 Today, on Tasty Solutions for Diabetes. Host Kelly Coffine and Lola Kuniko prepare three tasty lunch dishes. We continue our conversations with Skip and Maria, two people highly determined to manage their diabetes with the advice of experts from Harvard Medical School. Tasty recipes, important medical information, and more today on Tasty Solutions for Diabetes. Hello, my name is Lola Kuniko and I am a certified diabetes educator. And I'm Kelly Coffine, home economist and food consultant. Today we're going to make some great recipes for lunch. And lunch can be challenging, you know, we're always on the go, so you've got to take time to plan and select the proper ingredients for a healthy lunch. You're right Kelly, it's very important to have protein, vegetables and carbs for a balanced lunch. Let's get ready to make lunch. Yeah, let's do lunch. Tasty Solutions for Diabetes uses three main concepts for its recipes and menus. Concept number one, eat a variety of nutritious foods. Eat foods packed with vitamins and minerals as opposed to foods that contain mostly fats, sugars and starches. Foods that are nutrition superstards include leafy green vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lean meats, nuts and low-fat dairy products. Concept number two, balance high carb foods with lower carb foods. Foods are made up of three energy nutrients, carbohydrates or carbs for short, proteins and fats. Each of these play an important role in maintaining a healthy body. So it's not a good idea to cut out any of these nutrients completely. But eating carbohydrates makes our blood sugar or blood glucose levels go up. A person who does not have diabetes will release insulin to keep the blood sugar from going too high. Unfortunately, people with diabetes have to help their bodies keep blood sugar at a healthy level because their bodies don't produce or properly use insulin. So it's important to control your carbohydrate intake. The key is to choose some foods higher in carbs and some foods lower in carbs at each meal. Only about half and half is a good balance. The third concept we need to emphasize is portion size. In today's super-sized world, huge portion sizes have become the norm. A key to calorie and carbohydrate control is to eat reasonable portions. For each recipe, we'll show what a reasonable portion size looks like for the recipe and other items on the menu. Now back to the kitchen. The first recipe we're going to do today is our version of the Southwest Sandwich. No, my version of the Southwest Sandwich. Well, it's really my version. I think I made the recipe. But anyway, we're going to do it and we're going to show it to you together. And the first thing, instead of sliced bread, we're going to use tortillas, low-carb tortillas. Right. So you want to keep your tortilla moist. You want to put something on it, some type of a dressing or mayonnaise. They have a new light mayonnaise out, but they're all flavored. And this one happens to be wasabi horseradish. So we're going to... Wasabi. Yeah. So we're going to use some flavored mayonnaise. We're going to do a turkey breast. Right. Okay. Just a deli-style turkey breast. And you can buy low-sodium turkey breast at the deli nail, too. So if you do have high blood pressure, that would be a good idea. Okay. And then, of course, we've got avocado. We want to have some of the good fats. Right. And it's about a fourth of an avocado. Fourth of an avocado. And lots of crunch. We're going to do... And bad breath. We're just going to do a light, just a little bit of your pepper. And this is just a yellow pepper that you can buy. Wait, Kelly, I love a lot of pepper. You can put a lot of pepper. There's no problem with putting a lot of crunch in your tortilla wrap. And of course, we've got red onion. And I like to do... You can do any kind of onion, but I like the flavor of red onion, but I like the color. And then, we also want to use a good lettuce that's easy to roll. And this is a green leaf. So, you know, your green leaf is great. And it has more nutrients than iceberg lettuce, because the greener it is, the better it is for you. Right. The other thing that we do to add flavor is you can do your red bell pepper roasted. And that roasted flavor is wonderful. So I'm going to go ahead and just take some of this red roasted bell pepper and put it over here so we can add that to our recipe today. Great. All right. So let's start with this flavored mayonnaise and probably what, just a tablespoon. Okay. All right. And we'll just spread that around. And then if you'll grab some of the... Do I do it? Well, you know what? Let's start with the... I want some crunchy on the outside. So let's do a little bit of the green leaf lettuce. And I like to make it, yeah, go all the way to the edges, because you want to have crunch all the way through. Okay. And then we can do our turkey. And you know, the deli style turkey, turkey breast is really what you want, and you want it sliced thin so that you can roll it. Okay. So... Could you also use the shredded turkey? Sure. Now you can do your avocados. And avocados have lots of fiber. And also, they have heart healthy fat, like I mentioned before, and fat helps to keep you fuller longer so that you don't get the munchies. The hotty was supposed to put the peppers on. Is that you? Yeah. So we've got the yellow peppers that we're going to put here. Oh, yeah. And just put it in there. The stinky ones with the onions. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Put those red onions on, will you? Not too many, because I have to work with you. Not too many. The whole goal here is to do those as well, very thin, so that you can roll this. And the same thing with your...just do some slices of those roasted red peppers. Or if you do the fresh ones, then do them very thin so that they roll up easily. Okay. Now what I'm doing is I'm spreading a little bit of this out because we're going to roll it from one side to the other. And it isn't going to be easy to roll, so just know that, and you just have to work with it. And then we're going to put... Look how beautiful that is. Yeah. And we're going to put a toothpick on it. You want it right in here? Yeah. Just right there. It's good. And then if you're taking it with you, if you're eating it now, slice it and enjoy it. But if you're taking it with you, then use some saran wrap, some plastic wrap, and really work it, because you really want all those flavors to kind of spread out on that tortilla. Kind of like marinate it? Yeah. You can see how I'm just kind of rolling it up. You've got your toothpick in the middle, so be careful of that. And then this is just really a great way to pack it when you're taking it with you somewhere. Maybe we should open a restaurant that's burritos on the go. Lola's Wrappers. Let's get it. And there you have it. You got your lunch on the go. The Turkey Avocado Pepper Wrap has about 250 calories with about 12 grams of carbs, but if you include a small apple and about 8 ounces of milk, it comes out to about 400 calories with about 45 grams of carbs. This makes it a very balanced meal. You don't have to knock yourself out to prevent diabetes. Get real. If you're over 45 and overweight, you can prevent diabetes. Choose 5% to 7% of your body weight, get 30 minutes of physical activity 5 days a week, and eat healthy. Take the first step, talk to your health care provider, prevent diabetes. Today we continue our conversation with Maria Martos who says that exercise lowers her blood sugar and helps her to be tranquil. Experts Dr. William Polanski and Dr. Richard Jackson from Harvard Medical School say that it's important to fit exercise into your daily schedule. Ella Herces, tell us a bit about how exercise helps you. It helps me tremendously because it lowers my blood sugar and it helps me be tranquil. What kind of exercise do you do? If I exercise along well, for example, I will go for a walk, but if one does it alone, walking is a bit boring. I therefore have the habit of taking a soccer ball with me to the park and I kick the ball like that and I kick the ball like that. That helps me forget the time and it makes it easier to exercise because I feel like I'm playing and not exercising. Oh, that's great. And dancing. Do you dance sometimes? Oh, yes. It's very good for you. Yes, I do a little, but if I dance, I also sing. Yes, you can still dance for exercise and it'll help lower your blood sugars. Dancing is very good for you. So here we see that Maria's really worked out how exercise fits into her life. I think it's easy to get patients to agree that exercise is useful, even to think to themselves that they're going to be able to do it regularly, but finding someone who actually is able to fit into her life, that's not as common and what she's done is find something that works for her and for her it seems that doing things that give it more of an entertainment value, not just walking, which she finds boring, but adding in some sports at no matter what age we might add and that's a useful point to remember. But this finding a way to fit diet exercise into your regular schedule, Bill, that's always been hard for people. So finding a way for it to fit into your schedule and also the other thing that she's telling us is that she's managed to find a way for regular physical activity to be fun. And if there's one thing that we clearly know, if we look at people across America who are trying to bring exercise into their life, if you are thinking of exercise as a chore, if it's boring, if it's painful, I promise you you're not going to be able to stick with it. Eventually you're going to quit it. And it's only that relatively small number of people like Maria who've found some way to fit exercise into their life in terms of time, but also have found a way to make it seem like fun. Those are the people able to keep it up over time and really make it a part of their life. Yeah, that's a good point. And what works for one person may not work for another, but you need to think of different ways in which you can achieve the same thing that Maria has. Physical activity is any kind of movement, such as dancing, walking, running, cleaning house and working in the yard. Being active can lower blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol. It also reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke, relieve stress and strengthens the heart, muscle and bones. For our second recipe, we're going to do another of Kelly's favorite lunches. You know what, lettuce wraps really are a great alternative to using bread in a sandwich. So we're going to do a chicken lettuce wrap sandwich, but you can grill it. And I think what's important is that there are skillets out there that have grilling, a grilling bottom on it. It's a riveted bottom and you can grill year round, whether you live in the cold part of the country or the warm part of the country, you can do it indoors or outdoors. All I'm going to do here is just start slicing and then we're going to chop it up. So it's a nice small bite that you can use in these lettuce wraps. One thing I suggest for my patients is that if they go into a meal and they check their blood sugar and it's running kind of high, maybe over 150, 160, so that you don't go over 200, two hours after that meal, I suggest using lettuce instead of a tortilla or any kind of bread. And that way your two hour after meal won't be so high. Your blood sugar two hours after your meal won't be so high. And it gives it a great flavor because you can wrap it and then you can use all different types of vegetables to go along with it and some dipping sauces that will whip up here pretty quick. Great. Can't wait. So the dipping sauces are what's going to add so much flavor to your lettuce wraps. So we've got a couple of different ones we're going to do today. What is this? This is just a non-fat plain yogurt and we're going to make a cream sauce with some chili and onions, a little garlic and a little salt. And then we're going to do an Asian dipping sauce which is real simple with a low sodium soy sauce and we'll put a little bit of green onions and then this is a sesame oil which gives it a real rich nutty flavor to it. And then we're going to sweeten it a little bit with just some sweeteners. Oh, like a teriyaki thing. Yeah, absolutely. So let's get started. Okay. Okay. So we're going to add about a cup of non-fat yogurt plain, no flavor, some minced green onion. And we want a little bit of salt from the flavor. Yeah, I think it does need a little bit of salt but you know that's to taste so, and you can even try it with some different types of salt, you know kosher salt or even a little bit of a seasoned salt would give it a nice flavor. We just mix this up. Yeah, you're just going to mix that up and that's, and you can see it's kind of thick so it's nice and creamy so that's going to add to your lettuce wrap. Now here I'm going to take the, this is just a low sodium soy sauce and I'm adding this sesame oil which you can find in your Oriental section at your grocery store. This is just minced green onions, there's about three of them and you can see this one's a little bit lighter but can you smell this, can you smell that nutty sesame flavor that, that oil adds and then to that we'll add just a little bit of our garlic, maybe one clove of garlic and there you have your dipping sauces. And probably if you're on a low sodium diet your best bet would be to use the creamy sauce as opposed to the soy sauce. Right. Okay, so now you add a little bit of the sweetener just for taste, just for taste. And there you go. Now that we made our dipping sauce Kelly can you show me how it's done? Okay, so what we're going to do is we've got, this is a green leaf lettuce and I've actually cut the rib out of the bottom of it because we want the soft pliable leafy part of the leaf so we're going to take that and just put some of our chicken here. And then I'm going to let you select whatever filling that you want. So just pick from any of those beautiful veggies and fill it up. And I'm going to do the same. Yeah, and you know what, it's just, there's lots of texture, lots of color and then you get to pick your dipping sauce that you want to use. Well the cilantro, I can't wait to see how it tastes with the yogurt cream sauce. Yeah, and then see I'm going to take a little carrot, some cilantro, I love that deep color and I love that flavor. But I'm going to have lots of cabbage, I like lots of crunch with my lettuce. You got your cabbage on my cream sauce. I'm sorry. We obviously need a bigger kitchen. And I'm going to have the Oriental Dipping Sauce, that's what I'm going to do. Because she doubled it. I know, that's what I do. Okay, so look, now is that great or what? It's beautiful. You know. Just roll it up and take a bite. The two lettuce wraps and half a cup of frozen yogurt make up 530 calories with about 45 grams of carbohydrates. Diabetes is a killer. After I was diagnosed, I didn't feel sick, so I didn't listen to my doctor. Then it struck. I had a heart attack, then a stroke, and I was only 49. Most people with diabetes also have high blood pressure and cholesterol, which can cause severe heart damage. In fact, two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke. Don't let diabetes destroy your life. Call for your free Diabetes Survival Guide. Choose to live. Today, we continue our conversation with Skip Chafitt, who says that he was determined to manage his diabetes with exercise. Experts, Dr. William Polanski and Dr. Richard Jackson from Harvard Medical School, say that exercise is both beneficial for controlling diabetes and for your heart. When I encourage people to exercise, most of them tell me, I'm too tired. It hurts. I don't have enough time. How did you feel? I felt exactly like that. All those things prevailed in it. I felt that I had to do something, though. I was going to cure these diabetes problems. I was determined that by walking, and that was the first thing that was suggested, to start exercising. I started walking about 15 minutes a night, and that's all I could do. That was about once to twice around the park, and that was about all I could do. I was totally exhausted afterwards. The only benefit I got from that to start with was I slept pretty good after that. The fact that after I had done it for a week, I think my self-esteem was a little better. I had accomplished that. I had made a promise to myself, and I was able to keep that promise. I continued to do that, and I expanded on that until I was walking for about 30 minutes. I was convinced that 30 minutes was all I had time for. I was pretty busy. I was busy watching TV, and busy eating, and things like that. When I stopped eating constantly, I had a little bit more time. I found that when I would extend the walks, I started enjoying a few more things. I got to enjoy my neighborhood. You got to meet your neighbors? I did. I was able to meet a few more neighbors. I was able to see more wildlife. I didn't know I had any burrow owls in my neighborhood, which I do. Some of the birds and the wildlife that reside in my neighborhood was real nice to see. I had forgotten that they had been there, and I've lived in that neighborhood for 25 years. Isn't that amazing? It is. It really is. How we just stay inside, don't meet our neighbors anymore, don't even know about the habitats. We just don't get out. We're too busy to get out. We forget about our neighbors, and we forget about ourselves. Right. I really like how Skip has handled exercise. It's just exactly the way you would hope someone would be able to start and stay with exercise over time. We know that's so hard for so many people, but starting small 15 minutes, well, you could talk about that. Yeah. The thing is that Skip felt that he wasn't doing much when he was only exercising 15 minutes a day, but we know that actually 15 minutes a day regularly can have a very beneficial effect on your diabetes, actually side benefits are that it's also healthy for your heart. What Skip did was then he gradually moved up, and he was doing 30 minutes a day, and then he found out there were even other benefits to the exercise. Again, that's so different than from what most people do, where they say, boy, if I don't get out there and run a marathon every day, and let's see, I can't do that. So they give up, and they get discouraged so easily, but by starting small and by looking for things that would cause him to feel rewarded by seeing things in the neighborhood, by finding ways to enjoy what he was doing, he has really helped to create a habit that will become a lifelong habit. And that's tough for a lot of people, but I think what we see in Skip 2 may really help a lot of others. Before starting an exercise program, check with your doctor. Ask about your medications, prescription, and over the counter, and whether you should change the amount you take before you exercise. If you have heart disease, kidney disease, eye problems, or foot problems, check which types of physical activity are safe for you. Then decide exactly what you'll do and set some goals. Have a plan B, such as where you'll walk if the weather is bad. Chart your progress to see how you're doing. We've included a delicious soup in our lunch recipes, mainly because soups are very filling, and you can do them ahead of time, so they're great when you're on the go. And you can add all the vegetables you want. Yeah, and this particular one is a sopa de lima, we call it, or a sopa de lima. Thank you. Thank you. She does have the accent, sopa de lima. But what it has is fresh lime juice, which really gives it a nice zest. So our basis here is six cups of a chicken broth, and you can either buy a prepared chicken broth in the grocery store, or you can make your own with a chicken bouillon. I've taken two chicken breasts that I just boiled in a little bit of water, and then you could use that water, add to it, put a little bit of bouillon in it, and create your own chicken stock. So I just boiled this, and then drained it, let it cool, and just chopped it up. So we're going to add that, and it's just the two chicken breasts, probably about 12 ounces, 12 to 14 ounces. And we're just going to let that heat through. And then we're going to saute all of our vegetables. This is just a great recipe that incorporates all these wonderful flavors. Wonderful. Wonderful flavors. Wonderful. Okay, so we're going to saute the onions. This is just one medium yellow onion. We're going to saute that. I'm going to turn it up a little bit on a medium heat, and let that saute until they're soft. And then we've got about three cloves of garlic, three or six. What's about three? They're big cloves. They have big cloves in the southwest. Anyway, we're going to let that cook down a little bit, and then once it gets soft, we're going to start adding. Can I help now? Not yet. Because once it gets soft, the onions, that is. And you want them opaque, right? We want them opaque, and we want them soft, and we're infusing that garlic. And once they get soft, then we'll add our green chili, and we'll fold in our tomatoes. Sometimes when I saute onions, Kelly, if I put the garlic in too soon, it seems like I burned the garlic. Well, and you've got to keep your heat low. So it's a low, medium heat, and then that way you keep, and you continue to stir as it cooks. And what kind of oil did you use then? It's just a light olive oil. And olive oil is also a heart healthy fat, and if you don't like the flavor, you can buy the extra virgin olive oil, and it's not as strong as the regular olive oil. Right. So now that our onions have cooked down with our garlic and olive oil, we're going to add, you can fold in the green chili. All right. And green chili provides lots of vitamin C, vitamin A, a little bit of fiber, and of course, lots of spice. And this is about a cup, and we, you know, you just want this to heat through. And same with our vine-ripe tomatoes, and we're going to add those and just let them heat through. So we'll go ahead and put those in. And what we've done on the vine-ripe, this is two vine-ripe tomatoes, but we've taken all the seeds out. We've taken all the extra moisture out of it. So we just really want these to cook down and be heated through. Now that we've got it heated through, Lola, we're going to add it to our broth. Do you need help? When do we add the lime? See, once we've added all of the veggies in, doesn't that look great? It does. It looks like pico lecaios. It is. It looks beautiful. This is about half a cup of fresh lime juice, and we're going to add that, about five limes, five medium-sized limes. As you can see, it actually even turns it a little bit of an opaque color. We're going to let that simmer for about 12 to 15 minutes, and then it'll be ready to serve. But that lime flavor gives it just a really nice zest. So let's serve this up, Lola. This is about a cup and a half, but look at all of that flavor and texture. I bet that lime just adds so much. It really does. And then just with a little bit of your crushed tortilla chips, and you can do your minced green onions, and even a little avocado adds to it. More of a zest. And then another zest, yeah, just another zest of lime. It just really elevates the flavor of all of the ingredients together. The bowl of soup has about 350 calories with about 32 grams of carbs, and if you include about half cup of grapes or 15 grapes, it'll bring it up to about 430 calories and 45 grams of carbs. For more fun recipes, expert advice on diabetes, or to order a copy of this program, visit our website at www.tastysolutions.com. Hello, Lola. We had fun today creating some new sandwich ideas for our lunch menu. We did the turkey avocado wrap, and we did the grilled chicken lettuce wraps. And don't forget our sopa de lima. Yeah, that was a great soup with just some really unusual flavors. And zest. And zest. So join us next time as we cook up something fun, quick, and easy for dinner.