Today’s Topic:  Taking a cue from Adam Brown’s recent post, write a post documenting what you eat in a day!  Feel free to add links to recommended recipes/shops/whatever.  Make it an ideal day or a come-as-you-are day – no judgments either way.  (Thank you, Katy of  Bigfoot Child Have Diabetes for this topic.) To see other posts in this category, click here.

Here we are on Day 5 of 2015 Diabetes Blog Week. More than once this week I have strayed from the topic at hand and today is another one of those days. Rather than outline what I eat in a day, I am going to share one of my favorite cooking gadgets and highlight the most beautiful salad that I have ever made. Katy who submitted this topic won’t be mad at me because if she doesn’t already have a spiralizer, she will after she learns about zoodles and sees my beautiful salad.

Earlier this year on Facebook, my D-buddy Kate Cornell talked about fixing zoodles for dinner. I am not a very inspired cook, but this discussion interested me. Like what in the heck is a zoodle? Whenever I read what Kate is cooking, I always wish that her delicious low carb meals could beam through the Internet and land on my table. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet…

I was sufficiently intrigued with zoodles to find out from Kate that they are zucchini noodles that are made using a gadget called a spiralizer. Zoodles cook quickly and are an amazingly good substitute for noodles for those who want to eat low carb, increase the quantity of vegetables in their diet, or eat gluten-free. I asked Kate what brand of spiralizer she owns and ordered the same one (Gefu) from Amazon.

My spiralizer arrived and I spiralized zucchini (zoodles) and yellow squash (squoodles?) for dinner several times. They were delicious and so easy to prepare. Amazingly I have not yet served my zoodles with pasta sauce, but I will soon.

In early April I was having a friend over for supper and decided that I wanted to use my spiralizer to make either soup or a salad. I looked at photos online and found the most gorgeous vegan salad. You can find the photo and recipe here.

I do not follow a vegan diet and it is probably a sacrilege that I used this salad as a model for my chicken salad plate. But I did and I thought the result was great. (The other non-vegan part of the salad besides the chicken and probably the mayonnaise was that I used feta cheese instead of tofu.) Later on in April I had more friends over for dinner and once again plated the salad. I was universally complimented for the dinner and it was a great low-carb meal for me. I served bread both times with the salad and that is why the left side of the plate is empty in the photo.

Since then I have purchased a spiralizer cookbook called Inspiralized by Ali Maffucci. Ironically she learned about the spiralizer from her mother who has Type 1 diabetes. I also follow Maffucci’s blog. You can also Google spiralizer recipes and find great meal ideas.

The Gefu spiralizer is fine and I left it at my Arizona house. I have just ordered a new spiralizer for Minnesota and decided to buy one with more blades because Maffucci talks about blades 1-4 in her recipes and the Gefu has only 2. You can find spiralizers priced from about $15 to $50. I am not experienced enough to provide any advice.

Random spiralizer fact:  According to Maffucci, one of her readers sent in a video with her child jumping rope with a zoodle.

Another fact: You can also use a spiralizer to make “rice” from vegetables or even spiraled buns.

Final fact: If I can do this, anyone can.