Gimme your recipes for a diabetic with picky tastes

Cafe Society
1

The love of my life, Girl Wonder, is a type-2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetic. She also can’t cook to save her life, which means that trying to regulate her diet falls on my superhuman shoulders. I’m running out of ideas, and so I turn to the Teeming Millions to help me. There are a few caveats:

  1. She and I are nearly a “Jack Sprat” kind of couple. She tends to avoid red meat, and rarely eats chicken. She’s a veggie girl, but not a vegetarian or the like. I, on the other hand, tend to be more of a carnivore. I don’t like most green veggies. So any meat eaten is primarily mine, and I can’t handle a meal without some in it.

  2. In trying to keep carbs and cholesterol down, we rarely fry anything. It’s usually baked or roasted. Or crock pot. We’ll make buffalo chicken in the crock pot on occasion.

  3. We love garlic, and I also try to use onions (crushed), maybe some chilies for flavor, rosemary, oregano, and various other spices. Can’t be TOO hot; she has a sensitive stomach.

  4. I absolutely LOVE new potatoes, and so does she. I don’t mind throwing some new potatoes and carrots into an oven with some chicken breasts.

  5. She’s a picky eater. She refuses to eat any meat on the bone. She hates pot roast. She also doesn’t eat pork.

  6. I’m a fairly simple cook. Anything that involves more than instructions a 5-grader could follow is probably out.

Help?

2

Gosh, except for the genders being switched around you sound like my household.

Look, she doesn’t sound that picky, it sounds more like she is simply used to eating differently than you.

First step - don’t buy pork, and buy boneless cuts of meat. Well, sure, if for some reason you’re eating alone some night (one of you is working late or something) have that pork chop but plan meals around non-pork boneless meats.

Your cooking doesn’t sound that unhealthy, nor do her heavily vegetable habits. You’re avoiding excess fats.

If you cook meals that have that boneless whatever and several veg dishes well, then, maybe you’ll be eating 2/3 of the meat and she’ll have 2/3 of the veg but that’s not really a problem if the two of you are OK with that. You don’t have to have exactly equal portions of everything on the table.

One thing I do is make a thick soup/stew in the crockpot with a meat-based broth, a small amount of either cubed or ground meats, and lots and lots of root vegetables. I freeze 2-person sized portions of it, then take them out, thaw, and serve over a starch cooked for that meal - 2 servings of brown rice, or pasta, or something of the sort (I don’t cook grains or noodles in the crock because of how mushy they get). Keep the seasonings minimal when you make it, then add them just before serving. So over rice maybe I’ll add Asian seasonings just before serving, and over noodles something else, and hot sauce some other night. I’ll sometimes use half meat/half beans for the protein portion.

Another advantage to having the seasoning as condiments on the table instead of added heavily to cooking is that you can each season to your individual taste. For example, my spouse believes in the “more pain is more good” approach to hot sauce, whereas I’m much more moderate in my taste for it. By putting the bottle on the table we’re both much happier than if I try to cook it into the food as we’re just not going to agree on a happy medium there.

Bean soups and stews can be made in the crockpot, and most of them do well if you add some meat to them as well.

I’m a big fan of stir fry cooking as well.

As a general rule, whole grains are better for diabetics (of any sort) than white rice, white flour, etc. The choices for whole grains are a lot better than they used to be. If you don’t like a straight serving of, say, whole wheat pasta try half whole grain half white flour based.

Is there something more specific you’re looking for?

3

More than anything, something that appeals to both palates. When I said that she was picky, that was both true and misleading. I’m just as picky, but on the opposite side of the spectrum.

4

Hmm… can you summarize the likes/dislikes of both parties a little more than you have? What I got was:

Her
no pork
no bone-in meat
lots of vegetables
mild to no hot spices

You
Pork
meat of all sorts, and plenty of it
not so keen on vegetables
likes medium to hot spicy

Both
boneless chicken breasts
potatoes
no frying (by which I assume you mean deep frying and heavy batters)
roasting and baking OK

So… how do ya’ll feel about dairy? (milk, cheese, cream sauces)
What vegetables, other than potatoes, do you both like?
What meats/fish? Is it strictly beef and chicken and white fish or are you two up for lamb and salmon, too?
Are there ethnic cuisines you like/dislike?
How do you feel about rice, noodles, pasta, various grains?
Do you like cooking from scratch or not?
Do you want to try new things or just variations on what you already know?

One type of dish you might try is a shepherd’s pie variant - that’s basically ground or finely diced meat (traditionally lamb, but beef is also popular, and you can use anything really, including beans in place of meat or a combo) mixed with vegetables and gravy, topped with a layer of mashed potatoes (cheese sprinkles on top optional) and baked for about 30-40 minutes. As you can use whatever meats and vegees you like you can easily tweak it to your tastes, and it reheats well.

5

If she’s diabetic, she should stay away from potatoes, rice, and pasta. Everyone is different, but even the whole grain stuff raises blood glucose. Also, any sauces/condiments she uses, also need to be checked for sugar as an ingredient. You’d be surprised of how much sugar is hidden in the foods you eat.

Her best bet would be to just eat lean meats and green, leafy vegetables. That’s the only thing that will keep my blood glucose under control. It sucks, but you get used to it. :rolleyes:

6

There’s also the concept of “portion control”. There is nothing wrong with most (note the qualifier) diabetics eating a *portion *of potatoes or the like. By which I mean “dietary portion” which is MUCH smaller than what most Americans consider a “portion”. It sounds like his girlfriend is already leaning towards the “lean meat and leafy vegetable” strategy anyway, and I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. It is possible to cook tasty, flavorful meals that are healthy for a diabetic without eliminating all condiments. He also asked about meals they could BOTH enjoy - that might well mean plenty of potatoes for him along with rolls and all sorts of high glycemic foods for him, with her taking only small portions of them to go along with her mostly lean meat and vegetable diet.

In other words, I’m not assuming anything here, nor do I subscribe to the notion that diabetics need to be shielded from even the sight of certain foods on the table. I’m assuming both parties are adult here and the one with the Type II diabetes is responsible enough to make good choices at the dinner table.

I am making suggestions that work for my diabetic spouse and myself. It’s up to the OP to either accept them or not, and for his girlfriend to be responsible for making food choices at the dinner table. Realistically, most diabetics are not going to avoid all starches and sugar. Quite a few Type II diabetics can incorporate small amounts of starches and, yes, even sugar, into their meals without screwing up their control. In general, if they are eating grains (not just rice, but any grain) they’re better off with whole grains. If you can not, well, I’m sorry about that, it’s unfortunate for you.

7

I see.
Yep. I’m T1, and I know absolutely nothing about how a T2 would have to eat.
I know that I can’t eat many carbs at all. For example, this evening, I had 9 grams of carbs in my meal. I shot up 15 units of bolus insulin, and 2 hours later, my BG is still hovering around 200. So, yeah. Everyone is different!

Please don’t think I was trying to be cocky, Broomstick, because I wasn’t. I apologize!

8

Upon review I hope I wasn’t too snarky myself. There are, as we both know, significant differences between Type I and Type II, and even between individuals in each category.

At one point, when visiting relatives, they kept throwing away my spouse’s stash of emergency candy for low sugar episodes due to misunderstandings. As it happens, because my spouse is diabetic due to injury to his pancreas as opposed to one of the other various means of becoming diabetic he is more prone to low sugar episodes than many other diabetics, so yes, saying he keeps some candy on hand for “medicinal purposes” isn’t entirely a joke.

I’m sure you have your own collection of tales regarding the misunderstandings of others as well.

The other frustration of late is that this household has been undergoing a few years of poverty, and poverty foods tend to be carb-heavy (just read all the threads where people push “rice and beans” for the poor, nevermind how bad that can be for some diabetics). One of the reasons I work so hard on our garden is so I can spend more of our very limited food budget on quality protein and foods that are less carb/sugar and more fiber/protein/healthy fats which, of course, cost more than white rice and beans.

Which reminds me - one of the snack foods at this household are raw cubed vegetables - the spouse likes a mix of carrots, celery, turnip, and radishes (most of which I can grow in the backyard) and I keep a bowl in the fridge for him to munch on instead of junk food. It helps him keep his weight under control, too (important for anyone). Of course, since eating them is still eating it does bump his sugar reading up briefly but a heck of a lot less than the tortilla chips and sour cream he used to eat almost constantly. Don’t know if the OP’s girlfriend would go for a vegee bowl/tray or not. It can substitute nicely for a salad at the dinner table if you use a mix of vegetables both parties like - various types my family has used (the extended family, not just us two) include brocolli, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper slices, and green onions.

9

Girl Wonder is my wife, but that’s neither here nor there, and I don’t expect you to have known that. Most spouses are referred to here as “Mrs. Username” or “Mr. Username.” Girl Wonder is a play on my username. She’s my sidekick.

You’ve summed us up pretty well here.

We both like cheese and other dairy products. She likes the cream sauces more than I do. I find them a little too…buttery(?) for my taste. I prefer more of a marinara sauce to, say, alfredo.

Potatoes, corn, she likes green beans more than I do (I prefer peas). I can eat raw spinach (for instance, on a sandwich). Carrots. Most fruits, though she doesn’t like coconut. Baked/fried apples.

For her, it’s mostly poultry. I’ve had lamb before, and it was tasty enough, but not something I’d eat on a regular basis. She doesn’t really like fish. We tend to do chicken and turkey quite a bit. She’ll eat hamburgers, but at the house, she usually only eats red meat if I cook it and put in pasta, or if it’s “taco night.”

We live in a small town in Southern Indiana. It’s a good 45 minute drive to go to, say, a Panera. The only ethnic cuisine around here is Chinese food and Taco Bell. As such, we haven’t been exposed to tremendous amounts of ethnic food to be able to tell.

I have no problem with any of those, and neither does she. We switched to whole wheat pasta, and wheat bread, and the like (though I have to admit that wheat bread is not nearly as good as white for a PB&J).

I don’t know nearly enough about cooking to try to invent on the fly, so I tend to avoid trying to cook from scratch.

I guess variations. I’ve realized that any meat is more often than not going to be chicken. I need ways to keep from getting burned out on it, and that we can both enjoy. I hope that helps some.

Thanks.