Month: March 2026

Deconstructing a Hoagie to Make a Low-Carb Salad

This last week has been intense while I’ve been tracking all the food I’m eating and testing my blood sugar four times a day! Next week I meet with a specialist to discuss everything about the meds I’m taking and the food I should be eating to manage my blood sugar. So far, I’m doing well at tracking and I can see the immediate results of the benefits of low-carb eating on my blood sugar. My health care providers (April and Laura, who both read this blog…smile) would be very proud of me! You are my inspiration to tackle this issue!

Several weeks ago a young neighbor girl came to our door selling hoagies as a fund-raiser for her school. We always try to help. Of course, the hoagies arrived yesterday afternoon! I knew I could not consider the bun part of my new food plan! So, I opened the package to see what I could salvage for supper.

The meat and cheese were in the bun, with all the other components shrink-wrapped and laid inside. Very easy to deal with.

I started by putting the lettuce and tomato slices in my salad bowl. I usually like more tomato and lettuce in a salad, so I added some:

I set aside the mayo, dressing, pickles and chopped onion…Bert often uses my onions! Then I chopped half of the turkey and cheese. The other half went into the fridge for my next salad!

Finally, I wanted more vegetables in my salad, so I added some chunks of yellow sweet pepper and a few sugar snap peas.

This all made a great salad!

So, what happened to the rest of the hoagie? The other half of the meat and cheese went into the refrigerator.

The mayonnaise also went into the refrigerator. Bert liked the idea so he deconstructed his hoagie and added my onions, pickles and dressing to his salad. We were left with two buns. Bert ripped them apart and put them near the bird feeders. They are visited by various animals during the night. So, no waste!

This is helping me think about the challenges of eating at a restaurant. Most places have some kind of garden salad. I should be able to order a plain hamburger or meat entre and put it on top of a salad, right? I usually bring my own dressing so that works!

Anyway, while I’m staying out of the kitchen, I seem to be able to really crank out greyhound coats. It keeps my hands busy and Nittany Greyhounds is grateful for the coats! Enjoy!

If you have comments, questions or ideas for low-carb meals, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Finding Fleece Online at PicoTextiles.com

I’ve finally found a great source of fleece fabric to make greyhound coats! Check out: https://picotextiles.com.

This site has a variety of very affordable fleece, along with many other kinds of fabric like flannel and cotton broadcloth. The price per yard for fleece ranges from $7.95 to $12.95 with many on sale. Their website says:

We offer exceptional wholesale discounts on fleece and other fabrics for various organizations and their associates: charities, schools, hospitals, churches, temples, Project Linus, Soldiers Angels, Boy/Girl Scouts, wholesalers and more.

Receiving your discount is simple; just contact one of our customer service representatives before placing your order and let them know about your affiliation.

So, the next time, I’ll figure out how to have Nittany Greyhounds qualify for wholesale discounts!

Of course, ordering online has the same issues as in a store with bad lighting…you really can’t see the true colors. For example, I ordered 3 yards of ‘kelly green’ thinking it would go with plain white. The green is quite bright and will probably glow in the dark! When I paired it with the white fleece it was quite stunning!

Green and White

I also ordered a Native American print with a beige solid:

When I unpacked the fleece, I realized the beige really didn’t go with the tan and brown print, but the white looked much better. The beige seemed to tone down the bright green so I switched them around. With 3 yards of each color, I can make four green coats with a beige lining and four tan and brown print coats with a white lining! Yay!

It might not look much different here but the green and beige look good:

…and the white looks good with the tan and brown print:

I’ll show you the finished coats in a week or two!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Thinking About Spring

Take a walk with me around our property. I think spring is holding her breath right now! We are finally free from snow piles, but the grass is just waiting to see if it’s safe to turn green. I walked up the hill to see if the forsythia was starting to bud out. From a distance, the plants have a slightly yellow cast, but the buds are still pretty tight.

The garden on the hill is also waiting…no new green shoots yet for the echinacea or the lavender. They are my bookends for the garden.

From the hill, I wanted to document the two Butternut trees. From this view, the tree on the right is the one that is dying. Last year it barely had leaves. Every time we have a windstorm limbs come down. It really looks pretty sad in the summer. In the next month or so, when it isn’t so muddy, Bert will cut it down and use the wood in the shop stove. When he does that, I’ll try to document the process.

You can see the various planters near the patio just waiting for spring planting!

The back of the shop has our compost tumblers. One is in active use and the other just gets tumbled. Bert will add that compost to some of the garden soil. It’s amazing how much stuff we put in there and at the end of the season there’s hardly anything in it but black ‘gold.’

The space to the left of the shop under the spouting is ready and waiting for Bert to set up the rain barrels. He waits until we stop having freezing weather…frozen water in the plastic barrels could crack the plastic. Without plants in the garden, we don’t need that water yet anyway.

Here’s another view of the Butternut trees. You can see the one on the left looks pretty straggly.

And finally, our group of Red Bud trees struggle every year but Bert keeps trimming the dead limbs. I’m sure the birds would not be happy if we lost those trees…it houses our bird feeders and bird bath that the deer also visit every night.

Not much to see yet, but plan to follow along with my posts about our Garden of 2026. We are ready!

If you have questions or comments, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Making Rye Pocket Bread

I could just share with you the recipe to make Rye Pocket Pita Bread and pictures of the final product. However, I thought you might enjoy reading, or seeing pictures of, how it took three tries to get it right! Never be afraid to try something more than once (even if you set off the smoke alarm!). I now have a simple recipe to make sandwich buns, an old recipe for Rye Pocket Bread (which I will not use again!), and a great recipe that makes a delicious Pocket Pita Bread that uses Rye flour. Whew!

Finding a New Recipe

It all started with a recipe I found online called, ‘Soft & Fluffy Homemade Pita Bread.’ It sounded pretty easy but the layout of the ingredients list was awkward. I went ahead and mixed up a batch in my mixer. It was a pretty dry mix. I should have started with less flour and added more as needed. My mistake. Anyway, the finished rolls were tasty but did not make a ‘pocket’ when baked. The rolls were delicious and soft, so I revised the format of the recipe and renamed it, ‘Sandwich Buns.’ Below are pictures of the buns and the recipe so you can try it yourself. I did take pictures along the way, but I’m not going to post them all here…my goal was to find a good recipe to make flat breads that make a pocket.

Sandwich Buns

Finding an Old Recipe

I had remembered that about 45 years ago when my kids were little (1980 or so) I met a woman in a mother’s group. She was from the Middle East and was in State College because her husband was studying at Penn State. She graciously offered to show me how to make pita bread with pockets. I spent an afternoon at her apartment while she whipped up a huge batch of rye pocket bread. She was making enough to last her family for a week…it was their bread of choice. By the time I left I felt confident I could make them myself…and I did for quite a while.

Of course, time passed, the recipe stayed in my notebook and my life got more complicated. Needless to say, I had to really hunt to find the recipe again yesterday. The recipe called for plain yogurt and rye flour. I had neither! I knew I had some whole wheat flour that could substitute for the rye flour. I picked up some yogurt at the grocery store.

This time I decided to mix the dough up by hand…big mistake! My hand/arm strength could not mix the flour in well enough so I had to do most of the kneading by hand. Next batch…use the mixer!

It was a very soft dough, thanks to the yogurt. Everything worked well except…I tried to lay the circles of dough on cornmeal on the cookie sheet. Might have worked if I hadn’t made the oven too hot. The old recipe called for 500 degreesF and it was just too hot for the loose cornmeal on the cookie sheets. Just as I was taking the cookie sheets out of the oven the cornmeal was smoking hot and of course the smoke alarms were set off! Geez!

In the end, the pocket bread made fairly nice pockets but I’ve now revised the old recipe and will try it again tomorrow. I now have a small bag of rye flour, enough yogurt to make the recipe again, and will make the oven temperature only 425 to 450 degreesF.

So, here is the revised Rye Pocket Bread recipe and a picture of the finished products.

Rye Pocket Bread

Pocket Bread with Sloppy Joe

Sometimes, making a new (old)recipe leads to some changes. In this case, I ended up with two good recipes and one old recipe that got ‘retired.’

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com. Let me know if you’d like me to post the step-by-step to make this recipe!