The Low-Carb Diabetes Solution Cookbook (6 page)

You need to wait until your doctor is confident your diabetes has been reversed to use the Next Step recipes, not because they'll spike your blood sugar—they won't—but because reintroducing these ingredients must be done cautiously. You need to learn to use them in limited quantities, for flavor, rather than adding them back willy-nilly.

Hooray! You have something more to look forward to!

We urge you to eat breakfast. It keeps your blood sugar stable, but it's more important than that. If you'll be facing doughnuts in the break room, cake every time a colleague has a birthday, the smell of pizza wafting from the next cubicle, you need to be armed. Breakfast is your single most powerful weapon. Here are some ideas:

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Newsflash: You are not required to eat “breakfast food” for breakfast. You can eat anything you like —steak, a chop, tuna salad, chicken wings, you name it.

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Bacon, sausage, and ham are all fine, with or without eggs. Cook bacon or sausage in advance, and just give it a quick warm-up.

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An electric contact grill—you know, the George Foreman kind of thing—is hugely useful for cooking breakfast. You can throw in your bacon or sausage patties or a burger, and the meat will cook while you get dressed.

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Leftovers. I eat leftovers for breakfast often, anything from salad to meatloaf. The summer I wrote my barbecue book, I ate leftover chicken or ribs for breakfast every day for a couple of months.

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Eggs. If you like eggs, feel free to eat them daily, yolks and all—fried, scrambled, poached, in an omelet, whatever. The
Insta-Quiche
or
Confetti Frittata
both warm up nicely in the microwave. Hard-boiled eggs make a great grab-and-go breakfast.

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Make
pancakes
or
waffles
over the weekend, and freeze. Voilà! Toaster breakfast!

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Cheesecake makes a great breakfast, and this book has several. How decadent to have cheesecake for breakfast!

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Prewrapped cheese chunks are convenient for stashing in your purse or briefcase to eat on the go or at your desk.

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Can't face anything but coffee in the morning? See
Power Pack Mocha
and
Morning Mocha
, both on.

However, I am aware that many people rarely eat anything that takes more preparation than 3 minutes in the microwave or a trip through the drive-through. Even folks who do cook have days when they want something fast.

Most convenience food is as nutritionally bad as it is quick and easy. (Ironically, the Atkins brand frozen meals are too high carb for HEAL. Somewhere Dr. A is shaking his head sadly.) Still, there is real, decent food out there that takes almost no work, and it's not all bunless fast-food burgers.

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Rotisserie chicken: My local stores carry traditional, lemon-garlic, and barbecue. The barbecue flavor is most likely to have sugar. Leftover rotisserie chicken is great for chicken salad.

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Hot wings: Most have breading and sugar, but there are a few that squeak by. Pizza Hut Baked Hot Wings and Baked Mild Wings are both quite low carb. Choose the Buffalo sauce rather than the sugary barbecue sauce. Skip “boneless wings”—they're invariably breaded.

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Precooked bacon: If you hate preparing bacon, this is worth your money. Bacon without guilt is one of the great joys of low-carb eating.

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Frozen grilled fish fillets: Available in lemon pepper, garlic butter, Cajun, and more. Just microwave and eat.

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Frozen hamburger patties: Look for frozen burgers labeled “100% beef” to avoid fillers containing carbs and soy. Vary these by adding different kinds of cheese, sautéed mushrooms, bacon, a couple of teaspoons of minced onion, sprinkle-on seasonings, or what have you.

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Frozen cooked shrimp: Add these to a salad, or mix Heinz Reduced Sugar Ketchup with horseradish, lemon juice, and a shot of Tabasco to make cocktail sauce for dipping.

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Grilled chicken breast strips: Great in salads and omelets.

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Canned tuna, shrimp, crab, etc.: These are handy for dumping over a pile of greens for a quick main-dish salad. My husband will happily make a lunch of a simple can of sardines.

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Smoked salmon: Put this in a salad or an omelet, and you've gone beyond convenience food to elegance.

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Eggs: It's hard to spend more than 5 minutes frying or scrambling eggs. Hard-boil a dozen eggs over the weekend, stash 'em in the fridge, and they'll be there when you need a quick protein fix.

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Cold cuts: Identifiable cuts of meat, such as turkey breast, roast beef, and roasted or boiled ham are likely to have less sugar than things that are ground up and pressed back together, like bologna, chopped ham, and anything with “loaf” in the name. Read labels and ask questions. Try making those unsandwiches I mentioned earlier: Just spread mustard and mayo between a slice of meat and a slice of cheese, add a lettuce leaf if you like, roll it up, and eat.

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Individually wrapped cheese chunks: Swiss Knight, BabyBel, Laughing Cow, andstring cheese all make great grab-and-go snacks, or even breakfasts as previously mentioned. They're also great for stashing in a purse or carry-on bag while traveling.

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Deli salads and vegetables: These require some scouting. Skip the potato and macaroni salads. Sadly, coleslaw almost always contains sugar. But many grocery store delis carry at least a few things that work for us—tuna salad, chicken salad, even things like roasted asparagus. Do reconnaissance when you have a free 15 minutes, and the deli isn't slammed, so you can ask questions. In these food-allergy-conscious times, more and more delis post ingredient lists; read them.

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Ready-to-cook meat and fish: Many grocery stores carry kabobs and seasoned pork chops or fish, already prepped to take home and run under the broiler. Be wary about ingredients, and ask questions. If possible, do your shopping at a grocery store with a real meat department, not just prewrapped cuts.

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Thin cuts of meat: If you're short on time, buy thin pork chops and steaks. Unsurprisingly, they cook faster than thick ones.

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Bagged salad: Great stuff! Try a new blend from time to time. Also useful are coleslaw mix—
basically shredded cabbage—and prewashed baby spinach. Use it in salads but also try sautéing it lightly in olive oil, with a touch of garlic. Coleslaw mix and “brocco-slaw”—shredded broccoli stems—are good in stir-fries and skillet suppers.

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Precut veggies: Grab broccoli and cauliflower florets and celery sticks, add ranch dressing, and you've got the veggie thing covered. Put them in front of the kids and it may buy you enough time to actually cook something. At this writing, Trader Joe's, long a source of ready-to-steam fresh vegetables, has started carrying shredded cauliflower “rice” because of low-carb influence. And I rarely slice mushrooms anymore. Why bother when you can buy them that way?

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Bottled dressings: Skip low-fat dressings; most are full of corn syrup, and you're not eating a low-fat diet. Avoid sweet dressings like honey mustard, red “French,” and poppy seed. Read labels!

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Sprinkle-on seasoning blends: These lend interest to the simple cuts of meat that are quickest and easiest to cook. My favorite go-to food is a pan-broiled pork shoulder steak with Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning. I also love McCormick's Mediterranean Sea Salt Grinder; this is especially nice with lamb or poultry. Read labels; many seasoning blends contain sugar.

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Grocery store salad bar: Better than fast food! A few greens, a little green bell pepper and cucumber, plus shredded cheese, chopped hard-boiled egg, flaked tuna, chopped turkey breast or ham, crumbled bacon. The dressings are the treacherous part; see above. Look for olive oil and vinegar, along with salt and pepper. Salad bars are also great for precut vegetables.

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Frozen vegetables: More nutritious than canned, unless you plan to drink all the liquid in that can. Microwave according to package directions for best and quickest results. Steer clear of blends with pasta or other added carbs. Also skip varieties with sauces; they're likely to have hydrogenated oils, and very possibly sugars.

My sister, a middle school science teacher, has for many years now spent an hour or two on Sunday afternoon making a double batch of soup or chili, and roasting a big hunk of meat—a double-batch meat loaf, a pork roast, a small turkey, or the like. These then serve her and her husband as lunch and supper for the rest of the week. She adds bagged salad or a quick steamed or grilled vegetable, and that's it.

Consider, too, deli-style salads—homemade coleslaw,
UnPotato Salad
, (any salad you can make a vat of and pull out at a quarter- to-starvation. Make big batches of this sort of thing, especially if you have a family.

I recommend this approach wholeheartedly. Why cook just enough for one meal when you can, in the same time, cook enough for two or three? Leftovers are your friend.

It is up to you to make use of this information.

First, know this: Any food that is making you fat, sick, and tired—that leads to escalating medical costs and very possibly to disability—would not be cheap if they were giving it away. There is a huge back-end payment on cheap, carb-heavy food, both in terms of your life and health, and also in cold, hard cash. You can't afford that cheap junk.

Not all carbs are cheap. I consider cold cereal to be a conspiracy to get suckers to pay 4 bucks for 15 cents' worth of grain. Stuff like microwave popcorn and potato chips are just ways to justify higher prices for low-cost commodities. Stop buying this junk and you'll free up dollars to spend on real food.

And real food comes in a wide range of prices. If you're flush you can eat rib-eye steaks, lobster dipped in lemon butter, and out-of-season asparagus every night, but you don't have to. You can eat dark-meat chicken quarters, pork shoulder, spareribs, and other inexpensive cuts.

Your body doesn't care whether your protein comes from pheasant or chicken, from lobster or tilapia, from prime rib or pork shoulder. It doesn't care if you eat radicchio or cabbage. It cares whether you give it the nutrients it needs, and that you don't feed it poison. Your cells have no idea what the price tag is, and they don't care.

Extra freezer and fridge space are valuable tools. If you can eke out the money and space for a deep freezer, even a little 5-cubic-foot chest freezer, do. It will save you money in the long run, stocking up at loss-leader sales.

Remember, too, you will be less hungry. If you're used to midafternoon munchies, to rum-maging for a snack an hour after dinner, you will be shocked at just how much your appetite is reduced. At first you'll maintain some semblance of your customary eating patterns, but over time you may well discover that you're skipping snacks and automatically eating smaller portions at meals.

Do not force yourself to do this! If you're hungry, eat the unlimited protein-and-fat foods. Just know that over time your food bills may drop because you're simply not as hungry as you used to be.

No matter what sweetener I use in a recipe, someone will object. Therefore, I am officially sidestepping the issue with this book. I am using:

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Granular sucralose (Splenda and knock-offs): The granular stuff is bulked with maltodextrin, a carbohydrate. Why does it say “0 carbs” on the package? Federal labeling law allows manufacturers to round down anything under 0.5 gram per serving. Accordingly, I count 0.5 gram of carb per teaspoon, or 24 grams per cup, and I use liquid sucralose instead when I can. The packets have less maltodextrin, so fewer carbs, but for more than a teaspoon or two of sugar's worth of sweetening, the packets are a pain. Do not use Splenda Sugar Blend or Brown Sugar Blend. As the names suggest, they contain sugar.