A Southern Girl Learning to Cook – All Over Again

REPOST from former blog My Type 2 Diabetic Life ©

February 5, 2020

My grandmother and her sisters, in their childhood kitchen.
Image: My Type 2 Diabetic Life ©

As I mentioned in a previous post, I learned to cook from some of the most fabulous Southern cooks around!  My grandmother could make a chocolate pie with a magnificently beautiful meringue on top!  When it was cut, you could hold a piece of it in your hand without it falling apart!  And it was as delicious as it was beautiful! 

Me and my grandmother
Image: My Type 2 Diabetic Life ©

So I grew up eating all things Southern – chicken & dumplings (put some extra butter in that while it’s cooking!), turnip greens with cornbread dumplings, fried cornbread, baked cornbread (add some sugar to it before you pour it into the hot skillet!), chicken fried steak, new red potatoes in a cream gravy, pan fried chicken, mashed potatoes with full cream whipped in them, turkey and dressing, chicken and dressing, brown sugar and Coca-Cola glazed ham, hot rolls or white bread with every meal.  Peach cobbler, fluffy yellow cake with chocolate icing (FROM SCRATCH!), that chocolate pie… You get my drift, right?  

I never read labels on boxes – and in fact, it wasn’t until 1990 (after I was already an adult) that nutrition labels became mandatory.  I didn’t even really read them then, either.  I glanced to see how much salt was in something, maybe.  Or if there were weird words of ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce, but I never looked for carbohydrates or sugars in anything that I bought.

And let’s face it, like most of America, my family was eating things that came out of a box. It was convenient and easy for a household that had two parents who were both working.  It was easy to throw in a pound of hamburger meat and packets of seasoning and noodles that came out of a box.  BAM!  Dinner was served and the kitchen cleaned in less than an hour.  The rest of the evening was spent grading papers or later, going through office discipline referrals for the next day of work (teacher and school administrator 🙋‍♀️), while watching Netflix or Dancing With the Stars.  And part of the time was also given to our kids, helping them with homework.  (How I hated science fair time!)

As I said before, when my kids got into middle school and high school, we actually started working out at the YMCA.  It was fun and I felt like I was living a healthy life.  We were eating pretty well – even though we were still eating out frequently, because as a high school administrator, I had quite a few night time activities, and didn’t get home to cook all the time.  So when we went out, I would order something like grilled fish or chicken and veggies.  

But after I retired, instead of thinking I have more time to cook at home, my husband and I, as empty nesters, fell into the habit of “let’s go out and grab something because it’s easier and will give us more time to do something fun like binge watch something on Netflix or Hulu.”  When I did cook, because I had more time to do things, I would cook heavy, high calorie dinners – Southern Style and TexMex Style.  (See the list of foods in paragraph 1.). 

So fast forward to this past November, when I am diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.  Suddenly, I felt this urgent need to learn all I could about reading nutrition labels, and figure out how I could apply that knowledge to my cooking.

No more going out to eat, and no more boxed foods for convenience.  We are now trying, as much as possible, to use all fresh ingredients when we cook.  And as I said before, we also have eliminated refined sugar in our diet.  No sodas, no cakes or cookies.  I use Truvia in my coffee – it’s made from the stevia plant.  No calories, and it does not spike my blood sugar.  

I am learning to look at recipes and substitute things like Truvia in place of sugar, and almond flour or flax meal in place of all purpose flour.  I do a lot of research about how to cook low carb and low sugar.  Then I just try to revise recipes that I have liked over the years, or even when I know what I want, look back at all my grandmother’s recipes and work on recreating them using my new low carb food products. Yesterday I saw a bag of cauliflower flour and I got giddy – until I saw the $10.00 a bag price for a 10 ounce bag! I’ll continue to use the fresh riced cauliflower for now, until the cauliflower flour goes down in price!

Image: My Type 2 Diabetic Life

So with all this being said, I’m going to share with you one of my family recipes that I have adjusted.  I took a banana nut bread recipe, and have created banana nut bites.  Small, cookie size bites that can be a small part of breakfast, or a healthy snack. It’s like bite sized cake.   

And the very best part of the recipe is that it is low calorie, low carb, and low sugar.  (Remember that Truvia baking blend?)

And here’s the nutrition label for this recipe, created on Very Well Fit. 

Happy baking everyone!  If there’s a recipe that you’d like to see on here, let me know in the comment section, and I’ll see if it can be reworked to be diabetic friendly.

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