Here I am!!!



This pic was taken on March 29th. I do not remember where we were going but I do remember the outfit. Oh wait! I remember now! We were going to Home Depot to check out new bathroom and kitchen fixtures and refrigerators. Okay...

Anyway, Happy Easter! To all who are celebrating. We are having a ham (cooked in the crockpot) greens, potatoes, and cheesecake for dessert. We are also taking a couple of loads of stuff to the new house. So... we aren't actually REALLY celebrating, but then again... we are. I remembered to purchase a little bit of Easter candy for the family. I got a sugar free chocolate bunny. Thomas got a set of small Reese brand peanut butter bunnies. Pete got a package of yellow Peeps (which he actually likes).

So there I am. My back has been hurting something fierce. Don't know why. I haven't been lifting things that were too heavy or over-doing. That's a fact. I should have had way more done than I have. But I digress... My sugar is just a taddy high, but it usually is this time of the month. Hopefully I'll feel better in a few days. I haven't really been bad, as far as diet, just still not exercising. But who has time? We did order pizza for supper last night. I had Spinach pizza with bacon and shrooms. I love the Spinach pizza from Papa John's. It's really good. Maybe not so good FOR you, but good tasting, that's for sure. Anyway, it is one of their lower caloric choices but that didn't really go into my choice. I chose it because I love it. And I'm not going to get down on myself for it. I've been working hard and I deserve a treat every once in a while. So there! :-)

Hope you are all having a lovely holiday. See you guys later (soon, I hope).

Southern Dump Cake for Diabetics

I love Dump Cake. It's so yummy. And it's a true Southern Tradition. I'm not sure when it originated or who thought of it first... but who ever it was was a genius.
However... being diabetic makes it kinda of an off-limits item. It's not really even very good for you if you aren't a diabetic.

However... thanks to more sugar-free items becoming available on southern grocery store shelves, one can enjoy a less unhealthy version. Which myself and my family actually liked better than the original. So... instead of posting a picture of myself today or anything like that, I thought I would share this recipe with you all:

Ingredients
1 box Pillsbury's Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Reduced Sugar cake mix
1 20 ounce can Comstock More Fruit Light Cherry Pie Filling
1 20 ounce can Dole Pineapple Tidbits in juice (no sugar added)
1 cup chopped pecans, walnuts, almonds, your choice of nuts. Or use large shred coconut (sometimes called coconut chips)
1 stick light butter, melted. Or use equivalent amount (half cup) of other nutritionally sound oil such as mild olive oil, walnut oil, or avocado oil. I used light butter this time, but I intend to play around with it and see which ones work best. My guess is that different oils will work better with different fruits... not so?

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

This is the way you put it together:
Spread the cherry pie filling in the bottom of a 13x9 pan. I use a heavy glass baking pan for this. Pour pineapple tidbits (or crushed pineapple) on top of the cherries. Sprinkle the entire box of cake mix evenly over the top of the fruit. Sprinkle the chopped nuts, or coconut chips (if using) over the top of the dry cake mix. Now drizzle the melted butter (or alternate oil) slowly over the dry cake mix and nuts. Note that you must not stir this dessert at any time. Trust me. It will all work out. Layer your items and put on the middle rack of your preheated oven. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, depending on how high or low your oven burns.

This was a beautiful Dump Cake and more delicious than the original. The fruit tasted "fruitier" and "brighter", not as cloyingly sweet as the regular kind of Dump Cake. The cake mix didn't taste any different than any other full-sugar store bought cake mix I've ever had. I would encourage anyone and everyone to make this version of a Southern Classic. I would not recommend eating it every day... but if you know you are going to eat one anyway... why not have this less dietarily offensive version?

I will be experimenting with this recipe. The cherry and pineapple version is my very most favorite, but Thomas has just asked if I could make an apple version. I think that might be my next try. Apple Walnut Dump Cake anyone?

Not a very good record, eh?

I've been grossly negligent in my posting, haven't I? Thank you dear friend for prodding me to action. :)

As many of you know, I'm in the process of moving. I'm really happy about that. But I'm also awfully busy right now. I have had neither the time nor the energy to post a new pic. But... because my beautiful friend, Jeannie, asked me to:



This was taken the other day before we left to go to Home Depot to look at paint. The door and shutters on our new house need to be painted. We don't really like the color that is on them now. We're thinking some shade of red, or perhaps we'll stick with green, but just a nicer one, not so olive toned.

Anyway... I've been good. My sugar has been pretty steady in the 100 to 140 range. Just a couple of spikes in the last few weeks. The weight is not coming off. In fact I think I've gained a couple more pounds... but I can't let that bother me right now. I know I'm eating healthy. I'm not eating bad food or fatty food. I'm eating whole grains, legumes, lean meat, having yogurt smoothies, whole grain muffins or pancakes and fresh fruit for breakfast. I'm eating my largest meal for lunch and trying to eat light for supper. Mostly having salads for supper and soups. My downfall is still the bedtime snacks, tho. Have to work harder to curb that habit.

Hopefully I will have more time soon, to put up a better, more informative post. Thanks for hanging in there with me gang. I appreciate it so much. Love to all!

See? I promised you a picture...

...and here it is.




That's me with the marvelous new home gym thingie. Perhaps one day I will even take a picture of myself actually using it.

But I was trying to get ready to take my man out for his birthday dinner. Ended up driving over to the new neighborhood and drooling over our soon to be new house. Talking, making plans...

We are going down to FL to pick up Thomas very early Saturday morning. We have to be here Sunday for the home inspection at 1pm. And the man has to work next Saturday, so we can't go down there then. Will be extra busy this weekend, and then for several weeks to come, but it will be good. I have prepared good breakfast foods like the apple cinnamon bran muffins and the blueberry sourdough bran muffins and I have laid in a supply for those Activia brand yogurt smoothies. I like them. And lets face it... I AM NOT going to make a smoothie every morning, or any morning, for all practical purposes. Let's be realistic. Baking muffins? No problem. Whizzing up a smoothie in that noisy blender first thing in the morning? Yes problem. A muffin I can bake at any time and then freeze. A smoothie is not something that is very good after you let it sit a while. So...

Maybe I will at least eat healthy even if I don't stay on an exercise regimen. Perhaps I won't gain too much more weight. If I can just stay where I am right now, until we get this move all done, I will be happy. I am not going to even dream of loosing any during this time. It will be stressful enough without worrying about that, too. I so I will just concentrate on doing what I have to do and also on eating healthy. I won't feel guilty if I don't get my exercises done every day, or even every other day. I'm pretty sure that packing stuff up and moving things around will be pretty darned close to exercise. Don't you think?

Anyway, here's another pic of me with our new addition. OH! Did I mention that we are reserving the middle bedroom for an exercise room. We will put the home gym, the treadmill and the other stuff in there to start off with. And we will have no excuse to not use it. I hope.

Not Loosing Any Weight...

... but I feel pretty good anyway.
We finally got our home gym thingie put up and working. It's awesome! I have no pics yet, but... I will, I promise. Soon.




Okay, I was feeling pretty good. Now I'm depressed. Crushed. Okay, I'm crying a little bit. Life sucks. We got the house we wanted but when I called my son, who is in FL right now with his other family and who is supposed to come home on Sunday, he asked me if he could stay a couple of weeks longer. And Pete didn't want me to tell him that we got the house. He wanted him to just come home and be surprised. Why the hell does he always want to make surprises when he KNOWS damned well that they never turn out the way he expects or wants them to then he gets all offended and it just makes things harder on me. I feel so angry and sad and mad and terrible. Why is it that ever since we got married the days that should be the happiest always turn out to be horrible? I feel like I was robbed. By Thomas and by Pete. I should still be feeling happy and excited and all that good stuff. Instead, I'm sitting here crying and my nose is all stuffed and my eyes are blurry and red and I feel awful. I hate men! All of them! Not really. But I am mad as hell at both of them for taking this happy moment and turning it into a horrible one. It sucks.

And I'm also still fat. Only now... I'm fat and I have a ugly crybaby blubber face, too. I know we are going to have words tomorrow when we talk about it. Pete and I, that is. I've already had words with Thomas and that really sucks too cause I miss him so bad I think I might die and I'm worried to hell that he's going to want to stay there with them (they have been really working on him this time) and then they will take all his money and he'll have nothing left to live on and his life will be terrible and Oh God! Shut me up! I feel so miserable right now. I'm going to go to bed. I don't really feel like updating my stats or doing anything like that. I feel like crying and screaming and stomping and yelling and thrashing around on the floor and generally having a big two year old toddler type mad fit. But that won't help, will it?

Sorry, I'm late...

...

Hey! Check out the boots!
I know, I know, I have been remiss. I have not done my posts regularly, nor have I been exercising regularly. I think I gained back the two pounds that I lost last month. My sugar is up. Bummer, that. But I shall keep working at it as I can. I just wanted to post a picture or two since I promised I would do that at least once a week.
Okay, I'm going to update my stats over there --->
and then I'm going to go find some supper. I think me and the man will have a cheese/veggie/fruit plate for supper. I was going to make chicken and dumplings or something like that, but I don't feel like having cooked food. I want raw veggies and fruits. A salad, grape tomatoes, baby carrots, seedless red grapes, bananas, radishes, cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese, olives, pickles... a bit or a bite of each, perhaps...


Don't she look cute?

It Used To Be My Sewing Corner...

...eventually it will be my, excuse me, OUR exercise area.

However, I do have a little bitty bit of work to do before that happens. This is what it looks like right now, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009:



Isn't that a lovely piece of machinery? I can tell already that I'm really going to get a lot of use out of it.


...but not if I don't get my act together and get it set up. Well, next week will be less hectic. And I will be here alone, since Thomas is leaving for Florida tomorrow. He will be gone a month. As I've said elsewhere, it totally totally sucks. Makes me want to say dirty words and work horrific, torturous, violence on my ex. But I digress...

Today I walked for 15 minutes and did the variation in speed that Bunny talked about in her post. I've not done much walking this past week, but the last two times I did walk I did the variation thing. Today I didn't get up much speed because I was already tired. But after my walk I did 45 minutes of exercises, concentrating on abs and arms with some nice long stretches too. Felt good.

Sugar was not too bad this morning, 183. Not good, but not terrible. Then my after meal number was 228, I think. That is NOT good. I would like to get to a place where I don't ever get over 200. I need to work on that harder, don't I?

Anyway, we went out for a drive today and looked at some houses that I had been looking at online. I think we have found our place, but still need to go inside it and get a good feeling for it. On the way home we picked up Chinese takeout. I had mu shu chicken, which is essentially chicken with cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, mushrooms, other veggies, which you wrap in thin rice pancakes and serve with plum sauce. I went light on the sauce and only ate two pancakes.



I felt good today. It felt good to just spend time with my fellas and have a pleasant, relaxing day. It was enjoyable to the max. It was a nice day, temperature in the 70's, light breeze, lots of sunshine. Lovely day for an outing.