy on the stomach and so dense with nutrients. So I took to the Internet and started searching for a recipe for a protein bar I could easily make at home. I found a few possibilities, and chose the following recipe for two reasons: I love chocolate, and I already had all of the ingredients in the house.

I found the recipe on an old blog that doesn't seem to be updated anymore, and the recipe itself was incomplete and had no instructions or nutritional information, so I played around with it a bit, and this is the final product. It is more like a brownie than a protein bar, so my search is not over yet. But hey, a chocolate Paleo snack with less than 100 calories per serving, 4.3g of fat, 9.3g carbs, and 5.3g of protein? I'll take it!

Ingredients
1/2 cup almond flour
2 tbsp coconut flour
1 tbsp ground flax seed
3 scoops Vi Shape shake mix (or other protein powder)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp almond butter
2 tbsp honey
2 mashed bananas
2 eggs

Procedure
Preheat oven to 350. Line an 8x8 square baking pan with parchment paper. Mix all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl, combine almond butter and honey. I quickly zapped them in the microwave for 10 seconds to soften them up for mixing. Add mashed bananas and eggs, mix thoroughly. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir. My product looked, and smelled, like chocolate cake batter at this point. After closer examination, it tasted like chocolate cake batter too!!

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 16-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes, remove from pan (with parchment) and cool completely on wire rack. Remove parchment and slice into 16 small bars.

Nutritional Info (per bar)
Calories 95.3, Total fat 4.3g, Cholesterol 26.7mg, Sodium 41.9mg, Potassium 111.8mg, Carbohdrates 9.3g (Dietary Fiber 2.7g, Sugars 4.1g), Protein 5.3g.

Paleo Revisited

Last summer, on my flight home from a conference in Miami, I read Doug Willen's book, entitled "Quantum Paleo." It was the first literature I has read about the Paleo, or Caveman, diet, and it opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about food. I immediately jumped onto the diet without really evaluating the why or how, and quickly discovered that it simply wasn't the right time in my life to make a change of that magnitude. But the idea has been pecking away in the back of my mind ever since, so over the past few months I've been doing more and more reading on the Paleo lifestyle, exploring recipes, and talking to others who eat Paleo.

Over Christmas holidays I decided to start slow. Immediately after Christmas, I eliminated gluten from my diet, and stopped drinking dairy products. Within a few days I felt a dramatic change. All the bloating and fullness in my abdomen disappeared, my energy level increased, I started sleeping better, and I no longer felt tired and burnt out mid-afternoon every day. I also noticed benefits when exercising. I was running further and faster without getting as tired, I was recovering more quickly, and I was less sore in the hours and days following a strenuous workout. All that from eliminating wheat (I never ate much rye or barley anyway, so gluten free for me is mainly wheat free)? It couldn't be that simple. But it appeared it was.

Within a couple of weeks I realized the jump to Paleo would not be too hard. The only other staple grains in my diet were rice and corn (my husband is Mexican and we eat a lot of corn tortillas), and rarely eat refined sugar, so how hard could it be? Well, we'll see. Yesterday I began my new Paleo eating and am very excited to see what this new lifestyle change will bring!

Wordless Wednesday ~ Carb List

With summer vacation beginning tomorrow, this is a handy reference!

Wordless Wednesday ~ Draw Something, Diabetes Style

While playing "Draw Something" with Dylan this morning, he sent me this:

Ignore the rushed image and the spelling mistake ("wite" should be "white"), neither of which are a reflection of his actual drawing or spelling ability, and look at the bottom left of the image. In order to illustrate "milk," which is what he was drawing, he thinks in terms of carbs...

Happy Valentine's Day!

As a mushy romantic at heart, Valentine's Day is one of my favorite days of the year. But as the parent of a child with diabetes, Valentine's Day ranks third on my list of worst carb days of the year (after Halloween and Easter). The colossal amount of candy passed between classmates is enough to send me into carb counting overload, so I've researched the carb counts of some of the most common Valentine's treats to make today more about love and friendship, and less about diabetes.

Candy hearts ~ 12 pieces = 15 carbs

Candy corn ~ 11 pieces = 15 carbs

Cinnamon hearts ~ 30 pieces = 15 carbs

Hershey's kisses ~ 9 hearts = 25 carbs

And when all else fails, moderation is key. Happy Valentine's Day!