New Insulin Pump

I saw the news on Diabetes Daily about the new insulin pump coming on the market next year from a company called Medingo. The pump is the Solo, and it is a tubing-free, tiny pump. You can detach from it when you need to. The web site is here.

If you live in the US, the company offers you the option of ordering a free demo kit. I put my order in today, and will let you know how responsive the company is and what we think of the demo.

It looks nice! But we've been fooled by products that look nice before (Pelikan Sun). So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this one.

I thought I would have more time!

I thought I would have more time to write this summer. I thought I would drop in with a blog post here and there about our travels & adventures. But summer is a greedy monster and it is sucking time away from writing, which makes me sad.

We took a trip in the 2nd half of July across the country, so we had our first experience dealing with major travel & diabetes/celiac. Some great stories, some not so great. I want to write about them, but not all at once. Here are some quick impressions:

1. If you have to fly, and you have celiac, PACK FOOD. There is nothing for you at the airport. There is next to nothing for you on the plane. There's next to nothing for you on the plane even if you don't have celiac! Plan ahead, carry food.

2. The security personnel at the airports seemed to be quite knowledgeable about diabetes stuff and didn't give us any problems. Yay.

3. Stores at Yosemite park have lots of good food. It makes the natural splendor of Yosemite even more enjoyable.

4. It is helpful, if possible, to check local blogs/websites if you are looking for a place to eat that is celiac friendly. We stayed in places where we could do our own cooking, but there were a number of times we had to eat out. Thank goodness for all the bloggers out there!

5. Legoland says on its web site that it has gluten free hamburger buns. But when we got there, they were out of them. :(

Just some quick thoughts. More later, because the dryer just buzzed and I must get back on the laundry treadmill.

Gougeres, or Gluten Free Buns

I went to my friend Leah's house for lunch yesterday, and she served gougeres, which are cheese puffs made with Pate a Choux dough. Pate a Choux is what you use to make cream puffs. The little puffs were delicious, and I thought they reminded me, in texture, of the gluten free buns made by Against the Grain. Leah gave me the recipe so I could try them with gluten free flour. They turned out delicious! But they were small (Daniel made tiny sandwiches out of them).

I made them a second time today, much larger than the first time, to see how they would compare to the Against the Grain buns. They have a different consistency, and though they were really puffed to start with, they flattened as they cooled. I'll have to figure out how to stop that from happening. They taste good, though!

Here's what I did:

1 cup water
1 tsp salt
3 tsp sugar
6 tablespoons butter, cut in pieces
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour, sifted (I used the "Jules" brand GF flour mix)
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup grated cheese
freshly ground pepper.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In small saucepan over high heat, bring the water, salt, sugar, and butter to a boil, making sure the butter is completely melted. Off the heat, add the flour all at once and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon. Return to the heat and continue beating until the dough forms a solid, smooth mass and pulls away from the sides of the saucepan. Take off the heat and empty the dough into a clean mixing bowl. Little by little add the beaten eggs (I used a mixer), beating vigorously in between each addition, until the dough forms a smooth, supple mass. Mix in 1 cup grated cheese (the recipe calls for gruyere, but I didn't have that so I used a mix of mozzarella and asiago) and freshly ground black pepper.

The original recipe has you putting the dough into a pastry bag and piping it onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. I didn't have a pastry bag, so I just spooned the dough onto the parchment paper in large rounds and baked for 25 minutes. It made 6 rolls, at 21 carbs each.

The flavor was very good, but here are some changes I'd like to try:

Baking it for a bit longer.
Adding flax seed, or something else for fiber.
Actually using gruyere, which is so yummy.
Using a food processor instead of a mixer to see what that does to the consistency.

If you try this recipe and something works for you, let me know!

Quinoa Salad

It all started when I came back from vacation and looked at my garden. The weeds were trying to take over, especially the terrible morning glory-ish vines that try to strangle everything. Rising triumphantly over the weeds, however, were my basil and parsley plants, which flourished in my absence. Maybe I should go away some more? In addition, Matt had gone to the farmer's market and picked up some luscious, weighty, ripe tomatoes. As lunchtime approached, I thought about quinoa salad.

Quinoa is a fabulous grain, and great for people with celiac because it is gluten free and for diabetics because the protein in the grain keeps it from spiking your blood sugar. Quinoa is a complete protein with lots of fiber. It is okay on its own, but I like to dress it up a little. Here's what I did:

1 cup red quinoa (I found this at my local health food store).
1 1/4 cup water
1 large, weighty, luscious, ripe tomato, diced
1/2 raw zucchini, diced
1/4 cup craisins
1 loose cup parsley
1/2 loose cup basil
juice of 1/2 juicy lemon
3 T balsamic vinegar
3 T olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup crumbed feta cheese

Boil the water in a medium sized pot. Pour in the quinoa and cover; simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off heat, wait 5 minutes, then fluff & cool quinoa.

Put diced tomatoes, zucchini, and the craisins in a bowl. Finely chop the basil & parsley and put it into the tomato mizture. Toss in the cooled quinoa, and then toss in the lemon juice, vinegar, oil, and salt. Top with the feta cheese and serve.

This is a delicious power lunch, perfect for hot days!

Gluten Free Ice Cream Sandwiches

One thing Daniel really missed since going gluten free was ice cream sandwiches. There are plenty of gluten free foods available, but no one has put these on the market yet. So here we are, summer time again, and I thought I'd research making these guys from scratch. I found a recipe on Gluten Free Gobsmacked that looked so easy, and I gave it a try today. I also took her advice and bought some ice cream sandwich makers from Amazon.com. I got standard rectangular ones, and fun shaped ones as well.

The recipe is simple:

Cookie ingredients:
7 tablespoons butter, melted
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powdered (or dark chocolate cocoa powder)
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
3/4 cup gluten free flour mix (rice or bean based)
OR – in place of the GF flour mix use:
1/2 cup rice flour + 1/4 cup tapioca starch

I used the "Nearly Normal" brand of flour mix because that's what I had on hand, and it turned out fine. Nearly Normal has xanthan gum in it. I hoped that would be okay, because the recipe doesn't call for it, but it was no problem.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Line a large cookie sheet or jelly roll pan with parchment paper. Butter the parchment or spritz with oil.
3. Whisk melted butter and cocoa powder together until smooth.
4. Add sugar and beat until smooth.
5. Add vanilla and eggs. Beat again until smooth.
6. Add gf flour (or flour/starch) and beat together for 2 minutes. Mixture will be like thick brownie dough but should not have any lumps.
7. Using a spatula dipped in water, spread the cookie batter into a large rectangle (about 12″ by 10″ or larger). If the dough sticks to the spatula, dip the spatula into cool water and continue spreading. Try *not* to get the dough “wet” or have standing water on top. The original recipe says to spread it to a 1/2 inch thickness. Mine wasn't that thick, but it was thicker than normal ice cream sandwich cookies. I might try to do it a bit thinner next time on a larger cookie sheet.
8. Bake the cookie at 350F for 15 – 18 minutes or until firm/set but not crusty on top. (It will harden as it cools.)

Now you have to either cut the cookie into smaller cookies, or follow the directions on the ice cream sandwich maker. You just stamp the cookies out with the ice cream sandwich maker, and wait until they are cool. Then put one cookie in the bottom of the form, fill with your favorite gluten free ice cream, put another cookie on top, and press.

I bought ice cream that was already in a rectangular shape to help with this process, but really, any kind will do if it is softened a little. Then the hard part is waiting for it to freeze up again nicely before eating! We didn't do that tonight. We just dove right in, so the ice cream was squishy. The kids had vanilla ice cream in theirs. I took the scraps that were left over and made a small ice cream sandwich with mint chocolate chip. YUM!

Based on the recipe plus 1/2 cup ice cream, The rectangular ice cream sandwich had 66 carbs.

Blueberry time!

Blueberries were on sale this week, and in our house that is cause for joy! We all love blueberries -- straight off the bush, tossed into salads, stirred into yogurt, or baked into many wonderful treats. I decided to make a blueberry pie for Father's Day.

I've made gluten free pies before, but haven't really had much success with the crusts. They were okay, but not great. I found the dough very difficult to work with, and the crusts have come out heavy and hard. They broke too easily. But, what the heck, try try again.

I looked at a few recipes and decided to make a couple of changes. This time, the crust was fantastic. Here's what I did:

I whisked together in a bowl:
2/3 cup sorghum flour
2/3 cup potato starch
2/3 cup tapioca starch
3 Tablespoons corn starch
1 tsp. xanthan gum
4 tsp sugar
1 tsp. baking powder

Then I used a pastry cutter to cut in 1/2 cup butter and 1/3 cup shortening until the mixture was crumbly.

Then I whisked together 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar. I dumped this into the flour mixture, and stirred it with my hands until it held together. It was a little bit sticky, so I added about a tablespoon of sweet rice flour, which I had on hand because I was going to use that when I rolled out the dough. I divided the dough into 2 pieces, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and refrigerated them for a couple of hours.

For the pie filling, I mixed 3 pints of blueberries, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1/4 cup corn starch, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, and stirred it all around.

To roll out the pie crust, I sprinkled a piece of parchment paper with some sweet rice flour, put the dough on the parchment paper, sprinkled some more rice flour, and covered it with another piece of parchment paper. I rolled the dough between the parchment papers until it was a little larger than the pie plate. Then I peeled off the top layer and flipped the dough onto the pie plate. It rolled out and held together beautifully, which had never happened before when I made a GF pie crust. So I had hope!

I filled the crust with the blueberry filling, and dotted it with about 2 T of butter. Then I rolled out the second crust in the same way as the first. But instead of rolling it flat and putting the whole thing on top, I cut stars out with a cookie cutter. I made an egg wash with a beaten egg and a Tbsp. of milk, and brushed the edge of the pie crust with it. The I started layering stars on top, brushing with the egg wash so they would stick together.

It went into the oven at 4oo degrees for 20 minutes, then I lowered the temperature to 350 and cooked it for another 30 minutes.

I had a little bit of extra dough, so my daughter and I made a couple of extra stars and I baked them in the toaster oven with a little cinnamon and sugar on top until they were toasty. They were a yummy treat!

The pie turned out great. My husband said that there was no way anyone could tell that this was a gluten free crust. It was tender and flaky, just right. The blueberries cooked up beautifully, and the pie wasn't runny at all. We served it with some vanilla ice cream on the side. It was a wonderful father's day treat!

I tried to work out the carbs per piece of pie, and thought that an eighth of the pie was about 70 carbs. It was hard to figure because I had to add flour to roll the dough, and I wasn't sure how much I had shaken on. But when Daniel tested his blood sugar just now, he was at 215, but there was no correction, so I think he's not going to go wacky high. Ice cream can also do funky things to his blood sugar, but he only had 1/2 cup.

Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there. And I hope you get to enjoy blueberry season, too!


(NOTE: I made the pie again on 6/27, and this time took pictures of the dough making process. It really helps to have someone there to take pictures with you or your camera gets all smeary!!!)

I'm also posting this recipe on http://www.glutenfreehomemaker.com/!! Great site, and a wonderful place for sharing recipes.

Non-sleep over

Daniel had a couple of friends over last night for an end of school, watch movies, play video games, eat pizza kind of sleepover. Luckily we have a basement *and* an upstairs so I can't hear them (unless they are REALLY loud, which has happened in the past) when they are talking trash at the video games and sneaking upstairs for cookies. One of Daniels' friends, during a past sleepover, ate an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the night... that didn't happen last night.

But at 3 a.m. or so my husband got out of bed and I heard him negotiating with the boys. Apparently the phone rang -- oops, I missed that -- so they were sternly told that enough was enough and GO TO SLEEP.

Phones ringing in the middle of the night always set me off thinking about emergencies. So as Matt settled quickly into dreamland (HOW DOES HE DO THAT???) after grumbling, "no more @*%*$ sleepovers!! -- I stayed awake and day?dreamed scenarios. Then I thought about the movie I saw with Dominic & Nora (Night at the Museum), the salad I had for dinner that I would like to make at home (insalata d'oro, which was a huge pile of diced golden yellow tomatoes with olive oil, basil, goat cheese, and pine nuts and two slices of a delicious, fresh Italian bread) and the list of things to do today, lists for the upcoming vacation..

Basically, I thought my way to 6:30, tossed and turned for 45 minutes, then gave up.

Good morning.