Filberts

Does anyone know what a filbert is?  Yup, filberts.  Apparently they are a type of food!  The other day at the grocery I was look for a good snack and found the area of the store where they have lot of different types of nuts and dried fruit combinations.  Among all of the different blends that were offered there was one that had almonds, peanut, and filberts!  I had no idea what a filbert was, so of course I purchased it!

Then I had to figure out exactly what a filbert was.  Off to the internet!

According to Dictionary.com:

–noun 1. the thick-shelled, edible nut of certain cultivated varieties of hazel, especially of Corylus avellana, of europe . 2. a tree or shrub bearing such nuts ...

So it's a hazel nut? If it's a hazelnut, why call it a filbert???



Here I was, all excited to eat a filblert, and all they gave me was a lousy hazelnut!

I'm sort of bummed!

New Recipe Night!

Hey everyone!  It's new recipe night!  We love new recipe night!

I'm going to get right to it:

Okay, it's not my normal recipe.  A friend of mine sent it to me and I thought it was so wonderful that I had to share it!

Grocery Shopping

I think it has been awhile since I went on one of my 'famous' rants.  Buckle up everyone, because I am Fired Up!

Here is the deal, due to some very odd and bizarre circumstances, the food budget around here is going to be even tighter than usual.  Heavy sigh, but okay, we can deal with that.

I thought . . .

Then I went to the grocery store.  Remember all that beautiful food that I had been wanting and wishing for?  Yeah, I may have to continue to wish.  Has anyone seen the price of fresh whole foods lately?  Apparently you no long buy a whole apple, it must come with the entire orchard for the price I saw!

You would not believe all the sale prices, discounts and new low prices I saw.  Except they were all on crap!  I could actually fill my cart with over a hundred dollars worth of food and eat like a queen for a week with no problem!  Of course at the end of that week, wonderful hubby would be shopping for a casket for his wife, but that's just a detail right?

A short stroll to the produce isle depressed me beyond belief!  For the same amount of money I could  put together enough meals to get us through 4 days. 

Does anyone else see the problem here?  Everyone is supposed to be eating healthier.  The media, the physicians, heck, event he government is yelling for people to stop eating so much packaged food and yet, that crappy food is so much less expensive!

Here's the other thing, in order to make the crappy food they have to start with a base of something natural (don't they?).  Then they take a bunch of chemicals and other mysterious ingredients (that all probably mutate any and all mice they tested it on!) after all of this, some really overpriced advertising agency has to hype it and make people believe that it is some nice healthy natural food.

Does this make sense to anyone?  If the garbage food has to be so processed shouldn't it be more expensive then the fresh food that doesn't have all those nice expensive chemicals and flavor enhancers in it?  I'm really confused.
 
I want the rainbow.  I want to taste the rainbow! 

I just don't want it to be skittles!

I am sorry for the delay, but I do not seem to have the balance figured out yet with school and all.  But I do have some exciting news!


The perfect diabetic snicker-doodle has been discovered!  Yes! Necessity is the mother of invention!  Which is rather funny considering the fact that it was, in fact, my mother who who figured it out!

She is a good and caring woman!  Gotta love moms!

Colors

Have you ever noticed the color of the food that you eat?  Okay, I know that may sound silly, but I am a visual person and I believe that how your food looks has a great impact on how it tastes.

Wonderful hubby and I were talking today about the food that we have been eating.  We have been slipping and more and more junk has snuck it's way back into out diet.  I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

During the course of the conversation, I mentioned that I miss color.  I miss the color on my plate lately.

Hubby looked confused (okay, I know I am sometimes difficult to follow).  I went on to say that as a rule, junk food is all brown and blah.  It's true, think about it.  The grocery store shelves are lined with colorful and interesting boxes; yet, when opened the contents are varying degrees of brown and beige.

But when you are eating healthy whole foods, there is an explosion of wonderful color on your plate!  Incredible greens, orange, reds, and yellows.   The amazing blue/purple of blueberries and the more subtle green of celery.  These foods explode with flavors that are as amazing as their colors and veggies tend to have that awesome crisp crunch.

I miss the color on my plate.  I miss feeling happy when I look at my meal.

Think about it.  I could have a snack of a candy bar or yogurt and berries.  Which looks more appetizing?  The flat brown color of chocolate or the creamy white of yogurt spotted like poke-a-dots with red strawberries, green kiwi, or luscious purple blackberries.  (No, I do not know why they are called blackberries when they are more purpley-blue)

I think I'm going to go back to the yogurt and fruit.  Sign me up for some gorgeous salads and interesting seeds and nuts!

Why eat boring blah looking food when you could be feasting on a rainbow?

The Great Cookie Quest

While I endeavor to look at the positive aspects of Diabetes and my new eating plan, there are somethings that I definitely miss and want back, at least in some form.

Cookies, for instance, I miss chocolate chip cookies in the worst way!  You would think with all the books, research, and online information available; someone would have figured out a way to create a diabetes friendly chocolate chip cookie!

Enter my mom! (da ta da!!)  Mom has been on a quest to create the perfect "Katie friendly" chocolate chip cookie.

First, we tried substituting sugar for Splenda.  While it helped on the sugar and carb front, it produced dry and crumbly cookies.  That was no good!

Next various variations and ratios of the sugar/Splenda combination were attempted, with varying degrees of success.  The more Splenda, the more crumbly and crunchy the cookie.  More sugar made it too sweet and too much of a blood-sugar risk.  It was quite the quandry.

Today's batch had 1/2 sugar, 1/2 Splenda and a new margarine from bestlife.  It was soft and chewy with just a hint of crunch!  We seem to be on the correct path!

Sooner or later, we will come up with the perfect recipe for Katie Friendly chocolate chip cookies!  What do we do then?   Work on the Snicker-doodle recipe!

Getting dressed today, I happened to glance in the mirror as I was putting my sweater on.  Guess what I noticed, my belly is growing a bit.  That's a bad thing.

Coincidentally, someone asked me today how I am handling the whole school, work, mom, wife thing.  I thought I was handling it well.  I guess not so much.

I have to get a grip and figure this whole thing out!  It seems like a timing and planning problem.  Planning.  I can do that.  I have to do  that.

Perhaps I need a good swift kick in the bum.  If I exercised more, I could deliver my own kick!  Oh yeah, exercise, I've been slipping on that too.

There must be a way to figure this out!  I have come to far to be defeated now!