Easy Frosted Cookie

I wanted a quick sweet treat today and had some "sugar" cookies leftover from the weekend in the fridge.  And I almost always have some sugar-free "magic shell" on my counter too, so I put the two together.  I iced my cookie with the magic shell and then put it in the freezer for about 30 seconds.  It was really good; sort of a fudge-like consistency.  This would also be an easy way to ice lots of cookies for a party and not worry about icing melting.

(Use the blog search bar to find the "sugar" cookie or magic shell recipes.)

May 2019 Endo Visit

Samuel had a great Endo appointment yesterday.  Our Endo is very supportive of our low carb lifestyle, his growth, and brain development. It's honestly only praise from the whole team, but it took us several years of conditioning them to our lifestyle to get to that point.

We only go to our Endo about every 6 months for general check-up's and prescription refills.  She calls us "self-supportive" which is fine by us.

These past 6 months have been a bit challenging.  He's had a lot of growth spurts and growing pains.  He's asked to try some new foods  - some worked great, others haven't.  He's started baseball for the first time, so we've had to figure out how to keep him steady during and after games.  All this is just to point out that diabetes with a child is constantly changing.  We learn new things all the time just like everyone else.  I was worried that his A1c would be negatively impacted because of all of this.  And to be clear, I'm not concerned about the A1c number just for sake of achieving a certain number.  I'm concerned about his A1c only in correlation to his health.

Here he is after his appointment sporting an A1c of 4.7%.

Despite challenges of T1 life, we're nearing the 4 year mark with A1c's in the 4.5 - 5.0% range.  That makes me a happy mama!

Grilled Chicken Strips & Honey Mustard Dip

I marinated about 8 large chicken breasts for a few hours. Cut into strips, season with your favorite sugar-free seasoning, and then grill.  Be sure to make enough for leftovers!

G. Hughes sugar-free Honey Mustard dipping sauce is an easy dipping sauce for a week night. (No actual honey in it.  2 Tbsp/30g is 1 carb.)

We made a simple salad and added some green beans for an easy dinner.

Sausage & Egg Ham Cups

I've posted smaller versions of these before, but I made these much larger using a hamburger bun pan.

I lined the pan with 3-4 thinly sliced pieces of ham. Then filled that with browned sausage.  Then I beat 7 eggs with salt & seasonings, and topped each of the ham cups. If you're not dairy-free you could top with cheese too.

Bake at 400° for about 25 minutes or until the eggs are set.

After cooked, each one of these weighed about 5.5 oz. This is perfect for us at dinner. Dinner is Samuel's lightest protein meal to avoid protein highs over night.

These were a really substantial meal and very satisfying. My husband thought they'd be great for camping or hiking wrapped in foil.  The kids also split one for a snack the next day.

Sausage & Guacamole Ham Cup

This is kind of unique, so bear with me.  The idea came to me in the middle of the night.  I only made a few to see how they would turn out and we thought they were really good. These would also be GREAT for Green Eggs & Ham for Dr. Seuss' birthday!

I lined a muffin tin with paper muffin liners.  Then line that with 2-3 very thinly sliced ham.  In a bowl, mix 2 eggs, salt, pepper, a small 2 oz container of guacamole, and about 3-4 oz of browned, crumbled sausage. Mix all together.

I was going to only make 3 cups, but the above mix was enough for 4 so I added another.  I didn't want it to be very eggy... I just wanted the egg to bind it all together. It admittedly looks a little gross.  😂

Bake at 400° for 20-25, just until the middle is set and stops jiggling.  Let cool just a bit and remove the muffin liner.

After baking they're still a bit strange looking, but they were really good.  The sausage gave it texture and the guacamole/egg mixture was really creamy.  This is one of those "I didn't prep anything for dinner" fast meals. These could even be great snacks throughout the week!

Cinco de Mayo Dinner

Ok, so this isn't really a Mexican dinner, but it was delicious.  To be honest with you, I didn't even remember it was May 5th until around 4pm.

I marinated chicken breasts in lemon juice, oil, salt and seasoning for about 8 hours (prepped in a zip top bag after breaksfast).  Then I just threw them on the grill for dinner.  For sides, I served green beans and a cauli-rice stir fry found at Wal-Mart (frozen). 

Disclaimer... This cauli rice has peas, red peppers, spring greens, corn and tamari soy sauce.  This is the first time Samuel has had it, but BG so far is very good.  A serving is 105g and is 5 net carbs.  He had 70g. I actually made sure his serving had a small amount of peas and only a few kernels of corn.

So, since I had just recently realized it was Cinco de Mayo, I made myself a low carb margarita (a double if I'm still being honest).  I made it in a mason jar, but then got lazy so I just scooped out the ice cube I shook with it and added some fresh ice.  This is the beauty of living in the country... drinking out of a mason jar is always appropriate. 😂 You can search the blog for this recipe or look in the 'Drinks' topics.

T1 Parents - Dates and Get-Aways for Self-Care

It's really easy for parents of T1 kids to get caught up in this disease.  Guilty as charged!  But I'm learning that it is SO important for parents to get away every once in a while together.  We need time to focus on on each other and our marriage/relationship.  My husband and I have been trying to schedule "Date-Days" every month or two.  We drop the kids off at our friend's house around 9am and usually get back around 8pm.  We don't go too far... we stay within about 1.5 - 2 hours from home.  And there is most definitely a lot of prep that goes into it, but it's worth it.  Here is how I organize our food and insulin for our Date-Day's.

Meals for Samuel and his sister are put in containers and labeled who it's for and which meal.  Snack are labeled also.  Shots are prefilled and labeled.  We make sure extra test strips, chewable glucose, liquid glucose, prefilled correction shots, and a Glucagon is sent.  Our instructions for the Glucagon are attached to it.

We have also let the kids stay overnight at their house twice.  This is obviously more nerve-wracking.  We've only recently gotten comfortable to try this.  I send lunches, dinners and all the same items as above.  She makes them breakfast of bacon, eggs, and I send a piece of my Rustic Faux-Wheat Bread and measured yogurt or coconut cream to add to what she makes.  

Our pre-arranged instructions were to call us if she EVER felt uncomfortable or if he went lower than 50.  And you know what happened?  He ran low all night (mid to upper 50's).  She ended up sleeping right next to him so she could administer glucose and keep an eye on him periodically.  But she was comfortable with it (she watches him many hours per week and deals with glucose during the day).  I honestly felt so bad, but she was great about it.  And I think it gave more more insight to what life with T1 is like.  

My system for overnights, is similar to Date-Day's, but I use a syringe case (from Amazon), with Post-It Note label for each shot.

Close-up of the syringe case:

Ice Cream Popsicles

This is a recipe I adapted from one I found online.  You will need popsicle molds that you can find at any discount store or even at most grocery stores.

Mix in a blender:

1 cup coconut cream (or heavy cream if you're not dairy-free)

1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

1/4 cup Swerve confections (if you use a granular sweetener blend REALLY well)

1 1/2 tsp extract (vanilla, almond, strawberry, banana, mint, coffee, etc)

Blend very well.  Pour into 4 popsicle molds (leave room for added goodies and your handle).  Then add any fun additions (optional; 2-3 tsp per popsicle)... KNOW or Lily's chocolate chips, toasted chopped nuts, chopped strawberries, etc.  I stir the goodies in with a skewer to distribute. Freeze until solid.

These are mint chocolate chip and so good. Drizzle or dip in "Magic Shell" to make even more special!  Search "Magic Shell" on the blog for the recipe.

Sausage Bacon Griddle Sticks

Do you ever have sudden "AHA!" moments in the kitchen?  This was one for me and it turned out easier than the meal I had planned and was SO delicious, not to mention really fun.  Here's what I did...

☑️  Brown 10oz of breakfast sausage and crumble
☑️  Cook 6 strips of bacon really crispy and crumble
☑️  Make 1 batch of my corn dog batter (use the search feature of the blog to find the recipe)

 Then mix them all together.  It will be really thick.

Then heat up your corn dog maker and load it up.  Bake until GBD.  If you don't have a corn dog maker, I think you could easily make in a muffin tin and bake instead. (I prepped my corn dog maker with the grease from my bacon for extra deliciousness!)

Serve with your favorite sugar-free pancake syrup for dipping.  We had this for dinner, but obviously would be great for breakfast too.  You could make up a huge batch of these on the weekend and send the kids off to school or sports with meal or snack in hand.  This will become a new weekly staple!!!

Waffle Sandwiches

Saturday morning is "waffle day" at our house.  We make enough to have lots of leftovers.  I grabbed two of our leftovers and used it to make salami & turkey sandwiches for lunch.  I threw on some dill pickles and whatever leftover veggie each person wanted.

Lunch was done in 10 minutes and about 6 net carbs. 

Use the search feature on the blog to find my "waffle" recipe.

Grilled Chicken & Shrimp

Easy dinner of grilled shrimp and chicken.  Sides of green beans and riced cauli.  About 4 net carbs.

When in Miami... Eat Seafood

It wasn't until I was looking through pics for this post did I realize that when I was in Miami last week, I had seafood for almost every single meal.  Even breakfast. 🙊  So, if you're not a seafood lover, you'll probably want to skip this post.

Here were some of my absolute favorite meals in and around Miami...

The night I arrived I just ate at my hotel (Embassy Suites).  I find most of the restaurants to be really good.

This was a shrimp cocktail with an avocado cocktail sauce (yum!)...

And a spinach artichoke dip that I ate with my turkey club below...

My meal was a turkey club sandwich, no bread.  It had gouda cheese, a fried egg, and bacon which was more like pork belly.  A few asparagus and strawberries on the side.

My breakfast each morning at the hotel looked something like this (remember to ask for omelets to be made from cracked eggs!)...

Let's see... ok, I went up to Ft. Lauderdale and just hung out at the beach one day.  Getting hungry for lunch, I Yelp'd "restaurants near me" and found a gem right in front of me, ocean view, with outdoor seating.  Score!  Started off with a shrimp cocktail.

Then had an awesome blackened grouper sandwich (no bread), served with slaw and a very fresh side salad topped with a new-to-me almond from Spain called Marcona almonds.  They're really delicious and I found them at Whole Foods down there.

One morning I left really early to head to Key West for the day.  In Marathon, FL, right before you get to the 7 mile bridge, there is a restaurant called The Stuffed Pig.  It has an adorable patio hidden behind the building.  I had their 3 egg omelet with lobster, crab and baby shrimp.  It was LOADED with seafood!.  It must have been great fuel, because it was so hot and there was so much walking, I really didn't feel like eating until the drive home.

Which lead me here.  Next up was a fantastic, relaxing oceanside restaurant in Key Largo.  Lobster, steamed mussels, grilled shrimp, grilled scallops, stone crab claws.  Side of grilled zucchini and squash.

Oh, and a cup of conch vegetable soup.  A few potatoes, but chunky so easy to avoid.

And a cup of lobster bisque that was really unique... it had a bit of a curry taste to it.

Ask locals where they go!  That got me to this fantastic Columbian restaurant.  I honestly couldn't tell what I was ordering... I mean I knew it was swai, but not how it would be prepared other than broiled.  This had to be one of the simplest, yet most delicious preparations of fish I've ever had.  It's a very large swai filet broiled in some sort of broth/butter sauce with cooked onion and pepper.  

This day I was in Boca Raton and was at yet another oceanside restaurant with impeccable views, food and service.  This was grilled scallops, shrimp and the catch of the day, which was mahi mahi.  My sides were grilled asparagus and riced cauliflower, which is the first time I can recall finding riced cauli at a restaurant.

So the one thing I haven't mentioned so far is fantastic Cuban coffee.  It is crazy strong and out of this world.  There are specifically 2 drinks I loved.  Hopefully I get these right...

Colada = it's a Cuban espresso made a very specific way, served in a small container (equivalent to 6 strong shots of espresso) meant to be shared and you get little thimble-sized cups (demitasses) to sip from. Or you down the whole thing like me.  A few locals freaked a bit at the amount I drank. 🤣

Cortadito = basically a colada, but topped with steamed milk, which dilutes its potency a bit.

In Miami, they will almost always add a good amount of sugar when they make either, but I learned you can ask for no sugar and then add your sugar-free sweetener of choice!  

At the airport, waiting at my gate to fly home with my farewell Cuban coffee... 

a colada AND a cortadito...... all for ME!

Easter Baskets - 2019

Here's everything layed out to go in their Easter baskets for tomorrow.

Evie's...
Big bunny, 2 dresses, shower poof, bath bombs, nail polish, lavender soap, hot wheels, and an Extreme Dark Lily's chocolate bar (very low carb).  She also has a What's in the Bible DVD, but it won't arrive in time... whoops!

Samuel's...
Big bunny, 2 shorts/t-shirt outfits, hot wheels, What's in the Bible DVD, and a new baseball bat (obviously that won't fit in the basket), and an Extreme Dark Lily's chocolate bar.

That's it for the baskets.  Tonight we'll fill plastic eggs for their egg hunt with coins, a few dollar bills, stickers and small things like that.  We're taking our eggs to our friend and neighbor's house do our hunt with them.

We'll dye eggs as a family, watch an episode of What's in the Bible together, and we'll read aloud the story of Jesus's death and resurrection from the Bible.  🙌🙏✝️

It's going to be gorgeous tomorrow, so I'll probably grill something simple... chicken breasts and veggies maybe, but food isn't the main attraction of Easter at our house.

Low Carb "Sugar" Cookies

The first time I made these I thought they were ok.  I made a couple of small tweaks and everyone loved them the 2nd time.

Recipe link:
https://swervesweet.com/recipes/classic-italian-christmas-cookies

Tweaks:
✔️ I don't love anise cookies so I made vanilla the first time, but they were bland.  2nd time around I used almond extract in the cookie and the icing.  (Almond cookies are the best simple cookie in my opinion.)

✔️ First time I used Swerve in the dough and icing, but the dough texture seemed "off".  2nd time I used xylitol in the dough and confectioners Swerve for the icing.  Use whatever sweetener works for your blood sugar.

✔️  First time I made 24 cookies per the recipe, but they got a bit hard/too firm.  2nd time I made 12 bigger cookies.  This let the bottoms get crispy, tops firm, but still cakey in the middle.  I baked for 18-20 minutes. The texture was phenomenal!

Sprinkles are optional.  You can read my thoughts on sprinkles here:

https://happyhealthythriving.blogspot.com/2019/04/to-sprinkle-or-not.html?m=1

To Sprinkle or Not???

Anyone that has followed me for a while knows we avoid sugar at all cost.  Especially hidden sugar.  But what if sugar can be planned and consistent?  A lot of lunchmeat has small amounts of sugar (say 1g per serving) and many T1's I know do fine with lunchmeat.  Is any amount of sugar "bad"?  I don't really think so... here's why.

Last Christmas my kids asked if we could put sprinkles on our cookies.  We went to the store and looked at the ingredients... pure sugar...so my answer was "No".  I didn't really look at amounts, I answered based on the ingredients.  I searched online to see if I could make sugar-free sprinkles and sure enough you can, but it's pretty labor intensive and expensive.  I thought again about the sprinkles I could buy.  Then I thought about lunchmeat, meat sticks and a few other things Samuel can eat perfectly fine with small amounts of sugar.

1 serving of sprinkles (1 tsp) is 3 carbs.  I was standing in the store a second time trying to visualize 1 tsp of sprinkles... it seemed like a lot to me.  So I bought a jar and went home and started measuring.  Here's what various amounts of sprinkles look like weighed out...

So, 1/4 tsp of sprinkles is only 0.75 carbs.  Yes, it's pure sugar, but I thought I'd test it.  Keep in mind, my objective was to add sprinkles for fun, not to add sweetness.  It turned out 1/4 tsp is WAY too many sprinkles for 1 cookie.  The "right" number for us is about 15 sprinkles per cookie, which means a 1/4 tsp is divided between 4 cookies, so we're adding not quite 0.2 carbs per cookie.

I still carefully tested with Samuel and lo and behold, I don't have to bolus for the sprinkles at all.  I bolus for how many low carb cookies he'll be eating, but that's it.

Could I make sugar-free sprinkles?  Yes.

But in a world of 40-60 hour work weeks, homeschool, baseball practice, dance class, housework, and being a wife (etc...) a shortcut that causes no extra insulin is a win in my book.

Each person has to do what is right for them. At the end of the day, its normal blood sugar with as tight of a standard deviation as we can get that decides whether a food "works" for us.  If it doesn't work, we don't force it.  It just so happens this works for us.

Bacon Muff'wich

I made a bunch of these bacon muffins for a baby shower brunch and decided to use my leftovers for sandwiches for dinner.

(Use the search feature for "Muffins"... all I changed was to reduce the sweetener a bit and then folded in a 12oz package of crumbled bacon I cooked really crispy.)

Slice in half and load up with sandwich toppings of your choice.  These were REALLY delicious!  😋

Low Carb in... Orlando, FL

My most recent work trip took me to Orlando, FL.  I had beautiful weather the whole time and lots of great low carb food. Here are a few of my favorites (or ones I remembered to take pics of).

This is actually on the way to Orlando via a layover at Charlotte Douglas Airport.  There's a great BBQ restaurant there.  Smoked turkey, green beans, tomatoes cucumber salad...

A great grilled salmon salad with pecans, pears, bacon, and an avocado ranch dressing.  The pears were a bit sweet so I just had one...

When I travel I mostly stay at Hilton hotels (points, baby!) and particularly Embassy Suites because the stay includes a really good breakfast...

This Chicken Florentine and mixed grilled veggies was amazing!...

Another reason I love Embassy Suites is because every night between 5:30 - 7:30 they have an "Evening Reception" included with your stay.  Free snacks, wine, beer and mixed drinks for 2 hours.  Yes please!  Depending on the hotel location, some are more low carb friendly than others.  This one is Orlando was great.  Here were some of my snacks...

Grilled chicken house salad with feta, vinaigrette dressing and French onion soup, no croutons...

Simple blackened salmon and grilled veggies...

My co-worker and I went to this fantastic Korean BBQ restaurant.  I love being able to order a variety of meats and cook it how I like it.  And I love all the sides on the table. We had... Ribeye, Beef Bulgogi, Marinated Pork, Shrimp, and Steamed Egg Bowl.  A few pics...

Meatball sub, minus the sub, topped with marinara and melted cheese.  My waiter though ordering like this was genius! 😂
Roasted asparagus, zucchini, and peppers...

On my way home and another layover in Charlotte.  This time I went to Bad Daddy's Burger Bar.  They have lots of great burgers or you can build your own.  This is one has Monterey jack cheese, 3 pieces jalapeno bacon(!), 3 pieces of Maplewood smoked bacon and baconnaise.  No bun of course.  I was stuffed, but it was awesome!...