Thursday, March 31, 2011

Thursday

Do you know today is Thursday?  No, really, it is!  I woke up this monring thinking it was Tuesday or Wednesday!  That doesn't bode well for my day, does it?

I've been thinking about will power lately, and my lack of it.  I seem to be losing steam here and need to get back on t rack.  Anyone have any ideas?  I'm running out.

Monday, March 28, 2011

The Visit.

What an amazing two days!  I has been a long time since the three of us were able to go away together and relax a bit.  What an amazing time we had!  If the wind had been a bit less chilly, it would have been better, but we were in Chicago after all.

The college visit was wonderful.  I always thought that I would approach these things with some trepidation and melancholy.  That part of me would be sad that my child was going away.  That was so far from the way I felt and do feel about the experience!

I could see The Boy there.  I could see him among those buildings, in those classrooms, stretching his mind and soul.  I know that sounds weird, but that is the way I felt.  It looks and feels like somewhere my boy will be happy.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Boy

Today marks another step along a path that will be our next year.  We are off to visit a college for The Boy.  While I am excited and over-joyed for the opportunities he will have, I am (as all mother's probably are) a bit wistful.

Where did the time go?  Wasn't I just changing diapers and running after a toddler just a week ago?  It seems that way!

The next year will be full of excitement, plans, hopes and dreams for our wonderful son.  He has turned into a fine young man, no longer a boy.

I am stepping onto this new path with joy and wonder at the prospects he has for himself.  I never thought I would be one of those "clingy" moms who would not let her child go.  While my fingers are itching to hold on tightly to my sweet child, my heart is singing at what an incredible person he is becoming.

Still . . . .

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Googling (Bing-ing?)

Did you ever pull up your favorite search engine and just type something random in, just to see what would pop up?  (Please tell me that does not make me a big old geek!)

Anyway, hubby and I were discussing dinner and I was pulling up a couple of recipes to see what I could fine.  Hubby saw a recipe pop up for Oven-Baked Chicken.  Then he said, "I wonder how many recipes there are for Oven-Baked Chicken."

So, I decided to find out.  Google (Bing) here I come!

Google:  About 2,180,000 results 
Bing:  18,800,000 results.


Then my brain kicked in; how many of those results are actually low-fat, low-carb?  
Back to the search engines I went:


Google:  28,700 results
Bing:  8,270,000 results
 
What did I learn from this little exercise?  I'm not sure, other than there seems to be a lot of unhealthy chicken recipes out there!

My advice, beware, there are approximately 15 million more unhealthy chicken recipes than are are healthy ones!  Downloading a recipe could be very bad for the waistline!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Whatever

Grocery shopping - $100.00+ dollars
Menus for the week - Planned
Getting back on track - PRICELESS!

The other night, after reading my blog, wonderful hubby sat down with me to discuss what we were going to do.

Ironically, just a couple of days before, The Boy had a conversation with hubby about my blood sugar and testing.  He asked his dad if I had been testing like I was supposed to.

The answer at that precise moment was no, I hadn't been.

The recounting of that conversation was the final blow for me.  When the children are noticing something awry, you know you have really gone off the tracks!

So, this evening, while everyone else was chowing down on my signature wet burritos, I was delving into a spinach salad and this awesome quiche I make that had feta cheese and artichokes in it!  It was the bomb!

Yes, I could have had a burrito, but my burritos, are 609 calories.  That is okay once in awhile, but not today!  The boys got what they want and I got to feel very virtuous as I sat there eating my bunny food!

You would not believe how wonderful it feels to have meals for the week done and all the groceries in the house, so no one has to run out at the last minute and pick something up.

We are also avoiding that horrible conversation that happens almost daily lately.  "What do you want for dinner?"  Response, "I don't know, what ever you want is fine."  Yeah, right!  The minute it is cooked and food is on the table you get "the look".  Followed by an "Oh, this is what we are having, I didn't want this."

Sometimes that makes you want to scream and beat them about the ears with the spaghetti noodles had just placed on the table!

One of my favorite day dreams involves opening a restaurant.  I have the perfect name for it.  "WHATEVER".  It's perfect!  Think about this.  You are tooling down the road and you ask the passenger what they want to eat, which restaurant do they want to go to; and you get the normal response.  "I don't know, whatever."

Then you could actually pull into Whatever and order what you want!  This is an awesome plan!  We could serve "I don't know" burgers and a "You decide" salad bar.

Just think of the possibilities, it would be an overnight sensation!  Before long "Whatever" could replace McDonald's!  Watch out clown dude, you are about to be toast!  (Yes, we would serve toast too!)

Friday, March 18, 2011

Confession

I got up this morning, took a shower and pulled on my clothes on.  I stepped in front of the  mirror to check out the outfit and there it was, a bump has appeared in what was flattened a few weeks ago.  It was the final straw in what was a difficult week.  I stood there and looked at myself in the mirror and realized exactly how badly I had screwed up.  Not only that, I had let myself and all of you down.

I seem to have lost my way, diet wise of late.  With all the new changes, starting school and the stress that has become our daily life, some things seemed to have slipped.  Unfortunately, what I had let slip is the core of what I was becoming.

It happened so slowly, so quietly, that I never even noticed.  Until this morning.

We have all but stopped doing a big grocery shopping for the week, it just seemed too hard to fit it all in.  Having a menu for the week and the appropriate food on hand has become a thing of the past.

How on earth could I let this happen?  How could I have let myself down like this?

I've been feeling horrible lately and wondered why.  Sometimes I'm not the brightest bulb in the box!

I am angry at myself I don't even know what to do!

Wait, yes I do!  Beating myself up is not going to do any good.  That will just make me more depressed and then I'll start eating everything in sight again.

I can do this!  I know I can!  I HAVE to do this.

Where do I start?
  • Buy a new scale.  I haven't been doing my weekly weigh in since it broke.  Guess we are back to Sunday morning weigh-ins.
  • Menu.  It has become hard to make a solid menu for a family of three who seem to be on 8 different schedules.  I can't let that be an excuse.  I've never shrank from difficult before, and I won't now.
  • Exercise, my big nemesis!    I need to get off my hiney and get to work.
I apologize for letting you all down.   But I can fix this.  So it looks like me and this wonderful blog are going back to basics!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Filberts

Does anyone know what a filbert is?  Yup, filberts.  Apparently they are a type of food!  The other day at the grocery I was look for a good snack and found the area of the store where they have lot of different types of nuts and dried fruit combinations.  Among all of the different blends that were offered there was one that had almonds, peanut, and filberts!  I had no idea what a filbert was, so of course I purchased it!

Then I had to figure out exactly what a filbert was.  Off to the internet!

According to Dictionary.com:
–noun 1. the thick-shelled, edible nut of certain cultivated varieties of hazel, especially of Corylus avellana, of europe . 2. a tree or shrub bearing such nuts ...


So it's a hazel nut? If it's a hazelnut, why call it a filbert???



Here I was, all excited to eat a filblert, and all they gave me was a lousy hazelnut!

I'm sort of bummed!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

New Recipe Night!

Hey everyone!  It's new recipe night!  We love new recipe night!

I'm going to get right to it:


Okay, it's not my normal recipe.  A friend of mine sent it to me and I thought it was so wonderful that I had to share it!

Friday, March 11, 2011

Grocery Shopping

I think it has been awhile since I went on one of my 'famous' rants.  Buckle up everyone, because I am Fired Up!

Here is the deal, due to some very odd and bizarre circumstances, the food budget around here is going to be even tighter than usual.  Heavy sigh, but okay, we can deal with that.

I thought . . .

Then I went to the grocery store.  Remember all that beautiful food that I had been wanting and wishing for?  Yeah, I may have to continue to wish.  Has anyone seen the price of fresh whole foods lately?  Apparently you no long buy a whole apple, it must come with the entire orchard for the price I saw!

You would not believe all the sale prices, discounts and new low prices I saw.  Except they were all on crap!  I could actually fill my cart with over a hundred dollars worth of food and eat like a queen for a week with no problem!  Of course at the end of that week, wonderful hubby would be shopping for a casket for his wife, but that's just a detail right?

A short stroll to the produce isle depressed me beyond belief!  For the same amount of money I could  put together enough meals to get us through 4 days. 

Does anyone else see the problem here?  Everyone is supposed to be eating healthier.  The media, the physicians, heck, event he government is yelling for people to stop eating so much packaged food and yet, that crappy food is so much less expensive!

Here's the other thing, in order to make the crappy food they have to start with a base of something natural (don't they?).  Then they take a bunch of chemicals and other mysterious ingredients (that all probably mutate any and all mice they tested it on!) after all of this, some really overpriced advertising agency has to hype it and make people believe that it is some nice healthy natural food.

Does this make sense to anyone?  If the garbage food has to be so processed shouldn't it be more expensive then the fresh food that doesn't have all those nice expensive chemicals and flavor enhancers in it?  I'm really confused.
 
I want the rainbow.  I want to taste the rainbow! 

I just don't want it to be skittles!

Thursday, March 10, 2011

I am sorry for the delay, but I do not seem to have the balance figured out yet with school and all.  But I do have some exciting news!


The perfect diabetic snicker-doodle has been discovered!  Yes! Necessity is the mother of invention!  Which is rather funny considering the fact that it was, in fact, my mother who who figured it out!

She is a good and caring woman!  Gotta love moms!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Colors

Have you ever noticed the color of the food that you eat?  Okay, I know that may sound silly, but I am a visual person and I believe that how your food looks has a great impact on how it tastes.

Wonderful hubby and I were talking today about the food that we have been eating.  We have been slipping and more and more junk has snuck it's way back into out diet.  I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

During the course of the conversation, I mentioned that I miss color.  I miss the color on my plate lately.

Hubby looked confused (okay, I know I am sometimes difficult to follow).  I went on to say that as a rule, junk food is all brown and blah.  It's true, think about it.  The grocery store shelves are lined with colorful and interesting boxes; yet, when opened the contents are varying degrees of brown and beige.

But when you are eating healthy whole foods, there is an explosion of wonderful color on your plate!  Incredible greens, orange, reds, and yellows.   The amazing blue/purple of blueberries and the more subtle green of celery.  These foods explode with flavors that are as amazing as their colors and veggies tend to have that awesome crisp crunch.

I miss the color on my plate.  I miss feeling happy when I look at my meal.

Think about it.  I could have a snack of a candy bar or yogurt and berries.  Which looks more appetizing?  The flat brown color of chocolate or the creamy white of yogurt spotted like poke-a-dots with red strawberries, green kiwi, or luscious purple blackberries.  (No, I do not know why they are called blackberries when they are more purpley-blue)

I think I'm going to go back to the yogurt and fruit.  Sign me up for some gorgeous salads and interesting seeds and nuts!

Why eat boring blah looking food when you could be feasting on a rainbow?

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Great Cookie Quest

While I endeavor to look at the positive aspects of Diabetes and my new eating plan, there are somethings that I definitely miss and want back, at least in some form.

Cookies, for instance, I miss chocolate chip cookies in the worst way!  You would think with all the books, research, and online information available; someone would have figured out a way to create a diabetes friendly chocolate chip cookie!

Enter my mom! (da ta da!!)  Mom has been on a quest to create the perfect "Katie friendly" chocolate chip cookie.

First, we tried substituting sugar for Splenda.  While it helped on the sugar and carb front, it produced dry and crumbly cookies.  That was no good!

Next various variations and ratios of the sugar/Splenda combination were attempted, with varying degrees of success.  The more Splenda, the more crumbly and crunchy the cookie.  More sugar made it too sweet and too much of a blood-sugar risk.  It was quite the quandry.

Today's batch had 1/2 sugar, 1/2 Splenda and a new margarine from bestlife.  It was soft and chewy with just a hint of crunch!  We seem to be on the correct path!

Sooner or later, we will come up with the perfect recipe for Katie Friendly chocolate chip cookies!  What do we do then?   Work on the Snicker-doodle recipe!