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My diabetes is ridiculously mild.
Edit: apparently you can't edit cut tags, so I'm just going to apologize for the typo in it.
I am on the A1c cusp: 6.5. If it wasn't for the fact that the pattern of my blood sugar rises matches the diabetic pattern and not the normal pattern, I might not even be convinced I'm not still pre-diabetic. (I never rise spectacularly high, and I never drop out of the normal range: but I do rise in the early morning and at other times when I haven't eaten for a while--in fact it seems that not eating frequently enough is more of an imminent threat to my insulin equanimity than eating too much or eating the wrong things). So while I mean to be eating a lot less carbohydrates and almost no refined carbohydrates, I don't mean to be eating at functionally-zero (there is no such thing as actually-zero and people should not be fussed about it).
One of my adaptations is to bring almost no prepared carbohydrate foods into the house. This is not actually happening. Let's say "few," not "no." For one thing, two to three days a week I am feeding a voracious toddler who has a normal metabolism and needs carbohydrates to grow on, and if I buy her something I am sure to eat it too. She's pretty much convinced that fruit is the staff of life, so I don't need to provide her with much bread, pasta, etc. For another thing I do find that if I try militant abstinence I am more likely to freak out and binge eventually and probably sooner than later.
My preferred solution has been to try to make most of the carbohydrate foods I eat myself. This way I can introduce extra fiber and fat into them, by using more whole grains and also by using additives like garbanzo and nut flour and oils and butter. I make a rich bread ultimately derived from Gail Sher's version of the sponge method (is the sponge the same stuff the breadies at various forums mean when they say levain? I didn't bother to figure this out when I was looking for a buckwheat soda bread recipe and found my way there and realized that I had no idea what anybody was talking about, that they were way too fussy for me about every detail, and that their photos of great crumb did not match what I wanted anyway), which varies every time I bake it now because I'm confident in my version of the process. I can use more than a third of non-wheat flours because my sponge is so strong by the time I add them that it can carry all this material with little or no gluten to the kind of loaf I want. Which is dense, but not a rock, with enough air in it that it's pleasant to eat, but still dense enough that I can make very thin slices without the bread tearing up into squishy flakes. (my diabetes nutritionist says a sandwich filling should be at least as thick as all the bread together: this is only feasible if the bread is pretty thin) I don't have to measure ingredients, as long as I'm following this specific method that I've grown into. I can do it all by the developing texture of the bread, etc. The down side: it takes almost two days to make. The sponge grows very very slowly as I use a half-teaspoon or less of yeast woken from the freezer, and once the full dough is made it also grows slowly at first as I do it at a cool room temperature. But dough grown this way is, as I said, very strong, and capable of handling a lot of freeloading ingredients. Also it tastes marvelous and it has the texture I like best.
So but anyway this last couple weeks I had used the last of my last-baked bread, and I didn't have any more bread flour, and I thought it might be fun to make a soda bread. And I was running low on all purpose and whole wheat flour but I had kind of more buckwheat flour than I probably should because of a recent shopping trip where I forgot which flour I was almost out of and got buckwheat instead of oat. (do you know oat flour has actual complete protein in it and also lower glycemic properties than other grains? If you use it indiscriminately it might impart a gummy tendency to your baked goods but if you user it right--that is, added later in the process after the gluten has established itself, and in say a quarter or less proportion? I'm not sure about that part as I tend to make multi-grain things with the kitchen sink standing by to be added if I get excited--it just makes the bread more tender and nutty-flavored) So I started looking up "buckwheat soda bread"
Oh my does that bring out the nut cases. Apparently there's a whole brigade of egregiously anti-gluten, paleo, vegan and other types--please I'm not saying everybody who eschews gluten or animal products belongs to these categories I'm talking about here, I'm only talking about these particular people! Anyway, there's this brigade of people who devise recipes involving buckwheat plus a whole lot of other non-wheat ingredients, several of which are right out for (a diabetic whose individual blood sugar responses are like mine, which might be common). Gluten-free flour is often made of rice flour and/or tapioca flour and/or corn starch, all of which send my blood sugar higher than other starchy foods. (I can eat whole wheat in minor amounts consequence-free, if in a meal with fat, protein, and vegetables). They get all excited and call their sugary concoctions healthier. (I see fewer of them advocating agave syrup these days at least, which is very high-glycemic and also exploitive and environmentally disastrous to produce) I had to wade through a few of these before I found a normal buckwheat soda bread recipe, which I then had to modify anyway as I didn't have buttermilk and I was specifically looking for something to make that did not involve a trip to the store. (add an acid liquid to milk: it was dark and wet outside so instead of picking a lemon I used an orange)
It turned out quite well except for a soapy aftertaste from the soda. I think I may be done with cooking with soda. There's no reason to use it since baking powder exists and no food I've ever tasted was too sour from using the acid foods one usually balances the soda with.
On the other hand I made a second loaf with baking powder and it had a few things wrong with it. (1) I didn't have any more whole wheat flour so I used white flour. (2) The second source of buckwheat flour was much lighter than the first. I've read about this since. Apparently it is a deliberate choice by some people because it's less buckwheaty. Why cook with buckwheat if you don't like buckwheat? The whole point of buckwheat is it tastes like that! There's other food if you don't like it! (3) I undercooked it a little, so it has a less wonderful texture, (4) it rose less-which might be the soda answer or it might be my less precise handling. Generally it's paler and less wonderful than the first, except it didn't have the unpleasant aftertaste.
However the cookies I made (half & half almost of barley and white flour, sesame seeds, cream cheese that needed using with a similar amount of butter, egg, honey, and baking powder, not in that order-cream the fats with the honey, then egg, mix dry ingredients then add) came out really unsatisfactorily though the toddler liked them & roommate thinks he'll like them dunked in honey. They're rubbery and they have a taste of baking powder though I did not use that much.
So the bucknut quick bread remains in development but the bennecheese honey boulders are probably not something I'll be working on.
On a related front, I did a thing with cauliflower, garbanzos, cream and hot paprika paste that I think will be in regular rotation forever now, it was so delicious I licked the plate and I'm not ashamed to say so.
A problem for me in maintaining the food regime I feel is best for me is that I must have lots of vegies on hand and also have the mental capacity to cook a lot of things in advance, and having both of those things at once is an effort. It is not a normally difficult thing for me but my capacity to multitask has weakened so if I'm getting other things done like renewing my medical coverage or writing a novel I might not be focusing as well on these things, so I end up eating multiple quesadillas instead.
Edit: apparently you can't edit cut tags, so I'm just going to apologize for the typo in it.
I am on the A1c cusp: 6.5. If it wasn't for the fact that the pattern of my blood sugar rises matches the diabetic pattern and not the normal pattern, I might not even be convinced I'm not still pre-diabetic. (I never rise spectacularly high, and I never drop out of the normal range: but I do rise in the early morning and at other times when I haven't eaten for a while--in fact it seems that not eating frequently enough is more of an imminent threat to my insulin equanimity than eating too much or eating the wrong things). So while I mean to be eating a lot less carbohydrates and almost no refined carbohydrates, I don't mean to be eating at functionally-zero (there is no such thing as actually-zero and people should not be fussed about it).
One of my adaptations is to bring almost no prepared carbohydrate foods into the house. This is not actually happening. Let's say "few," not "no." For one thing, two to three days a week I am feeding a voracious toddler who has a normal metabolism and needs carbohydrates to grow on, and if I buy her something I am sure to eat it too. She's pretty much convinced that fruit is the staff of life, so I don't need to provide her with much bread, pasta, etc. For another thing I do find that if I try militant abstinence I am more likely to freak out and binge eventually and probably sooner than later.
My preferred solution has been to try to make most of the carbohydrate foods I eat myself. This way I can introduce extra fiber and fat into them, by using more whole grains and also by using additives like garbanzo and nut flour and oils and butter. I make a rich bread ultimately derived from Gail Sher's version of the sponge method (is the sponge the same stuff the breadies at various forums mean when they say levain? I didn't bother to figure this out when I was looking for a buckwheat soda bread recipe and found my way there and realized that I had no idea what anybody was talking about, that they were way too fussy for me about every detail, and that their photos of great crumb did not match what I wanted anyway), which varies every time I bake it now because I'm confident in my version of the process. I can use more than a third of non-wheat flours because my sponge is so strong by the time I add them that it can carry all this material with little or no gluten to the kind of loaf I want. Which is dense, but not a rock, with enough air in it that it's pleasant to eat, but still dense enough that I can make very thin slices without the bread tearing up into squishy flakes. (my diabetes nutritionist says a sandwich filling should be at least as thick as all the bread together: this is only feasible if the bread is pretty thin) I don't have to measure ingredients, as long as I'm following this specific method that I've grown into. I can do it all by the developing texture of the bread, etc. The down side: it takes almost two days to make. The sponge grows very very slowly as I use a half-teaspoon or less of yeast woken from the freezer, and once the full dough is made it also grows slowly at first as I do it at a cool room temperature. But dough grown this way is, as I said, very strong, and capable of handling a lot of freeloading ingredients. Also it tastes marvelous and it has the texture I like best.
So but anyway this last couple weeks I had used the last of my last-baked bread, and I didn't have any more bread flour, and I thought it might be fun to make a soda bread. And I was running low on all purpose and whole wheat flour but I had kind of more buckwheat flour than I probably should because of a recent shopping trip where I forgot which flour I was almost out of and got buckwheat instead of oat. (do you know oat flour has actual complete protein in it and also lower glycemic properties than other grains? If you use it indiscriminately it might impart a gummy tendency to your baked goods but if you user it right--that is, added later in the process after the gluten has established itself, and in say a quarter or less proportion? I'm not sure about that part as I tend to make multi-grain things with the kitchen sink standing by to be added if I get excited--it just makes the bread more tender and nutty-flavored) So I started looking up "buckwheat soda bread"
Oh my does that bring out the nut cases. Apparently there's a whole brigade of egregiously anti-gluten, paleo, vegan and other types--please I'm not saying everybody who eschews gluten or animal products belongs to these categories I'm talking about here, I'm only talking about these particular people! Anyway, there's this brigade of people who devise recipes involving buckwheat plus a whole lot of other non-wheat ingredients, several of which are right out for (a diabetic whose individual blood sugar responses are like mine, which might be common). Gluten-free flour is often made of rice flour and/or tapioca flour and/or corn starch, all of which send my blood sugar higher than other starchy foods. (I can eat whole wheat in minor amounts consequence-free, if in a meal with fat, protein, and vegetables). They get all excited and call their sugary concoctions healthier. (I see fewer of them advocating agave syrup these days at least, which is very high-glycemic and also exploitive and environmentally disastrous to produce) I had to wade through a few of these before I found a normal buckwheat soda bread recipe, which I then had to modify anyway as I didn't have buttermilk and I was specifically looking for something to make that did not involve a trip to the store. (add an acid liquid to milk: it was dark and wet outside so instead of picking a lemon I used an orange)
It turned out quite well except for a soapy aftertaste from the soda. I think I may be done with cooking with soda. There's no reason to use it since baking powder exists and no food I've ever tasted was too sour from using the acid foods one usually balances the soda with.
On the other hand I made a second loaf with baking powder and it had a few things wrong with it. (1) I didn't have any more whole wheat flour so I used white flour. (2) The second source of buckwheat flour was much lighter than the first. I've read about this since. Apparently it is a deliberate choice by some people because it's less buckwheaty. Why cook with buckwheat if you don't like buckwheat? The whole point of buckwheat is it tastes like that! There's other food if you don't like it! (3) I undercooked it a little, so it has a less wonderful texture, (4) it rose less-which might be the soda answer or it might be my less precise handling. Generally it's paler and less wonderful than the first, except it didn't have the unpleasant aftertaste.
However the cookies I made (half & half almost of barley and white flour, sesame seeds, cream cheese that needed using with a similar amount of butter, egg, honey, and baking powder, not in that order-cream the fats with the honey, then egg, mix dry ingredients then add) came out really unsatisfactorily though the toddler liked them & roommate thinks he'll like them dunked in honey. They're rubbery and they have a taste of baking powder though I did not use that much.
So the bucknut quick bread remains in development but the bennecheese honey boulders are probably not something I'll be working on.
On a related front, I did a thing with cauliflower, garbanzos, cream and hot paprika paste that I think will be in regular rotation forever now, it was so delicious I licked the plate and I'm not ashamed to say so.
A problem for me in maintaining the food regime I feel is best for me is that I must have lots of vegies on hand and also have the mental capacity to cook a lot of things in advance, and having both of those things at once is an effort. It is not a normally difficult thing for me but my capacity to multitask has weakened so if I'm getting other things done like renewing my medical coverage or writing a novel I might not be focusing as well on these things, so I end up eating multiple quesadillas instead.
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So for a "want something storable around" perspective, leavening might be optionalish.
Oat flour is great stuff for shortbread; it won't be a strong shortbread, but it will be tasty.
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I've been cautiously experimenting with frozen ones. They don't work at all for some things -- I don't see how people can stir-fry with frozen vegetables -- but I've got some Indian vegetable dishes that work really well with them.
P.
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... I should probably have a bread icon. I am pretty sure I have slots for it.