I like this ^ list; everything in alphabetical order 
The carb factors for some of the foods are different, depending on the source of the information. The difference isn’t huge. For grapefruit, numbers can vary from 0.06 to 0.1. For cooked quinoa, carb factors of 0.21, 0.28. How does experience and judgement come into play? It would seem like it could make a bigger difference if the portion were HUGE.
1 Like
I appreciate all the information shared here! I have lots of experience with “D”, and have done my own recipe calculations before, but never by weight nor have I understood about carb factors. So now I’m trying to work this all through to be familiar with it - figuring out recipes while I can. I am surprised at how many ingredients that I usually ignore (vanilla, cinnamon, etc.) have carbs. I typically take an extra unit to “soak up unknown carbs”, but now I have a better idea where those unknown carbs are coming from. I hope I can continue to make this work. Thanks again - @Jen, @Beacher, @CatLady, and @lh378. I am sure that insulin dosing will remain more of an art than a science for me, but it will better calculated. 
1 Like
At the beginning it is quite hard to calculate it. I am in the US and recipes are in stupid volume measurements, and so I had to convert all of those to weights. It was quite a task at the beginning, since we regularly cook 40-50 recipes. But over time it got easier. One thing I found helpful is i created a sheet with my common conversions i.e. a 1/2 an onion weighs 6 ounces and has 18 carbs. I also did some searching on European website where the recipe’s are already converted to weights
2 Likes
Thanks for the encouragement to not give up. It is daunting at the moment. I’m enjoying being able to google these questions - ie how many grams of carb in 1/2 C. flour. I am trusting that the answer I received is reasonably correct.
I’m also trying to put this in a spreadsheet with the hope that adding formulas will help with the work. We’ll see… but it definitely seems like it’s worth a try.
2 Likes
A lot, especially baked goods (for example, banana bread from my favorite coffee shop) and rice or potatoes or different varieties of winter squash.
3 Likes
Do you, or does he have a recipe to share 
?
1 Like
For the past 4 days my fasting BG’s ranged from 60 - 85. I am not complaining.
I have a bad habit of snacking…so even though, cheese, walnuts may be considered low or no carbs, I’m often munching on something… Therefore, I haven’t run a clean “test”. The only time I definitely do not eat is when I’m sleeping
2 Likes
I found that in order to eat Japanese food (mainly sashimi and sushi), I need to do a dual bolus over 2 hours. I generally split it for 40/60% and I find that it works seamlessly.But it did take a lot of trial and error to figure this out. the fish is fatty and high in protein, so it hangs on like a determined child clinging to a mother’s hand…now I find I get a nice flat line for hours before and during and after I eat it. always a very happy customer. but, YDMV. (also, btw, I try and maintain some constancy with the amount of fish I eat, but if I want to eat more, I just account for more carbs, but maintain the same “formula.”)
1 Like
One aspect of this pandemic is that I’ve been eating home and have been able to weigh my food. Using the carb factor and weighing the food has helped tremendously with better BG management. I have also tweaked around with my I:C ratios. It’s definitely not 1:10, as previously. The “truth” lies between 1:6.5 to about 1:8.5.
I think carb factor for mystery food and my inability to “quantify” food and their corresponding carbs will be what I need to improve…with the help of a CGM.
Have you had doctor’s “visit” during the shelter in?
1 Like
Zucchini Lasagna link:
We definitely do the step where we salt the zucchini and let some of the water out, then blot to dry before using it.
My wife can’t handle the dairy so we always make half of it without the soft cheese mixture. We tend to use more meat than the recipe calls for, and we use Rao’s spaghetti sauce for weeknight lasagna, and homemade for weekend lasagna. We use a vegetable peeler to create the zucchini slices. It is one of the larger vegetable peelers so it makes pretty thick slices which are perfect.
2 Likes
I don’t count things like this, as a rule. A teaspoon of cinnamon in a cake batter adds 2 g carb, and a teaspoon of vanilla adds 0.5 g carb, so in a slice of, say, 1/10 of your cake they’ve added 0.25 g carb – not worth thinking about. And even if you ate the whole cake, 2.5 g is not really a significant amount of carb in the big picture.
On the other hand, you could argue all those “small carb” ingredients add up: eggs, butter, baking powder, spices … but in several decades of baking, I’ve never found that ignoring them makes any significant difference to my BG. I just focus on the usual suspects: flour, sugar, milk, fruits, that sort of thing.
6 Likes
…which our own @Eric tried to do one time recovering from a bad hypo… 
4 Likes
HAHA!!! 
(but don’t forget that Doc eats donuts like they’re going out of style 
)
3 Likes
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY ALL!
For many of us, it may mean a “virtual” or distanced celebration of Mother’s Day. Have a wonderful gathering, any method 
4 Likes
I was curious as to how many carbs are “recommended” for Americans; I came across this in the Mayo Clinic:
How many carbohydrates do you need?
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that carbohydrates make up 45 to 65 percent of your total daily calories.
So, if you get 2,000 calories a day, between 900 and 1,300 calories should be from carbohydrates. That translates to between 225 and 325 grams of carbohydrates a day.
WOW!!!
225 to 325 grams is such a HUGE quantity for me today. When I look back decades ago, I likely easily had that much, maybe more. In defense of my youthful days, I was a growing young person therefore probably need more carbs; but maybe not 300 grams - wow!!
2 Likes
What’s crazy is to have a kid who eats lower carb, and watch him around his teammates at a restaurant. I swear there are kids on some of his teams that were eating 300 carbs a meal!
1 Like
A keto Facebook group said that beets were ok. I don’t know much about beets. I, too, thought that beets are sugary. When I ate beets, it was often a little bit, a few slices, or a few pieces on a salad.
What is the take on beets?
Beets in any significant quantity would not be keto friendly. Maybe in small quantities, like any other fruit or carb-y vegetable.
1 Like
I am not trying to eat keto or low carb.
I think what I’m asking for help is in making better lower carb vegetable choices that can help fill me up.
I am not that knowledgeable about which vegetables are lower carb than others. The green leafy vegetables, broccoli, kale, spinach, cauliflower, spaghetti squash, celery, are lower carbs for sure than potatoes.
There are a bunch that I’m unsure of:
String beans
Peas
Haricot verts
Tomato
What about carrots?