I don’t know about you, but if I haven’t eaten in a number of hours I go a little nutty. Call it low blood sugar levels, call it hypoglycemia, but if I’m really hungry – watch out. I’m liable to get pretty snippy if you say anything that might irritate me. Eliminating refined sugar and flour products from your diet and eating more complex carbohydrates can certainly help. But here’s what else is good for moderating blood sugar levels and cravings (as proven by studies on diabetics): cinnamon (and also legumes, but today we’re talking about cinnamon). They say, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon will help. But how do you get that much cinnamon in you everyday? Well, you can sprinkle it on your cereal, and in your tea. You can also try this recipe: it’s my new favourite breakfast.
Steamed Sweet Potato with Cinnamon Drizzle
This “drizzle” is a very flavourful alternative to margarine or butter. It’s also got an amazing nutritional profile what with the protein in the nut butter, the EFAs (for good brain fuction amongst other things) in the flax oil, iron and calcium in the molasses, and the cinnamon that discourages unhealthy bowel flora and normalizes blood sugar and insulin levels. You can also try it on waffles or toast.
2 fist-sized or 1 large sweet potato
2 tbsp. nut butter (I like MaraNatha Raw Almond Butter or Omega Nutrition Pumpkin Seed Butter)
2 tbsp. flaxseed oil (I like Omega Nutrition’s Orange Flax Oil Blend)
2 tsp. blackstrap molasses or maple syrup
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. sea salt
Scrub your sweet potato (don’t peel it – or you’ll be losing the fibre and nutrients in the skin – best to go organic). Slice into thin rounds (like an eighth of an inch) and steam for about ten minutes, until soft.
In a cereal-sized bowl, combine all other ingredients. When sweet potato is done, dish it out into a coupl’a bowls and pour the drizzle on top. Serves 2 hungry people, and you’ll likely have some drizzle left over. Enjoy!
Gawd, please don’t ask me the difference between a sweet potato and a yam because I can never remember. If you do know though, please feel free to enlighten all of us in the comments.