Sunday Snack - Cinnamon Popcorn, Peanuts, and Cheese

I actually had this the evening before.

When I was looking for snacks that were okay for a diabetic, the Livestrong website had this to offer:

Eating low-calorie carbohydrates like popcorn can help reduce the risk of obesity and other potential complications of diabetes. Popcorn is a whole-grain food, and the fiber content helps modulate blood glucose. For diabetics following a glycemic index diet, popcorn is a low-glycemic food, which indicates that it doesn't cause rapid spikes in blood glucose.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/391619-can-diabetics-eat-popcorn/#ixzz2JxQDnZtE

The article also mentions the addition of healthy fats or protein with this sort of snack.

I popped the popcorn in a pot on my stove using grape seed oil because of its low smoke point. When it finished popping I left it in the pot and added some of my home-made butter. Use the residual heat from the pot to melt the butter onto your popcorn and spread it around.

Then I added cinnamon and a dusting of sea salt. The popcorn was now finished.

To add a little protein and fat I plated some fresh mozzarella and some peanuts (making sure to have enough peanuts to share with my husband whom I was certain would be stealing some.)

Breakfast Using My Home-made Butter

I now had a quart of buttermilk and no plans for it.

I also had a lot more whole milk than planned as well.

 Pancakes seemed like a great way to use them. Usually my husband is the pancake maker in the house (there's a whole story behind that but I'll leave that for another day) but he uses mix from a box.

I searched the internet for a recipe that I thought sounded delicious and decadent that would make good use of the buttermilk, whole milk, and butter.

Having recently purchased some particularly wonderful bacon it seemed this breakfast may have been meant to be.

The only thing I could think to improve upon making special pancakes for the hubs was to add blueberries. Unfortunately these weren't fresh frozen so the result was mostly tasteless blueberries.

The pancakes were topped with some of the syrup of Vermont local my mother knows, regularly brings back from her trips home for her friends.

The recipe calls for you to keep your wet ingredients separate from your dry until you're ready to cook.

Be careful not to over mix your batter. Mix until your streaks of flour disappear.You better bet your butt I used organic flour ;p

 If it's a little lumpy that's okay. Mixing until you get a super smooth batter causes a chemical reaction between the acid in the buttermilk and the base of the baking soda. Over mixing or stirring causes will activate the gluten in your flour, leaving you with a tougher, more rubbery pancake - and nobody wants that (except maybe the dog.)

I ended up chickening out at the last moment and making my husband cook them on the stove while I watched. I would have felt terrible if I completely ruined breakfast. This recipe makes a very serious stack of pancakes.

At long last we had breakfast. It was delicious, but that organic bacon was actually so good that it out-shined the pancakes!