I used some of the Brazilian Starfish peppers (mildly hot) and Biquinho (mild) along with some onion on sauteed pork chops. I added some Agave Nectar & a little Equal and lime juice in cooking the pork chops.

NOTE [ 11/20/23 ]: I was in Raleigh a week or so ago and they still had some peppers in the stand at the State Farmers’ Market, but the season is winding down. I am choosing to not eat really hot peppers because they just don’t please me. Hotter is not better for me. Hot without flavor is useless.

Poblano and jalapeno peppers are my base flavors, and roasting them in the oven before adding them to salsa or soup is preferred. I like some peppers in my lentil soup, with spicy Andouille sausage.

I ate a bunch of corn on the cob, cooked in the microwave, this year. The new guy on Americas Test Kitchen shared a way to use the microwave to get rid of the corn silks. You cut off the stalk end of the corn, and leave on the silks end. You then cook for a couple of minutes. You can then remove the corn and squeeze on the silks end and this will begin to force the ear of corn out of its husk. But the surprise is that the silks will stay with the husk and you will end up with a clean ear of corn. *I cook my corn in the microwave for about 4 or 5 minutes, and this completely steams the corn and it is then ready for salt & margarine.

But, as much as I love corn on the cob, especially when it is sweet and flavorful, it is also high starch/sugar. I have been “good” for about 3 weeks, and have been watching what I am eating and recording it in My Food Diary on the My Fitness Pal website. I have managed to keep my weight a few pounds under 260, and my Bgl has been consistently in the good, but not lowest range. I’m not sure if it will be below 7.0 AC1, but it should be near 7, hopefully lower if I remain vigilant.

The photo above is from several years ago, but everything came together in season for a really good meal. The tomatoes had good flavor as did the corn and fried okra. I fried tomatillos, with onion and added vinegar and sweetener and that turned out flavorful also.

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NOTE [ 11/28/23 ]: One of the problems with eating to suppress blood glucose spikes is that anything edible that is either sugar, or is starchy and turns into sugar easily & rapidly is to be avoided, or severely reduced. I love bread, the smell, the flavor, even the different textures and colors of it. But yes, bread is a starch that quickly turns into sugar.

I have chosen to not go completely without bread, although in the past, I can completely cut out eating bread, and did so both times that I lost 60 lbs. One of those times was when I was about 49 years old and then again about nine years later. The first time was before I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, so losing weight that time was super easy. I ate wisely, and managed to turn my body’s metabolism way up, and therefore could eat a bunch during each day, never hungry (maybe once) and still could lose 2 or 3 pounds a week, with very little exercise. I drank a bunch of water each of those days.

One thing I read was that you didn’t want to exercise too vigorously because that would threaten a high metabolism, because the body would begin to wonder where it’s next meal was coming from, and shut down the metabolism thereby wanting to store food as fat. The article suggested controlled breathing and walks that would cause the body to bring in more Oxygen, which encourages a higher metabolism.

Oh, and I ate vegetables from A through Z: avocado, asparagus, beets, broccoli, brussels sprouts, beans, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, leeks, lettuce, okra, olives, onions, peas, peppers, potatoes, rappini, spinach, and zucchini. The first 60 lbs. loss was easy, but by the second time, there were a bunch of veggies that now were off limits… beets, carrots, garden peas, potatoes, all turn to sugar quickly in the body.

Oh, once in the eating zone, with my metabolism going full tilt, and eating properly each day, I could even satisfy those extreme urges, every once in a while… not every day, but maybe every couple to three weeks, I could splurge on a “craving”. Say a large plate of pasta with delicious spaghetti sauce, or a whole quart of ice cream or maybe a couple of slices of pizza. My weight would go up maybe 2 or 3 pounds the next day, but then I would go right back into that proper eating pattern and by the end of the week I was still losing a couple of pounds. Now when your body is taking in a bunch of food, and processing it efficiently, and not storing fat it is more of a “life style” and not a “diet.” Diets don’t work long term because humans can’t maintain the extremes that most diets require. Eat nothing but eggs & water for a week. Sure, you might lose weight, but you can’t keeps those extremes up, so when you go back to your former eating patterns, yup, you start to gain weight again.

A proper eating pattern requires you to regulate your daily calorie intake, while satisfying your body’s needs for nutrition. You need a certain amount of protein, carbohydrates and fat each day. You need to regulate your salt and sugar intake. Water helps flush the system, getting rid of waste and some of the excess items you have taken in, but don’t need.

At one time I could eat about 2,200 calories a day and maintain my weight, but now it is down to around 1,900 calories a day. So, if you have ever religiously recorded your daily food intake with an eye to satisfying all the nutrients your body requires, you realize very quickly that there’s not a lot of “wiggle” room to what you can put into your mouth.

You have 3 meals a day, so that’s 21 meals a week. Now, you may also choose to eat three meals a day with two snacks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This might make more sense because you could eat less at each of the 3 meals, and the snacks would be providing your metabolism with a little “pick me up” during those normal low points. But still seven of those meals are breakfasts. That only leaves 14 main meals. You are probably not going to have steamed asparagus, broccoli, or cabbage for breakfast. Although, I made some delicious Seafood Chowder a few days ago. I made it early in the morning, and it tasted so good that I had a small bowl of it as my breakfast that morning. *I had some for one of my meals yesterday, and it was still very delicious. A little spicy, and served hot, very flavorful.

So for fourteen meals, I will probably want some protein at each of those meals. Beef, chicken, pork, lamb and maybe fish. A steak or a hamburger, baked chicken, or shredded chicken in a soup or as chicken salad, a pork chop, a round bone lamb chop, or tuna fish salad. So for the 14 main meals you are probably going to want to rotate those different sources of protein so that you don’t get bored with a hamburger at each meal. Now, you not only have to start watching what you eat, but what is going to happen to any leftovers. You have to limit what you put in your mouth, but you also have to reduce waste by not preparing too much of any one thing. You can’t prepare a large pot of spaghetti sauce that might last for 5 or 6 meals. For one, you don’t need all of the pasta that would go with that much sauce.

I like vegetable beef soup. I make a delicious vegetable soup, but have found that it is difficult to make less of it unless I find a way to store some of the veggies for future use. What? Well, many of the cans of vegetables that I use for this soup; corn, green beans, garden peas, diced tomatoes and even okra come in 15 oz. cans. If you dump five 15 oz. cans of these veggies into a pot, the pot begins to fill up quickly. And you are going to cut up some carrots & potatoes, add some ground beef and some chicken stock… and the pot is filled with delicious soup, but FILLED is an important word here. I know you could do it this way, but then you would have to store the extra soup in your freezer.

What I have chosen to do, after years of making too much and freezing it, and throwing away the frozen soup that never gets eaten, is to make less of it to begin with. How? Well, the 15 oz. cans of veggies are normally a better buy than the smaller 7.5 oz. cans. So only use half of each of the 15 oz. cans and freeze the rest. You can even save the extra veggies in a single Tupperware container. Find a way to label your frozen items by date & interred item. So you might have a container that has corn, garden peas, green beans, diced tomatoes & okra all waiting to be thawed for another batch of soup.

*Oh, and okra. I love the flavor of okra, and I do not have a problem with slimy okra… it is just another form of a veggie that I like the flavor of. I like fried okra. I like diced okra in vegetable soup or in my Seafood Chowder. I like pickled okra. I like those okra cooked under pressure at a low temperature that come out like a brittle, dry okra chip, but still in the shape of the original okra pod. These may be priced at $16 a pound, but each of them weighs so little that you can get a bunch for a reasonable price. In the past I would buy a can of okra, or a can of mixed okra, corn & tomatoes, to add to my soup, but last time I bought a bag of frozen, diced okra, and add the frozen okra directly into the pot. During the okra season, I prefer to dice fresh okra up and add them to my soup… or fry them, without batter on the stove top.

What I prefer is to cook fresh and not store a bunch of leftovers. If I could fix each item with just enough for two meals… the one I am about to eat and one more a couple of days later, that is what I would do.

My original intent at the start of this note was to make mention of a new cracker that I had recently purchased to take the place of the White Mountain Bread that I buy at Publix and love to eat. For the White Mountain Bread, I try to limit myself to just one slice a day, although I might do two slices. One for the egg salad that I have at breakfast, and maybe one for the pork chop & steamed cabbage I am having at dinner.

I was in Harris Teeter yesterday and wanted to find a cracker so that I could cut back on my bread intake. Price matters when I am in Harris Teeter, so unless it is a special item that only HT has, I can probably find the item cheaper elsewhere. Spices and fresh vegetables are two of the items that can usually be found cheaper elsewhere. But, HT does display their veggies exceptionally well. I found a small package of “Savory Rice Thins” by Sesmark (original flavor, rice snack crackers). They are made of rice and have sesame & soy and they do have a pleasant flavor. A serving of 16 crackers, each a little bigger than the diameter of a golf ball, provide a total of 130 calories. There are 3 servings in a pack for under $4.

The 130 calories may sound high, but compared to most of the other crackers (wheat) this is very reasonable. Four wheat crackers might be 130 calories.

I’ve recently wanted to add a different flavor to my steamed cabbage. I love steamed cabbage, and with just enough sweetener, and/or bacon fat, I could eat a bunch of steamed cabbage. So, the thought of adding a little Toasted Sesame Oil to my steamed cabbage came to me. I tried it, and it worked, and then I was reminded that shredded, steamed cabbage comes in many of the egg rolls I love to eat. But haven’t eaten many lately. So a little soy sauce, and some toasted sesame oil flavors steamed cabbage very well. And I am thinking, that these rice crackers flavored with sesame & soy would go well with the steamed cabbage, and the crispness of the cracker would provide a welcome texture also. *A few of these crackers would probably go well with my Seafood Chowder, or with my Greek salad and these would be in place of a whole slice of White Mountain Bread. Okay, if I chose to eat just 6 crackers for each meal, that would be eight servings (@49 calories for 6 crackers) per package. The White Mountain Bread (counted as whole wheat) is 91 calories per slice, so I would be saving 42 calories each time I ate these crackers instead of the bread. Oh, and on the package, these crackers appear to have 0 sugars, but 8% sodium, carbs are 9%.

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[ 11/30/23 ]: I fixed some steamed cabbage earlier this afternoon, and I had enough to mentally divide the cabbage on the plate into three sections. I put some bacon fat on one section, some toasted sesame oil on another, and margarine on the other. I had already added some salt, pepper and a little Splenda to the cabbage. All three versions of steamed cabbage were delicious, and then I thought about what else to serve with this. Corned beef. I grew up eating corned beef about twice a year. It would always be fixed the same, in a pot on the stove-top in water, with onions & white potatoes. This was a delicious comfort food for a cold day.

But, I just googled regarding whether corned beef is okay for a diabetic, and the suggestion was not to eat it, or not to eat much of it, as it was high in salt content. So as I am writing, I think of the boneless pork chops that I bought this afternoon. There were seven small pork chops, less than a pound total, for less than $4. Yes, maybe a couple of these would go good with the cabbage. And yes, some green beans and white potatoes (not too much of the potato). And, some seasoned black-eyed peas and Vidalia onion! A perfectly flavored “comfort food” meal. [ END NOTE ]