Absolutely no food gives me such consistently healthy blood sugar readings as borscht. Every diabetician I’ve talked to stares at me like I’m a moron when I start listing the ingredients: a crapton of potatoes, beets, carrots, tomato sauce. Cabbage, sour cream. Plus, I usually eat it with a large raw onion on the side. And I don’t eat small, dainty portions of borscht either.
But every time, it’s sensational blood sugar readings.
Genes are real, my friends. Borscht is medicine for Ukrainians.
Also, in what concerns high-carb things, I tolerate potatoes in modest quantities. But not a grain of rice or a couple of strands of spaghetti. Lentils are poison to me. Because potatoes are more natural to Ukraine than rice or lentils.
Clarissa's Blog 
Potatoes and lentils are both the devil for my readings.
By your logic, I should be able to eat oats, but it ain’t so!
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“…I tolerate potatoes in modest quantities”
The key phrase being modest quantities. Get more whole grains in your diet: hulled barley (not pearled), oat groats, buckwheat (for “grechka”) , kamut or spelt.
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Unfortunately, buckwheat didn’t work for me. I love it, and my diabetic grandpa lived on it. Bit it’s a no yo for me.
I’ll try the other ones you recommend, thank you!
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It is the best time of Summer, the first fruit: cherries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and red currants. And this year, a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers, some of the younger women in the new housing intent upon making jams for the first time. My adopted daughter is clearly in charge becaise she knows what she is doing ;-D
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Speaking of which, why are currants so rare in North America? In Ukraine, we have tons.
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“why are currants so rare in North America?”
IINM black currants were illegal for a long time because they were considered a threat (hosting a fungus or something that is bad for pine trees).
Also gooseberries.
Of course currants are grown all over the place in Poland and so are pine trees so I’m not sure about the science.
When it comes to currants I like the juice and jam from black currants (the closest to grape jelly available) but as a simple fruit I like red, white and the salmon colored ones more.
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In Ukraine, people make jam out of them and it’s considered to be the best home remedy for colds.
This is the black currant jam. The red is simply fun.
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The native European black currant variety is considered better flavoured than the North American. My wife added dried European currants and fine walnut crumbs to to offset the sweetness of the raisins in her Christmas butter tarts. Like her shortbreads, the recipe is a couple of hundred years old.
She enjoyed handfuls of tart red currants on hot days. The ladies of the two local daycares froze the berries as a high vitamin C treat for the kids in the winter.
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“currants … a high vitamin C treat for the kids in the winter”
In Poland, homemade black currant juice is considered a general cure all for all sorts of minor ailments.
Raspberry juice too but black currant juice even more so.
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I wouldn’t argue, the commercial answers fail — and the daycare ladies do the best that they can.
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Potatoes are from South America. A lot of traditional SA food actually originates from Dutch colonies in Malaysia and Indonesia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobotie
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What is a crapton? Is that like a shit ton with a nicer word?
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