Yummy whole wheat, low sugar cupcakes by ninerbakes

www.ninerbakes.com/2013/05/31/healthy-absolutely-yummy-tasting-vanilla-cupcakes/

I had and still have massive cravings for Victoria Sandwich cake, which I cannot have under my current diet. I could have one small piece, but I can't stop at one small piece.So I had to find a recipe that fulfilled my need for cake which will not blow my sugar count.

 

These cupcakes/fairy cakes using whole wheat flour and hardly any sugar - and they are still yummy and they are HUGE!!!!!

• Prep Time 10 minutes
• Baking Time 14-18 minutes
• Difficulty Easy
• Servings

Easier if you have an American cup measurement  cup:

• 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup raw cane sugar
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
  
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• Frosting of your choice! Or make butterfly cakes by cutting the top of an squirting some cream on top or making your own whipped cream, slice the top of the cake in two and replace on the cream to form wings.
• You can also cut cake in half, spread on some jam and some cream and replace the top of the cake and have mini Victoria Sandwich cakes! 
• Is als

Choc chip cookie that is low sugar and low GI but still tastes good??

 Looking for a low sugar, healthy cookie that doesn't taste healthy?

This is a yummy chocolate chip cookie recipe that I have found which I actually reduce the sugar down to 1/4 cup in total and the kids haven't really noticed. You can of course taste that there is less sugar but the choc chips make up for that loss in sweetness. 

In one version I also added a teaspoon on ginger and nutmeg, which I liked but I think it could have done with more ginger - but the kids preferred the non ginger versions.

 I am now going to go looking for a wholemeal low sugar Victoria sandwich cake and see if I can be successful!!

 http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/whole-wheat-chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies/

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup butter, softened to room temperature

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence or you can use vanilla sugar

1 tablespoon milk

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips or chopped up bar of dark chocolate

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (170/180 celsius)

- Using a mixer, cream the sugars with the softened butter for about two minutes.

- Add in the egg, vanilla, and milk. Mix until smooth.

- Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

- Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, with the mixer on low. Mix just until flour disappears. Don’t over mix.

- Stir in the oats and chocolate chips by hand.

- Form rounded cookie dough balls, using about 1 tablespoon of dough. Place dough balls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I flatten the balls slightly too.

- Bake cookies for 11-12minutes or until lightly golden around the edges. Let cookies sit on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes to set up. Then move to a cooking rack. Makes around 2 dozen cookies.

They keep for a few days in a tight tin. But they may not last that long, I usually end up making two or three batches each week, as cookie obsessed son prefers these ones to the full sugar versions from the supermarket!

 

4 weeks of low carbs and low sugar

I just wanted to update on life "without" carbohydrates or sugar.


I say without but I mean of curse, different carbs and hardly any sugar. I have switched to low G.I - slow releasing carbs or food with no or low carbs in them. After the the new diet and checking my blood count three times a day - my blood sugars are great and can now go back to the midwife, leaving the gynaecologist and hopefully await a straight forward birth.

I thought I ate relatively heathily but actually I was fooling myself. There are of course plenty of unhealthy veggies out there and I can see now how much of the UK and US is sleepwalking to diabetes.

Cornflakes for breakfast are not great or brown toast and cheese - without checking the package to see if it is real brown bread; hardly any lunch and then a whopping great bog portion of white pasta for dinner and half a large packet of crisps in the evening whilst sitting on the sofa - having done no more exercise than running around after the three kids.

What I have learnt from living with (allbeit temporary) diabetes:

Check your brown bread! It may not really be brown! I now check that it is 'volkoren bloem'- wholegrain flour: proper brown; if you don't check, you may end up with white bread which is made a brown colour by adding burnt sugar!! That's what we were eating. Now we are not and the kids haven't even noticed the difference.

Volkoren/wholeweat/grain pasta is tastier than the white stuff and better for controlling blood sugar as it releases sugar more slowly than the white counterpart.  I also need to eat less of it.

Eating more regularly throughout the day using wholegrain products fills me up so I am not a complete pig at dinner time!

Sugar is actually too sweet, and you really don't need it - or that much of it (duh!). I find a caffe latte now fine without sugar, and earl grey tea but I just can't get on with English strong milky tea and no sugar: so I have stopped drinking it. I suppose I could use an artificial sweetener but I happen to think a lump of sugar, even with diabetes is better than a chemical substitute; there is that plant derivative Stevia but long term trials have yet to be done and I don't know what effect it has on unborn children: so  shall just live without either.

I make oatmeal, wholeweat cookies with dark choc chip with my eldest daughter every week and my cookie obsessed son prefers the ones made at home - even though they have a quarter of the sugar stated in the recipe. Hurray!

Check even things like peanut butter: price makes a difference for me but they was such a huge difference between the levels of carbs in the cheapest versus the next cheapest that I left the cheapest on the shelf this time. The cheapest had of course only 51% peanuts and the rest was oil and other stuff. The more peanuts in the fewer carbs (but more fat of course). 

Mashing food that is a carbohydrate makes it release its sugars into your blood more quickly: so mashed potato is worse than boiled potatoes their skins on.

I can have a treat now and then. The longer I go without sugar laden foods or white carbs the less  need them. I had one bar of a twirl bar last night: I didn't need any more. It was too sweet. That was the first bar of chocolate in 4 weeks.

That is not to say that I don't look at the tompouse in the cake counter; or crave a nice big piece of home-made Victoria sandwich cake. But I have quite a strong will and I know I should steer clear of them: unless there is a special occasion.

I feel less tired, without a doubt. I have more energy!

I am now at a higher risk of diabetes later in life so ought to stick to this diet after baby is here;   I  have found it pretty easy to rationalise this diet with ensuring a better outcome for baby but I don't know if I can out my own health first and stick to this long term. I hope so..

When you thought you ate healthily but then get a shock...

I am 31 weeks pregnant.

There is a fairly hands-off approach to pregnancy here in the Netherlands and that has at times worried me: only seeing the midwife once a month and then no urine checks and only two blood tests.

Anyway, that is how it is and I just go along with the flow; I am almost too busy with the other three to even notice that I am pregnant: although you can't fail to see that I am pregnant, as most people ask if I am due very soon and are shocked to hear I still have 9 weeks to go: and that's only if this one comes on time.

I had a routine check before Christmas and was told that as I was rhesus negative that I need to be checked for anti-bodies in my blood that would show up if baby was not rhesus negative: if baby is not negative then I need a shot of Anti-D to prevent any further complications with baby.

I rang the midwife to let them know that I had gone for the blood test just after Christmas as they had sent me another form to go and get my blood tested. That is when they told me that by 'blood sugar was on the high side' - I wasn't sure what this meant and she gave no further explanation. So I went and had the extra blood test the following morning at the hospital. After 2 hours my blood glucose was 8.0. That is on the high side. I went to the midwife to tell them the result: it needed to be under 7.8 and now I will be referred to a gynaecologist. 

I was rung today after spending hours on the internet in the absence of any advice. Some say eat carbs, some say don't. There is sugar in everything! But the trouble is I am a vegetarian and already restrict my diet. I don't overeat, I don't like biscuits or chocolate. I do not eat much in the day but I always have a big dinner with plenty of carbohydrate in the evening. We eat a lot of dark green vegetables already and lentils and beans.

I immediately bought wholegrain products and took all the sugar out of my diet that I can. No more warm milk and cornflakes...

I had wholegrain bread and peanut butter for breakfast, a slice of sardines on toast for a snack and a bowl of home-made lentil and spinach soup - all low in carbs but I am now feeling knocked out, which rather unhelpfully is a sign of low or high blood sugar!

What I haven't had today is my hour walk. I had a 60 minute walk on Saturday and Sunday and I miss it today. My daughters came with me yesterday, but they were not keen again this morning..!

I looked back on my diet: although I have out on weight whilst pregnant I never really fluctuate and tend to eat sensibly -or so I thought. I eat plenty of veg, only brown bread - don't overdo it with sweet things.

Yet I am now diabetic whilst pregnant. I am seeing the specialist next week and having another echo to check the size of baby - babies with diabetic/gestational diabetic mothers can get too big for their gestation and this leads to the need to induce labour before 40 weeks or have a c-section.

Neither appeal to me so I am taking the diet seriously in the hope that my new mostly brown diet can keep my blood sugars low and I can keep intervention to a minimum...

Vork en Mes - low food miles restaurant in Hoofdorp, mostly veggie food and not expensive.

Vork en Mes

Paviljoenlaan 1
Hoofddorp
Tel 023 5572963

 http://www.vorkenmes.nl/

My husband had his birthday yesterday and I wanted to surprise him with a slightly different lunch. We have three small children and don't get out that often!  I am vegetarian and he isn't, but he likes vegetaraian food. Where we are in Breda there is no veggie restaurant unfortunately, so when i heard the follwing chef on the radio, my ears pricked up.

I few weeks ago I was listening to Radio 1 in the car and heard a really interesting interview with Jon Karpathios, the owner of a restaurant in Hoofdorp.

Now,  that isn't that spectacular in itself but I was heartened and interested in his thoughts regarding locally grown food and knowing where your meat is coming from - and being in touch with nature by eating only what is in season. 

We are all so used to seeing strawberries all year round, seeing our demand for all year veggies fulfilled by faraway places such as Peru or Kenya. I am never too sure whether that is good or not but what I do know is flying all those veggies around the world creates a large contribution surely to the increase in CO2.

It has to be better to eat locally, thinking of our food miles and keeping in touch with the seasons. 

The menu is dictated by what is available in their gardens at the time. And they also work with local farms to provide their meat. 

The drive to the restaurant in straightforward - not far from Haarlem and not far at all from the motorway. The drive down a what looks like derelict plot only adds to the surpise as you appear in a carpark next to a lake and a park. The restaurant building is on the river and it has a wrap-around terrave where children and even your dog will be happy in the drier days. 

We were welcomed, they were expecting us and we were given the menu. What an exciting list of winter vegetables! Joeri and I chose a few smaller dishes to share. We only had the vegetable dishes and there were actually only a few meat dishes. Also some pasta dishes but I was interested in what they were going to do with the veggies. 

WOW! How can anyone make just vegetables taste so good? We were not disappointed at all, one dish was a beautiful mixture of winter veggies: beatroot, parsnips, carrots - just delicious! 

 We had:

Seizoensgroenten op verschillende manieren bereid, hangop met olijven en walnoten poeder

Tarte Tatin van ui met groene kool en komijnekaas

Brioche crouton met paddestoelen, uienjam en noten 

The three dishes were enough for a lunch, but we of course followed the meal off with a desert: Joeri had awhite chocolate pannacotta, grapesoup and chocolate mousse and I had carrot cake with walnuts, yoghurt icecream and caramel sauce.

We finished off with a coffee and left very happy. I even received an email the day after asking if I had enjoyed my visit and if I had any further ideas to improve. How many restaurants do that?

We had a lovely lunch, and I can imagine it is also a great place for dinner. Well done to Jon Karpathios whose concept is badly needed - we do need to think about where I food is coming from, we do need to be closer to nature and eat in season and there is no need that any of this needs to be expensive. 

I also have the cookbook now, so we can practice at home. Although I doubt that we will get anywhere close to the fabulous tastes we had yesterday.

You can tell a lot about people by the sort of rubbish they throw away...

I have just dropped my youngest one off at peuterspeelzaal (playschool). Over the last few days more and more boxes have been accumulating around certain houses. 

Sofie and I walk past them today - today must be pick up day because there are mountains of boxes and other stuff outside of some people's houses.

I am not uber green: I wish I could do more: I want to insulate our house because that is the first thing you should do - don't waste energy in the first place. We recycle, we re-use, we repair. 

I stupidly thought after hearing for years within Nottingham City Council about how fantastic the Dutch are at biking everywhere that they are too environmentally minded. But I am slowly seeing that Dutch society is not that green.

One indication: I am walking past houses and looking enviously at their rubbish. Almost all of it could be used again by someone with a screwdriver or someone that has little money or doesn't mind re-using. 

I see a pink balance bike; I see the biggest box of coloured wooden bricks that I have ever seen; I see 6 black plastic garden chairs (OK, not that fashionable but if you have no garden chairs at all, they are better than nothing!), two lovely tapestry cushions, boxes of shoes, chest of drawers, boxes of books!! All scattered around different houses: so it wasn;t just one thoughtless family: it was all of them. 

There were obviously items waiting to be collected that couldn't be repaired so I have less problem seeing them go to our district heating, removing what metal that can be recycled and then burning the rest to provide heat for a good part of Breda. 

I moaned about it to the husband when I got back. He was unusually still home at 9am. He stated that don't be silly, they come round with a wagon and take what can be recycled or re-used first. No, they do not. I have seen this massacre happening before.

The same bin lorry that takes our weekly recycling and household rubbish away comes down the street ( or one very similar) and takes the 'rubbish'away. The staff will pick up each of those items -re-usable, repairable or not - and will throw each one of them into the crusher where they will be crushed. 

This is not only a waste of money but also adding to the unneccessary pile of rubbish and creaping carbon footprint of all of us.Each thing that could be re-used or recycled that is thrown away, means that those are then not available for someone else or to be made into something else - which inevitably leads to more resource use. 

So along with not doing enough to reduce energy waste/use here in our area (it may be the same elsewhere in the Netherlands), the local council seems not to be doing anything about encouraging re-use or discouraging throwing away reusable goods. The service to pick up items from your house is free, regardless of what you are throwing away.

Happily at least I walked past some of those houses to pick my daughter up; the balance bike was gone, as were the tapestry cushions: someone was doing a little bit of re-using of their own it seems, well done!

Veggie Alternatives Review

I thought a review of the meat alternatives would be useful. This is the review of just sausage type foods from Albert Hein and Jumbo.

Albert Hein:

Vege hotdog type sausages:

Positive:  states to boil but I find they become huge, to I prefer to fry them for a few minutes. They are versatile. They can be eaten just as a sausage, or put in a tomato pasta sauce or in a bun. They are quite tasty and not spicy so can easily be eaten by my kids. 

Negative: there is a taste but they are not that tasty - but again, hotdogs aren't that flavoursome anyway, are they? If they become a staple in your weekly shopping, they can become boring after a while!


Albert Hein Bradworst: I also fry these sausages. 

Positive:They are thicker than the hotdog. I find that they have much more flavour than the hotdog, so better for me than for the kids. They are versatile but can more easily be eaten as just a sausage with potatoes or in your weekend morning fry-up! 

Negative: Their texture is a little strange, bit airy but the tatste is good. 

Jumbo - knakworst

Type of hotdog, they look like a hotdog and have a good texture. But they have a strong flavour and because of that, my children do not like them. i don't mind them but because of their strong flavour they are better eaten alone and not in a sauce as they can't accompany a sauce as well as the plain veggie hotdogs. 

Jumbo - frikandel: looks like a rough sausage! It isn't technically a sausage but sort of looks like one. The texture is more crumbly and it has a nice flavour, this is best eaten as its meat equivalent with chips! My kids don't like the texture but I do! Nice for occassionallly making frites-night more interesting.