The nutrition class we attended before Daniel was allowed to use the insulin pens was informative, but other than learning even more about counting carbs than we knew before, there wasn't much new information in there for us. I've really made an effort over the years to get my kids to eat a healthy diet. Fast food is a rare event, mainly if we are traveling long distances and it is the only available rest stop, or if there simply isn't time to put together some sort of meal at home and we have to get somewhere because of an activity.But really, how often is it really impossible to put together food at home? It's true that before Daniel's diagnoses, I fell back on the store-cooked rotisserie chickens for a quick meal or a couple of dishes from the local Chinese restaurant. But I can't do that anymore because of the threat of gluten. 99% of our meals are now made from scratch.
I've been lucky with Daniel, though. He's always been a great eater. Except for a short time when he was 2 and lived for a couple of months on either pancakes or cream cheese & jam on crackers, he's had an adventurous palate. But one thing he hasn't fallen in love with are salads. Okay, it took me a while to fall in love with salad as well when I was a kid. I kind of took it one vegetable at a time. Cucumbers. Tomatoes. The palest, crunchiest, iceberg lettuce. I don't know how many years it took for me to start craving the darkest green types of lettuce, but once I headed down that road I never looked back.
The thing is, for a diabetic, it's a really good idea to like salads. Salads can fill you up without carbing you into sugar spike land. The vitamin & fiber benefits are obvious. So how can I teach Daniel to eat salad? There is only one way. Cover it with meat. And, of course, add a sprinkle of cheese.
I made Daniel a "taco meat salad" tonight (minus the actual taco part). Under the meat & cheese is a nice pile of mixed greens, cukes, tomatoes, peppers, & carrots. He ate the whole thing, with only minor complaints about the lettuce. My master plan is to slowly, over time, alter the meat&fat to lettuce ratio until there are more greens than meat. By then his taste buds will have gotten used to -- even looked forward to -- the healthy crunch.
That's my plan. I'll let you know how it works.
