Give Your Valentine Real-Food Love

Whatever your love language, nothing says love like a steady supply of homemade, real-food meals for your family. It’s the heartfelt gift that keeps on giving–day after day, week after week. In fact, I see it as the ultimate gift that nonverbally communicates your desire to have your loved ones in your life as long as possible! Now that’s comfort food.

That said, what are you cooking for Valentine’s Day? It is tomorrow AND it is a weeknight, so special doesn’t have to mean time consuming. K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, silly) and make easy, real food.

Appetizers

Smoked Salmon Cucumber Roses (Diabetes Friendly)

Fast Fresh Salsa (Not exactly a Valentine’s tradition, but hey, it is red and you can make it as hot as you like it!)

Bacon Wrapped, Blue Cheese Stuffed Dates (Fancy, but made with only three ingredients!)

Main Courses

Pan Seared Scallops in Simple White Wine Cream Sauce (Diabetes Friendly)

New Fashioned Meatloaf (For extra credit, I recommend making heart-shaped mini meatloaves, or one large heart-shaped meatloaf on a cookie sheet.)

Instant-Pot Lemon Chicken Piccata (A classic, yet special as is!)

Turkey Taco Boats (I recommend using all red peppers for Valentine’s day, so they kind of look like hearts?!)

Desserts


Flourless Chocolate Lava Cake (Diabetes Friendly)

Flourless Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie (This is my favorite dessert of all time!)

Fresh Strawberry Cream Pie (This one is a little more time-consuming than my usual, but worth the effort and great for non-chocolate lovers.)

Disclosure: I was paid to develop the diabetes-friendly recipes pictured here for OnTrack Diabetes. Check out the Valentine’s Day recipe collection with recipe notes if you’re interested!

3 thoughts on “Give Your Valentine Real-Food Love

  1. Pam Burch February 22, 2019 / 7:46 pm

    I have been making your Oatmeal Cups and love them! However I wondered if you could provide the nutritional info-calories/carbs/protein as I am prediabetic working hard to lower my A1C-thank you!

    • thewanderingrd February 23, 2019 / 6:44 am

      Thanks so much for your comment and question! I’d be happy to provide the nutrient analysis of the oatmeal cups. I’m out of town this weekend but will do it this week and post here when it’s done.

    • thewanderingrd February 25, 2019 / 9:44 am

      Pam, I’ve updated the Baked Oatmeal Cups recipe page to include the nutrient analysis: https://thewanderingrd.com/baked-oatmeal-cups/

      You could eat two without fruit or one with fruit for about the same amont of carbohydrates (~30 grams). But if you prefer to keep the carbohydrates lower, you could also eat one (15 grams) with 1 T. walnuts and have 1 egg with it OR increase to 2 T. nuts without the egg to provide more protein or fat calories to fill you up without as many carbohydrates. Hope that helps!

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