FBG this morning hit another new low – 5.7. I actually have a graph on my wall of my FBG, next to the computer, and while its a series of dots all over the place, up and down, there is also a distinctive downwards curve – at the moment, while i am still swinging all over the place, it tends to be clustered around 7 mmol – whereas a few weeks ago it was clustered more around 8 mmol, which is a distinct improvement. what i have to do now is to try to keep it a little steadier, at around 6mmol rather than 7 mmol. I’m getting there, though, slowly.
I also had half a piece of rye bread for breakfast, and that didn’t spike me, which is really good news. The next thing to try is a whole piece of rye bread, because if i can tolerate that, then it immediately opens up what i can have for breakfast a LOT, plus it really helps in terms of a cooked breakfast, that little bit of carb. i mean, when you think of a cooked breakfast, toast or bread almost always features in there somewhere, or if not those, then potato products like hash browns, waffles, that kind of thing, or even fried potato slices. i’ve said this before but its actually very hard eating a purely protein/fat breakfast, and you get tired of it pretty quickly.
I took jess out earlier, and we ran into the leader of the gang of youths who likes to trouble us, a boy (i reckon he’s about 17) called Anthony. He was hanging out with two of his mates, one lad i’ve never seen before, the other i have, who i think probably has ADHD or something similar – he seems to have too much energy bound up in him, very exciteable, talks at 3,000 miles an hour, that kind of thing. Anyway, when i saw them, internally i was like “uh-oh”, and prepared to ignore them, but they saw me and came over, wanting to stroke jess. I tried to clamp my jaw down on my amazement and let them stroke her, keeping a very close eye on them, but that was really all they wanted, and jess, being the loveable dog she is, was quite happy to accept a fuss and give them kisses in return. it was like, for a few minutes, the tension between us was dissipated because of Jess and it was quite amazing. Then they resumed their usual teenage persona, grunted, and slouched off, chain smoking under their hoodies. Quite amazing, really.
Tonight is saturday, and saturday, in the Michiel and kethry household, is pizza night. I experimented last week with a cheese/egg base, but this week i want to experiment with using a couple layers of spring roll pastry to make a very thin base. I’m going to layer them in the cast iron pan i have, so that there’s a bit stretching up the side of the pan all the way around, well greased – between the sheets as well – then brush over the top of it, beaten egg. This will create a waterproof barrier between the tomato puree mix and the pastry. I’ll then treat it as a regular pizza – tomato puree mixed with oil, garlic and herbs, with cheese and salami on top of that, and see how it works. What i’m not sure of is whether to bake the filo pastry a lil first, to seal in the egg proof layer before i put the tomato puree ontop… i think i will, at least the first time. With luck it’ll provide a stable, crispy base for a thin pizza… and the carb content will still be pretty low.
as you can see, it wasn't an unmitigated disaster! Was actually pretty good, although it needs working on.
I simply laid filo (aka spring roll) sheets in the pan – where the sheets weren’t big enough, i layered them, although i never used more than 3 sheets per pan – brushed with oil to make the sheets stick to each other – and then with egg, to help provide a waterproof coating. tomato puree (mixed with olive oil, herbs, pepper, paprika and worcestershire sauce) went ontop of that, and then i treated it like a regular pizza – mozarella, cheddar, parmesan, salami, mushrooms, and lots of herbs and pepper. The net result was good – i love the crispy edges of the filo pastry where nothing had been baked on it, crispy and helped with a real crisp craving. the underside of the pizza was very very oily, though, which i wasn’t too happy about – had to wipe my fingers on tissue paper after eating. Not so good. So the next plan will be to see what i can get away with in terms of oiling the base – and perhaps experiment with cooking the sheets a little (with the egg wash), and THEN putting the tomato puree etc. ontop. Frustratingly, Michiel said he preferred last week’s pizza to this, but i preferred this one. argh.
In terms of BG, today was really good – the only time i went over 6 was before breakfast and after dinner, which is excellent in terms of keeping my BG stable (and what i need, really, to avoid the health complications from the diabetes).
Watched a programme tonight i’d recorded on the video thingie from way back around xmas (yes, we’re STILL catching up!), a horizon programme about dogs (link takes you to BBC Iplayer: the initial photo is a bit alarming but i assure you, the dog isn’t being harmed – its a thing to track dog’s eye movements when they look at human faces, nothing more sinister than that). I was absolutely right earlier when i typed about the power of a cute dog: apparently humans are preconditioned to respond to dogs in much the same way that we’ll respond to babies, and not only that, that stroking a dog triggers a release of something called Oxytocin, which is perhaps better known as the hormone that encourages mother-baby bonding, its released during breastfeeding and feels very very good. Even more amazing: dogs get the same release when we pet them. So if your pet looks like she’s enjoying that tummy scratch, chances are she really is – about as much as you are! Even more amazing: some dogs have the same cognitive ability as a 2 year old child: hold up a model or a picture of a toy train and ask them to go get it, chances are they will. But amazingly, Betsy, a very smart border collie, ALSO gets it - and she has a vocabulary of around 340 words. They’re keeping her location secret (understandably so), and the researcher said its not common to all dogs – she tried on her own, and was only able to get him to understand 2 words after a lot of training.
Still, it makes me wonder: we know Jess is intelligent, and that she deserves, really, to be encouraged to make the most of it, just as a human is, so i wonder how much she could do of something like that? so last night i tried training her… I’ll let you know how it goes.
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