Instructions Not Included

So, inspired by all the others out there in the DOC posting amazing recipes for D-Feast Friday, I thought I would get in on the action, and share with you my recipe for shortbread. I make it with Splenda, and to be honest, it's such a butter heavy recipe, you don't need a lot of sugar in it. However, it is totally not endorsed as healthy eating!

Ingredients:

Preheat the over to 180 degrees centigrade.

If you store them in an airtight tin, they'll last for ages!

So that's my contribution! Now, I'm going to be away all this coming week, so I'll be handing proceedings over to a lovely group of guest posters! Thank you so much to everyone who has written for me - I can't wait to share what you've come up with. 

Training wise, I think this coming week's lifting, carrying (and a bit of swimming) won't be a slack-off!

We had cake in the office again today. I was 'good', and did not partake. However, I decided that in honour of the fact it is no longer absolutely freezing, I wanted ice cream. I have just finished it, and it was very good. 

Before diabetes, my diet wasn't exactly a shining example of excellent nutrition. It wasn't awful, don't get me wrong. But I probably would have had the cake, and also had the ice cream, and not given it a second thought. Now, on the other hand, I didn't have the cake, because it was a (pretty great looking) home made cake, and I wasn't confident that I could come up with a decent carb estimate. And I weighed the ice cream. My scales are pretty good friends now. They're out all the time on my kitchen table, and if I'm at home, I weigh most things. Cereal, pasta (ice cream). Not rice for some reason - I've never worked out why I don't weight that. I'm strange? That seems like the most realistic reason. 

I hear a lot of people saying 'insulin makes you gain weight'. I don't understand this, myself.  It could be because I've re-evaluated my diet, portion size control and exercise, but I've continued to lose weight. I may be naive about it, but I don't see why there's any reason that you would put on weight, if there aren't extra factors involved.  I know that insulin helps you turn unused carbohydrates to fat, but so does insulin in everyone non-diabetic, surely? I don't think that you can accuse diabetes for that? If you were eating and not burning off the same amount of carbs, it would make you put on weight regardless of whether or not you have diabetes.

Now I don't want anyone to think that I'm having a go at people who struggle with their weight. That would be unbelievably hypocritical of me, as someone who has a lot of issues with her size, and has battled with issues with food. I just find this thing confusing, and haven't really seen any scientific proof that insulin makes you gain weight, rather than it being what you're putting in your mouth. I would be both happy and extremely interested to read any studies anyone could point me to, though!

I definitely think about food differently now, though. I'm starting to build up a mental guide to how much carb is in many items. A glass of juice, a slice of bread, half a tin of baked beans, my usual portion of pasta. I'm nowhere near fluent in the 'language' of carb values yet. I used to sleep with my radio on when I was younger. This meant that I acquired a rather sponge-like ability to soak up music and lyrics. I'm rather encyclopaedic, which you'll know if you've ever met me in real life. Maybe I need to make a song out of all of this?

Wow, I went quiet there for a while. Sorry about that. I would say that I've had no excuse, but that wouldn't be the entire truth. I've had a fair bit to deal with over this last week. 

So last Sunday, I was all set to write about all the fun I'd been having riding around on the back of Andrew's motorbike. I've no licence of my own to speak of, but have been enjoying riding pillion as of late. 

We rode out to Rievaux Abbey, which is absolutely gorgeous, and a really lovely ride.

I was borrowing Andrew's trousers. These are made for a slim man with no hips. I am not a slim man with no hips. Rather I am a woman with a fair amount of curves. However, I do not normally look as big as I do in this picture. Unless you are naturally extremely slim, biking gear has the tendency to make you look like the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. So wearing trousers that were a real struggle to get in did not make for the most comfortable of rides. I got fairly horrendous cramp down my legs about forty minutes in. I was also finding it increasingly hard to concentrate. 

Now, the observant amongst you might have noticed several items that feature in the above photograph. Points if you noticed what I'm holding in my right hand. More points, however, if you noticed the slightly harder to spot open meter case on the tank. Yes, it would appear that riding pillion burns a lot of carbs, as what I am holding in my hand (and was halfway through consuming by that point) is a fun-size Mars Bar. So I spent some of Sunday afternoon going hypo in a field!

After we got home, we set to work on a joint of beef that we'd been planning to roast. A few things ended up happening (which it turns out weren't entirely user error), and later that evening, we ended up with a kitchen fire. Complete with two fire engines. Thankfully, Andrew had managed to put the fire out before I'd even got off the phone with 999, but there was a LOT of smoke damage to the kitchen. Which meant we were up till gone 3am cleaning, and spent the next two nights doing much of the same.

You can't see quite how soot-covered the walls were in this picture of Andrew cleaning the ceiling, because my camera wouldn't pick it up. But have a look at that bowl of water. That was barely a couple of minutes out of the tap. That might give you a bit more of an idea of how much damage we were dealing with.  And by the way, the motorbike helmet is to stop whatever cleaning product was dripping down as we were trying to clean the ceiling.

Having no oven, and for several days, nothing other than the microwave and the kettle to cook with meant getting slightly inventive with food. Oven was out of action for quite a few days, and though it was fixed, it's now out of action again because the rubber seal has now come apart. It's getting rather annoying.

But the seemingly endless cycle of work, home, food, cleaning, bed (and repeat!) was starting to get to me. So I'm glad the cleaning has more or less finished.

In numbers news, I seem to have temporarily banished the highs, so I'm back to handling the lows again. Most of them are explainable - my mental clock seems to be out by about an hour, so I keep losing track of time. But there are some that seem to be coming out of no-where. It's the stealth-hypo effect. I know I'm not the only one dealing with these ninja episodes as well. Maybe there's something in the water?

Or perhaps it's not the water, but rather the air? I know all this volcanic ash is causing a huge variety of types of mayhem. I hope no-one out there has been too badly affected by the chaos.

All I know is that it gives you one beautiful sunset.

I've been baking again. If you watched yesterday's vlog, you would have seen that I possess a copy of a book called 'How To Cook'. So knowing that I've been baking might alarm you. But worry not. I'm actually not a bad at cooking. But though I'm 'not bad' at cooking, I'm good at baking. Baking I can do. 

So today's experiment consisted of lemon muffins. I say muffins, but it's basically a general cake mixture that I adapt to suit whatever I have in the cupboard at the time. 

Now, these cakes aren't for me. These are for my friend from work. He's trying to give up smoking, and as a way of encouraging him (because I HATE those dirty cancer sticks and the thought that they could be stealing life away from the people that I love), I promised a variety of baked goods for ten weeks. 

During my joint birthday shinding this time last week, he and I were talking about the blog. He asked me who was going to play me in the movie. I had to laugh. I told him I'd cast Dave Gorman to play him if he didn't want to play himself, and that he could tell me who would play me. He came up with a fairly bizarre set of suggestions, but hey it was a good giggle. Suggestions ranged from Emily Mortimer to Sandra Bullock, and ended up with the strangest one of all.....

OK, you probably don't know that I personally believe that this tree has more acting ability than Ms Knightley. So that one puzzled me no end. But like I say, it was an entertaining thing to chat about. 

So that is who the cakes are for. And whilst I'm pleased to support him in this weird way, there's something about baking when you know you're going to give it away. That's what I tend to do with most of my baking, these days. I know if I have a bit of it, I'll really struggle to stop. It's not that I think I'm greedy, or that I have no self control. It's just that it's difficult sometimes. If I have one, I want a second. I'm sure you know what I mean. I think everyone has something that they act that way around. 

So I try to give it away. I like to think that it makes other people happy. Here's hoping anyway.

Rather than go 'Happy New Year, world!' and be all bouncy and jolly, in love with the world afresh, I entered 2010 a bit anxious, and with the attitude of 'bugger off, I don't want to know'. 

So, anxious and a bit depressed would probably best sum up my attitude to the start of 2010. I've never been a big fan of January. There's all this pressure to get yourself sorted, and make resolutions. I tell myself every year that I'll do things, then don't end up doing it and get even more angry with myself. 

So, I made a resolution several years ago, not to make any more New Year's Resolutions. And I've been doing really well at keeping that one.

Well, I've bitten all my nails off again due to being anxious. I was getting worked up. I was getting a lot of double figure scores, and I couldn't get them to stop easily. So I rang up Becky, my DSN, thinking she'd tell me I needed to up my NovoRapid. But instead, I was instructed to start again on Lantus. 

Ah. 

Now, I'd been very keen to start on Lantus again. Mainly for reasons of personal craziness. It was like I didn't feel as though I was a proper T1, what with my tiny 2u boluses, and no basal. So getting the basal back would be, as someone put it to me, 'like getting my diabetic stripes'.  But when I got told to put it back in again, all of a sudden it was a bit like a promotion I didn't want. 

I was nervous. 

I'd had some pretty rotten hypos on Lantus last time, and I've not been proved too far wrong. I've taken it down by a unit, but I've only had one hypo-free day since starting it up again. I'm not enjoying it thus far. The only good thing, I suppose, is that if DSN-Becky wants to keep the Lantus in, I might be able to calculate my insulin-sensitivity more accurately, and do some PROPER carb counting. 

So moving on to some good things. I mentioned that I might have some new readers due to my request for people to follow this on LiveJournal's holiday_wishes community. Well, one of the other things I wished for was for some sugar-free caramel syrup to put in hot chocolate. I didn't actually think I would have anyone send me any. So imagine my surprise when this turns up before Christmas:

They ended up tasting rather like shortbread. Half sugar, half Splenda. Next time, a little more allspice. I'm willing to share the recipe should anyone want it. But they were good. Proof in point?

 

I took them to work with me, and only ended up with  a couple left, one being the one I snagged for myself there, with my sneaky cup of low-sugar hot chocolate. And yes, that is a Christmas mug. I bought it for £1.00 in the sales after Christmas 2008. I figured no-one else would have a Christmas mug at work, so I'd know it was mine, and could keep tabs on who was stealing it! Not that that seems to stop people.

Coming soon by the way - Sam from Talking Blood Glucose is going to be doing a guest blog here at some point in the near future. Yey! That should be worth sticking around to read. 

 


And one of the best things about post Christmas/New Year period? Slowly working your way through the sea of amazing new Christmas socks. Awesome ^_^

It's another mainly non-diabetes related one, but I'm currently engaged in a rather bizarre conversation over why we should theoretically adopt Thanksgiving in England. At the moment, arguments for the positive include:

1: An extra bank holiday in Autumn.

2: A celebration of God's bounty.

3: Food which though not common over here, is at least interesting sounding.

4: (I am now adding this one on) The chance for more sweet potato.

5: Further build up to Christmas, thus stalling early Christmas madness.

6: Getting another friends and family meeting chance. Any awkwardness is brushed over earlier, so making Christmas easier.

These seem all rather good reasons. My initial qualm with this was mainly:

1: WE ARE NOT AMERICAN!

This is not meant as any offence to Americans that I know. I socialise with you, thus you clearly don't embody the things about America which rub my the wrong way (I know it's pathetic, but the spelling issue is still high up on the list!), but rather that England doesn't try to further model itself as America mark two, since as a nation (in the sense we know England and the USA today) we were here first! 

But I am being somewhat swayed by the pro arguments. I don't get enough sweet potato, and Christmas does start too early.

So, if there are any Americans out there reading, do explain the Thanksgiving dinner - who knows, we might give it a try! How do you guys deal with what sounds like a distinctly carb-heavy meal?

And on a completely unrelated note, this is awesome:

Mmmm......I can smell bread. Don't worry, I'm not going (any more) mad (than usual). I can smell bread because, well, there's bread cooking.

I recently invested in a bread maker. Now I had a lot of people telling me that this was an outstandingly dumb idea. Bread makers tend to top the charts, along with ice cream and popcorn makers, of things people buy and never use. But I wanted to take the plunge.

I love bread, you see. I can't imagine my life without it. It would make me very sad. I was so glad that it turned out I wasn't blessed with the joys of dealing with coeliac disease as well.

The really good thing about using a bread maker is that I can control exactly what goes into the loaves that I'm making, and I can pick and choose what seeds I put in. This is great. And after a few sad looking little lumps that didn't really qualify as bread, we seem to have got the knack down, and come out with something that's really quite nice.  Warm bread and butter - heaven, I tell you. Thankfully, I got told by David (one of the two dieticians I seem to have acquired) that the way to work out the carb value of bread when you don't have a packet to work with, is to weigh the bread you're going to eat, and then divide that in half. This will give you a reasonably good estimate of the carbs. Plus, it's easy to remember, which is always helpful!

So, as long as you're committed to making it part of your routine, don't let anyone put you off a bread maker. They make nice bread, they're not THAT expensive any more, and you get the gorgeous fresh bread smell. What's not to love?