Are you constraining yourself to a lean turkey burger and green salad when whipping up a quick dinner?

Are you craving some delicious takeout from your favorite Chinese restaurant but are afraid the dish contains too many carbs and too much sugar?

It’s time to stop worrying!

You could eat many more delicious dishes than you thought if you choose smartly. Living with diabetes doesn’t have to mean feeling deprived. What’s more important is to balance your meals and use a few cooking tricks to enjoy a healthier and more flavorful meal. That is where homemade Chinese takeout dishes come in handy.

My grandma had type-2 diabetes. She lived healthily to 95, eating homemade Chinese food everyday. My dad was diagnosed as prediabetic nine years ago. My mom serves him Chinese food almost everyday, including stir fries and dumplings. His symptoms never developed into type-2 diabetes and his sugar levels were well-controlled and close to a normal level.

Why is homemade Chinese takeout the perfect choice for diabetic cooking?

It reduces your consumption of meat without pain.
A Chinese stir fry has magic powers: it can increase the volume of a dish with less meat, in a delicious way! For example, when serving roast chicken breast or a piece of steak, you can easily finish half a pound of meat by yourself, and you could probably make room for other carbs like pasta or mashed potato on the side. However, magic happens when you cut the meat into smaller pieces, and add in colorful vegetables and a rich sauce. Look at Moo Goo Gai Pan with tender snow peas, or Black Pepper Steak with crunchy peppers. That half pound of meat suddenly becomes a giant plate of food that can be shared between two people.

It helps you get a daily share of vegetables that you actually enjoy eating.
Forget about tasteless overcooked cabbage or a green salad with minimum dressing. I would hate eating veggies as well if the dishes were poorly prepared!

The process of stir frying makes vegetables taste better and become more nutritious, as they are only cooked for a short period of time to preserve their crunchiness, color and nutrition. You can easily add plenty of veggies to a stir fried dish with some protein. Since we are using a stir fry sauce to bind everything together, the vegetables will be extra flavorful, if not more delicious than the protein!

You can dramatically reduce your sugar consumption and create a better flavor when making your own stir fry sauce.
This is the main reason I highly recommend making your own Chinese takeout instead of ordering in a restaurant. Chinese restaurants sometimes use very sugary sauces that make your blood glucose shoot through the roof. On the other hand, homemade sauces use fresh aromatics to create a bold flavor with minimum sugar added. In the case of sauces with high sugar content, such as sweet and sour sauce or orange sauce, you can use sugar substitutes instead of real sugar. There are also many other low sugar sauces, such as black bean sauce and garlic sauce, which make your dish way better than takeout.

You can further reduce your carb intake by choosing healthier side dishes over white rice.
If you assume you have to pair a stir fry with steamed white rice or boiled noodles, think again! There are many other delicious side dish options that not only have a low glycemic index, but also pair perfectly with your stir fry. For example, quinoa and brown rice are healthier options and more filling than white rice. Cauliflower rice and zucchini noodles are even better. Not only do they keep your carb intake to a minimum, you can increase your daily vegetable consumption without fuss. Another great alternative is Shirataki noodles, or zero-calorie noodles. They are a type of translucent noodle made with Japanese yam that contains high dietary fiber and very few carbs.

The cooking is practical for a weekday dinner, once you get the hang of it.
Cooking Chinese food at home might sound intimidating. You will find it much easier than you thought once you try it. All you need is a reliable recipe and a few very basic ingredients. And believe me, you don’t need to purchase a wok at all. Nowadays many Chinese families use nonstick skillets to cook stir fries, because they require less oil, are easier to clean, and generate less smoke.

The desire for delicious food and the need to maintain a balanced diet is a lifelong battle that you need to fight on a daily basis. Hopefully, homemade Chinese food will make your meal planning easier, your stomach happier, and your body healthier!

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Hear me out.

Sometimes it’s the first date. Sometimes, it’s the second date. And maybe in some cases, Chinese food might be saved for the third date. But if you want it to go beyond that and keep getting more dates with this person, there is a surefire way to solidify it and make that person crave you. Yes, even more than mushu pork.

See, it’s all too easy to take your date out for Chinese food. You can sit in a booth and giggle while munching on fried wontons until your food comes out. Maybe you’ll even get to go back to your date’s place. If you’ve opted to go to your date’s place and order Chinese takeout already, boo. You’re in trouble because you’ve set the expectations bar really low. Criminally low.

Nothing is wrong with Chinese food for a first date, or any date. But if you truly like this person and get all those feelings, don’t wind up with disappointment, crying to your friends at the bar when this date of yours stops calling. No, no, no. Take the bull by the horns and make them never want to leave you.

By making your own Chinese food at home, you’ll impress them on a whole different level.  Here’s how!

1. It’s alluring

There are more Chinese restaurants in America than there are McDonald’s. Even though you can find Chinese restaurants everywhere though, because Americans aren’t used to cooking Chinese cuisine, it’s intriguing. Someone that knows how to cook a cuisine from a country they aren’t from or haven’t ever lived in is definitely someone you want to keep getting to know.

2. It’s delicious

Very few people dislike Chinese food. There are so many different dishes that it’s easy to fall in love with one of them, or all of them.

3. It’s healthful

If the person you’re courting is big into eating right and exercising, Chinese food is a welcome option because it’s healthful. Most Chinese cooking makes use of peanut oil which is significantly healthier than other oils. It is high in monounsaturated fat (just like olive oil) which makes it heart-healthy and has loads of antioxidants.

4. It goes straight to their heart

While it’s often been said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, the same can be said of women as well. When someone takes the time to cook for us and make us a meal that is delicious, even if it wasn’t difficult to prepare, it speaks to the soul.

5. It tastes impressive yet is beyond simple

Once you have the ingredients you need to make authentic-tasting Chinese food in your kitchen, it becomes incredibly easy to make it any time you feel the urge to eat orange chicken, sweet and sour pork, Mongolian beef, and even those fall-off-the-bone pork ribs. In fact, you’ll that you’re making it for yourself sometimes when you’re alone just to get your Chinese food fix.

6. It will get you more dates

After the first date goes well and you move onto the second date, you can invite your new love interest over to partake in the particulars of homemade Chinese cuisine. It will always end with another date being secured. You may want to wait until the third date, but it’s important you roll this one out early on if you really like this person because this will absolutely secure you more dates with them.

Who could say no to homemade Chinese food? No one, that’s who! Try it once and you’ll wonder why you didn’t start making it yourself sooner.

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