🤯 Zero carb, breaded, air fried chicken strips! 😍

Marinate chicken strips in Italian dressing, lemon juice, and salt for about an hour (or whatever seasoning you like).

Crack an egg in a wide bowl and add a few dashes of hot sauce and beat the egg.

Add pork dust to another wide bowl.  Pork dust is just finely ground up pork rinds. You can buy it or grind up your own pork rinds in a food processor.  Add Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and onion powder and mix.

Dip marinated chicken in egg wash, let drain, and then press into the pork dust to coat well.

Airfry in a single layer at 350° for 5 minutes, flip, then cook another 5 minutes until crispy and internal temp is 165°.

I'm pretty certain no one in a million years would know the breading is pork rinds!  🤫

Lunch made by Samuel

When your 11 yo T1 makes his own lunch...

* 3 chicken sausage links
* 3 pieces of cheese (stacked & cooked together on parchment in microwave)
* bread w/ xylitol honey
* cranberry jello salad
* carrots w/ranch

All low carb, sugar & grain free. 💜💪🏻

Low Carb Double-Decker Taco

HoLy MoLy!  A low carb double-decker taco (ala Taco Bell) ~ a soft & hard taco in one. 

This is SO good (if I do say so myself 🤣)! 

Crisp up a piece of provolone cheese in the microwave on a piece of parchment (about 50 seconds) and then break it in half.  Load up all of your goodies on the soft shell (I use Southwest Egglife wraps), tuck in your provolone halves, fold, and enjoy.

Vinyl Stickers for T1 Supplies

Just sharing some cool vinyl stickers for T1 supplies I found on Etsy. The shop owner has some premade for all types of devices, but also custom designs based on your ideas.  I sent her what I wanted for our NovoPen Echo's and Dexcom G6 transmitter and she sent mock-ups the next day. And shipped out the day after my order.  She's in Scotland, but shipped free to the US over a certain order amount.

Shop name is Diabity's.  No affiliation... just happy with the service!

 

Inserting Levemir PenFills into NovoPen Echo

What do you do if your kiddo needs half unit doses of Levemir in on-the-go pens, but in the US the only thing available are pre-filled pens that only dose in one unit increments? 

 

You improvise!

Note: you will also need a spare or empty NovoLog PenFill cartridge to do this because you're going to steal a piece off of it.

 

Our Endo ordered per my request: Levemir FlexTouch Pens and a NovoPen Echo that has the ability to dose in half units. Then you do a bit of surgery.

 

1) Cut the plastic holding in the Levemir cartridge. I know people that do this with a utility knife, scissors or snips. I asked my husband to do it... thus a hacksaw got involved (overkill, but it worked just fine). Just cut very slowly until you almost get through the plastic and then just snap it the rest of the way by hand. Do both sides and the cartridge will pop right out.

 

 

 

 

2) The Levemir cartridge as-is is missing a piece to fit into the NovoPen Echo. All you need to do is to pop off the orange cap from a NovoLog cartridge and pop it right onto the Levemir cartridge. Now it will fit right into your NovoPen Echo.

 

 

 

3) I have multiple NovoPen Echo's in use so I label them using NovoNordisk's color coding system to keep things straight. I used green electrical tape for this.

 

 

 

Now I have a small handheld case that holds: full strength NovoLog, diluted NovoLog, diluted Regular, and Levemir.

 

 

 

We still use vials and a syringe at home, but having all of these insulins in this case right in the fridge makes grab and go crazy easy.

 

It doesn't take much to make this T1 Mama happy! 

 

Taco Bell Protein Bowls

We don't love fast food, but there are certainly times it's handy. I heard about these protein bowls from Taco Bell so we decided to give them a try leaving off the high-carb ingredients. Samuel had this for the first time yesterday and his BG spiked really badly. Another low-carb mom suggested that we leave off the avocado ranch sauce, so we gave it another try today and it worked beautifully!

Here was our order:

 

Chicken Protein Bowl: no beans, no rice, no avocado ranch: extra chicken and sour cream. I ordered 1 crunchy taco and dumped the insides into his Protein Bowl and tossed the shell. 

 

Diluting ~ Sterilization Liquid

Something to think about when diluting insulin.  When you buy empty, sterile vials to dilute into they will always have a little liquid inside left behind from the sterilization process.  It's completely normal and not harmful.  

But the point of diluting is to be able to do corrections with as much accuracy and consistency as possible, right? For this reason, I always draw out the sterilization liquid before I dilute.  Sometimes I get very little out (usually just a few units), but today I just drew out 18u of that liquid.  😲

While I don't know that this would have made a huge difference had I not removed it, I'd rather not find out. 😉

Dexcom G6 Sensor Cover

 Wanted to share a cool little gadget I found on Amazon to help change overtape easier on G6 sensors. Put the senor/transmitter on like usual. Then you put this little plastic shield on (it's not sticky...it just sits on top). Then you put the overtape on. Samuel went his usual 5 days before the edges start lifting, but the overtape peeled right off and the sensor tape looked perfect underneath.

The 1st time we see used the free, clear overtape provided by Dexcom. It's barely bigger then the shield, but it still stayed on for 5 days. (Samuel isn't an athletic kid though!) He didn't like seeing the shield through the tape, so next time we used a nude patch which covers it better too.

Mexican Pizza

 🇲🇽🍕 Delicious low carb, grain-free Mexican pizza 🇲🇽🍕

Start with a low carb, grain-free pizza crust. Top with salsa, cheese (I use a mix of mozzarella and sharp cheddar), and top with browned taco meat. Broil for about 8 minutes until cheese is browned. Let cool a bit, cut, and top with sour cream and whatever else you like.  

Super easy and so freakin' delicious! 😋

Minecraft Birthday Cake

Turned Birch Benders Keto cake mixes & icing, and some food coloring into a LC Minecraft birthday cake. My grass block decorating leaves a lot to be desired, but the kids loved it, and it was tasty!

Note about the icing. Out if the container I thought it was pretty gross (being honest here). But then I added a block of softened cream cheese and whipped it until light and fluffy. It was pretty👌🏻that way.

Hard to believe Samuel is 11!!! 💜 Next month he'll have been T1 diabetic for 10 years. Low carb for 9 years.

S'mores

92° outside, but we're having s'mores! Inside though. 🤣We build them on a plate and blow torch them! 🔥🔥🔥

I put half the cinnamon the recipe calls for and roll them as thin and as evenly as I can. Samuel and I 💜 these!

Restaurant Recon

I'm taking the kids to Buffalo Wild Wings for the first time today. I'm doing reconnaissance work before we leave to figure out what to order. I find if I don't do this ahead of time I get stressed at the restaurant and the kids get impatient. 

Carb counting definitely isn't the safest way to go, but if we've not been to a restaurant before it at least gives me a baseline to start with. 

Wish us luck! 🍗 🍀🤞

Edited to add: I'm taking our own G. Hughes wing sauce and ranch dressing to be safe.

Diluting Insulin Pens

Trying something new with Samuel. We haven't used an insulin pen in about 9 years and honestly I'm pretty opposed to them for super-low doses (due to inconsistencies when tested). With that said, I'm looking for an easier way to dose insulin while we're out. But I also need to be able to fine-tune doses, especially correction doses. 

1) I color coded our pens with tape to match our home color coding system to keep things consistent. 

2) The Novolin-R Flex pen can only dose in 1 unit increments (boo!), but Samuel often only needs 1.5 units so I diluted our pen to a 1:1 ratio so I can dose in half unit increments now. 

3) A typical correction for Samuel is anywhere between 0.4 - 0.8 units so I diluted a Novolog pen to a 4:1 ratio so I can dose in 0.1 unit increments.

4) On the insulins that I diluted, I marked it as "diluted" on the outside of the pen and on the inside when you take the cap off just as an extra precaution.

And FYI, the Frio Duo cooler bag says it holds 2 pens, but 3 fit pretty well. Not sure I like the Frio so I have another small pen holder on the way to try also.

Where there's a will, there's a way, right?

Cocomel "Caramels"

 Coconut milk "caramels" sweetened with allulose and monk fruit. 0 net carbs if you deduct fiber and the allulose. Samuel's only had 1 at a time, but no BG rise. Slight coconut taste, but awesome caramelly chew. Found at a local health food store.

April 2021 Endo Appt

 Great Endo appt today. 4.4% A1c... our 17th in a row <5.0% (since 8/2015).

We had honest, open discussion and nothing but praise. Turns out puberty is starting, so we had some good discussion about keeping him at non-D levels through his pubescent years.

His non-D sister's A1c is also 4.4% so we had a good conversation about him being in a truly normal range. ❤️❤️❤️

Zevia Tea & Zero Carb Ketchup

Sharing some new (to us) low carb finds. Zevia tea and 0 carb individual ketchup packets. This ketchup isn't Samuel's favorite (although I like it), but I often forget to bring along our little bottle of No Sugar Added Heinz. I can keep these packets in his to-go bag so we always have an option with us. 

For locals, I found these at Earth Mother Health Foods in Farmington, MO.

Turkey & Bacon Fried Wraps

I have a cold and feel cruddy so dinner was whatever miscellaneous things I could find in the fridge.  

First, I fried some bacon. While that was cooking, I loaded up an Egglife wrap with cheese, ranch dressing, deli turkey, and then topped with the bacon. Drained some of the bacon grease and then fried the folded wraps ~ about 4 minutes per side.  So freakin' delicious!

This gave me an idea to make pizza pockets the same way.  If I feel well enough, I'll try that tomorrow.

Beef Enchiladas!

Super easy and mostly all protein.  

Make some seasoned taco meat and set aside to cool a bit.  Lay out turkey lunch meat (2 pieces together if it's thin). Add half a piece of cheese (I use American) and a scoop of the taco meat. Roll up and put on a parchment lined baking sheet. Top them all with salsa and shredded cheddar. 

BakeaBake 350°F for 20 minutes.

I serve with guacamole, sour cream, and more salsa on the table.

Steps...