Pumpkin Muffins

2 1/4 cup of Lower Carb Bake Mix

4 eggs

1/2 cup Splenda for baking (3/4 cup if you like sweeter muffins)

1/3 cup canola, olive, butter or coconut oil

1 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350F.

Grease your muffin tins or use muffin/cupcake liners.

In a large bowl combine the baking mix, splenda, ground cinnamon, baking soda, salt and nutmeg. Make a well in the center of the mix. Add the eggs, oil/butter and the canned pumpkin. Gently whip to blend wet ingredients and then blend with dry ingredients. Once well combined spoon mixture into muffin tins. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the muffins come out clean.

Makes 12 muffins

Total calories: 133

Fat: 15 grams

Net Carbs: 8.5 grams

Protein: 2.3 grams

If you give this recipe a try let me know how you like the texture. Do you use any other type of low carb mix or blend for baking? What’s your favorite?

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

Lower Carb Bake Mix

3 1/3 cups almond flour or meal

1 1/2 cup oat flour or 2 cups quick oats pulverized in a blender

4 tablespoons coconut flour

2 teaspoons xanthan gum

If you do not have oat flour on hand you can make your own. It’s not as fine as store bought oat flour but it worked out great in this recipe. Simply put your quick oats in a blender or coffee grinder and pulverize them until they look like flour. I haven’t tried regular oats with this recipe but will in the future.

As for the almond flour you can use that or almond meal. The flour is more finely ground and doesn’t seem like it contains the skin that is found on almond. I have also used almond meal which does have flecks of the skin in it. Both worked fine.

In a large bowl combine the almond flour or meal, oat flour or homemade oat flour, coconut flour and xanthan gum. Break up any clumps (the almond meal had large bits) with a fork if needed. Store your bake mix in a freezer bag in the refrigerator or in a air tight container. It can also be frozen if you will not be using it right away. This will make enough bake mix for at least two batches of baked items such as muffins or quick bread.

I haven’t worked out the nutritional stats right now with the recipe using ground oats in place of oat flour and additional xanthan gum. I’ll post the info as soon as I calculate it. The original recipe said for each 1/4 cup there was 126 calories, 9 grams fat, 5.7 grams carbs and 4.5 grams of protein.

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

     The other mix I tested was a brownie mix. The ingredients include a blend of inulin chicory fibers, soluble dietary fibers, wheat protein isolates, resistant wheat starch, cocoa, flax meal, vital wheat gluten, sucralose, organic stevia, luo han guo, salt, baking powder and natural enzymes.

     The mix was easy enough to use. I added butter, eggs, sour cream and vanilla extract according to the directions. The package suggested baking in a 9 inch round pan or a 8 X 8 pan. I didn’t have either one so I used a muffin tin. Instead of the 25 small brownies I would have got from using the other two pan sizes I got 12 brownies shaped like muffins…..or maybe we can just call them bruffins instead Using the new size it would mean that each of the brownies now had about 2 net carbs. Not bad at all.

     The texture of the brownies were quite good. Not exactly like a regular sugar filled brownie, due to lack of sugar, but they were like a nice, dense cake. They had a good chocolate taste but there was a strange bitterness in the background. The kids each had one and I could tell by the odd look on their face they could taste something too. I’m not sure if it’s a result of the stevia, which I’ve heard some people perceive as a bitter taste. Of course that didn’t stop us from eating them and we soon discovered that topping each brownie with some peanut butter cut the strange background taste. In the initial testing the brownie, when eaten alone, cause a slight hypoglycemic reaction. The next day I ate a brownie after lunch, topped with peanut butter, and didn’t experience the same issue.

     The other product I got to test was the multigrain bread mix. This one looked really interesting. The ingredients include wheat protein isolates, resistant wheat starches, whole and chopped brown flax seed, vital wheat gluten, inulin, salt, sucralose, stevia, natural herbal extracts, luo han guo monk fruit, natural carmel color and natural enzymes.

     I made the bread in my bread machine. Since it makes a smallish loaf I used the 1 lb bread setting. The package does give directions on making and kneading the bread by hand. I chose the lazy way out and let the machine do the work. Here’s a picture of the finished loaf:

     It makes a very nice looking loaf of bread. The package says it makes 18 slices. I cut the loaf into 9 slices and they came out fairly thick. You could easily cut each slice in half and use them to make a sandwich. The top of the loaf in flecked with the flax seed pieces. The inside has a consistency that is almost like regular whole wheat bread. My husband ate several pieces and liked it. I ate the piece I used for the blood sugar test plain and could once more taste that odd bitterness off in the background. The following day, after testing the bread, I tried another piece toasted with butter. Hmmm….the bitterness was still there. Several days later I tried another piece toasted with peanut butter and that covered the bitter taste. Peanut butter fixes lots of things! In the end it had a nice texture to it and, for me,  there were no blood sugar spiking/crashing issues. I only wish I could figure out why it has the taste in the background. My husband said he didn’t notice anything so it’s just me.

     Anyone try any of the other products offered by LC Foods? I’m curious as to how they taste. Especially the cake and frosting mixes. As I’ve previously written about even small pieces of regular cake do a number on my blood sugar levels.

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

     My baseline fasting blood sugar level was 91. I tested every 15 minutes for two hours and got the following results: 91, 87, 102, 104, 94, 82, 72, 77, 81. Here’s a graph of my blood sugar results:

The bread did not spike my blood sugar or create any type of hypoglycemic reaction like I got when testing the brownie mix. Looks like worked well for me. Unlike the sandwiches I ate last week during spring break. Blech! Won’t be doing that again any time soon!

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

      I followed the directions and made the brownies the night before I tested them. For this test we were suppose to eat two of them. I didn’t have a small enough pan to bake them in so the batter was evenly divided into cupcake pans. My baseline blood sugar after fasting was 87. I ate the two brownies plain and began checking my blood sugar levels. Fifteen minutes later my first blood sugar test showed 101. I continued to check my blood sugar every 15 minutes for the next two hours. Here’s what I got: baseline 87 and here are the results every 15 mines: 101, 98, 73, 86, 88, 87, 86, 84 . Here’s the result in graph form:

     This test didn’t work out as well as the pancake test. Right around the 30 minute mark the tiredness began and my blood sugar was 98. Several minutes after that test I started having heart palpitations and some sweating. These are some of the symptoms I get when my blood sugar is high or starts to drop quickly. The symptoms didn’t get any worse and my blood sugar level at the 45 minute mark was 73. So I dropped instead of having a blood sugar spike. By the 60 minute mark the tiredness was beginning to subside. My blood sugar at that point was 86. From there the yawning slowly went away and things went back to normal. As you can see from the graph my blood sugar levels stabilized and there were no big spikes.

   I would not call this test a total success. For some reason the brownies hit my system and caused some slight hypoglycemia even though I stayed within normal limits. It’s not so much the number it drops to but how quickly it drops that is the problem. For this test I ate the brownies alone. I did try them again but this time I topped the brownie with some peanut butter. The fat in the peanut butter seemed to slow down the drop. Plus I ate them later in the day which may have also slowed down the blood sugar level drop.

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

     Here’s how my week has been going.

     I worked Saturday night into Sunday morning (I work the night shift). As usual I brought my own low carb supper but ended up snacking on some treats sent in by a patients family. “Healthy” cookies made with oats and raisins. Didn’t end up eating before going to sleep. For lunch I had a sandwich (more healthy whole wheat, sliced chicken and lettuce) and some chips. Hey, it was vacation week. Time to have some fun! Turned out to not be such a smart idea when several hours later my vision started to go and the shakes kicked in. Since I have a seizure disorder my first thought was it’s the beginning of a seizure since they often start this way. When several minutes passed without things getting worse I decided it was time to check my blood sugar. It was a whole whopping 59. Yes, my delish sandwich caused me to crash and burn!

     Several days later I got a sandwich from a local restaurant. Turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. Not a healthy sandwich but it was only a small one. Very tastey but my blood sugar crashed again. I felt it coming on when the heart palpitations kicked in.

     Think I was smart enough to pass on the high carb crap? Well think again. My next roller coaster ride was a day later compliments of a lousy piece of store bought cake. Sure it was an 8 inch round cake cut into 12 pieces. Tiny, little pieces that couldn’t possibly do any harm right? After all aren’t you suppose to be able to eat foods like this in moderation? One tiny piece is certainly being moderate considering the rest of what I ate all day was healthy. Wrong! I started feeling terrible shortly after eating that small piece of cake. Over an hour later and I still felt like shit. Yes I did say shit because saying that I felt lousy doesn’t do any justice to how bad I was feeling. When the feeling didn’t let up I checked my blood sugar level. It was a whopping 159. I can’t imagine what it was before that point but it must have been much higher.

     So why share these stories? Well, because sometimes we do things that aren’t exactly good for us and that’s normal. Hopefully you figure out what does and doesn’t work for you and then keep doing what works. Another reason to share is to illustrate the point that low carb eating isn’t only for weight loss. I’ve heard the stories over and over again about how bad low carb diets are for your health or you should only do low carb for limited periods of time before problems start up. Those are just myths that need to be busted. Low carb eating helps with lots of different metabolic issues including:

• PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome)
• epilepsy
• insulin resistance
• diabetes (prediabetic, gestational diabetes as well as type 1 and type 2)
• reactive hypoglycemia
• endometriosis

     People who follow a low carb or even a paleo type diet find that their health greatly improves. Weight loss is a bonus. How about you? Following a low carb diet for some reason other than weight loss? Leave a comment and let others know why you eat this way.

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

Here’s the ingredient list: wheat protein isolates, resistant wheat starch, flax seed meal, vital wheat gluten, Inulin (chicory root) fiber, digestion resistant polydextrose fiber, baking powder, salt, sucralose, organic stevia rebaudiana leaf natural herbal extracts, natural luo han guo monk fruit and natural enzymes.

To make the pancakes you use the mix and add heavy cream, eggs, butter, water and vanilla extract if desired. Since I was testing the pancakes I did not add any additional ingredients but the package suggests that you can also add fruits, nuts or cinnamon to the batter.

The pancake batter was a bit thinner than I’m use to so it took a pancake or two to figure out the best way to cook them. Instead of trying to cook several pancakes at the same time on a griddle I used a small frying pan just big enough for one pancake. This allowed the batter to spread out but not spread so much that I ended up with pancakes that were all stuck to each other. So how did they cook up? Well, pretty much just like a regular pancake would.

See….they they look like regular pancakes. Nicely browned. They had a great texture to them. There were no odd flavors (Ack…soy pancake flash back!). The addition of the vanilla extract was a nice touch and the pancakes were good even without adding syrup. They were a little thinner than regular, high carb pancakes but that really wasn’t a big deal.

I ate the two that I needed for the blood sugar test and saved the remaining three. The batch made for the test only used about 1/4 of the package and I got 5 pancakes about 4 inches in diameter. Looks like the whole package would make about 20 pancakes total. This was a great mix and, if you check out the test, you’ll see it had no impact on my blood sugar levels. So not only did they live up to being a low carb (1 net gram of carbs for each pancake) product they also tasted great too! I will certainly be keeping a package of this mix around for future meals. As for the final 3 pancakes. I ate one later in the day topped with some peanut butter….Mmmmm. The final two were eaten with sugar free pancake syrup the next day. Hmmm…next time I think I’ll try making blueberry pancakes.

Do you make low carb pancakes? Make your own mix or do you use a purchased mix? What’s your favorite recipe?

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

     A short time after I was accepted I received a package from LC Foods containing my three products to be tested. There was a low carb brownie mix, pancake mix and multigrain bread mix. There were a few ground rules for the participants to follow.

- Fast for 8 to 12 hours before testing the product
- Follow the directions exactly when making the product and don’t add extra ingredients
- Eat the product plain – don’t eat it with any other type of food
- Drink water only while testing
- Take a baseline blood sugar level before eating the product and then test every 15 minutes for the next two hours.

     With the rules in place the first product I decided to test was the low carb pancake mix. I’ve made a variety of almond based pancakes before and they taste good. I don’t eat regular, high carb pancakes because it causes reactive hypoglycemia (quick blood sugar spike followed by a quick drop). These reactions give me a range of symptoms including racing heartbeat, shakes, sweating, extreme tiredness and, if it’s a bad reaction, blurry vision and dizziness. It would be interesting to see if pancakes made with several wheat products (gluten, resistant wheat starch, etc) would cause a reaction like regular pancakes do when I eat them.

     I followed the directions and made the pancakes. For this test we were suppose to eat two of them. My baseline blood sugar after fasting was 90. I ate the two pancakes without syrup, butter or any other topping. Fifteen minutes later my first blood sugar test showed 97. I continued to check my blood sugar every 15 minutes for the next two hours. Here’s what I got: baseline 90, 97, 104, 112, 99, 84, 83, 80 and 78. Here’s the result in graph form:

Wow! Great blood sugar response. No big rise and, even better, no quick drop.  It might look like a spike showing there but my blood sugar went up nice and smooth (only 22 points higher than starting) and came down slowly.I don’t know what other participants got for results but I personally did not have any reaction to the ingredients present. Plus they tasted great too! I’ll have to do a review on them. Next product up for testing is the low carb brownie mix.

Have you ever tried products from this company or any other that were suppose to be great for diabetics? Did they work or did they cause a reaction?

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

Kale, Balsamic Onions with Eggs

2 tablespoons olive or coconut oil

1/2 a bunch of kale, washed, thick stem removed and thinly sliced

balsamic flavored onions from previous pot roast or make your own with 1 medium onion and 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

salt and pepper to taste

If you already have the leftover onions then add the oil to a skillet, heat until warm, add the kale and stir to coat with oil. Saute the kale for 5 minutes stirring occasionally. Place a cover over the skillet and allow the kale to steam until softened. Add in any leftover balsamic onions and heat until warmed through. Add red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with fried eggs and a few slices of bacon.

If you don’t have left over onions then add the oil to the skillet. Add 1 medium onion that has been thinly sliced and saute until softened. Add 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, stir and saute onions until browned. Remove onions. Add more oil and the kale. Stir to coat with oil. Saute the kale for 5 minutes stirring occasionally. Place a cover over the skillet and allow the kale to steam until softened. Add in any leftover balsamic onions and heat until warmed through. Add red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with fried eggs and a few slices of bacon.

This made a great breakfast and lunch. Now I’m all out of kale and onions

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.

Since I just posted a recipe for broiled grapefruit I thought I’d let you know how many carbs are in this great citrus fruit. The amounts shown below are for the plain fruit. If you broil and top them with sugarfree maple syrup or any type of sugar or sugar replacement such as Splenda you will have to add the carbs fromthose items to the amount from the grapefruit. Every product is different which is why I didn’t include a total with the recipe. Please check the products you are using for the amount of carbs they contain.

WHOLE GRAPEFRUIT

- 1 large grapefruit (about 4 1/2″ diameter) has about 27 carbs

- 1 medium grapefruit (about 3 3/4″ diameter) has about 20 carbs

- 1 small grapefruit (about 3 1/2″ diameter) has about 16 carbs

GRAPEFRUIT HALVES

- 1/2 large grapefruit has about 14 grams of carbs

- 1/2 medium grapefruit has about 10 grams of carbs

- 1/2 small grapefruit has about 8 grams of carbs

GRAPEFRUIT SEGMENTS (the ones from a jar)

1 cup of segments with the juice has about 19 grams of carbs

This is a post from: Plate by Plate. Stop by and check out our Resources, Tips and Tools page for lots of helpful information for diabetics, prediabetics and anyone looking to use a low carb diet to improve their health.