Mmmmm

Rachael is a very good cook. And since I began this eating regimen she has looked for recipes that will fit the agenda but still please Michael too. The other night she found a recipe for a pear and porkchop salad that he loved...
Here's the recipe for that:

Pear and Grilled Pork Salad.
Ingredients
2 boneless pork loin chops (about 12 ounces total), cut 3/4 inch thick
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons snipped fresh sage or thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried sage or thyme, crushed
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

8 cups torn mixed salad greens (Rachael used all romaine lettuce)
2 medium pears or apples, thinly sliced
1/4 cup toasted, broken walnuts (optional)
Fresh sage leaves (optional)

Buttermilk-Apple Dressing
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons low-fat mayonnaise dressing
1 tablespoon frozen apple juice concentrate or frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
1 green onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon snipped fresh sage or thyme, or 1/4 teaspoon dried sage or thyme, crushed
Salt
Ground black pepper

Directions
1. Prepare dressing ahead. In a small bowl, stir together buttermilk, mayonnaise, apple or orange juice concentrate, mustard, green onion, and the 1 teaspoon snipped sage or 1/4 teaspoon dried sage. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Chill

2. Preheat broiler. Trim fat from chops. Brush chops with oil. Stir together the 2 teaspoons snipped sage or 1 teaspoon dried sage, the 1/4 teaspoon salt, and the 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Sprinkle sage mixture evenly over all sides of chops; rub in with your fingers. Place chops on the unheated rack of a broiler pan. Broil 3 to 4 inches from the heat for 9 to 11 minutes or until done (160 degrees F) and juices run clear, turning once halfway through broiling. Let rest five minutes, but don’t cool..

3. To serve, divide salad greens among 4 salad plates. Arrange the pear or apple slices on sides of the greens; Slice chops thinly, place in center of plate. drizzle with dressing. If desired, sprinkle with walnuts and garnish with fresh sage leaves. Makes 4 servings.

Michael loved it! He talked about it for two days and asked for it again this week. Now THAT is a successful dish and a fantastic cook, when you can make a low carb low calorie dish that you man loves!

THIS week she tried a second dish, similar but with different fruit.

Roast Pork and Nectarine Salad
Ungredients
12 oz. pork tenderloin/boneless porkchops (three or four chops)
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp. honey mustard
6 cups torn romaine and/or spinach and or favorite greens
2 cups fresh or canned pineapple chunks and/or sliced fresh nectarines or peaches to total two cups.
Cracked black pepper (optional)

Ginger-Pineapple Dressing
1/4 cup low fat mayonnaise

1/3 cup unsweetened pineapple juice

1T. honey mustard

1t. fresh grated ginger

In small bowl combine mayonnaise dressing, unsweetened pineapple juice, honey-mustard, and grated fresh ginger. Cover; chill until serving time. Best if prepared well ahead

Directions

1. Prepare dressing ahead.

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Trim fat from pork; sprinkle salt and pepper. Place pork on rack in shallow roasting pan. Roast pork for 20 minutes.
OR grill porkchops 4-5 minutes per side in an ungreased frying pan or open grill at medium temp,

3. Baste mustard on pork. Roast 5 to 10 minutes longer or until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part registers 160 degrees F. OR grill for an additional 4-5 minutes until done. Set aside to rest five minutes.

4. On four plates arrange a bed of greens.

5. Slice pork thinly; place pork, and fruit on greens. Sprinkle with cracked black pepper.

6. Drizzle Ginger-Pineapple Dressing on salads. Makes 4 servings.

And he loved this one too. If you are dieting just to lose weight, these are great. They are 224- 251 calories respectively. That's pretty good for a full meal. The fat content is 6-10 grams, depending on what kind of mayo you use, and the carb count is 20-22! So if you are counting carbohydrates that is a fantastic number for dinner. The are best with romaine lettuce, but any kind of greens would work.

And the very best part is that the salads make you feel really full. In fact, Rachael and I both put part of ours in the refrigerator for lunch the next day. Michael ate all of his.

I just put one picture up because they look just the same. except the nectarines are golden instead of white....

Try it, you'll love it.

jerky

Last summer as we were coming back from NM, we discovered a fantastic brand of jerky. Rachael picked up a single package in a Love’s travel stop. It was so good that when we came to the next Love’s she got a whole pound of it! It is honestly the best jerky I’ve ever had. I followed the web link on the package and just ordered a pound for us. Do you know how much dried meat you get in a pound!! Lots. Probably what would be several pounds of raw meat.

Now I want to tell you about it because I had a piece for breakfast and enjoyed it so much I want the world to know. Well at least the few people who read along here.

If you’ve never had jerky, real jerky, good jerky, you are missing a treat. Most of the stuff we get in stores around here is glorified lunch meat. It is chopped and compressed into uniform slices (sometimes even shaped to resemble a piece of natural meat) and dried. Some brands are shoved into little casings and sold a beef sticks. I guess there are brands that are real jerked meat, but most of them aren’t. I guess if you are starving it’s okay, but if you don’t like it, I don’t blame you.

Real jerky is real meat, trimmed of fat and sliced very thinly roughly cross grain and marinated briefly in a curing solution-usually salt. Originally it was sun dried or smoked over low fires. It isn’t really cooked exactly, but it doesn’t taste ‘raw’ either. The object is to dehydrate the meat quickly to retard any bacterial growth. Well-made jerky could be stored for weeks under dry conditions and will feed a person for many meals.

Jerky has become a popular snack food, but originally it was designed to be a method of storing vital nutrition and calories for periods of shortage or travel. You can’t toss a handful of real jerky in your mouth and chomp it like you do chips or popcorn. It is much too hard and tough. This is part of the reason why the processed and pressed types of jerky were developed. They are quicker and easier to consume. We are into instant gratification in our snack foods. Jerky doesn’t fit the bill.

I had a stick of jerky for breakfast this morning. I don’t know how much it weighed. It was a very thin slice about four inches long and an inch wide at its broadest part, but it tapered to points on each end, conforming to the shape of the natural muscle strip. I wondered, as I was stripping the thin shreds of fiber from the larger piece, how much the piece would have weighted in it unprocessed form. It took me about twenty minutes to eat the whole piece with my coffee.

You have to tear off a tiny strip of muscle fiber and hold it in your mouth until it is saturated enough to chew, so it takes a while. But when I finished that little strip of jerky I felt as satisfies as if I had eaten bacon and eggs. That’s the difference between real jerky and the processed stuff from the corner convenience store. It is a meal.

If you want good jerky I recommend you try Robertsons’ jerky (http://www.beefjerkynow.com/) They offer a variety of meat products including ham bacon and sausage. Check out the website and then try the jerky. If their ham and bacon are as good as their jerky, they are well worth the cost.

And if you’ve never eaten jerky or didn’t like it when you did, try a piece of Robertsons. It is almost like eating your mama’s roast in dehydrated form.

mmm

Oh yes, I wanted to tell you about my fabulous egg sandwich creation. Because of my starchy carb free diet I can seldom have bread. Usually I'm okay with that but sometimes I get a real hankering for it. Rachael, bless her little heart, found this whole wheat bread, Nickles 100% whole wheat bread. It has 16 grams of carbs per slice, which is about the same as other breads, but this is compensated for by 3 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein. It is a great alternative to white bread which has often has 20 carbs with only 1 gram of fiber and 2 grams of protein. And for some reason, thank goodness, it has a positive effect on my glucose numbers. Of course, I can't eat it every meal of every day, but I can occasionally have a sandwich or toast.

Anyway, enough of that. I like egg sandwiches but because of my standing-time issues, I'm not able to stand comfortably long enough to manufacture them. That process also includes standing and scrubbing the frying pan besides the preaparation.

I found a better way! Microwaved food can sometimes be disappointing, but this works!

Assemble: bread, thinly sliced deli ham (not chip-chopped, real ham) American cheese slices, 2 eggs, butter or margarine. two small containers-one microwavable sprayed with cooking spray. fork, knife.

Here's the part that prompted the whole thing- Sit down! Of course it helps to have a kitchen arranged so you can reach everything,but still...

Toast two pieces of bread-whatever kind you like.

While your bread is toasting. beat two eggs in a bowl, pour them into the microwave dish prepared with cooking spray.

Microwave the eggs for 1 minute.

When the toast pops, spread each slice with butter

Put a slice of cheese on one piece of toast.

When the minute of microwaving is over, flip the eggs. (They will be done on one side, but slimey on the bottom. )

Return eggs to microwave for 10 seconds.

Separate the ham slices -as many as you like.

Put the hot eggs on the slice of cheese,

Immediately spread the ham slices on top.

Place the other piece of toast on that and wrap the sandwich in a paper towel. The heat from the eggs warms the entire sandwich and melts the cheese!

Get your coffee or orange juice.

Breakfast is ready. hot ham and cheese with egg on toast! It's great. Tastes good. Easy prep. A whole breakfast in 3 minutes. Easy clean-up. Rinse the dishes and knife under hot water with a drop of soap....or toss them in the dish washer.

Trust me, try it.

off to a slow start

I hate it when I forget something and then have to hustle around to catch up. This morning after Rachael went to work, I got Michael's muffin and a napkin out and cleaned the counter off. Then I took my coffee and a muffin, let the dogs in and trucked on back to my sitting room. I had withstood the temptation of that muffin for a week, but I finally broke down and decided to have one after breakfast. All the excitement must be the reason I forgot to turn the coffee pot on for Michael's coffee. lol

At about 7:05 I woke up from a little snooze and suddenly couldn't remember if I'd pushed that stupid automatic button. Then I was pretty sure I hadn't. Michael's schedule is closely regimented and he cuts his timing to the minute, almost the second, so I had to hop up and hustle out to the kitchen and push the button. Phooey. I don't hustle well and it puts my day out of sorts. At least I don't have a schedule to keep other than getting to sit down with my book or my laptop. But for those few hours every morning I meet Rachael's and Michael's schedule. Luckily, I got the pot turned on just in time to get coffee started before he came down stairs. It wasn't completely finished dripping but enough so that he could get his cofffee and go on to work. Heh, heh, heh. I'll bet it was strong enough to straighten his hair.

The good news of the day is that the muffin didn't make my blood glucose spike! Two hours after I ate the muffin my reading was only 127. How great is that! My morning readings are seldom over 120 and usually around 110. I think that is good. I avoid the starchy high carb foods almost completely. Very rarely I have a sandwich with bread or a tortilla. Generally I have protein and vegetables and fruits. Not that I avoid carbohydrates completely, but I get them from the fruits and vegetables rather than from lots of starches. I have a doctor's appointment next Tuesday. We'll see what she says.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not real conscientious about doctor's appointments. I should have gone in March before I went to NM. But Rachael had her accident and couldn't take me. Then the next Saturday Kerra came and we left for Belen. I planned to be real good and go as soon as I got back in July, BUT... Famous last words.

In July the week after we got back, Rachael began her Lien Accounting training for Krogers and had long days with no breaks during the week so there was no time for her to take me. Finally she has a vacation scheduled and I'll go see Doctor Nickolson next week. Pat of the reason I began monitoring my blood sugar readings regularly was because I wanted to give her something as a record of what had been happening. Same thing with the blood pressure readings.

Generally, I'm pretty casual about seeing the doctor. I'm sure I'm a frustrating patient because I cannot afford a lot of tests and blood work and the things that doctors today use to keep tabs on what's going on inside our bodies. I do the things the doctor tells me within the limits of my financial ability. And most of that is to keep my family from worrying. Beyond that I simply let the Lord take care of it. Until a couple years ago, He did that all the time anyway.

school's out!

Well. School is out here in Belen for another year. It is amazing how time goes along. I remember when I was a kid, I was visiting Ma and Pappy and I said something about a long time until Christmas. I believe it was mid-summer because I never stayed with them except during summer vacation.

Pappy laughed and said it would be here sooner than I thought. Time went faster and faster the older a person got. I could hardly believe that! He was too old to remember how slow time went.

Well now I know. Just a couple weeks ago, I was arriving here to visit, looking ahead toward three months visiting. Now it is down to just a bit more than a month! It has been nearly sixty days of bright blue mornings and windy afternoons, with the mocking bird singing in the kitchen tree and the road runner strutting past the front window.

I've spent the morning looking at Chinese food recipes. First I was looking at woks because Kerra got a good one in a auction bargain box so I was checking in to using that which led to a couple recipes. Then one of my diabetes sites posted a Sizzling Stir-Fry recipe and so I looked at a bunch more. Chinese food is one of my favorite "cuisines" Chinese dishes are good for my low carb eating regimen because it is easy to leave out any extraneous carbs that creep in (cornstarch, sugar etc) and all you have left is some meat with seasonings and chinese vegetables which are great on carbs and fiber.

Did you know bok choy has only twice as many carbs as it does fiber! 1 to 2! That's a pretty good ratio! Now think about an apple--usually considered good diet food--with only 5 grams of fiber as compared to 22 grams of carbohydrates! 1 to 4+ Give me the bok choy. Although granted it leaves a bit to be desired as a plain snack, it is great stirfried up with chicken strips and a little ginger and soy sauce, etc.

Well, gotta quit for now. Kids are home, Kerra's home. Things're Happening!

Carbohydrates, sugars and diet!

I’ve spent the last few minutes going through my saved websites regarding carbohydrates. The doctor says don’t have diabetes but I must control my blood sugar because it is higher than she likes. Cut out the simple carbs. Period. I’ve been fascinated by the whole carbohydrate picture. It is very complicated, but I think I have a handle on understanding it. I have cut the breads, pastas, crackers. potatoes and rice from my daily diet. I’ve been eating just meats, vegetables and fruits, generally fresh, allowing myself only one simple-carb per day, maybe potatoes for supper or toast for breakfast. And Wow. The impact it has had. Not only does it control blood sugar, but there is a weight loss component included as a bonus!

Rachael went on the same food agenda as I did (mostly to keep me encouraged I think) and because her excess poundage was much less than mine, the weight loss was immediately apparent! Her clothes are noticeably looser in a little less than two months! I keep teasing her about her baggy pants and she keeps complaining that she is afraid of losing them!

I knew the starchy-carb free diet would be good for me, but I never suspected it would have such an impact on weight. I guess that was kind of stupid but I really didn’t. I mean I liked fruits and veggies and meat anyway, but I was eating them in addition to the bread and so forth. Leaving them out has really had an impact. I wish I could say I’m looking like a skinny Minnie, but that will be a while.

Meantime, anybody who is looking to lose weight really should look at this plan. It really is easy and because I liked fruits and vegetables anyway it hasn’t been hard. As Rachael said this morning, after about 7 weeks we have reached the place where foods heavy in simple carbs make us feel too full and sluggish. Not only that, the complex carbs keep the body satisfied longer. Last week Rachael had a very busy day and she and Michael had a lot to do so she decided we would do fast food. Carbs and more carbs!! That Arby’s French dip sub tasted really good with the fries, but by ll:30 my stomach was actually rumbling and aching. That hasn’t happened in weeks. I went to get a pear and a slice of cheese.

So take my advice, just dump all the “white foods” from your diet. (That’s the easiest way I’ve found to think about it without actually going and looking up the glycemic index count for each food.) Be honest and don’t cheat. Also of course leave out the candy and cookies that may not be ‘white’ but you know the 'white' is hidden by baking or coating or whatever.

I've found it easy. And it really works a million times better than counting calories and measuring portions.

Early Sunday Morning

I’ve been feeling very tired lately and I’m so thankful that I don’t need to struggle to get to work and take care of daily duties there anymore. I never realized how difficult it was until I could stop doing it. I never realized what a negative impact the weather had on my knees and my ability to walk until I was able to stay inside during bad weather. Now that I need not go out everyday when it is cold and wet I have much less pain than I did then. Of course, I’m not skipping rope or going on ten mile hikes, but the reduced pain is wonderful.

I just heard Rachael get up to go to work. She has to open today and Sunday mornings have extra task list that must be done to begin the week. I think I’ll go put a couple eggs on to boil so she will have a bit to eat before she starts the day. Otherwise she’ll just drink coffee.

When the doctor put me on a ‘carbohydrate free’ diet, she went on it with me, but it is only effective if you eat the protein and complex carbs regularly and don’t skip meals. I was put on the diet regimen because I was found to be borderline diabetic and that can be controlled by diet. Nice thing is it also results in weight loss! Rachael has lost a visible amount of weight since we began the first of December. LOL With me it is not so visible, but I’m trusting that it is accomplishing its primary purpose, which is to reduce my blood sugar.

Reducing the simple carbohydrates in our diet has been surprisingly easy. We eat no breads, pastas, rice, bakery products etc. or, of course chips, or snack foods Meats, cheese/milk/yogurts, nuts, fruits and vegetables are the basis of our my meals. Of course some fruits and vegetables have a higher number of complex carbohydrates so we also reference the glycemic index rating of those. By and large however, it has not been a strict, calorie counting, measure every bite process but basically just a change in what and how we eat. We allow ourselves one simple carb food per day. Toast for breakfast but then no others. Or if we want a potato for dinner we don’t do any simple carb for the other meals.

A great light blazed into my head the other day when I realized what much of the problem with traditional diets involved. With every diet I’ve ever been on I was counting calories and ignoring the carbohydrates. And unfortunately, the calories in the carbohydrate items-breads, pastas, potatoes-piled up fast and cut deep into the proteins and vegetables etc. It was a constant struggle to keep the calories low. With this simple carb free diet, the calories are reduced naturally and easily and I don’t miss them.

************
OKAY, Rachael is gone to work and I’m back. Just ate my own boiled eggs with a little serving of fruit and a half dozen low fat cheese cubes

I now have three dogs in my room snoozing away. Maxim, Sebastian and Mica got up with Rachael and ran outside to potty then Maxim and Sebastian decided to come in with me 'n' Gable instead of going back upstairs to hop in bed with Michael (Did I tell you it was 5:00 AM? -Just in case you think Michael is a lazy bones). I believe Maxim thought there was gonna be a whoop-de-do play time, but I soon put a stop to THAT!

Guess I’ll stop this here now and go do some Bible study. I surely miss not being able to be in services anymore. I miss the songs of God and the fellowship of sitting under the message of God. But the Lord has been faithful and my times with the Word are blessed.