Hello and welcome!

Howdy! Welcome to Beyond Sugar and Spice, the diabetic baking blog with a feminist bent. Thanks for dropping in.

So, a little about me and my motivation for starting this blog:

I love to bake... a lot. I also love to eat what I bake. When I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes a little over a year ago, I thought my days of baking tasty treats that I could also enjoy were over. But not so! Since then, I've discovered a whole world of sugar free and low sugar baking recipes, many of which you'd never know weren't the "real" (i.e. sugar-riffic) thing. But all baking can be tricky, and diabetic baking can be a special challenge...particularly when you're working with sugar substitutes. And some "diabetic" baking recipes seem to make the assumption that having diabetes means you no longer have taste buds. Nothing is more frustrating than plugging away at a new recipe, only to find in the end that even the dog won't eat it. So my hope for this blog is that it will help other diabetic bakers, and bakers in general, weed out the bad recipes, get the most out of the good ones, and have a lot of fun along the way.

So, that's the "diabetic baker" part of this little enterprise, but I imagine you're wondering where feminism fits in? Well, for one thing, I am a feminist, and proud of it. In fact, feminism is at least partially responsible for my love of baking. I started baking in college to raise money for various women's rights organizations for which I volunteered, and realized in the process that I got a great deal of enjoyment out of both the baking itself and the watching people enjoy what I'd made. But more to the point, there's been some discussion lately about the rise of traditional "domesticity" among young women who call themselves feminists, with some folks arguing that you cannot be a feminist while partaking in such traditional "feminine" activities. So let's get something straight; I bake (and knit, for that matter) because I genuinely enjoy it, and not because I feel I "should," or because I'm being ironic. And what is the point of feminism, after all, if not to ensure that women, and all peoples for that matter, may do and be as they choose?

So, in the spirit of freedom of choice, I'm glad you've chosen to take a look at the blog, and I hope you enjoy what you find!