Originally Posted by Iceblossom

I have a problem as well, I just love rice and pasta and grains and bread and cake and all that -- but I really have to watch what I eat or my glucose levels get out of control. Beans do have carbs but are low gylcemic index. Most of what they don't want us to have is in the corn, but this is a manageable amount.

For a summer side dish, black bean salsa/salad: Rrinse can of small black beans, add 1-2 ears corn (raw, slice the kernels off the cob, you can parboil just a bit but best on the less cooked side), chopped onion to taste (I use sweet onions and use quite a lot up to a whole one, you would most likely do a full bunch of green onions, or half or less of a strong onion). Some colorful green, red, yellow peppers cut up into confetti. If you want to add some hot peppers here's your chance, again to taste. Finely chopped cilantro. Finish with some crumbled cotija (or feta or similar hardish salty non-melty type cheese) Squeeze a couple of limes over everything, add an optional tablespoon or two of oil, stir it and call it good. It stays nice for several days.

When I had to change my eating style, I had to look at things differently. When I was a working single mom, I didn't have the time to chop up vegetables but was too cheap (and the offerings are much more plentiful now) and such, now I buy a lot of the pre-prepped things. Like right now in the fridge that I need to use up in next couple of days is some zucchini turned into noodles, and a bunch of cut up peppers. I have found that I don't want to rice cauliflower (although don't mind eating it as a potato substitute at all), or make vegetables into noodles myself. Sometimes when I'm dealing with my various issues, like a bad stretch of depression, the amount of work (which at other times seems minimal) involved in prepping my ingredients meant that if I didn't do them as soon as I came home, chances were about 50/50 I wouldn't actually use those vegetables and I would waste money by throwing them out limp and sad. I decided that if I had to spend a little more to not give myself the excuses to end up with fast food, that was a better way to spend my money and probably less of a hit buying prepared fresh ingredients than I was letting perfectly good things go to waste.