Cooking Tips From Chef Angie

My friend Angie is a real chef!  She caters many events in the CA area.  Several years ago she had the added challenge of diabetes and took it on to come up with some great low-carb gourmet recipes.  They’re so good that even her teenaged sons eat them and ask for more.  Take it away Angie:

Hi Lizzy,

Talk about intimidation,  Lizzy has asked me to write a little something for her blog and since she is a brilliant writer , and the fact that she knows it is not my strong point, she did ask me to write about something I love …………..Cooking Good Low Carb Food !  (I paid her to say these things – Lizzy )

Getting my diagnoses of Diabetes really gave me a great big challenge in the kitchen that I was not prepared to do.  I did not have a clue about Diabetes except the very little bit I learned as a Nurse.  Actually the only thing I really knew about Diabetes was how to treat someone who was having a low.   One of my first thoughts was that I had to stop using sugar.  I went to my first and last Diabetes class and I was told to do the plate method, and to test by blood glucose two times a day and that was it.

I was totally lost and decided to search the internet, I knew there had to be more than what I was told.   I am very lucky because the first site I found that actually taught me something was the American Diabetes Association and all of the fine folks there gave me an education that I am forever grateful. I learned we were all different and that we had to work at good control and I learned to eat to my meter and the best thing…..it wasn’t just sugar…it was the CARBS !  

So, what do I eat if I can’t have white rice, white flour, white pasta and white potatoes ?????   I was raised by a Mom that was raised in the South, everything was breaded, fried and covered in gravy with lots of fresh vegetables and mashed potatoes or rice or pasta.  And what about my passion …..Fresh Bread, I could go out to eat and have a whole basket of bread with butter…….yikes!

I looked at a lot of low carb cookbooks after that, and I even bought a few. I searched the internet and tried a lot of recipes, and finally came to the realization that I was going to have to do my own experimenting.  I love to eat and I want to eat good food.

At first I was trying to go really low carb so I just stuck to fish, chicken and meats with just a herb rub and either baked or cooked on the BBQ and I would serve them with plain veggies, Boring!!!

I started playing around with different ingredients and found that a lot of my original recipes could be also made low carb.  After Three years I finally figured out the gist of low carb cooking.

When I first went shopping to find myself some low carb products I was in the grocery store for two hours reading labels, what an education.  The second thing I learned was that if I planned everything and used portion control that I could actually have a lot more things than I thought I could……………but still No rice or white potatoes or pasta.

Once you learn your absolute “ Spike me to the Moon” foods,  the possibilities are endless. Olive oil becomes your friend and fresh herbs spice up just about anything.  Learn to make a good gravy from wine and the bits in the bottom of the pan or by adding some broth or cream.  Soups can be made that satisfy and can be for any meal with a lot of different ingredients and you can even thicken them by tempering in some egg white or with barley or quinoa or some heavy cream instead of flour and cornstarch.

They have a good variety of milks out today made out of many different nuts and soy and most of them are very low carb.

Finding a good low carb breading is a little iffy, I save the end pieces of my low carb bread slices to make my own but still use a little organic stone ground corn meal for my fried green tomatoes and cat fish .  For my beer battered fish I still use a ¼ cup regular wheat flour and 1/4 cup ground almond meal and beer, but the batter is thin and it has never given me any grief, not for someone really sensitive to any breading.  There is always the dip in mayo and roll in parmesan cheese coating that is also delicious and it is baked, this works on chicken and fish.

Desserts are my downfall but I have learned to love sugar-free cheesecake and low carb ice cream, sugar-free puddings and Lizzy’s trick of eating a brownie ( she cuts it into a lot of tiny little pieces and eats a morsel at a time over the course of the day).

And one of my very favorite things to eat…………Bread !    I am very lucky because I can have an ounce of my homemade sourdough bread (13 grams of carbs) with some protein and fat and it does not make my blood glucose rise too much. I have also found other really good low carb breads and buns and rolls and refrigerator biscuits and croissants that are low carb too, you just have to do a lot of reading the labels and checking the portion size.  They don’t always say low-carb, sometimes they say “light” or “lite”

There’s a great low-carb good eating world out there, all you have to do is explore it!

Have fun…………Peace………….Angie.

Don’t believe everything you think !!!!!!
Please help save the Earth…..it’s the only planet with Chocolate !!!!

You can find some of my favorite low-carb recipes at: 

http://community.diabetes.org/t5/Eating-Right-with-Diabetes/bd-p/Eating-Right-with-Diabetes

© EMO 6/12

Knowledge is Power