New Year- New Start . HELP please !

VenusFlytrap_2

Oh Mardatha, you do have my sympathy, a good friend of mine was diagnosed with diabetes last year and she's finding it very hard to work out what she can eat to manage her blood sugar levels, so trying to do it and keep an eye on cost must be doubly difficult!

I'm not a great fan of it myself, but there are millions of recipes on here for homemade soup and I'm sure you could adapt them if nec so they'd be OK for your OH - soup can be very cheap and filling as a meal in itself (especially with some of your HM seeded bread - sounds lovely!), or have it as a starter and serve smaller portions of your main meal.

Meat is expensive but can understand your OH not wanting to cut back if he can't eat many carbs. You said he liked steak pies, so how about buying some cheap stewing steak and using it for a luxury 'steak casserole' with lots of veg and a few potatoes, cooked v. slowly in the oven or SC if you have one? If he can't have pastry, how about making dumplings with wholemeal flour to go with it? Sorry, don't have a recipe, but sure there'd be one on here or you could Google it.

Speaking of wholemeal - has he tried eating brown rice and wholemeal pasta rather than white? I did Atkins for a while and know from that they don't have as dramatic effect on BS as the refined white versions. Just a thought, if they don't affect him as badly maybe he can eat more of them and you could use less meat, keeping him happy and costing you less money. Obviously your OH's health comes first though, don't want to suggest anything that could make him ill.

mardatha

Oooh dumplings sound nice ! I will look them up yes. Re stew, yes I have the crockpot and love it but I hate beef LOL God knows why we ever got married, we never like anything the same ! And trying to fill a crockpot with lamb would take my life savings....!

KittyKate

How about sweet potatoes? We get them from Lidl and they're a great pie topping. You can mix them with carrots to eke them out too. Not sure if that would be OK?

As for meals, would cous cous be OK, I know it's a lot better than pasta because I have IBS and it's OK for me to eat. Wholemeal pasta is fine in moderation too.

I eat a lot of soups, leek and potato, carrot, parsnip and apple, french onion, I much prefer veggie soups as I find they freeze/defrost well.

Stuffed mushrooms are very nice and a lovely side, do you like fish at all, because again Lidl do a great selection of frozen fish, salmon, haddock, cod etc and a few stuffed mushrooms with a piece of fish is a healthy and filling meal.

Long_tall_sally

Mardatha - presume your DH is type 2 not one, cos I was a little confused when I first read your post as my DS is type one & needs to have carbs with every meal and normal snack?

mardatha

He's type 2 yes. He just finds that carbs send his BS through the roof so wants to avoid as much as poss, but not cut out altogether. Kate, never tried sweet pots, the name puts me right off LOL ! and I hate fish, and never tried cous cous either, don't know what you do with it!
I did say we dont eat exotic LOL! more like dead plain!

Zazen999

Can he have cauli; cauli mash is a 'not bad' replacement for potato mash; add in some parsnips if you can.

mardatha

hates cauli. makes him feel sick..... sigh. He is NOT easy !!

Zazen999

mardatha wrote: »

hates cauli. makes him feel sick..... sigh. He is NOT easy !!

Oh well, not to worry.

Patchthedog

This is a good website and has lots of recipes:-

www.diabetes.org.uk

I have found that eating the normal things but increasing the amount of veg in the meal as much as I can and reducing the amount of potato/pasta/rice has helped me.

For instance with a roast dinner, have a couple of small roast potatoes and loads of vegetables with your roast chicken. This is healthier and you don't go hungry.

Another example veg curry and rice, have a normal portion of curry, a small portion of brown rice and a large salad.

If your husband tries to ensure that he doesn't got too ravenous before meals by regular snacks, such as fruit or oatcakes this may help to avoid spikes in blood sugar.

It seems to me that there is a bit of division in the medical community about carbohydrates. On the one hand type 2s are told to eat plenty of complex carbohydrates and on the other hand many people find that any carbohydrate increases their blood sugar. Hmmm...


Best wishes

Anna