I envy your mother! 
I would happily trade rice for potatoes.
I use all the regular cookbooks and just don’t have rice, or potatoes or pasta with whatever I am making. Currently my favorite cookbooks are the Ottolenghi ones. I really like Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and the Best Recipes in the World. I’m finding his new(ish) vegetarian one less appealing. Not sure why. If you are adventurous I’ve got a couple of new Indian cookbooks and like both of them very much. I just skip the rice or eat it in small portions or substitute quinoa or other healthier grains. Made in India by Meera Sodha ( https://www.amazon.com/Made-India-Recipes-Indian-Kitchen/dp/1250071011 ) and Spices & Season by Rinku Bhattacharya https://www.amazon.com/Spices-Seasons-Simple-Sustainable-Flavors/dp/078181331X ) .
@Consolation, your observation about the American Diabetes Association matches ours. Dh cannot maintain good blood sugar levels if he eats the amount of carbs that their recipes and meal plans allow. When he decided to restrict his carb intake to a max of 50 grams/day, he brought his A1C down significantly and was able to discontinue his Rx. He permits himself a small splurge on special occasions, which average out to about once a month.
Weekdays, dh usually eats cottage cheese for breakfast with a sprinkling of fruit. Weekends, he has eggs and sausage or bacon. Maple flavor pork sausage is pretty low carb and lets him enjoy that taste without indulging in maple syrup over pancakes or waffles.
Dh used to enjoy stuffed cabbage in the cool weather months. Now I make something with a similar flavor in a soup pot using shredded cabbage and no rice. Most recipes for “unstuffed cabbage” call for adding sugar to the tomatoes but I don’t add it. Cooking the onions and tomatoes for a long time brings out enough of their natural sweetness that we don’t miss the sugar.
There are some great low carb sites with tons of recipes-- dietdoctor.com, ditch the carbs, Jimmy Moores livin la vida low carb and pinterest also has some great recipes. Some less good than others but a good resource. Also Costco makes a low carb wrap/high fiber that are 80 calories for a 1/2 wrap and are actually really tasty. I’m at work so can’t think of the name right now.
Had not heard of the dawn phenomenon previously. My low carb breakfasts emphasize either eggs or lox, neither of which I feel I should eat routinely. I need a protein to get me through the morning, though.
For me, having the carb meal at midday seems to have the least impact on blood sugar. But lately, anything I consume in the evening is fraught with peril.
There are lots of low carb wraps out there, some of which are very good. The difference between a low carb wrap–typically about 8 gms net carbs–and a regular wrap (about 45 gms carb) is astonishing. Keep asking for them at wrap burrito places! All too often they make an effort to offer gluten-free varieties but treat low carb like a worthless fad, when in fact the proportion of the population that has T2 is MUCH higher than that with celiac!!!
If you have the time and/or inclination, a really tasty low carb breakfast is a low-carb wrap stuffed with a microwaved brown and serve sausage or two chopped and combined with a scrambled egg or two, a little cheddar, and perhaps some hot sauce.
For those on the road, the McDonalds-affiliated Fresh City (found at rest stops on the Mass Pike) offers a low carb wrap which you can get stuffed with Cobb salad or some other low carb alternative. It’s delicious, and can easily be split between two people, also.
@doschicos - absolutely! An EASY one for me for lunch is to keep some thinly-sliced roast beef from the deli around, take a Romaine leaf, put some slices of cheese on it, add some slices of avocado, the roast beef, and wrap the Romaine leaf around it and eat it like a sandwich… seriously, sometimes I barely finish the two I make. Those are ingredients we always have around.
Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti
- Cut a spaghetti squash in half longitudinally and scoop out the seeds.
- Place each half face-down on a foil-covered baking sheet.
- Pour a few tablespoons of water onto the baking sheet.
- Bake at about 375 for 30-45 minutes depending on the thickness of the squash.
- Take the squash out of the oven and let it cool down a bit.
- While it cools (or while it was baking and while it cools…), prepare your favorite pasta sauce.
- When the squash is cool enough to handle, take a fork and scrape out the “strings” of squash. For best results, scrape them into a colander and allow the natural liquid to drain. Finish drying the squash with some paper towel – you don’t want the extra fluid ruining your sauce.
- Once the squash has been strained & dried adequately, add it to the sauce, stir well, and enjoy!
Italian Chicken Bake
- Combine sliced chicken, spaghetti sauce, and broccoli (and other veggies you like) and mix well in a casserole dish. Season it as you see fit – maybe some S&P, Italian seasoning, and garlic.
- Sprinkle some cheese on top – mozzarella and Parmesan work well. Top that with about a tablespoon of olive oil, drizzled all over.
- Cover and bake at about 375 for 30 minutes. Remove the cover and finish baking another 15-20 minutes. Check the chicken and when that’s cooked, you’re good to go.
- You can kick it up a notch by adding some pepperoni slices, either on top or mixed in with the rest.
I made chicken breast stuffed with herbed cream cheese last night. I split the boneless breasts and seared them on both sides and took them out of the pan. Mixed 2 oz cream cheese with fresh chopped thyme, rosemary and parsley with a little kosher salt, pepper and also two cloves of chopped garlic. Finished in the oven for twenty minutes and topped off with sautéed mushrooms and broccoli . It was pretty yummy
My D1, who is 28, was just diagnosed as Type 1. She is struggling to get her numbers in line even though she is a pretty healthy eater. She takes an all day insulin shot and then has to supplement with another after dinner. She likes stuffed peppers so I modified my recipe. I use quinoa, lean ground turkey and a little bit of broccoli slaw as the “stuffed” part.I am going to try a vegetarian version with cauliflower rice and chopped portabella mushrooms for a “meaty” flavor. I use a sugar free tomato sauce to pour over it.
I also came up with an enchilada casserole for her to try. It is also quinoa or cauliflower rice based. I then add black beans and corn with enchilada sauce, ground turkey and avocado on top after it is baked.
She also likes the cauliflower rice stir fried and mixed with veggies and scrambled egg with a little bit of soy sauce for fried rice substitute.
She also likes fajitas/tacos in lettuce wraps.
In a strange twist of fate, her fiance is the one who suspected she had diabetes. He was diagnosed as T1 at the age of 7 and recognized the symptoms. He uses an insulin pump and isn’t as compliant as I think he should be.
Forgot to say I also make many crustless quiches when we are at the lake together. I just mix eggs, half&half, tons of vegetables and breakfast sausage or ham with a little bit of cheese and seasoning in a pie plate. The family favorite has spinach, portabella mushrooms,red peppers and breakfast turkey sausage with smoked Gouda cheese.
Crustless quiche is one of those great dishes that can taste nearly the same. But we watch the fat and sodium, so the cheese.
I’m not a scientist, though I can read their research. But some foods apparently work on the body differently, depending on what’s eaten with them. Apples, eg, may not cause the same trouble if eaten with X. You need a nutritionist for that.
I sometimes use the Laughing Cow cheese in the quiche to cut back the fat but we don’t really use that much. Have also used a low fat ricotta. Here is a favorite family recipe for a ricotta and spinach frittata: :http://www.cleaneatingmag.com/recipes/ricotta-spinach-frittata. I have modified the recipe by adding mushrooms and peppers.
I also use Laughing Cow cheese mixed in with cooked quinoa, wilted spinach,parmesan and slivered almonds for a very good side dish. D1 likes to take this for lunch with a baked/grilled chicken breast.
^^ Ha ha - I AM a scientist, so I tackled diabetes as if it were a logic problem. I’d buy an apple, cut it into equal pieces, and eat it with a variety of different things at different times of the day; then I’d take blood sugar readings every 45 minutes or so and graph the results (because we know it’s not really science unless you make a graph of your data…)
In my case, it didn’t matter how, when, or with what I ate that apple - my blood sugar went crazy. Yet I can eat the same number of carbs in another food and it doesn’t budge my blood sugar at all.
The dietitian did like my graphs, though (I let her keep a copy).
@NorthMinnesota - good luck to your daughter! I think the best advice I got when I was first diagnosed was to try hard but be good to yourself; don’t berate yourself if/when you have a bad day.
I am one of those people who likes to be in control at all times, and it drives me crazy when the food I eat one day (with good blood glucose results) has the opposite effect another day. So many thing affect blood glucose beyond what the food itself - stress, lack of sleep, minor illnesses, exercise, monthly hormonal cycles. In my case, at least, it’s not always easy to decipher what’s really going on.
Thanks scout. I will pass on that message. She is not much of a cook so I am trying to put together a list of easy recipes for her. As a funny side note her fiance’s A1C levels are the best they have ever been since they began to live together and thus follow her healthier lifestyle. I am looking for a good chicken and broccoli stir fry with a good flavor and a Thai shrimp with sweet chili dish or peanut sauce that isn’t loaded with carbs. She misses those. I need to get back to my test kitchen! 
@scout59, I’m assuming you ate the apple with the skin?
That’s too bad about your bs levels. Unless of course, you are “meh” about apples.
@NorthMinnesota, if you come up with a low carb version of your spicy Asian dishes, please come back and share!
For a fast low carb snack that satisfies my craving for peanut sauce/sesame noodles, I put some grated zucchini sauteed in olive oil, with or without garlic, in a bowl and add about a TBS of peanut butter powder, and a healthy splash each of soy sauce and sesame oil, with maybe a little chili garlic sauce or hot oil. Delish! Obviously, this could be made more elaborate with more ingredients.
Peanut butter powder is great stuff.
^^^^@Consolation, that sounds awesome.