Pintesting in the Kitchen - Cream Cheese Pancakes

Most nights I hit up Pintrest for diabetic-friendly recipes now. Planning ahead seems like the most likely way that I have a chance of eating anything.

If I wanted a bagel for breakfast I'd have to only 1/4 of it and my toppings would also end up limited. That's no fun for a girl who considers bagels a vehicle for cream cheese. I take cream cheese somewhat seriously - as a child I snacked on UTZ potato chips and cream cheese (much to the horror of my parents, especially my health conscious mother.)

I needed an actual breakfast food to enjoy in the morning instead of just some random recipe that would do the job.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

Yield: Four 6-inch pancakes

Serving Size: 1 pancake

Ingredients

• 2 oz cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 packet stevia (or any) sweetener
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

If you're uncertain of how to tell if you have 2 ounces of cream cheese, I refer you to the size of the packet where, as I'd never bothered to notice before, there are markers telling you each ounce.

I don't have any stevia so I used 1 tbsp of raw, organic honey.

Instructions

Put all ingredients in a blender or magic bullet.

 As it turns out my mother gave me hers on my last visit home and I hadn't used it yet

Blend until smooth. Let rest for 2 minutes so the bubbles can settle. 

Pour 1/4 of the batter into a hot pan greased with butter or pam spray. Cook for 2 minutes until golden, flip and cook 1 minute on the other side. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

 I took a bite of these with no syrup and they tasted a little like dirt.

Serve with sugar free syrup (or any syrup of your choice) and fresh berries. I didn't have free syrup but I was almost certain the night before I read that generally, a serving size of syrup was a tablespoon so I put about a tablespoon on.

Bingo! It was now edible.

Notes

Approx nutrition info per batch: 344 calories, 29g fat, 2.5g net carbs, 17g protein

Another great way to save on calories and sugar is to try to eat this in front of your toddler - you won't be eating the entire thing by yourself anymore.

Sunday Snack - Grilled Cheeseburger Wraps

I adore burgers. If you've followed me in the past when I was Pro-Portional Designs you may know a little bit about just how much I love burgers.

A friend of mine who spent her first pregnancy with gestational diabetes told me that I may need to steer clearer than I usually would. She told me I would probably need to skip the ketchup because of all of the sugar and I would be better off not eating the bun.

When creating my Dealing With Gestational Diabetes board on Pinterest I somehow came across this gem of a pin. Grilled cheeseburger wraps sounded so good that I decided they needed to be made that week.

1 lb ground beef

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon ketchup

1 teaspoon dried minced onion

pepper and salt to taste

5 flour tortillas (the larger ones)

shredded cheddar cheese

sliced tomatoes

 yellow mustard

Brown ground beef in large skillet and drain. 

Add Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, dried onion, and salt and pepper

to the beef

and simmer for 5 minutes. 

Sprinkle shredded cheese down center of each tortilla. 

I added a little green pepper and onion I had in the fridge.

Sliced up a beautiful organic tomato.

Then added that as well.

Mustard.

And finally ground beef.

My husband is a picky eater so his had a lot less.

Cheese.

Beef.

Roll up tortilla burrito-style and place wraps on preheated indoor grill (I used my George Foreman).

Grill wraps for about 5 minutes until cheese is melted. 

Mine was a bit more of a mess when it came time to grill.

But the taste was still really wonderful.

I plan to add this recipe to the list of things we somewhat regularly make.

 

Pintesting in the Kitchen - Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers

Cheese steaks are one of my favorite foods. When I liked in South Philadelphia (feeling like the lone mooly in Saint Monicas perish), (pretty much) the only two places I felt worth buying them was Tony Lukes or a place called George's on 9th street which you can find in the Italian market. Don't be a tourist and waste your money at Pats

 or Genos. Genos always looked to me like the sort of place that should actually be selling tacos.

As much as I would love to enjoy the crackle and chew of a sub roll with a steak and cheese - gestational diabetes has other things to generally say about my carb intake.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the info found here.

It all begins with some green pepper.

That you wash and then slice lengthwise.

Remove the rib and the seeds.

If you like wash it one more time to rinse away the seeds that may be remaining.

Slice up some onion and mushrooms

then gently sautee them.

Once they are soft you can stop sauteeing.

Place a slice of provolone cheese inside the halved green pepper.

Then, because I was going to use Steak-Em's I chose to cook a bit of them a little before adding them to the inside of the pepper. Steak-Em's are oily/greasy and I didn't want my green pepper packed with grease.

Return your mushroom and onions to the pan with the meat.

Add the mix to your green peppers. I put a little salt on top of this.

Top with a slice of provolone cheese.

Then place it in the oven to cook until your cheese is nice and melty.

Plate with whatever else you plan to eat with them. I had mine with eggplant caviar and a red cabbage salad drizzled with red wine vinegar and honey.

The dish was disappointing. It was bland and even with more salt it didn't improve. You are unable to get the steak and cheese mix thoroughly throughout the green pepper. I got bites that were nothing but green pepper and others that had too much of the somehow bland tasting steak and cheese mix.

And despite my effort the steak-em's still leaked grease.

Pintesting in the Kitchen - Eggplant Caviar

Making the adjustment to having gestational diabetes isn't easy. Still in the stage where all I knew was that I had to eat and that I had to be even more mindful of what I was putting into my body I really had no choice about trudging forward and trying to make this work.

Today's pintest comes to us via this pin and the information found here - in French.

Ingredients you're going to need:
3-4 small eggplants - I chose to just use 1 large one

 3 tablespoons tahini / tahini / tahina (or sesame paste)

1 clove of garlic
Juice of one lemon
1 dash of olive oil
1 c. in s. of Labane or buttermilk
1/2 c. to c. ground cumin
salt
 
Description 

Preheat oven to 200 °.

Wash and prick the eggplants all over with a fork 

and place them on a baking sheet.  

Bake 20-25 minutes, turning halfway through cooking. By the time my 25 minutes was up, because I used a large eggplant the center wasn't cooked as well as I was going to need. I cut it open, removed a few seeds, and put it back in for another 12 minutes and 30 seconds. 

I was getting nowhere really fast and my headache and hunger was only getting much more intense. I flipped the eggplant over, turned the heat up to 300, and set my timer for 15 minutes and 30 seconds. I removed as many seeds as I could 

and hacked up the insides 

and put it all back into the oven for another 15 minutes.

Let cool, peel by holding the stem and remove the seeds. Keep only the flesh. Yes yes it is a bit tedious but the result is much better without grains!

Then mix together the flesh of the eggplant with garlic, tahini, lemon juice, cumin, Labane (or in my case buttermilk), a drizzle of olive oil and salt.

Stay far, far, far away from this time consuming recipe. Nothing about this was worth it for me.The taste was no good and I just about wish I could get that time back.