 Today on Tasty Solutions for Diabetes. Host Kelly Coffine and Lola Kuniko are entertaining with some fabulous recipes. We conclude our visit 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. Hi, I'm Lola Coffine, home economist and food consultant. Hi, I'm Lola Kuniko and I'm a certified diabetes educator. Today we are entertaining. We have got some fabulous recipes that incorporate fresh fruits, fresh vegetables with savory ingredients to create appetizers for those entertaining moments. And if you have diabetes, these recipes are a great balance of carbohydrates and protein. Well, Lola, tell me, what are some of the strategies that you can use when you do find yourself entertaining or having to go to social events? Well, usually what I advise to my patients is to have a small snack so that you don't overeat when you do get there. And if they do take a side dish to volunteer to take some kind of vegetable, that way you always know there's vegetables or a low-carb recipe. Oh. It would be good too. Yeah, great, great ideas. Let's cook it. 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. Usually about a 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 is the savory stuffed mushroom appetizer. It's simple and full of flavor. The best part is that the mushroom is the main part of the appetizer. So it doesn't have a lot of carbs? No, not a lot at all. What we've started with is browning one pound of lean turkey. You want to make sure to buy the lean turkey because any other ground turkey may have just as much fat as ground beef. Right, and the way that we've browned it, so we're going to now add just a very light- Can I help? Sure. I guess you can. Get right in the middle of it. We're going to add just a light cream cheese and we've got the temperature on medium. And we're just going to cook this up so it's all nice and creamy and combined because that's what our filling is for our mushrooms. Okay, looks good. Smells good. It is good. Can I join now? Sure. Okay, so now we're going to add some of our flavors. We've got just a little bit of coarse black pepper and we're going to add, this is three green onions. Now we're just, this is just a little bit of garlic salt, so you want a little bit of salt in there, not much because we're going to top it with some shredded Parmesan cheese which is high in salt. And I think that'll be enough flavor. And here's what I love. This is just fresh basil. Smell that. It has a real pungent flavor and odor to it and it just, it makes it such a wonderful filling. So we're going to add that, mix it really well, and then we're going to stuff our mushrooms. We're going to place them in a Pyrex or any type of a baking dish that has an edge around it. Why is that? Well, because you're going to get a lot of moisture from your mushrooms. So what you want to do is make sure you have something to catch that. So don't do it on a baking sheet without edges. Anyway, we'll place them in there stuffed and then we're going to top it with our Parmesan cheese and bake them for a little bit. Okay. Now that we have our filling done, we're going to stuff our mushrooms. Okay. And yeah, you're just going to take maybe a teaspoon. And how many mushrooms does this recipe? Well, this one is for about 40 mushrooms. Okay. And you know, it, depending on the size of the mushroom, but you know, you want just a pretty standard size, about an inch and a half to two inches around. Hey, if you have children, my kid would love to do that. Yeah, it's fun. Get the whole family involved. Sure. Okay. These are mine, except for that one that you just messed up. And these are yours. In other words, in other words, these are correct. And these are overdone, overstuffed. Exercise more in the morning. Okay. So you can have one of these and you can have three of mine. Okay. So now that we've gotten all the mushrooms stuffed, all we're going to do is we're just going to lightly sprinkle the Parmesan cheese. I have a feeling that you want to do it. Would you like to do it, Mama? No, no. But what I want to say is, is that it is a little bit higher in salt. It's a hard cheese. So it really adds a lot of flavor without a lot of calories or fat. That's great. So now we have our oven preheated at 350 degrees. And really you're just going to bake it for maybe 20 minutes at the most. And you'll see the mushrooms, all the moisture will start coming out of the mushrooms. They'll turn a darker color. It'll be bubbling. It'll be ready to serve. How many minutes? I said 20. You know what? Can I tell them about the calories now? Are you finished? Yes, I'm done. It's yours. Take it away. I have calories in each medium-sized mushroom with about one gram of carb, four grams of protein, and maybe about two and a half grams of fat. You don't have to knock yourself out to prevent diabetes. Get real. If you're over 45 and overweight, you can prevent diabetes. Lose five to seven percent of your body weight, get 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week, and eat healthy. Take the first step. Talk to your healthcare provider. Prevent diabetes. Today we conclude our visit with Maria Martos, who says that managing diabetes is not impossible if you exercise and follow your diet. Experts Dr. William Polanski and Dr. Richard Jackson from Harvard Medical School say that anyone can live a long and happy life if they control their diabetes properly. Is there something you want to tell the audience, like, what is the most important thing you've learned about your diabetes? Okay, the most important thing I have learned about diabetes is that diabetes damages your organs. But I want them to know for the good of yourself and your family to try to follow that diet and exercise. It's easy. It's not impossible. It is easy, but you have to try to do your part to be able to manage it. You can do it. You can learn. Slowly you will learn. You can learn if you go to class, write down everything that you tell them. Then they can bring it home to study it at home. They can buy books about diabetes, but the most important thing is to follow the diet and the exercise. When Maria said some important things there, one of the things I think we should really emphasize is the degree to which she may not be exactly clear about how diabetes can affect you. I think what we heard Maria say is this commonly held belief that diabetes can really hurt you. That diabetes can really harm your organs and in fact even kill you. Again, I want everyone to be clear about this. It's not diabetes per se that can hurt you. It's poorly controlled diabetes. The good news that I don't think enough people hear is that when you're doing a good job, when you're making effort and you can get those numbers, that A1C, blood pressure and cholesterol, into a good and healthy range, we know you can live a long and healthy life with diabetes. Again, we've heard Maria talk in a way that I think was trying to put forward the idea that being at least a little afraid of diabetes is not a bad idea. And I don't mind people knowing that it's a disease that is very serious and can hurt you. But also we need to let people remember the truth and the hope that with good care we know you can live a long and healthy life. And I think that's something that's always been true about diabetes, but we didn't always appreciate it. But today, we find ourselves seeing more and more people who live longer and longer with diabetes. Talk with your healthcare provider to decide on the best times to check blood glucose. Once you learn the best times to check your blood glucose, check it regularly. Write down your results. Lola, this is a great party recipe. It's our chicken skewers that are lightly glazed with a real nice peanut sauce. So all we're doing is I've taken wooden skewers and soaked them. And the reason we do this is so that during the baking process your skewers don't burn. So we're just taking, this is about three pounds of just chicken breast. And we've taken them and sliced them into long thin strips and just use about three on each skewer and just thread them on there. And then we're going to put them in a, yes, a baking pan or dish that has been sprayed with some cooking spray so we don't want anything to stick. Okay, and we're just going to keep doing that until we have our first layer. So now we have our first layer. And so what we're going to, no, wait, wait, we're going to, let's put some olive oil. The reason we want to do these, we're just going to brush them with olive oil. Okay, now we'll do the second layer. Just go ahead and put that on top. And then we will, we'll do the same thing and then we're going to bake them. Okay, now that we've gotten our chicken skewers and gotten them glazed with a little bit of olive oil, we'll bake them and this is a 400 degree oven. And you know, just watch it. I think probably 20 to 30 minutes. You want to make sure your chicken's done. So you check it and turn them every once in a while. So now Lola, we're going to do the peanut sauce. And it's very simple. We've taken a three-fourth cup of creamy peanut butter and to get it to a, yeah, a nice consistency, you just put it in the microwave in a microwavable bowl for about, I'd say 30 seconds on 50% power. And just check it about every 10 seconds though because you don't want it to burn or bubble. So that's what we've done there. I'm going to take, I also did about a quarter cup of water and to that we're going to add just two, it's like two teaspoons or two little packets of sweetener. And we just want that to dissolve in here. And this is going to look like it's a little runny, but really you don't want a real thick sauce. So we're just going to add a little bit of that at a time, a little bit of soy. And we're just going to keep mixing and blending. And then we'll probably put it in the microwave for probably another 10 or 20 seconds on medium power because you can see it's starting to thicken up a little bit and we want it to be as smooth as possible. Okay, so now that we've gotten the glaze all mixed up and like I said, I put it back in the microwave for 50% power for just a few seconds, 10 to 15. And then that way you still have this nice smooth consistency. And then all of our chicken has been cooked until the juices run clear and that was about 20 to, I think it was what 22 minutes somewhere in there at 400 degrees. And then let's just put a little bit on each one and then you can just kind of smooth that out. And then we'll place them back in the oven and let that... Do you do it on both sides or just... Yeah, and we'll just let that glaze flavor these wonderful chicken skewers before our party. And probably for each skewer, you're looking at maybe a teaspoon, you know, a teaspoon of this glaze. You don't want too much. How many calories does it have? I think each one is what? About 30 calories? Yeah, I think so. The glaze adds about 30 extra calories, which isn't bad when you think of all the flavor you've got here. So really, I mean, it's a great choice for entertaining. So now what we're going to do is continue glazing and then when we get them all glazed, we put them back in the oven no longer than 10 minutes. Does it brown it or something? It browns it a little bit more and it just warms up that glaze and it just really makes it... It gives it a nice presentation and flavor. Okay? Today, we conclude our visit with Skip Chafin, who says that he sometimes feels overwhelmed by his diabetes. Experts Dr. William Polanski and Dr. Richard Jackson from Harvard Medical School say that keeping your A1C, blood pressure and cholesterol within a safe range can help you live a long and healthy life. Skip, do you sometimes feel overwhelmed about diabetes? I do. I do. And I'm not going to say it's an easy road. That's for sure. I still have moments where I get very depressed about it. I think, why me? Why was I picked? And on the other hand, I think, but I have control over it. I do have the power to take control over it. I have had to come to a real fork in the road of decision, whether I wanted to just enjoy that momentary lapse and enjoy the food that I'm eating just for the flavor and the sweetness or for the carbohydrate high or the fat high, or to think what it's going to do for me down the line. I get real paranoid about it at times, too, that if I do overindulge at times, I'll fall off the wagon to say, I consider myself kind of a carbohydrate addict. So I do watch that. It's something that you can't totally abstain from because you need it to live. That's one of the few things that your brain can use for energy. Converse it to glucose, which your brain uses to think with. And so I want to make sure I get plenty of that to where I'm thinking clearly most of the time. So, Bill, what we just heard Skip talking about was something that you and I see all the time. Skip has really been working hard with his diabetes. I think he's been doing a good job, but he feels like he's overwhelmed and he feels like he's failing in some parts of his diabetes. Now, feelings that you have about your diabetes are obviously very important, and we want to talk about those a little, but what I want to intersperse is what we talked about at the beginning. Although Skip is feeling bad about his diabetes, he doesn't really know how his diabetes is doing, unless he knows what his A1C is, his blood pressure, and his cholesterol. Keeping these things in a safe range is what guarantees you a long and healthy life. And in this long road with diabetes, there's always some bumps along the way. Well, that's for sure, and I really like what we've heard here, because while Skip has said to us, he's gone through times when he's felt a little discouraged about his diabetes. He actually seems to be doing pretty well with it right now. And he's dealt with it, I think, in just the perfect way. Like most people, he has lapses. He has times when any of us are trying to make habit changes, changes in how we are physically active, whether we are trying to change how we eat. You are guaranteed to run into problems where at least on some moment or some day, things aren't going to work out the way you want. And it's easy to get discouraged and to kick yourself and just be very upset and want to quit the whole thing. And again, that's expected. What I like about what we've heard from what Skip had to say is that he didn't really let that stop him. He expected, as I would hope everyone would, expect that you're going to have lapses, that you're going to have times when it isn't going to work out perfectly. And you realize that and you just keep going. You keep your expectations moderate. You're never going to handle diabetes perfectly. You're never going to manage your weight perfectly or what you eat perfectly. But you're going to keep it in range. And again, as Rich just mentioned, knowing about the A1C blood pressure and cholesterol is to help you keep some broad perspective on whether you're really doing well enough. I think that's right. I mean, I sometimes see patients who will come in to see me where their spouse may be unhappy about the way they're eating or their exercise. And when we check their numbers, they're actually doing very well as far as their diabetes goes. So that means they're hitting all their marks there. They're safe there. And what they need to work on is how to get along with their spouse better. That's another story, girl. That certainly is. Our next recipe is red pepper cheese puffs. And this is so simple, Lola. All we're going to do is make a cream filling. And then we're going to use some reduced fat croissant biscuits that we roll them into. And then you slice and you have these wonderful little cocktail rounds that are just great for anyone that has diabetes. Great. And they do have some carb, but they help to balance. Because the other two recipes we did didn't have hardly any carbs at all. Yeah, perfect for entertaining. So we're going to get started. We've got, this is 8 ounces of a low fat cream cheese. And to that we're going to add, this is just a medium red bell pepper. And we're just going to add that. I've seeded it, chopped it. And we're just going to actually want it minced fairly well so that you can get it mixed into your cream cheese. To add extra flavor, again, we're going to use a Parmesan cheese. So we're going to add about 3 fourths of a cup. We're going to save a little bit of this for the end. We're going to top it with that once we get them rolled. Now the other thing we're going to do is we're adding cilantro. This is a quarter cup. So, and it really, it's great. Not only does it give you flavor, but it also gives you a lot of color. So now while you're doing that, I'm going to open, we're going to use the croissants. Now I've gotten the reduced fat. Wow. And when I see that flour, I want to do that like commercial work. Is that one of those easy recipes? Looks like you've been in the kitchen all day. Which we have. Okay, so what we're going to do here is we're just going to take your croissant dough. We're going to unroll it. I'm going to just take one of these for now. Set this one aside. And I'm going to stretch them out a little bit. I'm going to put a lot of flour on it because we're going to work with it for a little while. What we're going to do is we're just going to make it long and narrow. We want it to be rectangular. Okay. And we want it to be pretty thin. So we're going to just continue to work it. I'm going to put some more flour underneath. And we're going to turn it over and do it again. Now what we're doing here is just taking the filling and I'm just going to put it on as thin as possible. I want to try and get it to the edges but you don't want to make it real thick. So you just stick it on one side of the dough. Lay it down and then try to spread it all the way across. The next step is fairly easy. You're just going to take this side and we're just going to roll it all the way across. There you go. So now all we're going to do is we're going to move this out of the way and then I'm going to cut this end off. You can bake that. That's for snacking. That's for the cake. So you can see all we're doing is we're just going to make these little rounds. Make sure you use a serrated edged knife otherwise you just won't be able to get through that dough. We're going to bake them for these probably about 8 to 10 minutes, golden brown at 375. This recipe makes about 48 cheese puffs. Okay and it's about 50 calories with about 5 to 6 grams of carbs. So all we need to do is just pop them in the oven. What? The cheese. The cheese. There you go. Okay, how do you do it? Just a little. There you go. Beautiful. Sure. Alright, then we're going to pop it in the oven. Thank you. 375 for probably 8 to 10 minutes until they're nice and puffy and golden brown. For more fun recipes, expert advice on diabetes or to order a copy of this program, visit our website at www.tastysolutions.com. Well, we did it Lola. We finished all of our recipes for our party. Right. First we got the savory stuffed mushrooms. Oh those were great. The ground lean turkey and stuffed them in there some more than others. I noticed that. But the best part was that the mushroom was the biggest part of the appetizer so it really helps keep the carbs down and the fat down. So that was great. And then we did the glazed chicken skewers. Right, which was very easy. Yeah, that's a simple recipe. And that peanut glaze is wonderful. And then of course we did our red pepper cheese puffs. And those were easy. Can you say that three times really fast? Red pepper cheese puffs. Okay, well, we're almost out of time. We better go get ready for the party. Let's do it. Have fun. Can't wait for Maria Skip and the two docs coming in from Boston to have fun with us. All right, thanks for joining us. Great. Come on in. Thank you. Visit our website at www.tastysolutions.com for more party recipes. There you'll find a spinach dip recipe that you can eat with fresh vegetables. Anytime you're at a party, load up on vegetables to keep from overindulging in foods that are higher in fat and carbohydrates. The cheesecake cream and fruit platter is a delicious way to treat yourself and yet keep fat and calories under control. Holiday drinks often add lots of calories, but very few nutrients. We also offer a couple of drink recipes that are refreshing, very low in carbohydrates, and easy to make.