Sweets for Those with Blood Sugar Issues

My lovely thyroid has given me blood sugar issues. I'm not the only person I've met like this, though the first time I spoke with a doctor about my glucose tolerance test, I was told I was pre-diabetic. What works for my wonky thyroid will work for those who diabetic issues, too.

Be that as it may, I have a sweet tooth. I can control it more now than in the past. The cravings don't become a raving monster in my head anymore, but I do enjoy sweets as much as the next human being. However, how does one do this? Well, here are some of my solutions that do not include baking or preparing anything. I've located these products at HEB, Walmart, and Walgreen's.

Murray's Sugar Free Products
It's a toss up on whether or not the lemon cookies or the fudge wafers are my favorite (though they have considerable more choices than that!). Murray's uses Splenda, which my body tolerates quite well. This is a product I have to either hide from the sticky fingers in residence or I buy several containers knowing I'll be forced to share if I want any.

Breyer's No Sugar Added Ice Cream
My Daddy may be a vegan, but he buys 3 or 4 large Bluebell Ice Cream containers at a time. He's kept his weight in check for years and years, but that sweet tooth didn't miss his daughter any. I grew up on ice cream. Here is an alternative ice cream my body can handle. This product also uses Splenda.

Blue Bunny Ice Cream
Blue Bunny offers a line of No Sugar Added and Sweet Freedom ice creams and Popsicles. Again, sticky fingers will make off with these treats. There's even ice cream sandwiches!

Hershey's 
Hershey's hasn't missed the Sugar Free bandwagon. I have an affinity for dark chocolate, so I tend to gravitate towards those choices. The site even offers nutritional information and gluten free choices, in case you weren't aware. I wouldn't mind in the stores in town had more options. I usually see just two products.

Sugar Free Jello
HEB's deli often offers sugar free jello, but you can also find the individual servings 4-pack or, for those hard-core in the kitchen types, make your own from a package. In fact, I've taken some of Jello's sugar-free products and used them to revamp baking recipes. Maybe I should post my sugar-free, wheat-free pistachio muffins in the near future (they were so good!).

Russel Stover's Sugar Free Products
Russel Stover's has won me over. The toffee clusters and birthday cake flavors make me purr. Russel Stovers not only offers sugar free chocolates, they also offer hard candies.

The Sugarless Shop
Online shopping is a friend of mine. When you're frustrated with finding sugar-free, tasty treats, online shopping can solve that dilemma.

Sprouts
Sprouts is always one of my favorites stops. I always cruise by the aisles that offer sugar-free dark chocolate almonds or sugar-free dark chocolate almond bark and stock up. If I want to visit Sprouts, I have to travel out of town, so I know stocking up is smart. These are my ultimate favorite sugar-free treat.

Certainly, there are other shops I've missed. I've only been sugar-free eating for almost 18 months. I'm still uncovering many nuggets. Just because I have diet restrictions does not mean I need to be miserable. I don't eat sweets every day and I certainly don't allow myself to start before evening. If I want fruit, it's best in the evening because it'll trigger my sweet tooth. If I eat more fruit to satisfy the sweet cravings, my health will start spiraling asap. That's not pleasant, so I stick to my eating guidelines.

Carb Alternative: Spaghetti Squash

In my constant pursuit to merge my healthy eating requirements with family meals, I have to remind myself that a few vegetables offer great carb alternatives in dishes.

Spaghetti Squash

Take the spaghetti squash, for example. Tonight is spaghetti night and I decided it was time to reintroduce spaghetti squash into the meal. The following are my basic spaghetti sauce ingredients:

HEB Tomato & Basil Spaghetti Sauce (2g of sugar)
HEB Gluten Free Spaghetti Pasta
1 lb of ground turkey (cheaper, 20g of protein, less fat)
1 lb of ground meat (tastier)
1 or 2 small cans of tomato sauce
spaghetti squash (1/2 a gourd)
your choice of spices, (I like sea salt, pepper, garlic, basil, sage, and oregano).

Here's a short note about spaghetti sauce. Please read labels because most spaghetti sauce has 11g or more of sugar per serving. Servings are much smaller than we anticipate them to be. This is the one jar of sauce that has the least amount of sugar I have found.

I often enjoy gluten free pasta, but tonight had to be low-carb to balance out a carb lunch. One time, when I stood in a grocery store in San Angelo next to my sister, I went to apologize about the gluten free pasta price and found it was similar and/or cheaper to traditional spaghetti noodles. I hadn't anticipated that.

Spagehtti squash is an easy, tasty low-carb solution. Spaghetti Squash is extremely easy to prepare. You cut it open like you would cantaloupe and carve out the seeds.

Place it flesh-down on a plate and nuke for 20 minutes. In the meantime, you cook your spaghetti meal as usual. When it's done, use a fork to carve out the flesh and it comes out in a spaghetti-like form.

My mother learned you can cook a whole squash in the microwave for the same time and you take the seeds out after cooking. Cutting the gourd in half is easier if you cook it first.  I prefer removing the seeds beforehand. You'd have to use this method if you wanted to try a recipe with stuffed spaghetti squash (see links below).

Serve your spaghetti sauce on top. I've found that a quarter of a squash is enough for one serving, so the other quarter portion is great for lunch the next day (the other half of the gourd is wrapped in tin foil and sits in my fridge drawer until I'm ready to cook it). One cup of spaghetti squash has 7g of carbs (a 4 pound squash will yield 5 cups), so a quarter gourd equals approximately 9g. That's really not that bad, and it's even better when Doc says veggie carbs don't count!!

Other Menu Items with Spaghetti Squash

• Scrumptious side dish to chicken, pork chops, or steak. Add butter, salt, and pepper for dreaminess.
• Pasta alternative with Alfredo sauce and Shrimp (seasoned as you prefer your shrimp).
• George Stella's Sausage Stuffed Spaghetti Squash  (pictured here). If you follow anyone on Pinterest, may I suggest this link to follow Mr. Stella?
• Spaghetti Squash Carbonara Bacon lovers, rejoice!
• CraftCanada.com has several recipes, including Cheesy Spaghetti Squash and Parmesan Spaghetti Squash Carbonara.

Honestly, run a simple Google search for spaghetti squash recipes and you will be overloaded with wonderful ideas to cause major salivation. Spaghetti squash can be roasted in the oven as a stuffed entree and nuked in the microwave and carved out. It's tasty and does not distract from any flavors added to it. Isn't that pasta's entire purpose? To fill up a saucy meal? Well, now you have spaghetti squash to make it low-carb. Enjoy!

Sweet Coconut Curry Chicken (easy way)

This Sweet Coconut Curry Chicken (this is a lightly sweet dish, it is NOT the burn a hole in your tongue kind) is a recipe I re-created because I ordered it once. When you find a dish you can't do without, you scour sites for a recipe you're willing to spend time and money on so you can have it at home whenever you want. I found one that wasn't too complicated and my doubtful husband turned into a fan. 

I have since re-recreated the recipe when I figured out there was something in it making me fall asleep. There's no reason for that.

I took some snapshots of the ingredients (but I forgot to take complete pictures of the food, sorry). 

Since I like to prepare white rice with the meal, I started the water boiling before I start on the chicken.

I pick up the 8-piece boneless, skinless dark meat chicken at my HEB and chop it up to cook in olive oil. I prefer dark meat because it's juicier and more flavorful (otherwise, I won't eat the chicken). This is the only chicken dish that my pickiest eater, Bianca, will moon over. She was purring so much during our dinner last night her Daddy demanded she stop (she was rather loud in her theatrical way).

While the chicken was cooking, I added about 2 tablespoons of the Los Aminos soy-sauce (soy free, baby! you can always add more to suit your taste), McCormick Ginger and McCormick Curry spices, garlic powder, salt and pepper. I rarely measure (again, sorry) but I covered the chicken twice with the ginger, curry, and garlic when I added these spices.

Here's a link for Los Aminos Soy-free Soy Sauce, but I added a picture of the label to show you how much sugar is in it. I also added the Coconut Milk label just so you can see just how much sugar we're adding to this dish (almost none because you have to divide it into eighths). Again, all these were at my local HEB.

I like to add frozen veggies to the pot. There's an HEB whole green bean frozen bag (HEB also offers the steamable fresh produce version) that makes preparation easier. I stir chicken while the microwave steams the veggies. I like the frozen version because I make plans just for life to throw monkey wrenches in them. I'll have put food aside for a certain meal and not get a chance to make that meal (for whatever reasons) for a week or more. Frozen veggies give me the freedom of getting to the meal when I have a chance (or just remembering to get to it!) and I don't have rotten veggies waiting for me.

Sometimes, I can find a whole mixed-bean and carrot frozen mix (like this one from Birds Eye) and I'll pick that one up instead. I'll steam that up in the microwave while the chicken is cooking.

In addition to all this, I chop up mushrooms and add them to the skillet when the chicken is thoroughly cooked. Dark meat creates a lot of juice (yesss!) so the mushrooms cook quickly enough. I used to put in button mushrooms, but Portobellos have a flavor my children will eat (and I'm all about poking natural vitamins and such down their gullets).

I love mushrooms. I've spoken of my love and adoration for mushrooms, haven't I? Of course, HEB is my store for all my mushroom supplies. I usually grab whatever is cheapest. Sometimes, I'm cutting up the large Portobello mushrooms, or I'm grabbing the pre-cut container. And if you don't like mushrooms or accidentally used them for another meal (I did that yesterday, oops), the meal tastes just fine without.

When the mushrooms have cooked to the desired consistency, I add the coconut milk and the steamed veggies and mix it until the coconut milk heats thoroughly and it's ready to serve. Usually by this point, the rice is done, which makes this a 30 minute or less meal, doesn't it? I love it when I make a meal in 30 minutes or less (I'm a total Rachel Ray fan, I just revamp her meals to be low-carb or served with gluten-free noodles).

I serve rice with my meal, but I keep my rice portion small, 1/2 to 1 cup total so I'm keeping my carb count where it should be. One cup of white rice has 45g of carbs, which isn't horrible if you kept your other meals low-carb (Doc says 60g of carbs per day and that does not include veggies). Like I've said before, I'll make my breakfast and lunch low-carb and have a carb meal with my family for dinner. It's an easy compromise and even my husband knows I load up on extra veggies (and in this sauce, how could you not? I tell my pickiest eater if she'd quit eating around the veggies and mix them with the rest, she won't notice the veggies as much in their creamy sauce...it's true the times she does believe me and it's still true the times she doesn't). When I pile on the veggies for myself, there isn't enough room in my stomach for 1 cup of rice. The fiber fills you up plenty, so 1/2 to 2/3 cups are more than enough! And for that picky eater? Guess who was raiding the fridge last night for leftovers? Veggies and all.

Happy eating!