Days 128-133

Hello all. I'm not as late this week. Progress. Baby steps. Every week I have full intentions to do this blog on Sunday. This time of year I don't think that will happen. You see, Sunday is football day. Our TV is tuned to the NFL Redzone. My laptop is flashing between NFL.com to watch the Bills games and our fantasy football team. Tim and I have a team this year and let me tell you, it has made football so much more fun. We are Bills fans (hanging head in shame). We rarely get to see their games here. We get the Eagles or Steelers (who I also like). The thing that is fun is the fact that we have assorted players on all the teams who we can watch and root for. Anyway, that is why the blog doesn't get worked on on Sunday. We can all blame football.

So, onto our week of meals. This was a low key week. We were all still getting over colds and not very hungry.

Sunday:
WINGS
no picture
Again, I'm a dork and forgot to take the picture of our wings. Sunday night is wings night in our home. We also eat a ton of celery so fret not, we are eating our veg as well.

Monday:

Taco Salad

This is becoming a fave in our home. It's perfect because I can throw it together while Connor is at karate and it's all ready when he gets home. I love the chipolte salsa on mine

Tuesday:

Turkey Burgers with creamed spinach

We love our turkey burgers now. They are so delicious and Aidan eats them most of the time. This time I didn't mince the green onions fine enough so he was able to see them and wasn't happy about it. Tim experimented with some creamed spinach. This wasn't a big hit with Aidan, but I will give him props for trying it. Connor on the other hand loved it. He ended up eating more than he was bolused for and we had to give him a little more insulin after the fact.

Wednesday:

Steak with whiskey cream sauce and brusssl sprouts

This was good. It was fun to make this one because we were in the middle of a terrible thunderstorm and I love myself some thunderstorms. I made a mistake and used a bunch of cubed up stew meat instead of steaks. We were out of steaks and I rarely make stews. The meat was a little tougher than normal but the amazing sauce made up for it. I also did the brussel sprouts differently and they weren't as good as when I roast them. They cooked in a little bacon fat and then I added some chicken broth and they basically cooked in the chicken broth. We all decided the butter garlic roasted ones are way better.

Thursday:

Slaw Dogs

What? What's that? Is that a bun?! Oh yes it is. I love the internet because I can google something and find an answer. This amazing woman has an incredible blog chock full of recipes we can use. These buns are made out of egg whites beaten to within an inch of their lives and then egg yolks with some cream cheese. Throw it in the oven, bake, voila. One carb bun. Oh yeah. The slaw was also delicious. Instead of sugar, I just used stevia and I think I ate Aidan's weight of it. I seriously ate this for a couple of days. It was so good. Next time I think I'll dice up a dill pickle and add as well. Then I will disallow anyone touching it.

Friday:

Pizza!

Yes, we attempted pizza again. The crust was made out of eggs and cheese. I don't think we'll do it again. It was nice to have pizza again but the crust was just too much and not that easy to work with. I am thinking I'm going to try the same recipe I used for the buns and try that as a pizza crust. Otherwise, the toppings were delish! We enjoyed our pizza with a movie. Good times!

Saturday:

Pumpkin Pie Milkshake

Tim roasted up another one of our pumpkins during the day and we all just wanted something light for dinner. So the milkshake was had. It's basically just cream, water, ice, protein powder, roasted pumpkin, some pumpkin pie spice and a packet of stevia. They were super duper filling and everyone was satisfied.

So, that wraps up another week. It was a good week. Connor had some blood drawn today for his endocrinologist appointment next week. We are pretty excited to see how this way of eating has affected his numbers. We've been doing this for just over a month and an HBA1C averages three months of sugars so he's still going to have a couple of months of not so great numbers to deal with...although I have read/heard that it mostly accounts for the past month. We shall see.

Have a great week!!

Days 121-127

Hello Mr. Procrastination, how nice of you to stop by.  So, I've been thinking about writing all week and haven't had the time or gumption to do so.  We've been busy and for part of the time sick so I have my reasons.  =)

Let's get to the meals.  I'm not going to have pictures for all of them because I'm a dork.

Sunday:
NO PICTURE
Wings
I am happy to report that wings have no carbs.  The sauces that we use have no carbs.  We may have lost our Friday night pizza night, but we've gained our Sunday Football Wings.  Tim fries them up for us.  We tried baking them once and they just turned out mushy and nasty.  When we fry them they get nice and crispy.  My wings I like to make a butter garlic sauce and I think next time I will put some fresh parmesain in the sauce as well.  We also like to use Frank's hot sauce because it has no carbs in it.  Aidan likes his honey mustard dressing for his wings.  He's the only one who still eats a little bit of carbs.  So, Sunday's meal was a win win for all.


Monday:

Taco Salad

This is such an easy meal to throw together.  I just cook up some ground beef and mix in a taco seasoning packet.  I bought the Simply Organic taco seasoning blend and didn't think anything about there being carbs in it, but alas, there were 5 carbs per serving.  Huh?  How can spices have carbs?!  Because they also included potato starch.  Dang.  It did effect Connor's blood sugar even though we covered the carbs with insulin.  I'm going to just start making my own taco mix.

Tuesday:

Turkey Burger with Lettuce Buns

Oh yeah, we took care of the bun issue.  We used leaves of romaine.  We usually put lettuce on our burgers anyway.  This recipe is from Dr. B's book and is so tasty.  Aidan even liked it this time.  I put a little bit of blue cheese dressing on top of mine with a slice of tomato fresh out of our garden.  YUM.

Wednesday:

Bacon Cheeseburger Quiche

Yup, you've seen it before and you will see it again.  I think we've had this three or four weeks in a row now. This time we were starting to get tired of it, so you will not see it next week.  It will be in the mix again though in the future.  It's really easy to make and everyone loves it.  We just need a break after having it so much.

Thursday:
NO PICTURE
This was an interesting dinner.  I had made a fish chowder.  It looked good, but once it was done, it smelled too fishy for me.  Connor and Tim ate it and liked it.  Aidan and I opted to make "milkshakes" (protein shakes) and that is what we had for dinner.  Tim enjoyed a very large serving of leftovers the next day.  =)

Friday:

Kielbasa with onions and peppers

Oh my, this was a tasty treat.  I found local kielbasa in our Wegmans and was happy to see it had no extra fillers like other kielbasas.  We fried that up with some peppers out of our garden and an onion.   No one even mentioned that it was pizza night.  We all snuggled on the couch and watched Wall-E and enjoyed our meal.

Saturday:
NO PICTURE
I am trying really hard to remember what we had for dinner on Saturday.  I can't remember.  I can't even really remember what we did.  I know this is the day that I started to come down with my cold.  I got the food shopping done in the afternoon (mental note...don't go to Wegmans on Saturday afternoon).  I came home and felt like crap.  Tim probably made dinner.  Oh yeah...now I remember.  We roasted one our pumpkins that we picked out of our garden.  Tim roasted it for an hour.  He then let it cool.  He made all of us pumpkin pie milkshakes.  It was a scoop of protein powder in a half cup of cream, half cup of water, 1/2 cup of pumpkin, a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice and a packet of stevia.  It tasted exactly like pumpkin pie.  It was a treat.  The kids loved it.  It's even better because pumpkin has a lot of vitamins and minerals in it and Aidan sucked it down.  Pumpkin is a little high in carbs, but Connor is allowed up to 12 carbs at dinner.  He rarely eats that many at dinner, unless there are brussel sprouts involved.  We all mentioned how it reminded us of Dairy Queen's Pumpkin Pie Blizzard.  At least this one was good for us.

Ok

Days 114-120

Oh my. It's Tuesday already and I haven't posted yet. Sorry my faithful viewers (all three of you), it's been a busy weekend. We have officially been doing very low carb eating for one month now. This will be the fourth week with no sugar, no grains, no fruit, no carbs. The only carbs that we ingest are in the form of vegetables. We all feel fantastic. I'm not going to lie, it was rough the first week. Both Tim and I had our share of withdrawls and some pretty impressive fatigue. That is all behind us now. More importantly, Connor's blood sugars continue to be very good. We are having a bit of a problem with him having a low blood sugar once a day. The problem with that is that after his low, he usually rebounds with a higher number, although he doesn't rebound over 200 anymore. When he goes down and then swoops back up then I can't tell if his basal rates are ok or not. I finally called his nurse today and asked her if I should change his insulin sensitivity because I noticed that whenever we bolus a high (130--that's crazy that we consider that a high now) that within two to three hours he's low. She did indeed change his sensitivity and his carb ratio. His rates are dropping. He now needs less insulin to treat a high and less insulin for what carbs he does eat. We are THRILLED. I dropped his basal rates again today too. He's been such a trooper with us experimenting and his constant blood sugar checks, but he's also being rewarded so he doesn't really care.

So, now that I've rambled on about what most of you probably don't understand, let's get to the meals:

Sunday:

Roast Beef with stir fried cabbage and tomato casserole

We decided to use some of the big roasts in our freezer this week because we are about to get another order of our grass fed beef. We are excited to watch our freezer fill up again and we are excited to go see Chris and Amanda out at their beautiful home. This was a pretty easy roast to do. I've never done a roast before so it was interesting. I looked up online how long to cook it and apparently had bad information. It had to cook an hour longer than I thought it would. It ended up being pretty good though. It also made for a lot of leftovers for the next couple of days.



Monday:

Scallops wrapped in bacon with broccoli

Tim and I loved this dish, but the kids weren't as keen on it this week. They each had a couple of them and then claimed they weren't hungry. It was kind of a rushed dinner because we were so busy that day (Labor Day) that we had a late dinner and both of the kids wanted to squeeze in a Scotland Yard game before bed.


Tuesday:

Peanut Ginger Pork Chop with Bok Choy

This was a new recipe and it was delicious. Three of the four of us loved it and the surprise was that Connor was the one who didn't like this one. Aidan loved it. I'm getting to where I really like marinated things early in the day and then all I have to do is cook it. Easy peasy. I'm not sure why Connor didn't like it, but he's not been as hungry as usual so we're not forcing him to eat it if he doesn't like it.


Wednesday:

Bacon Cheeseburger Quiche with a salad

This meal is a three-peat for us. It's easy for me because I can throw it together while Connor is at karate and it's ready when he gets home. Everyone loves it and we always have enough left over for the kids to have a lunch the next day. You're probably going to get tired of seeing this meal, but we aren't tired of eating it yet.


Thursday:

40 clove Brisket with Swiss Chard

I'm not sure about this meal. For one thing, it was a pain in the arse to peel 40 cloves of garlic even though I have one of those little rubber roll garlic peelers. Again, I followed the internet for cooking times and this one was way off this time. I think I over-cooked it. It was still tasty, but the meat dried out a bit. The garlic was delicious though. We smooshed a bunch of them over our beef while we were eating. Connor ended up basically eating garlic. You probably could smell us from down the block.



Friday:

Bacon Feta Chicken with Garlic Roasted Brussel Sprouts

We really like this meal too. We've had this before. It's so painfully easy. You put a bunch of feta cheese on top of a chicken breast and then put a couple of pieces of bacon on top of that. Throw in in the oven and bake it....dinner done. We had this with roasted brussel sprouts. I think Connor has a serious addiction to brussel sprouts. Interestingly enough, they have a pretty high carb count for a vegetable. 2 brussel sprouts have 3 carbs in them. At most we allow him to have 12 carbs at a meal. He uses all of those carbs up on the sprouts.


Saturday:

Korean Beef with Stir fried cabbage

Saturday was a treat for us because Tim's dad and most awesome step mom came into town to spend the day with us. We treated them to our way of eating. I hope they survived it. We made one of our faves. The Korean Beef and cabbage. Oh man, I can't get over how much flavor those little strips of steak have. They are so good. We had a lot of fun and I know Laurie had a lot of questions so when I have time to write I'll post some of the resources we've been using.

So there was our past week. We are starting to settle into certain meals each week. It's funny because in the past I used to get upset with us eating the same thing all the time. I would get bored. It's different now though because most of the time I'm not hungry and I don't crave anything anymore. We're basically eating to fuel ourselves now. Novel idea, right?

Well, I have to jet because I have two boys waiting for their hugs and kisses. Until next week (and hopefully on time) I hope everyone stays happy.

Days 107-113

Hello all. We are rocking the kitchen around here. We are in our third week of extremely low carb eating. I'm amazed at the changes in all of our moods, cravings, and eating patterns. Let's get to the meals.

Sunday:

Korean Beef with Stir-fried Cabbage

Oh my. This meal was so flavorful and delicious. It made enough for dinner and two days worth of lunches. It was also insanely easy to throw together. Win win all around.

Monday:

Scallops wrapped in bacon and garlic roasted brussel sprouts

This was a huge win with the whole family. Aidan wolfed these down and raved about them. That's a plus around here lately because Aidan is still not really liking the fact that his favorites are gone. At least he's not moaning about his lack of pizza, macaroni, and pasta as much.

Tuesday:

Turkey Marjoram burgers on a bed of spinach

This recipe came out of Dr. Bernstein's book. It was delicious. Connor loved these. He wanted more when he was done. They were surprisingly moist. Turkey burgers in the past have always been on the dry side, but these were very good.

Wednesday:

Bacon Cheeseburger Quiche with Zucchini fritters

This is a repeat from last week because Aidan loved it and when we find something he loves, we need to run with it. He even liked the zucchini fritters this time. This is an easy meal to throw together and the leftovers fed Connor for the next two lunches. It's nice to have something ready in the fridge come lunch time so I don't have to waste our hour lunch break making big lunches.

Thursday:

Steak with whiskey cream sauce and broccoli with cheese sauce

Man, if I could marry this whiskey cream sauce I would. It is from The Pioneer Woman's Cookbook. I've made it before and since going no carb I haven't cracked the book open. I wanted to peek at the recipe again and see if it was ok for us. It is. The flavor of this sauce is so amazing. Tim and I had some of the extra sauce on our eggs the next morning too. I'm pondering keeping a container of this sauce in the refrigerator at all times. Of course, we've also been drinking our whiskey so I'm going to have to go get another bottle of it.

Friday:

Pizza

What? Pizza? Yes, we did some experimenting. Instead of making my normal pizza dough recipe, Tim made a crust with soy flour. Soy flour has only 9 carbs per serving where normal white flour has 24 carbs per serving. The taste is a little different, but really all you need of the crust is to hold the toppings. Sadly, even the reduced amount of carbs had a huge effect on Connor's blood sugar. We're not sure if it's because of the flour or the pizza sauce. The pizza sauce was measured out and the carbs were covered, but he still had a rise in his sugars. It looks like we are going to need to find an alternative to our Friday night pizza night.

Saturday:

Crab Legs

Steamed clams

This meal came about as a sudden craving I had. I hadn't planned anything for Saturday and we spent the day cleaning and hadn't really thought about dinner. Around 3 o'clock we were watching some pre-season football and I had the thought of crab legs pop into my head. Tim was a dear and went out and picked up a bunch of crab legs and while he was picking them up he got a big bag of Maine clams. Dinner solved. We cooked it all up, melted butter with garlic and set up the table outside. We enjoyed our dinner under fall looking clouds and cooler temps with Nancy. It was perfect.

So, that was our third week of eating nearly no carbs. The only carbs we are eating are basically from our vegetables. Connor's blood sugars continue to be level and his insulin usage is down. The first week we went no carb his sugars ran from 80 to 110 and then the second week he ran from 100-140. It was a little higher, but it was because of a growth spurt. This is interesting because usually his growth spurts run him with sugars between 200 and 300. So, while I was kind of bummed to see 100 to 140 I was thrilled it wasn't any higher. Right now his HBA1c will likely be 7.1 which is down from 8.1. The lowest we've ever had his HBA1c has been 7.4 and that was after having a lot of uncontrolled lows. Now, we're going to try and get it down to 6.1. I think within another month of eating this way and my messing around with his basal rates we can achieve that.

Well, that is about all I have for now. We're going to go enjoy our 68 degree weather and sunny skies. I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend!