Divabetic Salutes Roberta Flack

Roberta Flack is the daughter of a draftsman and a church choir organist who learned to play music at her mother’s knee. She studied both Chopin and Methodist hymnody before gaining admission to Howard University.

“For the first three decades of my life, I lived in the world of classical music,” Robert Flack said in an interview with NPR. “I found in it wonderful melodies and harmonies that were the vehicles through which I could express myself.” 

After graduation, she dreamed of becoming an opera singer but instead chose a career in music education. She taught in rural North Carolina and Washington, D.C.- area schools while performing in nightclubs on the side.  Her unusual repertoire of folk revival ballads and Motown hits made her a sensation. In 1969, signed to Atlantic Records, Roberta Flack released  her debut album, “First Take.”  One of her many accomplishments is being the only solo artist to win the Grammy for Record of the Year two years in a row — in 1973 for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and in 1974 for “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”

Although she occasionally co-writes her material, Roberta Flack is mostly known as a deeply intuitive song interpreter.

“I always say that ‘love is a song’ — meaning that music reaches beyond age, race, nationality and religion to touch our hearts,” Roberta Flack told NPR. 

Throughout her career, Roberta Flack has had 18 Billboard-charting songs, four Grammy awards, 13 nominations, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement award. 

 Her hits include soul-stirring collaborations with Peabo Bryson and Donny Hathaway and chart-topping singles, showcasing her musical brilliance and emotional depth.

“My music is inspired thought by thought, and feeling by feeling,” she said in the same article. “Not note by note. I tell my own story in each song as honestly as I can in the hope that each person can hear it and feel their own story within those feelings.”

In addition to her music success, she founded the Roberta Flack School of Music at the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, offering underprivileged students a free, inspiring music education. Her dedication to music and welfare culminated in the formation of The Roberta Flack Foundation, which supports animal welfare and music education.

Roberta Flack’s music remains indelible in our lives, touching hearts and minds globally.

The Decadent Diabetic’s Roasted Ginger Shrimp in Remoulade Sauce Recipe

Chef Ward Alper aka The Decadent Diabetic’ and I believe that diabetes doesn’t have to dim your dazzle especially when it comes to entertaining.

Together we’re hoping to encourage you to enjoy life without compromising your diabetes health.

Coming together with friends and family to share meals helps build healthy relationships and promotes good overall health. But why not make the most of the meal and let silver screen legend, Ginger Rogers inspire you to experiment with spices like ginger to your meals.

Fresh ginger is good for so many things. When buying ginger look for full, plump roots that are juicy and not dried out on the ends at all.

It’s been famously stated that silver screen legend, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels!

That’s also a fairly accurate description of what life’s like for people with diabetes – they do what everyone else does while managing their blood sugars!

Ginger Rogers is quite simply one of the greatest talents that Hollywood has ever seen.  She was an actress and singer and dancer–a triple threat before people even really knew what that meant.  Not only could she do it all, she did it all so well…the result of a strong work ethic and sheer raw talent.  As an actress, she had tremendous range; she was a natural with comedy, but she could also bring a tear to your eye as she did in dramas like her Oscar-winning performance in Kitty Foyle (1940).  And as a singer, she recorded several songs that were hits at the time and continue to be standards today.  But it is for her grace as a dancer that she is perhaps best known, especially for her 10 movies with Fred Astaire.  It is important to remember she had already made a name for herself on the stage and in 20 films before their first one together, but their coupling created an image so iconic they are still known all over the world.

Roasted Ginger Shrimp in Remoulade Sauce Recipe by The Decadent Diabetic

Ingredients for Shrimp Preparation

10 RAW shrimp (16-21 size) pealed and cleaned

½ tsp. ground ginger

1 TBSP. canola oil

1 tsp. soy sauce

Ingredients for Dipping Sauce:

½ cup Mayonnaise with olive oil

1 tsp. – Dijon mustard

1 tsp. coarse grained mustard

1 tsp. white wine or cider vinegar

Directions

Preheat oven to 425° F.

Combine shrimp, ginger, oil, and soy sauce. Roast in the oven for 5-6 minutes. Allow to cool.

Mix mayonnaise, mustards and vinegar together until smooth. Place into a small dish and surround with the shrimp.

Servings: 2

Carbohydrates: 3 grams per serving

When Chef Ward Alper was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes he thought it was the end of eating as he knew it.  For the first weeks Chef Ward says he faced a tin of tuna or a slab of meat and a salad and got bored very fast. He left the table unhappy and unsatisfied. Then it dawned on him that there were plenty of foods out there that he could still eat, and even more to be created, his eyes, and his world, opened up and he came up with the motto – “Take back my life and my table”. Chef Ward has been working in the restaurant kitchen since he was 8 years old. He shares recipes and more at his blog, The Decadent Diabetic, encouraging fellow ‘divabetics’ to expand their choices.

Our ‘divabetic’ entertaining inspiration, Ginger Rogers starred with Fred Astaire in the 1935 musical, “Roberta”. It was an adaptation of a 1933 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller.

The film’s famous songs included “Yesterdays“, “Let’s Begin” (with altered lyrics), and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes“, “I’ll Be Hard to Handle“, “I Won’t Dance” and “Lovely to Look At”

https://youtu.be/rkV8fC5W0tw