Christen’s Go-to Bariatric Snacks!

Hi, everyone! I hope your summer is going great! I just got back from a fun summer camp out, and before that I was at a scrapbook convention all weekend. I can safely say that my summer has rolled out and is in full swing! When it comes to busy activities and planning family fun-time, one of the biggest debates we have is what we are going to eat. It is easy to plan something healthy for meals, as we have a good running list of family recipes that we refer to when we make our plans, but the snacks are where we find ourselves in a pickle. If we don’t make plans for healthy snacks, we find ourselves either hungry and cranky, or making poor decisions when it comes time to eat.

I keep a handy list of quick and easy snacks  on my phone  that I can reference when needed. I tend to get tunnel vision when it comes to food, and find myself eating the same thing over and over again until I get burnout. Since I have had bariatric surgery, I have a little bit more restrictions when it comes to what I should eat. I could eat just about anything now since it has been several years since my surgery, but I really prefer to keep as close to the meal recommendations as I possibly can. Here’s what’s on my list:

Hand-packed snacks:

Boiled eggs

Baby carrots

String cheese

Meat and cheese roll-ups (ham and Swiss is my favorite)

Sugar-free popsicles

Tuna pouches

Pickles and olives

Salami or pepperoni with cream cheese 

Sargento Balanced Breaks

Oikos Triple Zero yogurt

Protein bars:

Premier Protein - chocolate peanut butter 

Quest - s’mores

Atkins - protein wafer crisp lemon vanilla

Protein shakes:

Muscle Milk 100 Calorie

Premier Protein 

Atkins

MRE Lite - in powder form mixed with milk 

I know that a lot of these snacks might seem a little bland, but they are great if you are looking for high protein and low sugar snacks. Most of these items you can keep on hand at any given time. Additionally the shelf life of most of them is longer than many other snacks. The best part is they take little to no fuss. You can grab and go or pack a little snack bag or even pre-make a few lunch meat wraps. Usually when I buy a new package of salami and cream cheese, I will go ahead and put the whole package together so that I can grab a few right from the fridge. It is super helpful to have these ready to go now that I work from home. Having these yummy filling snacks available whenever I want them keeps me from running through the pantry and grabbing chips or a handful of cookies, which is very dangerous now that I work from home. 

Do you have any delicious quick and easy snacks or bariatric snacks that are your favorite? I would love to hear what you keep on standby. Be sure to stop by and continue the conversation on MMC Chat on Facebook.

Sugar-Free Recipes Revisited

Last month, I wrote about my holiday cookie tradition, and in our podcast, I mentioned that I would try to find a way to make my cake-mix cookies in a sugar-free way. I wanted to take my recipe (linked below) a step further and make them keto. As we have discussed before, sugar-free doesn’t necessarily mean keto.

There are plenty of sugar-free cake mixes out there. What immediately comes to mind is the popular sugar-free line of cake mixes by Pillsbury® that could be easily substituted in my earlier recipe for cake mix cookies to lower the sugar content in the cookies. To make it keto, I needed to take it a step further and lower the carbohydrate content as well.

In the past, I have been on different forms of a low carbohydrate diet. These types of diets are difficult for me because I have a sweet tooth. As I mentioned in my sugar-free baking blog, I have been on the hunt for a substitute to trick my brain into thinking I am being bad while I am still being somewhat good. I call it “healthy junk,” and I have been on a mission to satisfy those cravings since I started my weight loss journey in the spring of 2019.

I typically go to Sprouts Farmer’s Market or Market Street to get my “healthy junk”, and I will further explain my grocery shopping science in an upcoming budget shopping blog. However, I want to explain why I like these grocery stores so much. Sprouts caters to individuals with special diets such as myself (I am low-carb, gluten-free, and mostly dairy-free) by labeling their pre-packaged foods with diet-friendly labels to make the process of grocery shopping quicker and easier. The labeling process is also very helpful for those just starting out on a special diet.

At the store, I discovered that Swerve® also makes a sugar-free and keto-friendly cake mix. I also picked up some Lily’s® no sugar added Pumpkin Spice chips (on clearance) for a low-sugar add-in. From there, I kept the recipe the same and just substituted the Swerve® cake mix and the pumpkin spice chips. I did not change the oil and egg ratio or the baking time. I wanted to see how they turned out.

I could not be happier with the result! The box yielded 18 cookies with less than 1 gram of sugar and 4 grams of carbohydrates per cookie. As with Swerve®, if you are familiar, this consistency is a bit grainier than a normal cake mix cookie, but the taste is very similar.

For keto dieters that are not a fan of Swerve® or would like a cheaper option that you can find in any grocery store, Duncan Hines® also has a keto cake mix on the shelves as well as Birch Benders®

As always, let me know what you think in the comments below. If you try this keto recipe, what would you do differently?

Check out our downloads page for my cake-mix cookie recipe:

Downloads

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Sugar Free Recipes for the Holidays

One thing I really enjoy about this time of the year is the baking. My mom and I spend quite some time together in the kitchen. Even my daughter Reyna enjoys partaking in this holiday tradition. There is usually a great deal of laughter, a little swearing, at least one bickering session over techniques, and a lot of bonding that goes on. Each year Mom and I sit down and pre-plan out what sweets and treats we will be making, and the cookies, candy and holiday bread start churning out of the kitchen shortly after thanksgiving is over. Most of the candy is shared with others, but that doesn't mean there isn’t a mountain of candies on the countertop at both of our homes. We make these sweet treats to enjoy and share but too much can be dangerous for our health. 

Cindy and Christen making Fruit Cake Cookies 

also known as Christmas Crack

You might not be aware, but my husband is diabetic as well as my mom. I am also working hard on maintaining my own healthy diet, as I am very close to being diabetic myself. I had weight loss surgery in 2018, and I need to keep a close watch on my carb and sugar intake. It is a real challenge when the winter months come around to stick to our diets because we all want warm fulfilling foods, and to top it off the sweet tooth really seems to come out too! In the past, Mom and I would just make lots of candies, and not be concerned with the amount of sugars we were consuming. As the years have gone on, and we are more self aware, we realized that some changes need to be made so that we can continue our baking traditions, but not kill ourselves and our family with all the excess sugars and carbs.

One thing I want to specify is that there is a wide spectrum of food, recipes and replacement sweeteners out there. You will want to watch things closely; just because something is sugar-free does not mean it is low in carbohydrates. I am not a health food expert or nutritionist by any means. Infact, I regularly depend on others' expertise to make sure that I am making healthy choices and selecting the right products. I have been learning some tricks though. It seems that this past year especially, Mom and I have been exploring various family recipes that we have enjoyed over the years, but with a twist. We will take one of the ingredients (like the sugar) and convert it to a sugar-free substitute, or exchange the flour for a lower-carb or no-carb option. We have even tried some keto recipes that were very similar to some of our all time favorites. 

There have been some successes and some major failures. My best advice I can give you at this time is to try it at home for casual dining first to ensure that it tastes good. Don’t volunteer to make someone’s birthday cake and then try to make a keto cake from an unfamiliar method without trying it first. Sometimes you will be blown away by the similarity, and other times gravely disappointed. For example, we made a keto dump cake while camping a couple of months ago, and it was a little disappointing. I was just glad that it was only our family eating it, and not something we had to take to a potluck!

The absolute best recipe conversion that we have done to date was an old favorite of mine since I was a kid called “Mexican Wedding Cookies”, also known as “Russian TeaCakes” and “Snowball Cookies”. I think I have seen them called “Danish Cookies” as well. Mom and I have made these cookies time and time again. They have a short ingredient list so the taste is very specific and consistent year over year. This is a simple recipe if you want to try something sugar free and are still on the fence about the taste of sugar free desserts. It's also a great way to bake and give someone the gift of a sugar free dessert, which would be totally awesome, because you can ask anyone who is restricted to sugar-free options and they will tell you that there is hardly ever anything sugar-free for dessert.

So bust out your apron, you will want it for this delicious sugar-free recipe below:

Be sure to listen in on the Podcast on Wednesday and we will be taking a deeper dive into sugar-free baking. If you would like a printable version of the recipe click here.