Gestational Diabetes: Changing the Way I Eat

A lot has happened since I last posted in August.  The main event is that I'm expecting a child in early July.  Everything has been going well, and I'm feeling great, but last Friday I got a phone call that I did not want.  The nurse on the other end of the line said "you didn't pass your test."  This means that I have gestational diabetes.

I'm waiting to hear from a specialist and dietitian in the next few days, so right now I have no idea what my sugar count is and what they want me to do for it, but of course other than the safety of the baby, food was my first thought.  What am I going to eat?  What will I have to cut out?  How many carbs are in a tortilla!?

I frantically started searching for food blogs on the topic, and honestly, I haven't found too many that I like (feel free to send me links if you have them).  Most of the blogs that I've found consist of women who are talking about all of the low carb mixes and sugar free foods they're eating.  I hate sugar-free foods, and I really don't want to resort to some low carb mixes.  Honestly, I'd rather come up with actual food solutions, so I thought this would be a great time to start blogging again.  I've already started watching my carb intake because this is something I know I can do, but I want to wait until I hear from my doctor to post any food or recipes.  Check back soon for what I hope will be some exciting options for anyone else struggling to keep their sugar intake under control.

My strategy right now is to watch my carbs and eat six small meals a day.  I hate small meals.  I like to eat three large meals.  I like feeling full.  I suppose I'll get used to this eventually, and I'm lucky that I have a job that allows me to eat when I need to, but right now it's my big adjustment.  I'm also not going to add extra sugar to anything, which is a lot less of a problem.  I'm so glad I don't have a soda habit.

Kalbi Ribs

I've always been a little intimidated by the grill.  I'm comfortable with all manner of kitchen tools, and I make pasta from scratch, in fact, I'd like a blowtorch just for the kitchen, but that little outdoor kettle fills me with dread.  I have a cheap grill that I used about five times  five years ago, and it has been sitting, neglected in my shed ever since.

For some reason that grill has been nagging me this summer, begging to be let out and used.  I have access to basically any cut of beef or pork I could want thanks to an Amish butcher, and I'd been reading about Kalbi ribs.  They seemed easy enough, and a good way to get over my grilling fear.

Kalbi ribs are beef short ribs cut flanken style (long and thin lengthwise, resulting in multiple bones per piece).  I get mine cut 1/2 an inch thick.  While not really a recipe, but more of a process, it goes like this:

You want about 1 lb. of ribs per person.  Place the ribs into a large plastic container with a head of minced garlic and about 1/2 cup or so of soy sauce.  Marinate at room temperature for 15 minutes on one side, then flip and marinate for 15 minutes on the other side.

In the meantime, you need your grill preheated to high.  Put the ribs on the grill grates for about three minutes per side for medium-rare and around 6 minutes per side for well-done.  Let the ribs rest for 10 minutes before cutting between the bones for bite-sized pieces.

These are a finger food, and you will get messy.  The meat is salty and fatty in a really pleasant way.  My husband looked on in terror as I devoured these ribs, throwing the bones haphazardly on the empty bowl in front of me.  I eat leftovers straight out of the fridge.

On a completely unrelated note, I usually don't buy flowers for myself, but I need to start.  I saw these sunflowers at a market at they made me happy for days.

Strawberry Lemonade Cake: On coming to terms with ugly cakes

Have you ever watched any of those cake decorating shows, the ones where a team of people have 12 hours to make a life sized version of the Taj Mahal or 1,972,231 perfect grains of rice in a wicker basket all out of cake?  What about all the pictures of beautiful cakes out of home kitchens?  My cakes don't look like that at all.  I even took a cake decorating class, but my cakes lean, the frosting is bumpy, and I make a mess on the cake boards.  I have a cake esteem problem, or at least I used to.

Like women who grow up feeling self-conscious about their bodies because of the air-brushed, photo shopped pictures of models, I never felt good about my cakes.  (I've never been self-conscious about my body though, go figure.)  You see, my cakes look, well, homemade.  I make a cake for my husband's co-worker's birthday every year, and I always send it with apologies for its appearance.  In fact, last year I learned the cake was going to a family dinner party, and I had a minor panic attack because I knew the cake was not a party-worthy centerpiece.

Finally, something clicked.  I thought back to how many weddings I had been to where the cake was beautiful, but dry and overly sweet or had too much almond extract.  Fondant, while smooth and gorgeous is not something I want to eat.  I have had a few cakes that were both beautiful and delicious, but these have been few and far between.  The man who gets a cake for his birthday every year is thrilled to have something homemade.  He's not looking at the flaws.

So, my cakes, while homely, bumpy, lopsided, and always leaning are delicious, and I'm fine with that.  I will no longer apologize for my ugly cakes.  I feel like there's a life lesson here, but I don't want to get all after school special on you, so I'll close with this: love your ugly cakes.

For those of you who want to know more about this cake, it's a strawberry lemonade cake.  So, the cake is lemon, and the frosting is vanilla butter cream with strawberries whipped in.  I got the recipe here.  I think this would be excellent with any berry.

Grilled Onions: French onion soup without the soup.

Onions have always been a staple in my house and at my parents' house.  There is a joke that anything my dad eats could use some or more onions, and that if we just served onions, he would still think more onions were needed.

Honestly, I don't understand people who have an aversion to them.  I have a cousin who will pick out minced onions from the dressing at Thanksgiving and who I've seen eat onion rings by pulling the onion out and just eating the batter.  Yes, raw onions can be harsh, but cooked onions are sweet and mellow.  Onions are also good for you and inexpensive, so I think it makes sense to have more onion side dishes.

I think my husband has onion amnesia, especially when it comes to these grilled onions.   He always claims he's not interested in them, but after taking a few bites, he keeps going back for more.  I think these could win over most of the onion haters among us, and I think it tastes kind of like french onion soup without the soup.

Some notes:

• I'm including step-by-step directions below for a grill, but you can also bake these for an hour between 350 and 400 F.  Put on a cookie sheet or oven safe dish while baking, so juice doesn't run all over your oven.
• I can eat one of these by myself, and I really like it over a baked potato.
• I usually use a sweet onion like a Candy or Vidalia, but I've used yellow or white onions too.

Grilled Onions

After getting your grill ready, peel and wash your onions.  Place each onion on a sheet of foil big enough to wrap the onion in.  Cut off the root at the end, and then use a paring knife to hollow out about an inch and a half hole in the top of your onions.  I just leave the onion insides that I've taken out in the foil.

Fill the hole with a bouillon cube or paste (about 1 teaspoon).  I use either beef or vegetable, but chicken would work too.

Top with a pat of butter (about 1/2 tablespoon).  Wrap the onion in foil and place on the grill for an hour.  (potatoes take about this long too)  My grill was at medium heat, but these will work at low or high heat, you'll just need to adjust the time.  I've never had a problem with overcooking these.

When the onion is soft, it's done.  Put it in a container before unwrapping, so you don't get juice everywhere.

Peaches, Pesto, Mozzarella: What I've learned

I learned a few things while making the salad you see above.  First, pesto makes an excellent salad dressing.  Two, I'm getting so skilled at using my $30 thrift store Le Crueset grill pan.  I mean really, look at those grill marks!  And finally, peaches, pesto, and mozzarella cheese go perfectly together on a salad.

The pesto recipe I used called for pine nuts, but I didn't want to take out a loan just to buy nuts, so I subbed in pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds) instead.  I've been using them in place of pine nuts a lot lately, and they haven't let me down yet, so give them a try.  I also can't get arugula where I live or that would have went on this salad instead of spinach.  

This salad was served with barramundi, which is a fish that I had not tried until last December.  It's a flaky white fish, but does not have the typical white fish flavor. From what I've read, it can be farmed in a sustainable manner, so it's not a bad choice of fish, and it's my new favorite.  We stock up on it the few times a year when we can get to a Trader Joes.   If you can get the skin crispy, do it.  I think I could eat a bag of crispy barramundi skins.  I previously mentioned arugula, which I also had not tried until this year.

The only thing that makes me upset about any of this is that I've lived 32 years of my life when I could have been eating barramundi, arugula, and grilled peaches and pesto.  I need to make up for lost time.

Chorizo Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes

In my opinion, there aren't too many things better than a twice baked potato.  They are cheesy, salty, and if cooked just right, the potato skins get crispy.  I don't think they should always be relegated to a side dish, especially when you can just stuff your entire meal in one.

The key to making twice baked potatoes is to bake your potatoes ahead of time and let them cool before trying to scoop them out.  Not only do you risk burning yourself with scorching hot potato flesh (trust me, I've done this), but the potatoes will also break apart easily leaving you without the shell you need if you don't let them cool properly.  If you're using the oven anyway, go ahead and put a few potatoes in, and then you can have twice baked potatoes the next night for supper.  You can also bake potatoes in a crock-pot.  Just put them in the crock pot at night, and when you get up in the morning, you can put them in the refrigerator, so they will be cool and ready to scoop out for supper.

The other trick I've learned to making twice baked potatoes is instead of scooping out the flesh with a spoon, use a knife and cut around the inside.  Then you can go in and dig out the potatoes with a spoon.  This leads to a lot less breakage of your potato skin.

I didn't measure this exactly, and you can pick and choose your ingredients.  You can use sausage, ground beef, or chicken instead of chorizo, or leave out the meat entirely.  Change up the cheese to whatever you have on hand.  I serve these with sour cream.  They freeze and reheat well, so I always make extra.

Chorizo Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes

4 russet potatoes
6 to 8 oz chorizo, cooked
1 cup co-jack cheese, shredded
3 scallions, chopped

1. Bake potatoes until tender.  Set aside and cool to at least room temperature, but cooking them the day before and refrigerating them works great too.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 F.  Cut each potato in half and carve out the inside.  You will now have 8 potato shells and the potato insides. Put reserved potato insides into a medium bowl.

3. Mix chorizo, cheese, and scallions with potato insides.  Taste for seasoning.  Because chorizo is salty and spicy, I don't add any extra seasoning, but if you're using a different protein, you may want salt, pepper, or other spices.

4. Spoon the potato mixture into the potato shells, and place on a baking sheet.

5. Bake potatoes for 20 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and the skins are crisp.

Why I Love Breakfast and a Burrito

I love breakfast more than any other meal, and it's purely for emotional reasons.  I grew-up in a home where my mother ate and still eats something chocolate every morning.  I really didn't know that Hostess chocolate cupcakes were not a breakfast food until I was in my mid-twenties.  Chocolate cake and Swiss Rolls were the norm, but I always liked a savory breakfast.  I would go to my grandparent's house before school where my grandpa would make me cheese omelets or heat up leftover mashed potatoes and fried chicken.  The only time my mom cooked a breakfast is when my family would go camping.  I remember the little Coleman camp stove with eggs just taken out of the red plastic carrying case and sausage links.  These breakfasts were special.  Now, my dad often takes me out for our morning meal when I'm home visiting, and it's these kinds of emotional memories that make me love this meal so much.

I have a breakfast burrito almost every morning.  I previously posted about making them ahead for the freezer, which works great, but most of the time I just make my burrito as I get ready for work.  Those of you who know me know that I will sleep every last second before I have to get out of bed, and I've been known to hit the snooze button for at least an hour.  In fact, my husband knows that he's not allowed to talk to me in the morning because all questions are considered stupid until I'm properly awake.  Yet, I do love breakfast, and I've got a routine down that lets me throw together a burrito every morning.  It goes like this: stumble to the kitchen, heat the pan with oil, go brush teeth, chop mushrooms and throw in the pan, do hair, throw eggs in the pan, get dressed, and so on.

The filling for my burritos constantly change.  I'm on a mushroom, kale, egg, cheese, and jalapeno kick right now, but sometimes I'll have potatoes, sausage, peppers, egg, and onion.  Really, whatever produce I can pull together quickly and wrap in a tortilla is good for me.  I always have a gallon jar of pickled jalapenos in the fridge.

When breakfast burritos were requested for supper a few nights ago, I knew I wanted to do something a little different than my everyday fare.  These were filled with egg, pepper, onion, chorizo, and cheese and then topped with some leftover Rotel dip and cilantro.  The filling and cheese sauce from yesterday's nacho post would also make an excellent addition.