A Diabetic's Thanksgiving: Diabetes and the Holidays

How can a Diabetic handle the holidays? All the cookies, brownies, cake, stuffing, biscuits, buns, cranberry sauce, and pie can make for a disastrous Thanksgiving for any Diabetic.

1. Stuffing alternatives: I have recently discovered flax seed meal. Because of its fiber content, it assists with breaking down the food, meaning that there will be less of an affect on your blood sugar. The trick is to make a
muffin in a minute' recipe found in several places on the internet, and crumble it up like you would stuffing bread crumbs. Stuff it in the turkey, and finish the baking.

2. Splenda! Splenda is a great sugar substitute for Diabetics. Say what you will about 'carcinogenic' sweeteners, but you can substitute a lot of sugar in many recipes with splenda, lower the carbohydrate/sugar count down, and make it potentially better for your blood sugar.

3. Skip the mashed potatoes. I know this sounds crazy, but take a bag of cauliflower, steam it as normal, add a little butter, salt, and pepper, and mash them or rice them with a fork. The consistency is a lot like mashed potatoes, and with the butter and pepper, some say they even taste like mashed potatoes, I disagree but I don't dislike the taste at all.

4. Skip the pie. Unless a very low carb pie alternative can be made (and I have have had some Diabetic cheesecake before that was... different), you should probably skip most of the deserts except for a little fruit.

5. Green bean casserole. This is iffy. If you must have it, have it in moderation, or just have green beans with some crunchy onions as a topping. The cream of mushroom soup is going to be high in carbohydrates.

6. Low-sugar or low-carb cranberry sauce is a great treat. Sugar free Jello with some craisins can also do the trick. Add some whipped cream (actually very low in carbs), and you have a great, sweet treat for the Diabetic in your family.

7. Turkey and stuffing. With the flax seed meal stuffing, you should be pretty good with turkey and stuffing.

8. In all things, moderation. Folks, remember. We are Diabetics, and because of that, we can eat most foods, just not a lot of any foods. Talk to a doctor before you do anything different than your normal diet, but I have found that Diabetes does not mean the end of life.

9. Frozen whipped cream. You can find a very low whipped cream by cool whip, that if you freeze (or better yet, deep freeze), then you can have almost ice cream. It tastes great, doesn't have a ton of carbs, and will really give you that ice cream 'fix'.

10. Ask your family to be conscious of your diabetes. Frankly, it is brutal to be the only one to have a tiny sliver of pumpkin pie, while everyone else is eating cookies and cake. Have offerings such as meat and cheese trays, some fresh berries, and sugar-free/low carb alternatives to traditional foods.