Monday Morning

Here we are again, Monday!  We had such beautiful weather this weekend (and the sun is still shining that) forgot to get all depressed about Monday!  I enjoyed my guests, Amberlyn brought her friend Jamie and daughter Elliena who was highly entertaining.  My best friend's daughter Maggie and her boyfriend Anthony came over too and stayed the weekend.  And I didn't alter my cooking too much for them so I didn't eat horribly.  Yay!  I mentioned that FatSecret website... it's quite interesting.  It really does take a lot of work to write down everything I eat - which makes me think twice about eating it... oh dang, I don't want to have to enter that... not worth it.  It is sort of cool though.  If it's a packaged product like the yogurt I am eating right now I can just scan the barcode and it will bring it up and I just have to enter the portion size and it calculates the calories.  Then I have to add the granola and blueberries so it's kind of tedious.  Oh..the barcode scanner.... I have a Droid phone and it has a FatSecret app and a barcode scanner that syncs up with my computer.  Never thought I would have a use for the barcode scanner :)  Who knew?  Anyway I am learning more about portion size and calories.  I really never have counted calories too closely.  I probably won't do it for too long I'll just kind of become familiar with the foods I typically eat so I'll have a better idea of how many calories I am stuffing in.  :)

This morning 160.8 not a new low but still better than 170 :)  and glucose 85.  Now that is a new low.  Sweet.  I must be doing something right.  Like not eating a smore yesterday :)

My goal for this... week :)  will be to take the Zoomba DVD's from the box and learn how to work the DVD player.  Wish me luck with that!

Ciao!

Another Day in Paradise

It's 7am.  Everyone else is still asleep.  My coffee pot is about to beep the signal that will tear me away from this screen.  Ummm... that first sip of coffee.  Better than... many things :)  I love early mornings when it is quiet and peaceful.  The day is still brand new and full of possibilities.  I think I'll finish this, get dressed and go for a walk before breakfast. I just saw my neighbor drive out headed home to Moses Lake.  They come up for the weekend sometimes.  They don't have a home up there just a campsite.  It's high on the hill and has a pretty view.  I always like it when they leave so I can trespass :)  I walk up pretty much every day - just to make sure the deer and elk have not partied their tails off and left a big mess.   The neighbors appreciate that I care so much :)  I bet everyone will sleep in - except for Elliena.  Dave took the girls into town to Sporty's last night to show them off.  I think he likes being the most popular man in the bar.  :)  One of our neighbors who poured our walkway last year hangs out there.  When ever we have gone in for a beer Dave will wave at him and he usually pretty much ignores him.  But last night he decided to mosey over and say "Howdy".  Of course.  When you show up with two beautiful 25 year old women you are the king.  :)  I am not drinking so I thought I'd let them go and stay home with Elliena.  We had a great time.  She went to bed and I messed around with a diet website that my sister in law sent me called - FatSecret.  What is she trying to tell me I wonder?  Guess what?  When you're fat it ain't no secret man!  :)  You're supposed to  write down everything you eat and it calculates the calories... there's a lot too it.  It might be more effort than I want to put in.  I'll do it for a little while though.

Oh yesssss!  There we go.  First sip!  Ok the stats:  161.2 (not a new low but not bad considering how much taco salad, and a burger - with a "thin bun" I pounded down yesterday) and glucose 94.  Which is shocking  since I caved and had a smore down by the fire last night.  It was oh so good :)  Elliena had more than one.  Here she is eating the first one.  Check her out.  She is wearing mommy's sweatshirt and looks like she has no legs :)

And here she is once the sugar kicked in:

Ha ha!  So funny!  And ready to eat another one!  I wish I had taken a picture of her after the last smore - that she couldn't even finish.  Her face was a disaster. Tank wanted to lick it in the worst way!  I'm pretty sure she had a great time.  She told me it was the biggest fire she had ever seen in her life!  :)  She also had fun collecting eggs.  We got 4 eggs yesterday.  We've been only getting one or two because of the stupid magpies but she wanted to go check for more "baby eggs" about every 15 minutes so they didn't have time to steal them away.  Dave tells me that's what I need to do everyday.   Wonder if he thinks it's important for me to have an income?  Yes I work from my home office - but they would figure it out if every time someone calls I'm out at the hen house :)

Well... better get rolling!  I have sunflowers to plant today!

Ciao!

Can You Say Saturday? :)

This is going to be the best day of my life - so nobody screw it up ok?  :)  No - I just mean it's Saturday!  And the sun is out and it's going to be 80 degrees and we have visitors.  And Maggie and Anthony are going to mow my lawn :)  Speaking of moving.  I'm so sore I could almost scream!  The worst part is I can't say, "Yeah I ran the Boston Marathon, I'm pretty sore."  Nope - pathetically for me it's three hours of hard time on the riding lawn mower.  That is so lame!  But my back and sides are so sore.  It was bumpy!  I almost got thrown a time or two.  :)

Well, this morning my glucose was 99.  Perfect!  I weighed in at 161.8.  :(  I don't know why I weigh every morning.  There is always bouncing up and down.  I do love those mornings when I reach a new low.  Today is not one of them though.  Over all I am down about 9 pounds though so that's good.  I do need to get some real exercise though so that's why I bought - oh I hate to admit this... Zoomba CDs.  Ok - it's out!  I'm going to groove it up with Pedro, or Beppo or what ever his name is.  What hooked me was the zoomba sticks.  You know they make noise when you shake them.  Did you ever see the animated movie Hercules?  With the Roman cartoon dancers?  Yeah.  I'm the fat one.  Maybe if everyone gets bored this weekend I will pull it out and try it.  If nothing else it would be funny.  Disgusting but funny.

Dang!  Here comes my cat again.  He is an excellent hunter.  I'm so tired of it.  He always brings his prey in the house.  Last night he ran in through the cat door with a little live mole in his mouth and let it go.  Finally Dave chased it out.  I like that better than his usual solution of flushing them down the toilet.  :(  What a way to go!  And now I can't use that toilet anymore!  I have to keep getting up and looking to see if the mouse has magically crawled back up into the bowl.  Eeeek!

Ok... little Aleena has emerged from the bedroom down stairs and I now can not hear myself think.  She is five - but almost six and she is going to be 6' 2" when she grows up and she is going to ride a cow today after she flies her kite and she has her ears pierced and is almost in kindergarten and one time when she was at her Chacha's house it was raining so bad and they almost got struck by lightning and they have dogs and got in trouble cause they were digging in the garbage...   :)  So... yeah!  I am going to retreat to the tub (until her mama gets up) to soak my sore fatness.

Ciao does not seem appropriate this morning.  I think I'll go with... Peace Out!  :)

Stuff That Makes Me Smile

As much as I enjoy my bimonthly trips to the Woodinville I am alway ready to go home.  I've come to enjoy the drive home - once I get through Issaquah anyway.  It's always a treat to take Hwy 231 through the farmland and valleys.  It's a very rural and twisty drive.  There is very little traffic and I've found I can drive as fast as I am comfortable.  If I have had a Starbucks double shot I tend to really breeze along.  The radio reception offers nothing but twangy country music which I enjoy especially if they play Josh Turner :)  Once that fades out completely I am left with my crazy mix of favorite songs on the CD.  The closer I get the louder I sing and I'm really glad there is nobody else in the car :)  The cool surprise this trip was turning a corner, looking over toward a small lake and seeing a moose wading out of the water.  I was so excited I was waving and yelling through the glass.  I was only a little disappointed that the moose didn't wave back.  Well I guess you had to be there - but next time you see a moose I guarantee you will smile!

This morning I forgot to test my glucose level but I weighed 160.4 which is about 2 lbs lighter than when I left for a total of 10 lbs since May 15th when I started this gotta get a grip journey.  Yippy!  Maybe not so surprising considering what I ate while I was away from home.  Not much!  We had appointments in Colville this morning that took until noon.  Dave wanted to stop at Subway to get something to eat but I feel like I'm on a roll so I decided to just come home and make something.  I had some boneless chicken thighs in the fridge so I thought I'd grill them with an Asian style oyster sauce and have them with a salad.  I threw together many of the usual favorites, mixed greens, tomatoes, cukes, avocado, fresh mozzarella cheese and chopped nuts with ribbons of basil on top and some balsamic pomegranate vinaigrette.  It was delightful.  Much more healthy than a sub sandwich or even a wrap.  If I am going to grill chicken with a sauce I like to use thighs.  They tend to be more moist and flavorful, not to mention cheaper.

I've been on the riding mower all afternoon mowing parts of vacant pasture.  Those giant dandelions were just getting ready to burst open so we wanted to catch them before they seeded out.  It was a pretty bumpy ride.  I felt like I was riding a mechanical bull.  I'm sure I will be very sore tomorrow.  Maybe I got a good core workout :)  This day flew by.  It's dinner time and then I have to get ready for my late arriving weekend guests.  The sun is expected to warm us up this weekend.  I have some lettuce to harvest in my garden.  Yep, that's a whole list of stuff that makes me smile!

Ciao!

Oh Baby!

Now I remember why I was thin when my kids were little.  They don't let you eat!  We had a great family evening over at Jeff & Andrea's house, my brother and sister in law.  My nephew Chris and his family are visiting from TN so we gathered up all the cousins who were living over here in the Seattle area for dinner.  I brought my little granddaughter Aubrey who will be two in August.  I was worried that I would over eat because Andrea is a fantastic cook but never fear!  Little Aubrey would not let me put her down most of the time we were there.  I think she was a little overwhelmed by all the big people.  And my oldest son Adam always scares her with his booming laugh :)  I attempted to get her to eat the little bites of meat, salad and yummy bread I had cut up and put on my plate for her but all she wanted to do was feed them to me so I had to fake eat the bread.  She didn't even let me make the salad I planned.  Thanks to Amberlyn the salad was very yummy.  She made it while I held the baby.  Jeff grilled pork tenderloin and it was fabulous.  I inhaled as much as I could in between her wiggling.  We (when I say we I don't mean me) also had crispy garlicky potatoes, several kinds of bread and brownies... ummmm brownies.  They smelled fabulous.  Little Aubrey saved me from the potatoes and brownies.  Well... I would rather hold my little baby than eat anyway so I guess that worked out ok.  It's so easy to forget all the energy it takes to run around after a toddler.  Aubrey kept me busy enough.  I don't know how I handled four small children.  Especially the mischievous Michele who was always found swinging from the chandelier or up to her elbows in the big tub of Costco margarine that I used to bake industrial batches of cookies!  I used to eat about half of them as they came out of the oven too.  I must have burned the calories running around after the little curtain climbers.  Those were the days!  It will be very interesting to see what my glucose level is in the morning.  It should be ok.  Thanks to Aubrey I ate pretty sparingly.  :)

Well, I'm off to bed.  Tomorrow after work I'm on the road again headed for home.  I can't wait to see how my new herb barrels are doing that I planted before I left.

Ciao!

p.s.   this morning my glucosse was 91!  So the Aubrey factor really worked.  In the last two days I have learned to ALWAYS request your salad dressing on the side and if you need a distraction from eating borrow a toddler :)

Eating Out

Today I took my son Bobby and nephew Nick to a little local diner - The Clearview Cafe.  Bobby who is 19 and lifting weights was ravenous!  I chose that restaurant because I knew they had big food for little money.   Bobby chose a French dip sandwich with fries.  Nick chose a country fried steak with hash browns and gravy breakfast and I chose a bowl of chili with a side salad.  I asked them to not bring the bread or croûton to the table.  Easier to resist temptation if it's not in my face.  What I failed to do though was ask for the dressing on the side!  It was a honey mustard dressing and quite good but about 3 times more that I would have put on.  Lesson learned1  Bobby inhaled his food and was getting ready to drink all the little half and half packets so I felt sorry for him and gave him at least half of my chill.  Nick finally slowed down and put his fork down and Bobby swooped in to finish his hash-browns and gravy and even finished up the last of my salad.  He ended up with all of the plates in front of him.  By the time he left he was full but I thought for sure he was getting ready to order dessert.  Sometimes I long for the days when I could eat like that and still be a skinny Minnie.

This morning the stats were 162.9 lbs and glucose 108.  I can't thing of a thing I ate yesterday that would have caused a little spike like that.  I'll just have to keep at it.  Time for bed!  My eyes are rolling!

Ciao!

p.s.

This morning my glucose was 118.  Yikes!  That honey mustard must have bee LOADED with... well - honey :)  A little if ok but since I forgot to ask for it on the side I got a bunch!

Cauliflower Again?!?

Tomorrow I'm going west again so no time to blog.  Thought I'd tell you about the side dish I made for dinner tonight.  Dave had to work late so it was dinner for one.  I grilled a small rib steak so I thought I better make something very veggie.  :)  I decided on cauliflower.  I love cauliflower but how many times can you have steamed cauliflower?  After a while it does get kind of... boring!  So I chopped up a little garlic, shallots and yellow bell pepper and a few sun dried tomatoes (they really add a nice touch... very tangy/sweet) and stir fried them with salt and pepper until they were sort of caramelized.  The yellow pepper cooks more quickly and has a lot of sugar so it browns nicely and adds great color to the cauliflower.  Then I added just a little balsamic vinegar and melted some grated Gruyère cheese on top.  Not much... I use my small micro planer which shaves a very fine layer.  Since everything turns sort of a golden color I thought it would be nice to add  just a bit of fresh green so I went out and snipped some chives and raided the new baby spinach in my garden.  I rolled up the spinach with the chives and just snipped it up into ribbons after taking the cauliflower off the heat so it would retain the bright green flavor.

Wait!  Do I have utensils backwards?  :)  Too funny.  I am sort of... process challenged :)  You ought to watch me make a sandwich.  Takes about 5 trips to the fridge because I just can not remember everything.  And every night when I set the table I forget the serving utensils.  Every night!  

So what's healthy about rib steak?  Well :) It is home grown very healthy beef.  Make no mistake though... moderation is the name of the game.  I am always satisfied with just a small amount.  This was a small steak and I put at least half of it away.  Dave would wolf down the entire steak easily but I'm good with just a few ounces.  I was a good girl and ate all of my cauliflower.  Since I can have as much as I want to that I chowed down!  It was quite tasty.  You have to like cauliflower though.  My friend Brenda (bff) hates vegetables.  But she's a great mom and knew it would be best for her children to learn to like them so she just... lied :)  and told them that she was allergic to vegetables.  Still makes me laugh.  All five of her girls love veggies so I guess it worked out.

This trip will be very quick.  Not enough time to get into too much dietary trouble.  This weekend when I get home we will have our daughter Amberlyn and Maggie, Brenda's daughter (but I claim her too) visiting.   I don't have to worry about cooking differently for them.  They like veggies :)  I think I will be able to keep the momentum going this week.  We shall see!

Well... better get to bed.  I have to get up super early for the trip.

Ciao!