Culinary Pursuits

It's official. I'm on a diabetic diet to keep my gestational diabetes (glucose intolerance) under control. The good news--I'm able to control my blood glucose levels through diet alone. Even though my fasting (morning) blood sugars are a bit high, my doctor says I don't need to go on medication because my sugars are great the rest of the day.

I met with a diabetes counselor last week to get some ideas for bringing my fasting blood sugar down and she suggested that I either take a walk at 3 a.m. or eat a snack at that time. "If I were you," she said, "I'd opt for the snack." No kidding. So I've added an early morning snack to my routine (cheese and a sugar free pudding--yummy!) and it seems to be helping.

The counselor asked me how I was doing emotionally with the change in my diet. I said, "Well, I'm pregnant and sometimes I just get crabby about it." She said, "You're eating to live, not living to eat." That's never been one of my strong suits, but God is teaching me through all of this. We're studying Isaiah as a family this year through Bible Study Fellowship. In one of the lectures, the teaching leader said, "God can use anything to discipline His people." So instead of complaining, I've been trying to learn from the discipline, which is not a bad thing.

Even though I'd rather be cleaning closets and getting Christmas organized and just leave dinner prep to my two oldest girls, I've been forced to make time for meal planning and meal making due to my dietary restrictions. Grace's specialities--Thai noodles, chicken spaghetti and baked macaroni and cheese--just aren't part of my life right now. Neither are her cinnamon rolls :(
So instead, I've gotten creative with the crock pot. My mother-in-law gave me the America's Test Kitchen cookbook "The Best Slow and Easy Recipes" as a gift last year and I've been using it a lot lately. The recipes are quite a bit more work on the front end than the usual run of the mill crock pot recipe, but the end products are very tasty. So far we've sampled chicken Provencal, chicken curry with potatoes and carrots, Thai chicken coconut curry soup, beef goulash and beef stew. Another benefit of branching out of my usual cooking rut: Matt's been delighted. There's nothing he loves more than being greeted by the aromas of exotic spices when he walks in the door at night.

I've also been roasting a lot of vegetables including, cauliflower, butternut squash and brussel sprouts. Grace and Elizabeth have been keeping me supplied with homemade wheat bread, cooked sugar free pudding and sugar free jello salads so that I don't feel completely deprived. I've found that I can even indulge myself with one piece of Hershey's Bliss dark chocolate after lunch without it affecting my blood sugar levels.

I have yet to face the plethora of food offerings during the holiday season, but a healthy baby is a strong motivator. I can hardly wait to meet the little guy. And I guess I can take the advice I gave my firstborn son a few weeks ago, "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Heb. 12:11