Dangerous Games...

When I was a kid there were toys on the playground that you could seriously hurt yourself on.  Swings so tall that you could launch yourself far enough to break an arm when you hit the ground.  See-saws where the board was so long that when you were up in the air your feet were dangling 4 feet above the ground.  And you could easily fit two or three kids on each side.  Someone always fell off.  Or worse... they rolled off when I was up in the air which made me drop like a rock!  Owww!  Maybe I was just little and everything seemed huge.  Well... I'm riding that see-saw right now and I feel the need to get off.  :)  My friend Dee asked me on facebook a couple of days ago where my blog was.  I told her I was too fat to write a post.  Still true!  But oh well.  January is right around the corner and with it the promise of better dietary behavior.  (insert big sigh here)  This morning the fatometer read 154.5 and glucose 113.  It's time for another visit to the doc for blood tests.  I've been stalling because I'm sure the results won't be quite as positive as the last round.  They won't be horrible but - meh!

I have made and consumed a few tasty salads lately.  That's a good start.  It's not as easy to eat fresh healthy veg and salads when you can't just go out to the garden and pick them.  Takes more planning.  The ideas are not coming to me as readily.  I'm more inclined to think about almond roca and cookies this time of year.  And pot roasts and potatoes.  I did have a tasty salad for lunch yesterday though...


This was an old stand by from summer... cukes, tomatoes, mozzarella, basil but winterized with a sprinkling of left over wild rice and red wheat berries.  With just a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  Very tasty.  I should go back through some of my old pics to remind myself of what I should be eating.  :)

One more exciting piece of news from yesterday... my last Christmas present arrived.  A Boos Block cherry wood cutting board.  Dave is so sweet to get that for me!  I love it!

It may not look that exciting - but it is!  It's big and beautiful!  Dave did not understand why I just had to have one until I told him that all the chefs on the Food Network channel have one :)  Yeah - you guessed it...  enormous eye roll :)
Go check it out on Metro Kitchen:  http://www.metrokitchen.com/product/JB-CHY-R02
One of my new fav websites.  I've enjoyed free shipping all Christmas season.  Which is awesome since my knives were a little heavy and this board was seriously heavy!  It's actually darker than it appears in the pic.  And it will get darker over time.  I need to go get some mineral oil to treat/seal it.  Now you just watch.  You will now notice a Boos cutting board all the time when you watch your favorite cooking shows.  :)  And you'll remember you saw it here first.  You'll also remember that a cutting board does not make a chef... unfortunately.  If it did I would be awesome!  :)

Well gotta roll.  Gotta get to work.  It's snowing and blowing so hard it feels like a power outage kind of day.  At the very least it will be a snow shoe walk to the mailbox kind of day.  Umm... if I don't see you again before... HAPPY NEW YEAR!  :)  Since there will be New Year feasting I will write my next post when I am BACK DOWN to 154.5 :)  I'm horrible!  I promise to redeem myself next year!  Here's to a healthier 2011.  Hey, I'm still way better than spring 2010!

Ciao!

Out With The Old, In With The Moo - Continued

Fortunately I've been able to resist the Harry and David tower of treats under my tree and my stats reflect this.  This morning 152.6 and glucose 98.  Yay!  It would be awesome if this were the last time I lose those pounds :)

I've been rummaging around in my freezer in order to make room for Panda as we discussed last post.  I found some cube steaks I had purchased over Thanksgiving to make Salisbury steak for Michele - but we never got around to eating that.  Too much other stuff to eat!  I marinated it over night with grilling rub and Worcestershire sauce and seared it in my grill pan then sliced it up and made a steak salad out of it.

That's not a good pic... I really have to check the settings on my camera.  But you get the idea.  Romain hearts, shredded carrots, sun-dried tomatoes, crumbled goat cheese and marinated cube steak -topped with pine nuts.  It's been awhile since I was inspired to make a salad.  Of course I have made some - I just have not been very excited about them.  Too darn cold over here in snow country!  I enjoyed this one.  The salad was simple and tasty.  The steak was nice and warm and had a nice kick from the seasonings.  I just drizzled it with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  It made a nice light dinner.  Dave enjoyed it too.  With the other half of the steak or rather.... barely hanging together ground beef :) I purged my fridge and made soup.  That will be for dinner tonight.  It's sort of a minestrone type soup.  It also used up some beef stock from the freezer.  Oh... I just remembered... I'll go down and drag some shredded zucchini out of the freezer and add it.  And maybe I'll throw in a little bit of frozen left over stuffing too.  :)  (DONE) I love to save left over stuffing.  It adds lots of flavor and texture to just about any soup.  This particular batch of soup is getting pretty busy though.

Ok... dinner is over and I have to admit I was a little unsure what the soup would turn out like.  It was actually good.  Whew!  Well.... Even if it wasn't it was just stuff I would eventually have had to throw away.  Nice save though!  I made some sourdough cheesy bread to go with it.  I only had half of the piece that is shown here...

Enough about soup!

I also excavated some nice shrimp and clams that Dave's friend Scotty brought us when he came to visit in November.  They will be great in my Christmas Eve Seafood Chowder.  I still need some cod or flounder though.  Too bad there's none of that in there.  There are some tuna steaks but - I just can't get my head around tuna in seafood chowder.  Nope!  Not gonna happen!  There were also round sourdough loaves in the freezer.  I think I'll hollow them out and serve the chowder in them.  Well... for Dave and Amberlyn anyway.  I can't be trusted with a sourdough bread bowl :)  There were also some nice chicken breasts from Costco and I pulled out some tomato puree that I had frozen from the very last of my tomatoes.  They will make some fabulous tomato soup.  I'll serve them with sourdough grilled cheese sandwich strips.  I think I'll plan to indulge in those.  Ummm!  There are still two fat rib steaks courtesy of Scotty.  I have not taken them out yet.  I was planning on grilling those tomorrow tonight but Amberlyn who WAS coming over tomorrow is delaying her trip to spend time with her very handsome boyfriend.  While I would rather hang out with him than me too... well... I guess no rib steaks.  Too bad because those freezers are not nearly empty.  I'm trying to get the really good stuff out before Dave starts tossing everything out to the cows, dogs and chickens.  Hey - the turkeys are back... I bet they will help eat some spare bread from the freezer that I might have to toss.  I'm not sure I want to encourage them though.  They almost hang out on the porch as it is these days.  And those darn dogs just cozy up to them.  They truly are good for absolutely nothing.  But so sweet!  They are my pals.

Ok... I apologize!  I'm done now :)

Ciao!

The Gift That Keeps On Giving!

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Costco featuring what appeared to be some very nice pears on a pretty tray.  I thought my mom might like the tray - and the pears, and my dad might like to complain that I got him pears for Christmas :)  so I ordered them and had them shipped to my parents house in Dover, TN.  I just love ordering things online!  I included a little note.  They arrived quickly.  Only problem was that the card was from someone else and made no sense at all.  The only way they knew that were from me was that the packing slip said purchased by Kathy Olsen.  My mom called and I had a good laugh about the note mess up.  I really didn't care as long as the gift arrived.  Several days later a box of truffles - also Harry and David showed up at their house as an appology gift.  I though that was pretty cool!  A two-fer!  That was great!  They can mess up my order anytime!  What my parents don't know is that when I arrived home from Woodinville under my tree was a Harry and David tower of treats.  :) I assume it's my apology gift for screwing up my order.  I didn't find a card yet but there must be one in my pile of confusinon and disorder that typically follows me whereever I go.  :)  It's beautiful!  I've always admired them in catalogs but never had the pleasure of being the recipient.  Of course now that I have declared an end to the holiday binging I will let other people eat the contents but I will enjoy the pretty boxes. 

Here's another really cool present...  Our daughter Amberlyn gave this to everyone in our family last Saturday night at our little family gathering.  I thought it was a wonderful and very thoughtful idea.  She made it.  It's adorable... little jars of hot cocoa mix.  They look so pretty and the card says...

 "The greatest gift is family and knowing that you're there.  We can all be connected by sharing this cup of hot cocoa on Chrismas Day".  Isn't that cool?  Thanks Amberlyn!  What a sweet gift!

I'll end by reporting that one pound slithered away and my glucose level is inching back down.  154.2 and glucose 116.  Wonder how many times I have lost that pound?  :)

Actually I'll end by showing you this not so great photo...  The real thing is oh so much prettier...

as I've been sitting here typing away the sun has been busy rising.  I happened to glance up and see a beautiful pink reflection in the window on the barn and realized that we have a georgous sunrise this morning.  It snowed about three inches yesterday so evertything is fresh and white.  It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  :)

Ciao!

The Unsuccessful Holiday Dieter!

Hi Yall!  I'm so lame!  :)  Well... I'm just back from a wonderful week in Woodinville/Bothell spent at work and with family and friends.  It was fantastic and fattening!  Now I have to report my poor behavior.  It all started with the Roca I made to give away for Christmas.  I ate so much of it that it made me ill.  Not nearly as ill as my mother though one year.  (Let's see if I can switch the focus from me for just a minute...)  I have made this recipe for years!  One of my nice little clients gave me her secret recipe back in the 80s.  I worked at John Patrick's hair salon at the time and she was always one of my favorites.  Her name is Janette.  This is a tribute to your Roca recipe Jeanette :)  Where ever you are.  I made it every year around Christmas time.  This particular year I may have made it for my dad's birthday.  In any case it was a gift for him and it was packed in a quart Mason jar.  My mom happens to love Roca too. She tried many times throughout the day to get him to crack open the jar but he just wouldn't.  Finally he went to bed and she was unable to resist any longer so she opened the jar and ate just one piece.  Of course that was one piece at a time until there was only one piece left in the jar.  She went to bed and was tortured by the thought of the one lonely piece left in the jar until she got up and ate it too.  You can just imagine the confrontation in the morning when Dad finally decided he wanted a piece of his Roca.  :)  Somehow it was all his fault since he wouldn't eat a piece yesterday when she offered it to him.  Amazingly I completely understand that logic.  She was rewarded by being so sick she felt steam coming out of her ears.  I also know that feeling.  Oh woe is me!   The picture above is the Roca packed up and ready to get out of my house!  Good riddance!

I did make one good choice last week.  On Friday evening I wanted to order a French Dip sandwich but instead I ordered chicken lettuce wraps.  Brenda's French Dip looked oh so much tastier.  :)  Other than that it was pretty much a free for all.  There were so many yummy things to eat!  And I did.  Bummer!  :)  I'll go ahead and just admit that I gained a few pounds back.  Again!  This morning the fatomer read 155.2 and glucose 121.  I thought it would be worse.  I forgot my glucose monitor last week.  How convenient!  Now I must be good and shrink again - or I'll look like all the rest of the middle age ladies in January on the cruise ship in my swim suit pretending to be thinner - and not convincing anyone!  :)  My friend Donna gave me a great tip.  Always take the stairs!

We did enjoy being with our west side family on Saturday evening.  Dave's brother and sisters and many of their kids were there.  We were only missing Aaron, Sue's son who is in the AF stationed in North Carolina.  All of our kids were there too except for my Katie and her little family, also in the AF stationed in southern CA.  We miss our little soldiers!  I did get to enjoy watching my oldest granddaughter Aubrey opening presents.  She had more presents that anyone.  :)

Now that I am back home I have to begin working on cleaning out our freezers.  A project I call... out with the old, in with the moo.  :)  We are welcoming our cow Panda back.  She will have a fabulous new look.  I'm horrible!  I really do hate the butchering aspect of the cows!  Anyway.... I am a bit of a food pack rat.  When I cut up veggies I save the end pieces and add them to a plastic freezer bag.  Same with beef bones or shrimp shells - anything that would make good soup stock.  Today I excavated those out of the freezer and made some "Souper Stock".  Unfortunately it is now taking up more room in the freezer than the bits and pieces that came out - but oh what wonderful soup I will have.  I always make seafood chowder for Christmas Eve. The shrimp shells and veggie stock will be perfect for that.  Here's what it looks like boiling away...

You can see the red and yellow onion ends and bits of carrot and shrimp shells.  Not pretty but if you happen to stop by on Christmas Eve you would be sold on scavenging your bits and pieces.  Good quality stock is expensive!  This made 5 quarts.  I also excavated some chili from the freezer and heated it up for dinner.  Very tasty!   Unfortunately I barely made a dent.  I haven't even thought about the freezer in the barn yet.  Well... I guess I'm off to scope that out next.  Who's hungry?  We may need some help!  Now that I think of it... I believe Adam may be coming over for Christmas.  Problem solved.  He'll eat anything!  :)  And lots of it!

I'll really have to work really hard to correct my lame behavior now or I will have to rename my blog as my dad commented and call it - The Unsuccessful Dieter.  I'm not giving in though!  Pa has irritated me just enough to make me want to fly right!  :)  He's very good at that!  Thanks Pa!

Ciao!

Oh The Brutality!

It is SO much easier (and more pleasurable) to put the pounds on than take them off!  Hmm... same with getting pregnant :)  Both of those processes end with screaming and wanting to kill people.  I have small progress to report.  Glucose 101 and fatometer 153.2.  Pretty lame.  I was down to 148!  And I still have Christmas to go through before my cruise in January.  Last Friday evening we had friends over and I decided to make some cookies.  I have not made cookies in - I don't even remember!  Back in the day when I made them for the kids I used to make ginormous cookies.  Probably as big as the kids faces!  And I used to eat them straight out of the oven.  That was when I weighed oh maybe 130.  It would be one cookie for me and one cookie for the plate.  Remembering that behavior I made them really small since I knew I would probably eat a few.  I might as well have made them the size of children's faces.  The result was the same!  I'm sure I looked like a lazy cat sprawled out on the couch with a sleepy smile on my face.  Actually I was relatively good on Friday night.  Most of them were eaten.  It was Sunday evening when they called to me from the freezer!  I'm a pathetic loser!  :)  I have not been all bad though.  It's just the occasional stunt like that that is making it pretty slow to get back to my pre Thanksgiving pants.

Winter is definitely harder to lose weight!  Salads are not very appealing right now.  It's so cold outside.  We still have piles and piles of snow.  After I come in from feeding the cows in the afternoon I'm not really in the mood to rush over and pull a bunch of cold veggies out of the fridge and make a salad.  I've been making more cooked veggies.  Broccoli with sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese and a sprinkling of pine nuts is very tasty.

I have been getting a bit of exercise though.  Just feeding the animals is much more difficult in the winter.  We have the mamas and calves separated from Red Bull and Ginger.  One group has the creek for water - although the creek has come pretty close to freezing over already this year.  If it does Dave will be down there with an ax :)  But the other group has to have water hauled from the house 6 gallons of water at a time then I have to climb up on the wooden fence and pour it over into their tank.  I have to do that twice a day.  Plus pitching hay over the fence is a bit of work.  Right now we have six cows so that's quite a bit of pitching.  I don't mind though really.  I do like visiting with the cows - and I do like rib steaks :)  There are also fences to check.  Just a couple of weeks ago (before the snow started) I bought some snow shoes.  They make it so much easier to walk the fence lines!   Dave and I do that together.  We enjoy our little walks.  And of course the dogs have to come along.   

Tank can sometimes be a little over excited.  Check out this tiny video...

Tank in the snow 

We now have lots of turkey and deer hanging around eating the hay.  The dogs will chase the deer off if they are outside.  They have been in more than out lately because of Lucy's injury.  I need to let them out right now.  There are two deer eating from the hay bale RIGHT NOW!  They don't chase the turkeys though so I have to do that myself. Turkeys look a little too much like chickens and they know not to chase the chickens! 

Ok well (ha!  Sounds like Aunt Rita)... I better get rolling!  Gotta get out there and feed them animules!

Oh and by the way... I have a new grandchild scheduled to arrive early in July :)  Yay!  That means I need to collect a ruby.  :)

Ciao baby!

Turkey Anyone???

Have you ever noticed that Thanksgiving lasts longer than any other holiday?  Christmas is like a flash fire.  Yay! Presents!  Poof, wrappings up in smoke - done!  Thanksgiving just keeps lingering and lingering... I suppose this depends on how many leftovers there are.  This year with only six of us there are MANY leftovers.  Carol!  You need to come back over here.  You didn't eat enough!  Tonight it's turkey and wild rice soup.  I get to use up a couple of quarts of the turkey stock I made from the bones.  :)  After using those for the soup I will have 5 quarts left.   Well here - let me show you :)

This image could be right out of a book called Have Yourself A Merry Little Redneck Christmas.  :)  Don't you just love my freezer?  I was too lazy to go put them in the big freezer in the barn and my kitchen freezer is too full.  Dave discovered that fact this morning when I went to retrieve some turkey slices that I had frozen.  I opened it and he said, "Oh my God!  You filled the freezer up!"  The problem is that Panda is going to have her "sad day" next week and she will be going to live in the freezer.  So... I guess it will be a feeding frenzy between now and then - or I can just hope the air outside stays frozen because Dave will be tossing stuff OUT of the freezer.  What a tangent!  Ok...  back to my soup - in a round about way... I made the brown/wild rice yesterday to use up more of the big spiral ham I cooked when Michele and James were here.  I made fried rice with that last night.  So yum!!!  When I made my broccoli and cauliflower gratin for Thanksgiving I made way too much to put in the pan so I just stored some away uncooked and used that to go in the fried rice.  Last night it was the veggies (with bits of cheese and chopped up stuffing) and eggs and chopped ham and the rice.  A little garlic black bean paste and some teriyaki sauce made it extra special and kicked up that sodium and sugar content just right - flavor wise.  Wish I had some left for lunch!  But no!  Which means I ate too much!  Anyway... that used up the last of the stuffing and veg and tonight I will use up the wild rice for the soup.  See... told you I was getting around to getting back to the soup.  Note to self... you are crazy!

Another easy morning after dish was the ham/stuffing/veg/cheese quiche I made.  So easy to wisk the eggs and chop and throw everything else in.   Anyway - the point is... every time I make one ingredient needed to use up a Thanksgiving leftover it turns into another dish - another left over!  I won't have to go to the store for a month.  Which works out great since Dave has the truck for driving to work.  He barely made it up our hill last night in the little Honda due to the snow we got yesterday.  We must have about 14 or so inches piled up out there.  Beautiful!  If you don't have to drive in it.

Well!  I am completely exhausted!  I feel like my brain has just been on a scavenger hunt.  It ran all over the neighborhood and came back with a bunch of junk which makes up this blog post.  Bummer for y'all!  I'm out!

Oh... 115 glucose :(  154.2 fatometer.  :(

Ok... now I'm out!

Ciao!  :)