Gestational Diabetes - Dessert

It's been almost a month since I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and it's definitely been interesting.  I'm learning all kinds of things about what foods I can tolerate and what I can't.  One of the biggest concerns is whether or not I'm getting enough calories total, which is a huge challenge when you are eating a significantly lower number of carbs.  I'm making up a lot of the difference with fats and I'm getting probably more protein than I ever have since becoming a vegetarian.  There are two meals that definitely suck the most - breakfast, and dessert.  I'm sure there are psychological reasons why it's bad to be upset I can't have dessert and that means I'm a sugar addict but I'm 35 weeks pregnant and sometimes just need some ice cream.  

So far, I've found two desserts and one sweetish bedtime snack that agree well with me.  The key with all snacks is to make sure you are getting enough protein.  So here are mine:

Chobani Indulgent - we have both the mint chocolate chip and the raspberry flavors.  They have only 14g of carbs in a serving, and my snacks need to be under 15, and they have 7 grams of protein.  

Homemade banana almond butter ice cream.  This one is definitely an occasional snack, because the carb count and sugar count are pretty high, but it's certainly helpful to kick an ice cream craving.  

14 Wheat Thins with Trader Joe's White Stilton With Apricots.  (Photo from here.)  This cheese is delicious and the dried apricots make it feel gloriously sweet and indulgent.  The cheese itself has 5g of carbs, so I don't eat it for my regular daytime snacks.  For bedtime, I need to make sure my snack is a little more filling so I feel okay going a little over the 15g carb limit.  

I've also been eating a lot of cottage cheese with homemade applesauce, but since that is easy to pack into small mason jars and take to work, I simply eat it there.  Making your own applesauce is very easy and delicious.  I like chunkier applesauce, so that's what this recipe is for.  Leave the peels on the apple for convenience and fiber.  

Ingredients:

- 4 apples

-Cinnamon

-A tiny bit of water, like maybe a couple tablespoons

Procedure:

1. Chop apples into 1-2 inch pieces 

2. Put apples, water, and cinnamon into a pot on medium-low heat.  

3. Occasionally stir and break up the apples.  When delicious, remove from heat, put in jars.  

Somedays, it doesn't help to be barefoot.

One of the downsides of being eight months pregnant is that it really hurts to be on your feet for extended periods of time.  It's always kind of bugged me to spend long stretches in the kitchen without shoes, because my feet don't have any support and my legs start to wear out, but now, it feels like I can't stand for more than 30-45 minutes or so.  So tonight, the 4-5 hours we've spent cooking and prepping food for the week has been interspersed with a lot of breaks, and things got a lot better once I went and put on my sneakers.  Hopefully the end result of this will be that almost every meal for the week is good to go and we don't have to do a lot of prep work to have delicious, healthy meals.

I haven't posted in awhile, mostly because I haven't come up with many new recipes and because Pinterest basically serves most of the purposes for which I started this blog (a way of cataloging my favorite recipes, etc.)

Anyway, I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes this week and while there are plenty of posts and blogs out there, since I have a high chance of having GD again with subsequent pregnancies (the jury is still out on whether this kid gets a sibling, ever), I figured it would be useful to me and perhaps to others to compile recipes.  I haven't met with the endocrinologist/diabetes educator or learned to test my blood sugar yet, but a few friends gave me some advice so for the past few days I've been eating low-carb, upping my protein, and eating 3 small meals and 2-3 large snacks.  I've been tracking everything on My Fitness Pal and trying to figure out how doable being a vegetarian with GD is.  I only have 8 weeks to go in my pregnancy, so if I do end up needing to eat meat to get the nutrients I need and not overload myself or the baby with sugar or salt, I will do so.  (There is very little I won't do to avoid having an 11lb baby, it turns out.)

So here is my meal plan for this week:
Sunday: Burgers and Zuchinni Fries - I used whole wheat bread crumbs and had my burger bunless, with a side of greek yogurt (the black bean burgers from Costco are pretty spicy so the yogurt cuts the flavor.)  I recommend not using panko, or running the panko through the food processor first.
Monday: Lentil Tacos (I'm trying this recipe) on whole wheat tortillas (I buy the whole wheat ones from Costco)
Tuesday: No Noodle Zucchini Lasagna 
Wednesday: Kale Quinoa Salad with Roasted corn and Lemon Vinagrette - I'll probably skip the corn on this one.  My lemon vinagrette is just lemon juice and olive oil and some garlic and salt.  You can add mustard if you want it to hold together better.
Thursday:  Stir fry with tofu and all of the vegetables from our CSA and a side of brown rice.
Friday: Fish with a side of rice and...something with lima beans.

Something that helps me a lot is to make rice and quinoa in advance, because during the week, it's hard to remember to start the rice cooker as soon as one of us gets home from work so that the rice is done at a reasonable time.  (It's possible they make rice cookers that stay warm for hours for exactly this reason but ours burns stuff if it's beyond the time.)

I also made some cookies and chocolate chip bread to use up the 8 very large zucchini that came from our CSA (we went with the Jones Family Farm for any Baltimore locals and it's been great).  Mr. Barefoot approved of the cookies and pronounced them "pretty edible, in fact good."

What are you eating these days? Any low-carb, high protein suggestions for me?