Saturday, September 3, 2011

Coconut Flour Zucchini Bread

I've been diabetic for more than 7 years now.  I was diagnosed during Joseph's pregnancy, but was assured that it would go away post partum. It did not.  I really didn't get much better after he was born, and during subsequent pregnancies I didn't get much worse again.  Bottom line is that I'm a borderline diabetic.  I have had blood sugars in the 200's, which makes me a member of the diabetes community.  My goal is to have a fasting blood sugar below 100, and a 2 hour post eating blood sugar below 120.  Most of the time, I achieve those goals.

After my diagnosis, I had to change my diet significantly. I used to be a "carb girl".  I LOVED my simple carbs. I liked Cheerios and bread and white rice and potatoes.  My basic diet was centered around carbs.

All that had to change after I realized my blood sugars were going too high.  So I moved to a low carb diet.  I am usually very self controlled with my eating, so was able to make the necessary adjustments. I am also not a "gourmet" and I don't require much variety in my diet, so I found it easiest to just eat the same things over and over again.  As of a month ago, a typical day's diet would be:

Breakfast:  full fat homemade yogurt with berries and Stevia, and eggs
Lunch:  A salad or apples and peanut butter or some leftover stew with high protein.  Mid afternoon I would have another yogurt with berries.
Dinner:  Meat and veggies and salad
Night Snack:  Yogurt with berries.

  About a month ago, I realized our baby is allergic to cow's milk, so I reluctantly dropped dairy from my diet.  Which meant my yogurt had to go away. Which made me sad :-).

I was VERY happy to find something else for  snacks and that is coconut flour bread.  I am not someone who likes messing around in the kitchen. I cook well, but I don't experiment much.  Two friends kept recommending coconut flour but getting to a store to get some was a pain, so I put it off.  Well, I finally bought some from Amazon and found a recipe for coconut flour zucchini bread.  (We have zucchinis -- oh do we have zucchinis!)

Coconut flour is low carb for a flour. It also absorbs moisture so the recipe calls for EIGHT eggs per loaf.  That means there is plenty of protein, and protein is a great thing for a diabetic as it helps achieve more stable blood sugars.



    Ok, here it is and it is SO SO SO good!  The first loaf was pretty bland. Kevin said it tasted like cardboard.  I adapated it (I'm not great at adapting recipes, so I am proud of myself) by adding some Stevia.  It is delicious now!  I don't let other people eat it.  It is MY zucchini bread.  I make zucchini bread for everyone else with normal flour.  They need to leave my zucchini bread alone!

  I feel like I'm entering a whole new world in that I LOVE bready substances and I will experiment with coconut flour to make other things when the zucchinis run out.  For now, I'm a happy mommy with my zucchini bread.

3 comments:

♥ Naomi ♥ said...

Really funny Mom!

whimsy2 said...

I'm diabetic and I'd love the recipe. Please?

Pam in Ohio said...

Yay! Good job! I'm glad it turned out. I usually use honey but maybe that's too many carbs. It's amazing how good coconut bread is.