Puteri’s World

I had a late breakfast this morning and so I didn’t feel like fixing myself some lunch. Instead I made some herb-bran muffins.

I love muffins because they are quick and easy to make. I have found some recipes that are suitable for people who want to watch their blood sugar. You may find the recipe for this muffin on my food blog.

I have just been to a fellow Malaysian’s food blog and I drooled at the pictures of coconut tarts she had on her blog. Too bad, with my current diet, coconut tarts done that way are out. Maybe a half of that tart won’t hurt me, but how can you stop at half a tart?

Might as well avoid it altogether!

This dish is made up of shrimp and ‘petai’ (Parkia Speciosa) stir fried in chilli paste and shrimp paste.

I am pre-diabetic so usually I am careful about what I eat. I am convinced that this particular dish does not raise my blood sugar!

Why? Because this bean is not only stinky but bitter as well. Usually any plant that has some bitterness in it, like bitter melon, is always good for the blood sugar. I do not know for sure if ‘petai’ has blood sugar lowering properties but this morning my fasting blood sugar reading was 81 mg/dL.

Excellent indeed!

Update:

I found some articles that say that petai does indeed have sugar lowering properties!

Hypoglycaemic effect of Parkia speciosa seeds

Stinkin’ good

Ever since I started monitoring my blood sugar, I have ordered a few cookbooks that deal only in diabetic cooking. This is the first of the three books that I ordered from Amazon.com that has arrived.

I’m quite pleased with the recipes in there, and one thing I agree with the author is that the recipes in the book are nutritious, tasty and healthy, which means healthy for those who are not diabetic as well. There’s quite a variety of dips, soups, vegetable dishes, salads, meats, fish, pasta and desserts. I don’t think I can completely go vegetarian, and this cook has some fine recipes with pork, chicken, and beef.

There’s a recipe in the book that I can’t wait to try. It is oven-fried catfish. Instead of the usual batter coating the fish, the recipe calls for cornflake crumbs. Not that is different!

The next time I have friends over for dinner, I can serve dishes that I can eat, and my friends can enjoy. Sounds good to me!

My goodness, this blog is turning into a diabetic food blog!

 I bought a recipe book called Diabetic Living by Better Homes and Garden. There are some really easy recipes there and I decided to do a soup that required barley because I already had some barley in the house. The recipe called for cooked chicken and cream of chicken soup but I substituted chicken with sliced roast beef and a can of cream of chicken soup with cream of mushroom soup.

Besides barley, chicken, cream of mushroom soup, I also needed some chicken stock, and spinach. That was one yummy soup and Doug loved it so much that he wished I had fixed him that kind of soup from the beginning of our marriage!

 Yesterday before I left for church I broiled 2 pieces of chicken breasts, and cooked some brown rice. After church I fixed a brown rice chicken salad. I needed low fat Italian dressing, some coleslaw mix (I used American salad) and a can of hearts of artichokes. I’m not much of a salad person but that brown rice chicken salad was something else. I enjoyed it, and because it was a reasonably low carb dish, I was able to eat a small slice of banana bread of the the meal.

I am learning that having to watch my blood sugar does not mean that I am resigned to eating tasteless  food! 

Last night I had brown rice and curried mix vegetable for dinner. After about three hours I took my blood sugar test. It read 130 mg/dl. This is after three hours. It seems rice, white or brown, brings up my blood sugar level.

So this morning while I was at the supermarket, I decided to give the tofu noodles a try. It has 0 gm sugar so, even if I took a whole bowl of it, I don’t think it’d affect my glucose reading very much.

It sure looks like the ordinary noodle. I boiled the noodles for about 5 minutes. I used a cup of chicken stock for my soup base. I diluted it a bit by adding about half a cup of water.

I broiled a piece of chicken breast seasoned with herbs. It was quite tasty.

 This is how the bowl of tofu noodle looked like. I added a tomato, some chinese mustard, chopped cilantro and spring onion, and of course slices of the broiled chicken.

The texture of the tofu noodle was rubbery, and reminds me a lot of squid, but the flavor .. quite tasteless if fact. If I did not have to think about my blood sugar, I would not eat the thing!

About an hour and the half after the meal, I took another test of my blood sugar. Unfortunately the meter did not read anything. I wasted two test strips, in fact my last two, and I could not tell what my blood sugar reading was. I hope the reason for the meter not being able to show anything has nothing to do with my blood sugar having rocketed sky high!

This afternoon I made a doctor’s appointment for a complete physical. The 24th was the earliest they could fit me in for an appointment but since that was Christmas eve, and I’ll be busy that day, I chose to go on the 27th instead.

Whatever the results of the physical, I have decided to radically change my diet.  I hope this effort pays.

 I am trying to eat less rice and changing my diet because of my blood sugar concerns. For the last couple of days we have been eating baked fish and chicken breasts. Doug loves the food. He thinks he can lose weight with the smaller portion and the healthier cooking style that I am offering.

Last night I ordered three diabetic cookbooks from Amazon.com. Today I found a site that is filled with recipes for the diabetic. In my mind, being a diabetic means you are forever stuck with tasteless food! How wrong I was!

I found all kinds of recipes and they don’t look boring or tasteless at all. I think I can do this. That is change my diet and the kinds of food I eat.

My father is a diabetic and I do not want to end up dependent on insulin. Besides the change in my diet, I will have to seriously get on with exercising regularly. Where exercise is concerned, I am very lazy. But I have to exercise if I want to be free of diabetes.

So like it or not I will have to do it and learn to maintain a positive attitude about it. Ok, how about I start thinking about endorphines, which are happy hormones produced through a good exercise?

I have never been particularly fond of Italian cooking. In fact I can count with one hand the number of times I have eaten at an Italian restaurant this past year, and I still have fingers to spare! All that cheese and tomatoes! I am lactose intolerant, and that is one reason why I avoid food with cheeses, also I have and acid stomach. Imagine what eating food with lots of cheese and tomotoes will do to my stomach!

But still I have to add variety to my home cooking. To be honest, I am bored with the dishes that I have cooked up in recent months. I wished I was rich enough to hire a private chef to prepare my meals, or better yet been married to a husband who knows some gourmet cooking!

Anyway, last Wednesday, I cooked spaghetti for dinner. It has been a long while since I last cooked spaghetti. This time I tried Ragu pasta sauce with lots of chunky mushrooms in it. I also bought some grated parmesan cheese and some 4% fat ground beef. I was surprised how good everything tasted! That is why I made spaghetti again for dinner last Sunday. Doug had no complains because he loved spaghetti and brought some left-overs to work this morning. Best of all, my stomach was only slightly bothered by the meal!