Antipasto Pasta

Let's talk carbs. Specifically pasta.

Yes the whole point of this diet is to cut out a lot of carbs and all sugar but you can still have carbs there are just a lot of rules. First you can only have carbs one meal out of the day, preferably for lunch when your metabolism is working harder. That means one carb/low fat meal and one protein meal a day. Secondly only whole grain carbs are allowed, brown rice and whole wheat pasta for example. Lastly the carbs have to be eaten with as little fat as possible so that your body doesn't absorb a load of fat along with the carbs.

So what does this leave for you to eat for low fat/carb meals? Plenty you just have to get creative, give up the idea of ever having cheese on your pasta, and look really hard for the couple grocery story products that you can eat. Lucky for you I've already done the last step, the intensely annoying and soul draining part for you. Seriously I was torn between breaking into tears or throwing sauces on the floor the first couple times I tried to shop and found how little there was to eat that was sugar free and diet friendly.

The other rule with pasta is that it has to be very thin angel hair pasta made with hard wheat. Montignac claims the pasta dough being forced through the thin metal pasta extruder during production causes a reaction in the wheat that makes it harder to break down into bad carbs while being digested. A lot of his quasi science leaves me scratching my head so I just take his word for it and any of my scientist readers can let me know if this is total crap.

There are three pasta brands I've found in stores in Madison that fit all these quantifiers. Bella Terra Organic Capellini Angel Hair, Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value Angel Hair, and Ezekiel 4:9 Organic Sprouted Grain Angel Hair. In regular grocery stores these brands hide in the organic section rather than in with the regular pasta.

Pasta sauces get a little more complicated depending on how strict you want to take the low fat rule. I've found some good sauces with less than 2 grams of fat per serving from Barilla and Classico. The roasted red pepper and tomato basil in both brands were especially tasty. I was very surprised that the least expensive brands more consistently were sugar free.

In the past I've been posting pasta recipes with penne and lasagna noodles going off the French version of the diet that didn't specify the angel hair only rule. Apparently the American diet needed more rules to keep us fat lazy poor eaters under control. Substituting angel hair in for my earlier recipes will make them perfectly legal for the diet however.

For now I'll post a very tasty and very easy recipe that will work for the weight maintenance stage of the diet when you can add a little more fat into carb meals without any dire consequence. This is when you aren't losing weight but are following most of the same rules to keep your weight steady. It works, I haven't lost or gained a single pound while eating this way. Next week the fella and I are going hard core on the weight loss phase again to see how much more weight we can get rid of, though the vacation from counting GI levels has been nice. I highly recommend taking a month off from the strict eating after a couple months just so the low GI doesn't break your will to live too much.

This recipe just involves tossing some marinated veggies into store bought pasta sauce to make it a little more special and give it a home made feel. It was delicious. We had pan roasted cauliflower with thyme and lemon juice as a side and El Coto Rioja which I believe I may have already raved about once before. It really is a wonderful spicy Spanish wine in the under $10 price range. With wine this good for that price I see no reason to spend more. Plus I'm a sucker for quirky labels.

Antipasto Pasta

1 16-ounce package whole wheat angel hair pasta
1 28-ounce jar sugar free pasta sauce
1 4-ounce jar marinated artichokes, drained, halved
1 10 to 12-ounce jar roasted red bell peppers, drained, cut into strips
1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives
1 packed cup fresh basil leaves, sliced or chopped

Cook pasta in a large saucepan of boiling, salted water, following package directions, until tender. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta water.

Meanwhile, place the marinara sauce, artichokes, peppers, and olives in a medium saucepan. Bring to the boil over medium high heat. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 5 minutes or until sauce thickens.

Add sauce to pasta. Stir to combine. If desired, add some of the cooking water if too thick. Top with basil. Serve.

Original recipe from one of my favorite cooking blogs Enlightened Cooking.

Low Glycemic Ice Cream

I've been a neglectful blogger, too busy wining and dining friends and just plain drinking wine to find time to post. Tonight I discovered something while shopping that I'm too excited not to share immediately. Low glycemic index coconut milk ice cream!

Three months with no ice cream is no way to live. So when I saw this peaking out of freezer case among all the other crazy and expensive frozen treats at Whole Foods I knew even at $5.99 a pint it was coming home with me. I clutched it to my chest and ran to the fella where he was peacefully shopping for vitamins and panted something about “Must...have...now...yum.” Once I got out the words “sugar free” he gladly tossed in our basket, still looking at me like a crazy person hyperventilating over ice cream.

This was worth every penny. It was the best ice cream I've ever had which is odd considering there is nothing traditionally ice creamy about it aside from being cold. It's dairy free combination of coconut milk and hazelnuts which made is super creamy and sinful. It's sweetened with agave nectar. And its loaded with chocolate and hazelnut chunks. It is delightful. If the fella hadn't been watching there would have been little to keep me from eating the whole pint in one sitting.

Sometimes this diet and its restrictions gets me down. There are a number of days I just want to say screw it and go drown myself in a huge baguette slathered in mayo and deli meat. It would be so easy. No more complicated menus or being picky in restaurants or explaining why I can't eat such and such a thing for the millionth time. Then out of the blue I stumble upon something like this ice cream and the blind excitement of that discovery that makes it worth it. The successes are worth the work. Oh yeah and the living longer and going down two sizes isn't too bad either.

Sucess!

Still no sweetener free chocolate but I found the next best thing. Carob! It never crossed my mind until a co-worker mentioned it. And there it was in the Whole Foods bulk bins for cheap and unsweetened.

After the failed quiche for dinner I needed this win. Life is good again.

The Montignac Method: Grocery Shopping Made Nearly Impossible

You know what has sugar in it? Everything. And I'm barely exaggerating.

Chicken stock, sugar. Gourmet high cocoa content chocolate bars, sugar. Hot sauce, sugar. Rice noodles, sugar. Sausages, sugar. Soy milk, sugar.

I knew this was going to hard but I wasn't expecting this level of frustration before the project had officially begun. The fella and I spent seeming eternities in each aisle trying to find things that were free of sugar and all other sweeteners. Seems we are going to have to start making even more things from scratch than we already had been.

Adding to the frustration were the odd ingredients neither of us had ever used before and were having a hard time locating but were major flavors in the recipes we had found to cook this week. Celery root and endive weren't exactly sitting out in the open waiting to be snatched up. It was an adventure.

We've also stopped eating meat and dairy products with hormones and preservatives added to them which means a huge added cost and a trip to Whole Foods in addition to the regular locally owned warehouse grocery store. The dairy and meat alone cost almost as much as a full produce heavy grocery run. As the fella said as we looked at each other exhausted from nearly two hours of dread inducing shopping, “This is not going to be a cheap diet.” I had to keep reminding myself that keeping him alive for a long long time was worth all this cost and effort. Diabetes is a serious issue and taking care of it isn't going to be easy.

The finally eating restriction in the endless puzzle called “can I eat this?” was the fact I stopped eating any and all preservatives over a year ago in an effort to improve what seemed to be a food allergy. Eating whole unprocessed foods made me feel a thousand times better so I'm sticking to that. However it did add a final layer of impossibility to selecting food. If it was sugar free it seemed to have a lurking sulfate or nitrate and many of the preservative free foods we had come to know as safe over the last year had sugar hiding in them.

My mood was improved upon coming home and pulling it all on the counter; fruit, vegetables, and the free range meat. It was a beautiful site. I'm excited about cooking new foods with ingredients I've never tasted before, from a cuisine I know so little about. It feels good to be proactive with our health instead of waiting for it to become a problem. And in a time when so many others are struggling to pay the rent I felt very fortunate to have the means to buy such luxurious food and someone so special to me to go on this journey with.