One evening this week I made pizza scima, a flatbread from Abruzzo.

Baking bread became a pandemic hobby for me. I love it, but the process takes time. Time to knead and time to rise. Time to punch down before the second rise. It’s a slow and calming practice that I have learned to appreciate. Baking bread became abeautiful way to mark the hours of a lockdown afternoon and I delighted in stopping in between work calls to take a peek under the cloth that was covering the dough, as it was snuggled – and getting ever more snuggly – in a bowl by the heater (in winter) or sunny window (in warmer weather). The oven would heat up the kitchen and as we sat down to dinner, a golden, crunchy loaf would emerge, ready to accompany whatever was being served up. 

But days are returning to somewhat (new) normal here and there is less time. No lockdown means a different pace during the day, because I now inevitably rush out during lunch hours to run errands or stop off for a quick visit to the fruit and veg market before work gets started. Or I’m slowly venturing back into the office for a day here or there. All this means that those minutes that lent themselves to slow food activities now run into each other again: time is not as leisurely as it was, and suddenly it’s dinner time without time to make a loaf of bread. 

But on this day, I wanted bread; fresh, homemade, just out of the oven, bread. 

And so, I made pizza scima! It’s a five-minute process where all the ingredients: 00 flour, olive oil, salt, bicarb soda and white wine get tossed into a bowl, mixed together and then flattened on a tray. The dough is scored, and the oven does the rest. No kneading, no proofing, no resting, no rising.

Half an hour later, a stunning crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside flatbread emerged and honestly, it is the best bread hack there is to know. (Plus, the recipe calls for only a little wine in the dough meaning you have something to drink with dinner!) Viva gl’Abruzzesi!

There’s nothing like adding a sneaky little shortcut to your repertoire – whatever that may be. I think that often people with diabetes become super smart at finding these sorts of little techniques that become a snappy solution to a diabetes problem. 

Yesterday, I learnt a new diabetes hack thanks to Kelly Kunik, DOC old-timer who writes at Diabetesaliciousness. Here is what she shared via a collaboration with Ascenisa*:

This reminded me of one of the topics for Diabetes Blog Week. For newer folks to the DOC, DBlogWeek was an initiative of Karen Graffeo who used to write at Bitter~Sweet Diabetes (seriously, check out all these people and their blogs). Each year, Karen would coordinate this monster effort, coming up with different writing prompts and then setting up a platform for them to all be collated in one space. 

Back in 2014, one of the topics was diabetes hacks and ninety-five diabetes bloggers all wrote posts sharing tips and tricks they have discovered that goes towards making their diabetes a little easier. Here’s what I wrote. I’m so pleased to find that all the other contributions are still all together on this link, and I’ve just spent a delightful hour scrolling through and re-reading some of them, getting a refresher on some super ideas from super people!

Call them hacks, call it inspired improvisation, but MacGyvering the fuck out of diabetes is a talent worth cultivating, because you never know when a diabetes moment will call for it. 

DISCLAIMER

I am on the Editorial Board for Ascensia Diabetes. I am paid for the pieces I write that appear on their blog. Kelly is also on the Ed Board. Sharing this for no other reason than it blew my mind!