Yep! I got not one, but TWO of them for Christmas.

The first one is Betty Crocker 30 minute meals for diabetics. First, let me
say I am put off by any cookbook that has 30 minutes in the title. I'm all
for convenience foods so long as they are organic or at least free of stuff
like HFCS, transfats or any of our allergens. And yes there are some things
like that out there. Even some tasty things! But in my opinion if you can
make it in 30 minutes or less, you are NOT cooking. And in looking at the
recipes I would have to say this is true. Although some do call for raw
meat, they also call for things like brown Minute rice and all sorts of
prepared sauces. Most of what I see in there (even if I were not allergic
to the ingredients) are not things I would eat, diabetic or otherwise.
There is a recipe for green beans with caramelized onions. Now that sounds
good and it even uses raw green beans. But... It calls for sugar to
caramelize the onions. I know a lot of restaurants do this and I've seen
chefs on TV do it because they say it makes things faster. True, but
nothing beats slow cooked true caramelized onions. And you just can't get
that with sugar.

Most of these recipes call for reduced fat stuff, no sodium stuff and
already prepared things like BBQ sauce. Now that I think about it, the book
does not use "cookbook" in the title. And that's a good thing because it
really isn't. Overall, the recipes (and I use that word loosely) are lower
in carbs than in past books I have had. They do have an entire chapter on
carbs and how a diabetic should eat. There is a section for snacks and mini
meals, some of which have as many as 2 carb choices (i.e. 30g of carbs).
One of these is for a latte with soymilk. There is a LOT of soy throughout
this book. Apparently the author thinks we should eat a lot of that. I
don't think so... I was amazed though that there was no section for
desserts. Woo hoo! That is pleasing to me. A book that doesn't treat us
as sweet starved people. There is a section in the back that gives some
sample meals and does give suggestions for dining at other people's houses.
Sweets might be mentioned there. I didn't really read the whole thing and
probably won't.

I highly doubt I will make anything out of this book. Just not my style.
But I might recommend it to a newly diagnosed diabetic who is really
confused about diet or to a person who doesn't know how to, doesn't want to
learn how to or just won't cook.

I have a friend who has raised 4 children and for the most part does not
cook. She readily admits this. But she eats a very healthy diet. Plenty
of salads, raw and frozen vegetables, and for the most part plain meats.
She has GERD and can't do a lot of sauces. If she is doing some chicken
breasts or thighs or whatever, she doesn't call it cooking, because
basically all she is doing is heating the stuff through. No sauce to make,
etc. She was married to a Japanese man and did learn to cook some Japanese
dishes from her former MIL. A few times a year she might make some Japanese
dishes, usually now when one of her grandkids needs something special for
school or she wants to make a special meal for her adult son who is half
Japanese. I'll bet if I were to show her this book she too would agree that
what is in it is not really cooking. But I digress...

The next cookbook looks really nice at first glance. Plain white paper with
some vegetables on it. Entitled Delicious Diabetic Recipes, The Gourmet
Cookbook For A Healthy Life. It is written by an MD who is also a Cordon
Bleu chef.

Part 1 is Basic Ingredients and Techniques. There are starches, cooking
with fats, less salt and more flavor, lots of vegetables, sweetening without
sugar (they recommend choosing fruit for dessert) and baked goods. The last
two sections are small and do include things like using prepared Phyllo
Pastry.

Part 2 is about making healthy eating a habit. It includes quick meals,
leftovers, fish, cold food on the go, using frozen ingredients, freezing
meals and using seed sprouts for quick cooking. Also included in this
section are family meals, cooking for kids, healthy entertaining, and
snacks. Now I haven't looked at the recipes yet. Will do this in a minute.
But I notice that the snacks are all things made of vegetables. There is a
pumpkin carpaccio with nigella. I am not sure what nigella is, but I
thought it was a bird seed. I could be wrong though. Now let me look at
the recipes because this one does look promising!

The starch section mentions that we should eat beans and whole grains as our
starch choices and that we need to figure out how much is right for us to
eat. That's good I guess. There is a whole wheat pasta recipe that looks
good. Has a lot of zucchini in it and also goat cheese. 2 carb choices
(i.e. 30g of carb). Now that's more better that the other book that counted
that many carbs as a snack! Still too many carbs for many here, but some
could eat it. Then a quinoa dish that wouldn't appeal to me but looks to me
like it would appeal to most people and it is only 1 serving of carbs (15g).
Bulgur with fresh figs and pistachios. Not sure who that would appeal to
but it's 1 1/2 carb choice (about 22-23 g). Taboule salad. Yes! I love
that stuff. Then it tells you how to cook wild rice and includes a recipe
with it in there. On to brown rice. Tells you how to cook it and how to
cook it more quickly if you need to and has a stuffed pepper recipe weighing
in at 2 carb choices.

Now we're on to legumes with a page on how to cook them and a recipe for
Fennel, Lentil and Lemon soup. Too bad lentils don't do well with my BG and
also that Angela is allergic to them because that looks really good and has
only 1 carb choice (15g) per serving. There are a couple of more recipes
that wouldn't appeal to me, but again look like they would appeal to most
and are one carb count each.

Now we're to the cooking with fats section. Good looking recipes here
(although again not appealing to my taste), ways to use less fat and gain
more flavor. 1 carb choice at the most, but most have none as they are
mainly meats.

Now the less salt, more flavor section. Why is it they always tell us to
cut back on salt? Vegetable stock, eggplant and tomato stew, mixed rice and
lentils at 2 carb choices, a tuna recipe, pea soup at 1/2 a carb choice (7
1/2g), herb infused olive oil, beef recipe, sea bass, asst. sauces, salmon
with salsa, beef stew with string beans in beer and dried fruit.

On the vegetables. Lots of instructions for how to prepare them and
incorporate them into your dishes. Replacing starches with vegetables.
There are many recipes and ideas here. I won't list them all. Then there
are a few recipes for spreads such as tahini paste. How to make it from
scratch.

Now we are on to sweetening without sugar. No mention of artificial
sweeteners here! He tells you to use naturally sweet things and herbs and
spices. There is a dessert recipe for rolled fruit leather with goat
cheese. Interesting! Calls for unsweetened apricot fruit leather. Also
tells you how to sweeten by changing the temperature and the texture.

Ah wait! I spoke too soon. There is the sugar substitute page. But it does
say you should only use them to get your food to taste until you become
accustomed to eating things that are less sweet. It also explains the use
of sugar in cooking and how it is used for more than just sweetening. It
does tell how to use them in baking but does not include recipes that use
the stuff. There is a recipe for sorbet and another for dried fruit and nut
biscotti.

The baked good section has beer and almond bread, pumpkin dinner rolls,
eggplant pastry, carrot cake that uses polenta and a tiny bit of honey,
zucchini and cherry tomato bake (contains some flour) and a couple of other
things that are less than 2 carb choices.

The quick meals are a stir fry and a pasta dish, both cooked from scratch.
Two Asian recipes for leftovers. Trout recipe under fish but mainly just
how to cook various types of fish.

The next few sections are informative but nothing I feel I need to comment
on. There is only one recipe under desserts. Almond cookies in apricot
sauce. These are flourless but there is a smidge of honey in the sauce.
More chapters of interest as far as how to prepare various foods. Then
there is the chapter that tells us to reduce the quantity of baked goods and
tells us how to do this at parties and such. This book seems not to be
aimed at just diabetics but people in general.

There are plenty of other recipes including chicken fingers coated with
sesame seeds! And crackers made of beets and sesame seeds (they do contain
some flour though).

Okay, I have not read every page of this book, but I intend to when I get
the time. I did check the carb count of each and every recipe and although
a few had 2 servings of carbs, most had less. Most had only 1/2 a serving
or none. The recipes look good (although some not to my tastes), and look
like they have readily available ingredients, except perhaps for those
nigella seeds. I saw them listed in many recipes. They are just as I
pictured them and I do think they are bird seed as well.

I would recommend this book to any diabetic and really to anyone who needs a
general cookbook. Not only does it have good recipes, but it gives you the
various techniques for cooking and explains all sorts of facts about foods
that you might not know.

So I must say now that I have actually seen a diabetic cookbook that is
good. Although I have not tried any of the recipes in it yet, they do not
look weird, except maybe for that stew with the beer and dried fruit. I did
once make something similar for my husband many years ago. He didn't like
it, but I guess it must not be that weird if similar recipes are in other
cookbooks.

"Julie Bove" > wrote in message
...
> Yep! I got not one, but TWO of them for Christmas.
>
I've seen a number of posts saying that at least for type 2 diabetics,
cookbooks labelled low-carb are usually better than those labelled
diabetic.
[snip]
>
> The next cookbook looks really nice at first glance. Plain white paper
> with some vegetables on it. Entitled Delicious Diabetic Recipes, The
> Gourmet Cookbook For A Healthy Life. It is written by an MD who is also a
> Cordon Bleu chef.
>
> Part 1 is Basic Ingredients and Techniques. There are starches, cooking
> with fats, less salt and more flavor, lots of vegetables, sweetening
> without sugar (they recommend choosing fruit for dessert) and baked goods.
> The last two sections are small and do include things like using prepared
> Phyllo Pastry.
>
> Part 2 is about making healthy eating a habit. It includes quick meals,
> leftovers, fish, cold food on the go, using frozen ingredients, freezing
> meals and using seed sprouts for quick cooking. Also included in this
> section are family meals, cooking for kids, healthy entertaining, and
> snacks. Now I haven't looked at the recipes yet. Will do this in a
> minute. But I notice that the snacks are all things made of vegetables.
> There is a pumpkin carpaccio with nigella. I am not sure what nigella is,
> but I thought it was a bird seed. I could be wrong though. Now let me
> look at the recipes because this one does look promising!
>
I hadn't heard of nigella before either, so I did a web search for it. It's
a
black, bitter seed used as a spice, originally from southwest Asia. Not
one I saw years ago when I frequently searched the spice racks at
several stores with good spice selections, and not one that sounds like I'd
like the taste of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_sativa

Robert Miles

"Robert Miles" > wrote in message
...
> "Julie Bove" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Yep! I got not one, but TWO of them for Christmas.
>>
> I've seen a number of posts saying that at least for type 2 diabetics,
> cookbooks labelled low-carb are usually better than those labelled
> diabetic.
> [snip]
>>
>> The next cookbook looks really nice at first glance. Plain white paper
>> with some vegetables on it. Entitled Delicious Diabetic Recipes, The
>> Gourmet Cookbook For A Healthy Life. It is written by an MD who is also
>> a Cordon Bleu chef.
>>
>> Part 1 is Basic Ingredients and Techniques. There are starches, cooking
>> with fats, less salt and more flavor, lots of vegetables, sweetening
>> without sugar (they recommend choosing fruit for dessert) and baked
>> goods. The last two sections are small and do include things like using
>> prepared Phyllo Pastry.
>>
>> Part 2 is about making healthy eating a habit. It includes quick meals,
>> leftovers, fish, cold food on the go, using frozen ingredients, freezing
>> meals and using seed sprouts for quick cooking. Also included in this
>> section are family meals, cooking for kids, healthy entertaining, and
>> snacks. Now I haven't looked at the recipes yet. Will do this in a
>> minute. But I notice that the snacks are all things made of vegetables.
>> There is a pumpkin carpaccio with nigella. I am not sure what nigella
>> is, but I thought it was a bird seed. I could be wrong though. Now let
>> me look at the recipes because this one does look promising!
>>
> I hadn't heard of nigella before either, so I did a web search for it.
> It's a
> black, bitter seed used as a spice, originally from southwest Asia. Not
> one I saw years ago when I frequently searched the spice racks at
> several stores with good spice selections, and not one that sounds like
> I'd
> like the taste of it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_sativa

Thanks! I forgot to look it up last night.

Robert Miles > wrote:
: >
: I hadn't heard of nigella before either, so I did a web search for it. It's
: a
: black, bitter seed used as a spice, originally from southwest Asia. Not
: one I saw years ago when I frequently searched the spice racks at
: several stores with good spice selections, and not one that sounds like I'd
: like the taste of it.

: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_sativa

: Robert Miles

I b elieve it is sometimes used on rye bread rather than the usual
carroway seeds. Little black seeds.

Wendy

Julie Bove > wrote:
: Yep! I got not one, but TWO of them for Christmas.

: The first one is Betty Crocker 30 minute meals for diabetics. First, let me
: say I am put off by any cookbook that has 30 minutes in the title. I'm all
: for convenience foods so long as they are organic or at least free of stuff
: like HFCS, transfats or any of our allergens. And yes there are some things
: like that out there. Even some tasty things! But in my opinion if you can
: make it in 30 minutes or less, you are NOT cooking. And in looking at the
: recipes I would have to say this is true. Although some do call for raw
: meat, they also call for things like brown Minute rice and all sorts of
: prepared sauces. Most of what I see in there (even if I were not allergic
: to the ingredients) are not things I would eat, diabetic or otherwise.
: There is a recipe for green beans with caramelized onions. Now that sounds
: good and it even uses raw green beans. But... It calls for sugar to
: caramelize the onions. I know a lot of restaurants do this and I've seen
: chefs on TV do it because they say it makes things faster. True, but
: nothing beats slow cooked true caramelized onions. And you just can't get
: that with sugar.

: Most of these recipes call for reduced fat stuff, no sodium stuff and
: already prepared things like BBQ sauce. Now that I think about it, the book
: does not use "cookbook" in the title. And that's a good thing because it
: really isn't. Overall, the recipes (and I use that word loosely) are lower
: in carbs than in past books I have had. They do have an entire chapter on
: carbs and how a diabetic should eat. There is a section for snacks and mini
: meals, some of which have as many as 2 carb choices (i.e. 30g of carbs).
: One of these is for a latte with soymilk. There is a LOT of soy throughout
: this book. Apparently the author thinks we should eat a lot of that. I
: don't think so... I was amazed though that there was no section for
: desserts. Woo hoo! That is pleasing to me. A book that doesn't treat us
: as sweet starved people. There is a section in the back that gives some
: sample meals and does give suggestions for dining at other people's houses.
: Sweets might be mentioned there. I didn't really read the whole thing and
: probably won't.

: I highly doubt I will make anything out of this book. Just not my style.
: But I might recommend it to a newly diagnosed diabetic who is really
: confused about diet or to a person who doesn't know how to, doesn't want to
: learn how to or just won't cook.


Cookbooks of this kind are designed for peole who dont havethe ime to cook
and have used all kind s of prepared foods or take-out regualarly and re
now confronted with a new situation and need to strt cooking in a way to
be able to live with this mysterious new disease they have. It can be
most useful, if, often too high carb for most of us here, but a great
improvement over non-stop frozen entrees and fst food.

Wendy