Low Carb Peanut Butter Cookies

I love peanut butter cookies! And these little babies are a delicious low carb treat that my husband can also enjoy. These don't get quite a crispy as a normal cookie would, so if you like your cookies chewy, these are for you! The recipe is simple: only 3 ingredients!

Ingredients:

16 oz peanut butter

1 cup Splenda (or any artificial sweetener)

2 eggs

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients and mix until completely combined. Form one inch balls and use the tines of a fork to make the criss cross pattern. Bake for 12 minutes. Makes about 30 cookies.

Be careful as you are taking the cookies off the cookie sheet to cool. When they're still warm, they tend to crumble, but they firm up as they cool.

The best part? There's less than 4 carbs per cookie! Yes!

Chicken Fajita Nachos

Last night I fixed my husband's absolute favorite: chicken fajita nachos! And super easy it was.

Ingredients:

tortilla chips

bell pepper

onion

shredded chicken

fajita seasoning

cheese slices

Directions:
1. Chop the bell pepper and onion into slices. Add to pan and saute over medium heat for 6-8 min.
2. I had previously cooked a whole chicken in the crock pot and so I just grabbed some leftovers from the fridge and added it to the pan when my veggies were almost done. Add the fajita seasoning. Cook until warm.
3. I didn't have any cheese sauce so I had to improvise. I unwrapped 5 slices of American cheese, diced them up, and melted them in the microwave for 20 sec until completely melted. About half way through I added some water to help make it more like a sauce.
4. Serve chicken and vegetable mixture over chips and drizzle sauce over top. Delicious!

Here's the carb breakdown for a serving:
20 tortilla chips- 27 g
1/2 bell pepper- 4 g
1/4 onion- 5 g
1/2 package fajita seasoning- 5 g
5 slices American cheese- 6 g
Chicken- 0 g

Total: 47 g carb

The Trouble with Food Labels

Since my husband was diagnosed with diabetes, I have been educating myself on how to read food labels.  However, this is often a confusing task because the Food and Drug Administration doesn't even define some of the terms that food products have on them!

The key for my has been figuring out how many carbohydrates are in a serving size of a particular food item. I'm bombarded by labels like "Low Carb, "Sugar Free," and "No Sugar Added." These phrases can be deceiving for many reasons.

First of all, many products spouting low carb claims don't really many less carbs than the regular product. They try to subtract out the fiber and sugar alcohols to get what's called "net carbs." Even the Atkins Diet does this. But to my husband's blood sugar, carbs are carbs and it goes up no matter the fiber or sugar alcohol count. 

Sugar free is another tricky label because most of the time sugar alcohols just replace the carbs. Not only do these still make your blood sugar go up, but they can also give you some bad diarrhea. Yuck.

No sugar added is truthful in saying that additional sugars were not added to the product, but many things have natural sugars that make the carb count high. 

Go to Health.com to read about the 16 most confusing food labels.

How to Make Meal Planning Easier

Meal planning is something that everyone plans to do. We'd all love to sit down once a week with our grocery list, coupons, weekly ads, and an eye on our pantry to decide what the fam will eat for dinner. But many times that gets overwhelming. Since it's just my husband and myself, we try to stick to a $60 a week cash budget. Here are some things that make meal planning easier for me:

1. Keep the ads in check.
Just because it's on sale, doesn't mean you need it. If you already have enough shampoo, don't go out and buy another just to increase your stockpile when you can put that money (even if it's just a dollar) toward something else.

2. Know what's in your pantry.
It's the one of the worst things to be putting away your groceries only to discover something that you already have. Make sure you check your list that you've made so that you don't buy unnecessary duplicates.

3. Purge your cookbook.

I always sit down with my cookbook to decide what to make for the week. That being said, I just went through it and did a complete overhaul of the recipes. There were recipes in there that I'd never tried and those that I had tried, but we hadn't liked. So I kept only the recipes that I knew I would use and went from 76 recipes to 48. I paper clipped the recipes to card stock and slid them into a sheet protector. This way I can just pull out the sheet and take the recipe I need instead of having my cookbook taking up precious countertop space.

4. Let other people do the work for you.
Okay, this one sounds lazy but it really does help. For those people who don't have time to be Extreme Couponers and scour all the stores for the best deals, know that there are people out there who have already done that for you. I follow blogs like Money Saving Mom,
The Peaceful Mom, and savings expert Sami Cone for the latest deals and coupons.

Those are my tips to help the meal planning process go along smoothly.

Cauliflower Crust Pizza

Pizza: a diabetic's dream! This cauliflower crust makes a diabetic-friendly and delicious meal.

Crust ingredients:

16 oz cauliflower (I just buy the frozen bag)

1 cup mozzarella cheese

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp garlic salt

1 egg

Crust Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 450F. Steam the cauliflower until tender and then mash with a fork as thin as possible.

2. Add the cheese and the egg and combine. To be honest, you have to eat it with a fork anyway so most of the time I don't even add the egg if I don't have any on hand.

3. Add oregano and garlic salt. Combine.

4. Press onto a pizza pan (or a stone like I have). If you do have a pan, don't press all the way to the edge because then you've have a hard time getting it out.

5. Bake for 15-17 minutes

Crust after baking

I you wanted it to look pretty I suppose you could round off the edges, but my husband will eat it despite its appearance.

Toppings Ingredients:

Pizza sauce

1 cup mozzarella cheese (or extra if you want)

Toppings of your choice! I went with good ole' pepperoni.

Toppings Directions:

1. Add pizza sauce and spread almost to the edges.

2. Add cheese and toppings. Top with cheese if desired.

3. Bake 3-4 minutes until cheese is melted.

4. Enjoy!

Yummy!

I kind of hinted earlier that it doesn't stay together very well. You'll have to eat it with a fork, but it tastes just like a Digorno!

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Southwestern Meatball Chili

This low carb recipe is super easy and delicious! It's also one of my husband's favorites. I think the only reason it's called "chili" is because it has chili powder in it. It's really just meatball stew.

This dish is quick and easy with simple ingredients:

16 oz fully cooked beef meatballs

16 oz package mixed vegetables, thawed

1 can diced tomatoes

1 tbsp chili powder

3 tbsp tomato paste

Directions:

1. In a Dutch oven, combine the meatballs, thawed vegetables, tomatoes, chili powder, and tomato paste. Cooked, covered, over medium-low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Ladle chili into bowls and top with things like jalapeno peppers or cilantro.

Nutrition:

4 servings; 385 cal, 24 g fat, 93 mg chol, 944 mg sod, 25 g carb, 8 g fiber, 20 g pro

Runkeeper

Since I'm training to run a 5k, I've been looking for apps on my smart phone to help me. The other day I ran across this application in a Yahoo! article and it's called Runkeeper. Many of you may have heard of it. After testing it out today, I can say that I would highly recommend it to all runners.

This week's run had me jogging for 90 seconds and then walking for 2 minutes. I liked this infinitely better than the first week which had me jogging for 1 minute and then walking for 90 seconds. I felt like I couldn't get far enough in a minute that the same people couldn't see me start and stop (I'm very competitive).

The Runkeeper app lets you customize a run workout and then lets you know when your interval is over and what the next interval is. It also periodically lets you know your time, distance, and mile pace. When you are done, it gives you the summary of your workout and uploads it to the Internet where it stores everything.

Don't like running outside? No worries. The Runkeeper has a place where you can manually input your workout also to be stored online.

I give it two thumbs up!